Getting wet

Soaking Southend

Sea, sand, aircraft and sunshine – sounds too good to be true doesn’t it? So it was as Southend Airshow was plagued with rain, low cloud and strong crosswinds, but perhaps we shouldn’t have expected any better being the bank holiday weekend. Dean West was at Southend Airport for it's open day linked to the annual airshow at the seafront. All photos copyright of author.

Despite the poor conditions the show went on, albeit with a curtailed flying display schedule. Team Guinot, B-17 Sally B, Battle of Britain Memorial Flight and the warbird trio of Spitfire, Me109 and Hurricane were all weathered in at their bases elsewhere and were unable to make it, while the Canberra, which would have been a highlight for many, didn’t risk the trip down from Coventry. Kudos have to be given to the Red Arrows for displaying in atrocious conditions on the Monday, conditions in which the RAF Hawk solo display were unable to display in. Although the RAF Falcons didn’t jump on the Monday they left their decision until the last minute to see whether the conditions could improve, which it unfortunately didn’t with a cloud base of 800ft, but they still managed to entertain the crowd with some fly-bys of their Hercules.

Another victim of the poor weather was the RAF Chinook display, which made it to the airport only to be able to fly once the show had ended and conditions had improved enough for the aircrew to fly some members of the Air Training Corps about. With the withdrawal of the RAF Merlin display this year, the only RAF helicopter to display at Southend this year was the Search And Rescue SeaKing, performing an unusual demo with a RNLI Lifeboat. Another helicopter display, although not at all similar to the SeaKing demo, was the Royal Navy Black Cats, flying two Lynx, one of them showing off their new colour scheme for the season. As always this duo always amaze the crowds and go down very well at smaller venues such as this.

Whirly Birds

Also braving the conditions were the Blades, flying 4 Extra 300’s, and Will Curtis in his Team Road Angel Su-26. Jonathon Whaley’s Hunter, Miss Demeanour, provided the crowd with spirited displays on both days, although the aircraft had to recover to Manston after its Sunday display as no risks could be taken with landing the Hunter in such poor conditions at Southend Airport.
The Catalina, from Duxford, managed to display on both days in conditions that could almost have seemed suitable for the aircraft. Essex emergency services were displayed at the show with performances from both the Ambulance and Police helicopter.
As previously mentioned the RAF Hawk was unable to display due to strong crosswinds although the Tutor and Tucano both displayed. Due to the change in allocation of RAF display aircraft, Southend only saw one fast jet this year, the Typhoon, on the Monday, which still looked like an amazing display, even when watching from a few miles away at the airport! However, this years support from the RAF was relatively poor in comparison to previous years when you could have seen displays from the Harrier, Jaguar, Tornado GR4 and Tornado F3. One would argue that it is seafront shows like Southend that the RAF should really send their frontline recruiting tools as the majority of the audience are families with children who have the potential to be the next Red 1.
Even though the weather tried its best the show wasn’t a total write off and the organisers deserve a big ‘well done’ for not giving up and letting the weather get the better of them. But please, lets have some sunshine in 2008!