Hercules Farewell

[chazzer]

Just wondered if anyone knows if there is to be any kind of Farewrll tour of the remaining Hercules Fleet as the C1 and C3 aircraft retire at the end of October.
Lyneham played a big part in the Hercules career and perhaps a visit to the base at Lyneham by both types could be possible for the people of Lyneham to say GoodBye to the aircraft that occupied the airspace above Lyneham and provided jobs for so many for nearly 40 years.
I would love to see 2 aircraft land on runway 27 as I guess hundreds of others would it would make a change from the silence that we have at present.
Recently a Farewell to the VC10,Hercules and the TRiStar was arranged at BrizeNorton for 300 People do we think this could be done for the Hercules at Lyneham.
Any thoughts on this subject.................
Chazzer

[rh226]

Perhaps also consider the claim of their other old bases of Thorney Island (where the type was introduced with 242OCU), Colerne (where they were serviced until 1976), Changi (48 Sqdn - the first operational squadron) and Cyprus (70 Sqdn). Though I don't know if the runways could now take them at the first two.

Incidentally, the introduction at RAF Thorney Island was 1 August 1967 - just three and a half months after I was there on a CCF camp. It was like a morgue then and the only aircraft to be seen were three Argosies (XN821/850/854) and a solitary piston Provost - which I did not get near to........but I did get a low level AEF flight in the SAR Whirlwind (XP349) - legs dangling out of the open hatch!!!

Regards,

Bob

[Pen Pusher]

Already a thread running on this subject viewtopic.php?f=44&t=88107



Brian

[Firefighter]

I was recently at Colerne for a BUAS Open Day and a Hercules landed on for a static display flown by a French exchange pilot, Hercs' have very rarely used Colerne since its closure! but I went there on Exercise Fast Buzzard!(5 Airborne)many moons ago (late 80's) which obviously used Hercs', we had to redeploy to Keevil for the second part of the exercise.

[Blackcat1]

Probably the same French exchange pilot that i saw piloting the last C130K i saw at Lyneham just before it closed?