Thanks for the pics and videos, Alan F..the Spit/Lanc/Hurricane is almost exactly as I saw in their fly-past....awesome!
I have a Concorde story some might be interested in....
I was at Luton Airport a few years back, on sales business. I was talking to one of the management team and he told me this...
Apparantly, early in its' history, probably before it started commercial flights, Concorde was due to land at Luton for some kind of show-and-tell or some-such. It was being flown by one of the test pilots I believe.
He was on final approach when he radioed in for confirmation of the length of the runway. He was told that it was "as advertised" (5000 feet I seem to recall but could be wrong) and perfectly adequate for Concorde to stop safely.
Now, for those who don't know Luton, the main runway is not flat....it rises quite a bit to about the mid-point then drops away again. Further, close beyond the end of the runway is a fence then a steep bank that drops down probably a couple of hundred feet to houses, shops, etc.. (The Vauxhall/Bedford factory is off to the left).
Now, from a low-flying aircraft, apparently, what you see is a runway that only looks about 2000 feet long with the town right behind it.
According to "my guy" the pilot was right at "decision height" when he muttered to his co-pilot something along the lines of "screw this, I'm not going to plough this baby into Marks and Spencer" (possible poetic licence there!) and he jammed the throttles wide open, full re-heat and said "we're outta here...adios Luton!" (there may have been the odd F-word involved but that would be guessing)
Now, something else to know about Luton is that, due to the aforementioned proximity of habitation to the field, extreme noise-abatement measures have to be taken on take-off. It is quite disconcerting because it almost feels like the pilot shuts the engines down to nearly zero as soon as you are in the air, then banks away sharply to avoid the most dense housing areas. First time I experienced it I thought the engines had failed and we were going down.
So, back to our BAE/Aerospatiale wondercraft....as you know, this is a noisy bird....apparently our panicking pilot completely ignored said noise-abatement and kept the throttles all the way open, a sort of "up yours" gesture possibly . No doubt a glorious sight and sound but several windows were shattered in Luton simply due to the vibrations caused.
I am led to believe that, to this day, Concorde has never been to Luton.
And you always thought these things were all planned so perfectly that nothing could go wrong!
