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Masai meet the Hunters...

Posted: 18 Jul 2006, 12:00
by petermcleland
These seem to be using a different film and I have had trouble getting the colour balance right...I'm not satified with them at the moment as the Hunter camo looks wrong...I'll work on it.

Our Venoms were all sawn up and we returned to England in a Britania (whispering giant...because it had f... all to shout about)...I sat abeam the props and back in the U.K. my ears took three days to recover their hearing. We re-equipped with Hunter FGA 9s at R.A.F. Stradishall and after some familiarising and practice air to ground firing, we flew them out to Nairobi...Eastleigh was too small to operate Hunters, so we were based at the new Embakazi Airport (now Jomo Kenyatta).


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DaveG might be interested in this one...The Braking Parachutes were used for ALL landings at Embakazi Airport for technical reasons...DaveG this shows the length of the string and the colour of the chute...it got a little browner with age...Sort of parchment colour.

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Taxying in after dropping the chute off the edge of the runway...I was flying Oscar on this occasion.

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Yuo may remember from an earlier post that a Masai chief agreed to look after our practice target out in the Rift Valley....Well we arranged a Parade of Hunters for the Masai to...

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...meet the new aircraft.

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I was obviously not taking these pictures because that is me with my back to the camera...Paddy Thompson our excellent Squadron Engineering Officer is tipping his hat and Dicky Brown our Instrument Rating Examiner is looking a bit bored with the proceedings. We never normally wore this kit and that is probably why it is looking a bit crumpled...We normally...

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...dressed like this for the whole year, as the climate is very pleasant...It is very close to the Equator but is 5500 feet above sea level. This was our crewroom in a small complex of "AlTents" (aluminium huts).

Thank you for looking at this last set in the series.

Posted: 18 Jul 2006, 12:48
by jonesey2k
Nice pics!

Posted: 18 Jul 2006, 13:19
by Vulcan_to_the_Sky!
Once again, some interesting pictures.

Posted: 18 Jul 2006, 16:09
by TobyV
So thats where the chairs in our house TV room at school came from :lol: Once again, so much more real in colour - and makes it seem less old than the equivalent type of material in black & white. Photographs of the Masai tribesmen just wouldnt be the same in b&w!

Posted: 18 Jul 2006, 19:32
by Chris Trott
All I can say is .......... WOW.

Thank you so much for sharing these photographs Peter. They're a great showing of history.

Posted: 19 Jul 2006, 10:10
by smithcorp
Amazing photos again Peter - thanks for posting them.

Posted: 19 Jul 2006, 11:46
by Charlie Bravo
Cracking pics. I had to chuckle at the Britannia comment :lol:

Posted: 19 Jul 2006, 15:12
by petermcleland
Charlie Bravo wrote:Cracking pics. I had to chuckle at the Britannia comment :lol:
Wasn't funny at the time CB...I nearly went to see a doc :think:

Posted: 19 Jul 2006, 15:38
by Charlie Bravo
Peter, may I draw your attention to this thread.

I have posted it before but it may have been before you were a member.

Posted: 19 Jul 2006, 18:44
by cstorey
Peter - is that a BOAC Argonaut to be seen in one of the pics? The colour has faded but the two horizontal stripes look familiar

Chris