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Vickers VC10
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4 replies on “Vickers VC10”
Jon – The famous “Gozomi Bird”. I flew to Belize via Dulles on one in the early ’80s. A beautiful aeroplane,even if the rearward facing seats were a bit weird, but much safer apparently.
Yeah, the thinking was aircraft rarely reverse into mountains 🙂 Joking aside in the 1980’s I travelled to various places aboard RAF VC-10s. As I recall the last was to Denmark in ’87 and fog was a major problem when we arrived from the UK. Being a military jet we landed anyway. They do that the RAF: flying a passenger jet in ways that civvies really wouldn’t like. One trip I did on a VC-10 the aircraft was ordered to return immediately to the airfield after 10 minutes in the air. We did a wingover and were back on the ground in no time. Reason? A defence minister needed to get somewhere quick and we were going that way – so it was ordered back.
Many years ago, I was told by a BOAC engineer that Harold Wilson offered the plans for the VC10 to a visiting Soviet trade delegation, and they produced a Russian version. However, when he allegedly offered a visiting Soviet delegation the plans for Concorde, the Russian version failed due to some BOAC engineers having slightly altered some specifications, suspecting that offer would be made. Not certain if it was true or not, but he dined out on that story for quite a few years..
Jon – The famous “Gozomi Bird”. I flew to Belize via Dulles on one in the early ’80s. A beautiful aeroplane,even if the rearward facing seats were a bit weird, but much safer apparently.
Yeah, the thinking was aircraft rarely reverse into mountains 🙂 Joking aside in the 1980’s I travelled to various places aboard RAF VC-10s. As I recall the last was to Denmark in ’87 and fog was a major problem when we arrived from the UK. Being a military jet we landed anyway. They do that the RAF: flying a passenger jet in ways that civvies really wouldn’t like. One trip I did on a VC-10 the aircraft was ordered to return immediately to the airfield after 10 minutes in the air. We did a wingover and were back on the ground in no time. Reason? A defence minister needed to get somewhere quick and we were going that way – so it was ordered back.
Many years ago, I was told by a BOAC engineer that Harold Wilson offered the plans for the VC10 to a visiting Soviet trade delegation, and they produced a Russian version. However, when he allegedly offered a visiting Soviet delegation the plans for Concorde, the Russian version failed due to some BOAC engineers having slightly altered some specifications, suspecting that offer would be made. Not certain if it was true or not, but he dined out on that story for quite a few years..
“even if the rearward facing seats were a bit weird” … like it.
“A defence minister needed to get somewhere quick and we were going that way – so it was ordered back.” 😂
Russian concorde … it was just up the road from us and my gf’s grandpa had been involved in it.