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History repeating itself.a waste of 60 years


andy brown

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With all of the recent news from Ukraine it  reminded me of the Cuban crisis , all this sabre rattling ,we are one little blue dot in sea of nothing yet ignorance still prevails ,ok I'm arcing back sixty years but the name of the game was the same ...it's mine ..no it's mine ....

 As an agricultural engineer back in the day I watched and learnt that progress was part of the human races ingenious capacity to be able to improve on yesterday , simple example going from horse drawn to mechanisation in no time at all. But then there was this ....

Called out to breakdown, tractor has stopped...it's on Farnborough airfield mowing the grass , reach gate house and guard room seems very busy ..why are you here? Sign this official secrets act .camera clicks .given directions ...do not drive on taxi way get it ,drive round the grass , all very dictatorial.. as yet the penny hasn't dropped ,it's  mid October 62 nice sunny day leaves just starting to turn tractor on opposite side of airfield , on reaching it found to elderly chaps with sythes cutting along the fence line and burning what they cut on a bonfire with the long suffering kettle on top , "oh come to do the tractor don't know what happened just stopped" early fordson major with upright injection pump minus pump coupling , also water pump seals gone , whip off bonnet front cowl and radiator remove water pump ,then notice RAF land rover in awful hurry straight lining towards me across airfield it did a fifty yard skid across the grass and out lept the driver tall ginger headed corporal who delivered the words "We are about to go to Red Alert " have to tell you that I am giving you a predicted four minute warning" .."this airfield will be taken out do you understand " .As there wasn't a lot you can say in reply I said I better eat my sandwiches now then ....didn't eat the sandwiches instead got on with job ,more so as at the time was being paid bonus 33% more you did more you got , so better rattle on , suddenly out of the corner of my my eye an aircraft appeared low and fast over the roof tops to the east the town there being terraced down toward the airfield, it had its headlights on and wasn't hanging.about once it started down almost skipping down the roof tops I could see it was a Vulcan bomber ,there was nothing gracious about his approach with all flaps down and leaving to trails of black smoke spinning behind an a heat haze you could cut with a knife..he started to brake once he touched the runway  which bought the nose down so fast that smoke poured of the nose wheel as the plane came towards me ,as it slowed the nose started to lift back having almost torn the nose wheel flaps off ...as It went past me to the end of the end of the runway which was two hundred yard to my left still quarter throttle with smoke billowing of the main undercarriage brakes , usually these were seen with pristene paint work but this was in a right state from nose to tail all leading edges were black with spider web dribbles fanning out down the fuselage the engine cowls were a coffee colour with streaks of oil that had feathered away along the underside of the wings ,I could see the Crew in the cockpit just through the side cockpit window which was stained with a sheet if oil reflecting the sunlight , braking hard it turned left onto the taxi way then Sharp left again to pass by me in the opposite direction it had used on the main runway as it throttled up it passed the two old boys cutting the long grass by hand ,in a flash their bonfire went along with the kettle way out into the woods , then their bikes spinning through the air some hundred and fifty yards ,as the pilot gave it a bit more throttle the two old boys went laying flat grasping at the grass  the were blown into the woods.

As it came past me at around forty mph I crouched down behind the tractor ,couldn't breath for paraffin fumes but then it turned left again across the main runway and headed to the back of the national gas turbine research centre .

.No sooner had it stopped than the bomb bay doors opened a team of men in white full body suits gathered round with a framework on wheels like Ali scaffold also had what looked at a distance like a garage sun tuner dials all over it ,they tried to put a screen around the bomb bay doors but gave up on that ,then slowly a device appeared being lowered down inch by inch on to the cradle , slowly appeared a  glossy black ball with coloured cables and pipework attached to it  ,more wiring and pipes were connected to it from the sun tuner and most of the ground staff moved away and left two or three people attending to the black glossy ball which only just fitted into the width of the Vulcans bomb bay , so in one morning sixty years ago I was warned about the arrival of Armageddon and then  actually saw an Armageddon ,often wondered about the crew of that vulcan ,was going to say they were just ordinary people but they were far beyond ordinary which brings back to (Why Again)  ???????.

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