Not so long ago, the Autumn Airshow was a pleasant day out, mixing the base’s most active types with aircraft that rarely got to go out in public. That template’s evolved significantly in more recent times, creating a show with international participation and a fair number of other outsiders, although that combination of Duxford-based familiarity and obscurity still remains in place.
Anniversary or commemorative themes have also been introduced and, while these haven’t always guaranteed a correspondingly relevant line-up, they have at least attempted to give each Autumn Airshow an identity - making them less a simple season wind-down event and more a fully-fledged airshow, on a par with the May and September air displays.
What have we got to look forward to this time around, then? Well, possibly above all else, a wide array of post-war aircraft, present in connection with the show’s ‘Remembering the Korean War’ theme. The Korean War occurred at the tail end of piston-engined fighter development and not long after the introduction of the first generation of jet fighters. In this way, it acted as a kind of meeting point for these disappearing and emerging combat aircraft technologies – a crossroads that the Autumn Airshow will showcase with the participation of Kennet Aviation’s AD4N Skyraider, Golden Apple’s F-86A Sabre and The Fighter Collection’s and Naval Aviation Ltd’s Sea Fury T20s. This Sea Fury pairing should have been a trio, but the Royal Navy Historic Flight’s Sea Fury FB11 hasn’t yet received its new engine. So, while the FB11 won’t be able to attend, we look forward to seeing it charging around the circuit next year and so, too, the Meteor Flight’s sublime new T7, which isn’t yet cleared for public display, but which has been replaced by Air Atlantique’s Meteor NF11.
All credit to the Imperial War Museum for including examples of some of the less glamorous US military Korean War participants, like Justin Needham’s L-19 Bird Dog, a whole clutch of Piper L-4 Grasshoppers and the Aircraft Restoration Company’s smartly turned-out de Havilland Beaver, the latter making its airshow debut. The Communist forces have a bona fide Korean War representative there, too, courtesy of the Real Aeroplane Company’s lovely Yak-18. Other aircraft taking part with links to the Korean War include Aces High’s C-47 Dakota, T-6 Texans from the Aircraft Restoration Company and The Fighter Collection and a Stinson Sentinel, which isn’t flying in the display but will be a static exhibit.
Pure P-51 Mustangs weren’t involved in the conflict, but their descendant F-51s and RF-51s certainly were, so the presence of TFC’s P-51TF Miss Velma and the Old Flying Machine Company’s P-51D Ferocious Frankie make for appropriate inclusions.
Elsewhere, the Tiger Nine Team is another Duxford debutante, bringing back to the airfield the unbeatable sight of nine Tiger Moths in close formation, over a decade after the Tiger Moth Diamond Nine Team’s withdrawal from the scene.
The RV-8tors display will add their exciting brand of closely-spaced, fast-paced aerobatic flying, while it wouldn’t really be a Duxford show without the involvement of B-17G Sally B, Plane Sailing’s PBY-5A Catalina or the OFMC’s Spitfire IX MH434.
The same has become true of the Belgian Air Component F-16AM, which has displayed at four of the past five Autumn Airshows but which never becomes too familiar. Indeed, it’s one of the best fast jet routines of them all, especially so in the hands of Captain Michel ‘Mitch’ Beulen, who’s in the last of his three years spent as the Belgian F-16 Demo pilot. He’ll be putting the F-16 through its paces one last time, as will Flight Lieutenant Dan Hayes in the RAF Tucano T1.
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