Subscribe Today

• Subscribe to Armchair General Magazine
• Subscribe online and save nearly 40%!
 

Sitting and drinking all day is all very well of course, but it doesn’t get me any decent photos until the displays start up, so off I toddled to see what was lying around. And I wasn’t disappointed. Being someone who actually works in Farnborough during the week, I saw this interesting vehicle arrive a few days before – and wow, what a great looking machine! This is, of course, the V22 Osprey, a transport vehicle that has VTOL capabilities like a Helicopter, and the flying capabilities of a plane. Using its twin tiltrotors, the Osprey can take off vertically or in a very short take off distance before rotating the nacelles forward by 90 degrees and becoming a fast turboprop airplane.

I couldn’t resist a shot of me with my ACG in front of this beast. And here’s a picture of another Osprey during the later display. The Osprey was able to demonstrate its abilities very impressively by showing off a combination of helicopter and airplane type flying.

The usual array of warplanes were scattered around amongst the corporate tents and buildings.

Sometimes, the pilots were even on hand to talk about their planes – here are some pictures from what was, to all intents and purposes, a tiny piece of the USA nestling in the Hampshire countryside.

One of my favourite helicopters is the Apache – alas, despite thinking this was one of them, it turns out…it’s not. It actually appears to be an Agusta A129 Mangusta..

But here’s something you definitely won’t see in the sky – it’s actually an unmanned underwater vehicle. Not the sort of thing you normally find at an airshow either…

[continued on next page]

Help Armchair General by bookmarking to