Tail Fin Heroes …

 

We had a prompt recently … 'our first flight' – well it introduced a range of memories for the eight of us … trips to the States to meet up with relatives who'd left the Welsh valleys, others who'd gone south to Africa with their families, an English-American who'd lived in Sri Lanks, or holidays into Europe …

Showing a car being boarded at Lydd

... then me (of course) … I'd remembered we'd taken in the mid 1960s, our car over the Channel from Lydd airport, on the Kent coast ...

... so my mother could drive the three of us down to Italy, where my father would fly out and join us.

The leaning tower was one
of our stop overs

Now to tail fins – as the company that flew out of Lydd turned out to be Silver City Airways … interesting company … one of the first commercial flights from London Airport (as it was known) was to Sydney … via – guess where – yes … Johannesburg – crumbs – I'm so pleased I didn't have to travel that way.

Panorama view of Lake Como - another stop over

So this was why I was off down various rabbit holes, we lived near Heathrow for the first 20 years or so of my life ...

Using both the USA and UK flags as their logo

... I really had better get back to 'tail fins' … my first flight to the States for a friend's wedding was on one of Freddie Laker's Skytrains …

It certainly shows Freddie ... 

To my amazement in 2017 – oh yes 50+ years of air transportation … when tail fins popped up … would you put Freddie Laker, Queen's frontman Freddie Mercury, children's author Roald Dahl, pioneering pilot Amy Johnson and our 1966 football's winning team captain Bobby Moore …

Map of Lake Como ... I've no idea where
we stayed, but my mother, father and I 
did learn to play Bezique here

... well believe it or not Norwegian Air International has placed these images on five of their tailfins … strange bedfellows I thought – and I'm sure you do too? Little things amuse me …

Normal service will be resumed shortly …

Hilary Melton-Butcher

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