Where? Old Warden / Biggleswade, England
When? 07/08/2011

The Shuttleworth Collection's Old Warden airfield offers excellent photo opportunities both in the air and on the ground as the action happens very close to the visitor and the clear background gives timeless impressions. Apart from its already extensive collection the "Military Pageant" air display give the opportunity to see also other aircraft at this exquisite location.

This year's Pageant was scheduled for August, 7th and did promise very interesting visitors. Without anticipating the following report unfortunately the weather did not cooperate during the whole day as did the technique of some of the planned aircraft.

In an already well-tried fashion the gates opened at 9am with a scheduled start of the flying at 2pm, thus giving a lot of time to stroll through the hangars or visit the adjacent Botanic Gardens or the "Birds of Prey" centre.

After the Historic Vehicle Parade the Spitfire IX of the OFMC was the opening act of the flying display, followed by the "Special Operations" Lysander, displaying its short take-off capabilities and explaining its role in flying from Britain to France in covered operations during WW II.

The "Shuttleworth Trainers" were up in the air next, split up into three groups. At first the Blackburn B2 and the de Havilland DH82a Tiger Moth did go up, followed by the Avro Tutor, Hawker Tomtit and the de Havilland Chipmunk, with the latter one doing aerobatics. The final group under this theme were the Polikarpov Po2, Miles Magister and the Percival Piston Provost.

The planned Vampire T11 had to be cancelled due to an engine change, but was very well replaced by the Sea Fury T20 of the Royal Navy Historic Flight. The fate of the Vampire was also shared by the BBMF's Lancaster which went unserviceable due to an defective engine and had to be cancelled upon short notice.

The Gloster Gladiator and the Fieseler Storch followed next under a "Western Desert Encounter" – and it's up to you to guess who did win the aerial encounter...