Ming's Spaceship

 

A project to write and design information displays for a VC10 bound for Al Mahatta Air Museum brought me to a place I've been wanting to visit for years. Bruntingthorpe Airfield is home to a wonderland of classic and/or bizarre aircraft in widely varying states of repair. Part of its fascination lies in the fact that these aren't museum pieces; a lot are incomplete, battered, in some cases even decaying. It's like finding an abandoned ruin on a Scottish moor. There might be more to see at a National Trust castle, but there's a sense of ownership of your discovery.

One of the most arresting sights is the Boeing Super Guppy, the Mekon-headed behemoth that Airbus used to deliver large aircraft parts. Nowadays they use their own aircraft, the Beluga, to avoid the ignominy of their American rival's understandably smug slogan: "Every Airbus arrives on the wings of a Boeing". The Guppy looks odd in photographs. In the metal it's just plain unfeasible. Flight is unquestionably impossible, and pictures of airborne Guppies are surely the work of advanced Photoshoppers.

For me though, the showstopper was the Victor. I have memories of seeing it from the viewpoint of a seven-year-old standing on the grass at Gaydon Airport. I'd seen the Vulcan and been relatively unimpressed (I do realise I'm speaking heresy here, but that's how I felt). The big delta V-bomber's undercarriage was too spindly, and those tiny porthole windows in the cockpit were just silly. The Valiant must have been there too, but I have no memory of it whatsoever - I suspect I found it even less impressive.

But then the hangar doors opened 500 yards down the strip and this great white apparition rolled into view. It was unspeakably wonderful; covered in bulges, slots and yawning intakes, it had floated out of a Flash Gordon episode straight into my life. It ran up its engines and began to gather speed for what I now realise was to be a fast taxi. The noise was Brobdingnagian, enough to make your entire body vibrate in harmony. Dimly heard over it floated the triumphant tones of the commentator. I'm sure it wasn't Raymond Baxter, but in my memory that's the voice I hear. I'm also fairly certain that Elgar's "Nimrod" wasn't playing, but it's the undeniable soundtrack to my memory palace.

"Ladies and gentlemen. The Handley Page Victor, the latest technological stride in Britain's supremacy in the air. Capable of over 600mph, it can deliver a nuclear payload to targets 6,000 miles away, it represents the pinnacle of... oh dear, oh dear."

With the impeccable theatrical timing of the classic British prat-fall, the all-white monster performed an unintended retraction of the nosewheel and scraped off several yards of skinnagen on the tarmac.

While I admit my recollection of the exact events may have been distorted by the passage of more decades than I intend to detail, the impression that stays with me now is the profound sadness that this magnificently warlike bird was lying wounded on the runway. I wanted it to soar away to planet Mongo to grind Ming the Merciless into submission. Today, looking at Teasin' Tina I felt that same sadness. A line from an old Barclay James Harvest song pursued me all the way home:

Like a bird with perfect wings denied the sky.