Ray Hanna and a Spitfire = Perfection!

Not sure if this has been posted on here before but I have just found an HD upload of this classic video of the late, great Ray Hanna performing a very low pass at Duxford for a TV documentary. I believe the Spit is the legendary MH 434 from Duxford. Warning! the video contains very strong language:

 

There was the one at the Goodwood Revival meeting as well right down by the stands. The noise was superb and everyone was transfixed. I was looking through my camera lens and got a fantastic panned shot of the last 6 inches of the tail...... I really should have practised.

 

That's the one. I was about 100 yds from that spot at the beginning of the stands.

 

How about the infamous bridge scene from Piece of Cake (I believe Ray said something along the lines of "find me a bridge, I'll fly under it"):



Or he'd quite happily do it in a jet too:

 

Air safety board would be having kittens if a pilot flew that low now followed by your grounded
Ray Hanna and his son Mark, , two very missed war bird pilots of the first degree, i can remember the early days of OFMC, you always knew when Ray was the pilot.

 

Thanks for the 1967 Red Arrow clip. I've always thought that the Reds had that certain something extra when the flew Gnats.

 

Did Hanna every display any of the Gnats that got preserved and returned to the air, or was there none airworthy in his later years?

 

I agree - those synchro twinkle rolls are impressive (and I understand they had a trick involving pulling a fuse to increase the roll rate!)

 

The twinkle roll came about by accident when one of the aircraft had a roll rate limiter failure and they discovered just how quickly it could roll... so everyone promptly removed the fuses and the twinkle roll was born. BUT it was nearly killed of by stuffy words from on high (MOD) about not flying an aircraft with equipment deliberately isolated and possibly over stressing the airframe. The words insisted that "...fuses be replaced immediately". Fortunately one of the tech's happened to have a pocket full of fuses that he'd just 'tested' on a power supply in the workshop and so promptly fitted them to the aircraft. He knew the fuses were OK as every one had 'blown' when it should have when he 'tested' them... After all, nothing was said about replacing the 'working' fuses, was it?

 

Not sure if I'm allowed to link to another forum, but if you google for "pprune twinkle roll" you'll find the full story - one of the team is reported as telling it as above, but there are other claims about it all!

 

I'm sure there will be different versions but that was as it was told to me when I was in "the mob" back in the '70s