Here Comes Treble: Ballet In The Sky
Thumps in spectators’ ears:
Chinook takes to the skies
With giant pirouettes,
And elephantine en-pointe!
Isabel Bradley is enchanted by an aerial ballet at the Duxford Imperial War Museum in England.
For more of Isabel's colourful words please click on Here Comes Treble in the menu on this page.
Recently, Leon and I attended an air-show at Duxford Imperial War Museum in Cambridgeshire.
We arrived some time after the start of the show, unfortunately missing the spectacular Red Arrows. As we ambled from the parking lot to the entrance, older ‘planes growled overhead, flying just above the tree-tops. As we walked onto the grounds, we were greeted by a flight of bi- and tri-planes.
We spent many happy hours watching a dizzying ballet in the sky, accompanied by an orchestra of engines:
Floating, rumbling –
Dragonflies in flight;
Bi-planes diving,
Tri-planes soaring –
Puff of smoke trailing
Behind limping machine:
Mock-dog-fight –
Weaving their dance through the sky.
Spitfires, pas-de-deux,Painting the sky –
Blue-butterfly-yellow-butterfly,
Climbing and floating,
Perfectly in unison,
Underscored by rumbling,
High-speed,
Low-level fly-past.
Black Hawk ballet –
Whirling, twirling,
Arrow in the sky,
Ripping the silence –
Roaring, thundering by,
Up,
Up and over and flashing past –
Upside down:
Speed-fiend!
Wocka-wocka-wocka
Thumps in spectators’ ears:
Chinook takes to the skies
With giant pirouettes,
And elephantine en-pointe!
The Chinook was amazing: a massive helicopter, with a rotor at each end, it was incredibly manoeuvrable. Incongruously, it performed aerobatics as easily as the tiny Spitfires: gaining height, stalling, nose-diving, flying sideways, turning without moving forward, back, up or down, landing on its rear wheels, nose in the air, then reversing in that position before rising straight up – or flying with its loading bay open, crew waving to the crowds below.
A while after the display by the Hawk, two Midge jets screamed past us, flanked by huge Hunter jets. The Midges disappeared over the horizon, while the larger jets did their own high-speed pas-de-deux above the airfield before following the Midges into the distance.
The ‘Battle of Britain Flypast’ was very moving: a huge Lancaster bomber, flanked by a Hurricane and a Spitfire, was watched in utter silence by thousands of spectators. The only sound was the rumble of the engines as the three old ‘planes lumbered past at roof height.
Many of the ‘planes we saw that day, including the Hawk and the Chinook – are currently active in Iraq. How tragic that such grace and beauty was created for warfare.
On the ground all of these machines seemed clumsy and out of place. It was thrilling to watch them come to life in the air, to do what they were designed for.
Until next time, ‘here comes Treble!’
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