Wednesday 13 July 2011

Strange Parallels - Nature and Machine

Sitting outside in my garden last week as dusk was falling, I was marvelling at the aerial ballet and dogfight-like flying of the Swifts overhead.  As I have said before on the blog, I love to watch these birds fly.

It took me back a few years, in fact all the way back to my early childhood and got me reminiscing about watching Spitfire and Mustangs at airshows and how they jinked and flew about to entertain us.  

I haven't been to a decent airshow for a few years now and haven't really missed it to be honest, particularly when you have your own daily airshow each day with the Swifts.

As recent as last night, with the young now fledged, we have had over a hundred flying a few hundred feet up overhead as they flock for the night.

In taking me back to my previous enjoyment of airshows , I was saddened to hear this weekend of the death of one particular beautiful bird, the P51D mustang - 'Big Beautiful Doll'.  She was my favourite, beautiful restored and cared few, superbly flown and always a pleasure to see.

Sadly, she collided with anther aircraft and was destroyed in the resulting crash.  The good news was that Rob Davies the pilot/owner managed to parachute clear.

Here she is in better times from a few years ago.


Martin

1 comment:

  1. Martin I saw the video yesterday - he was very, very lucky to escape.

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