Great pictures!

What I have not seen are the JATO take-offs with a much sharper angle
of attack as I'd witnessed at the then USAF Brize Norton, when I was a
youngster.

As soon as we kids saw that silver shark's fin passing Easterly
between the trees parallel to Milestone Road in Carterton (accompanied
by the tell-tale goddamn awful screeching noise) we all ran down to
the Westerly end of the runway and clung on to the chain link fencing,
too scared to go further West where the fencing kinked in and much
closer to the runway, just in case!

The angles of attack seemed much closer to the Vulcan's, one which
indicentally passed through USAF Brize Norton one day, promptly nosed
up and vanished into the cloud bank without fuss. Whether with the
B47 that was a noise abatement thing I don't know (they never did it
after about 6pm until morning but practiced 'circuits and bumps'
solidly through the night) but we did joke that at the usual shallower
angle of take-off, it was possible to poke the aircraft with a stick
even by the time it had passed over Upper Heyford.


Richard.