EXHIBITIONS AND CONFERENCES
13 Jun 08. The Queen’s birthday flypast – 14 June 2008. The Royal Air Force (RAF) provided a flypast to mark the Queen’s official birthday following the traditional Trooping the Colour ceremony in Horseguards Parade, London, on Saturday 14 June 2008. The flypast will involve 55 aircraft, the largest number for many years, of 14 different types, from World War ll (WWll) Spitfires, Hurricane and Lancaster, to high-tech Typhoon multi-role fighters, flying over Buckingham Palace. The first of nine elements which will make up the flypast will be five aircraft from the Battle of Britain Flight (BBMF), based at RAF Coningsby, Lincolnshire. The only airworthy Lancaster bomber in the United Kingdom, will lead two Spitfires and two Hurricanes. Two aircraft types will be new to this annual event this year, King Air 200 multi-engined trainers of 45 (Reserve) Squadron, based at RAF Cranwell, Lincolnshire, and BAe 125 transport aircraft from 32 (The Royal) Squadron, based at RAF Northolt, Middlesex. For the first time since the 1990 flypast over London to mark the 50th anniversary of the Battle of Britain, this years flypast included a formation of 16 aircraft, consisting of Tornado GR4 strike aircraft from RAF Marham, Norfolk, of which the Queen is Honorary Air Commodore.
13 Jun 08. The Territorial Army (TA) will celebrate 100 years of service with a
spectacular pageant at Horse Guards Parade on June 21st. The event will be
attended by thousands of Territorials, and the history of the TA from 1908 through to 2008 will be re-enacted in the presence of TRH The Prince of Wales and The Duchess of Cornwall and HRH The Earl of Wessex. One thousand Territorials will take part in the event, including Gallantry and Operational Award holders, in front of a 6,000-strong audience comprising serving TA, veterans, families, friends and employers. The pageant will recreate great moments in the history of Britain’s Territorial force, featuring battle re-enactments, tanks, guns and horses. It will also display the courage and expertise that the Territorials bring to today’s British Army operations. Nine
Territorial bands will provide a lively musical accompaniment and help create a magnificent atmosphere for this historic event. Military vehicles dating back to World War I, including one of the few remaining Rolls Royce Silver Ghost armoured cars from 1916, will also feature. Following the Pageant, and for the first time in their 100 year history, one thousand Territorials will march down The Mall where HRH The Prince of Wales will take the Royal Salute outside St James’ Palace.
16 Jun 08. War photograph archive moves home. One of the world’s largest collections of aerial photography is being moved to Scotland. The Aerial Reconnaissance Archive, known as Tara, contains more than 10 million photographs, most taken by surveillance aircraft in World War II. It is being transferred from Keele University to the Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Scotland (RCAHMS) in Edinburgh. It is hoped much of the archive will be made available to the public online. The majority of the Tara archive comes from the Allied Central Interpretation Unit (ACIU), which was based at Medmenham in Buckinghamshire and was the headquarters of photographic intelligence during World War II. No attack, whether a bombing raid, the landing of a few men on a beach or a massive landing of an army, was possible without preparation of target material at the ACIU. The images tell the full harrowing story of WWII, from graphic pictures of the D-Day landings to scenes of smoke rising from the funeral pyres at Auschwitz and even a photograph of Amsterdam showing the street where Anne Frank was hiding. The collection also has Scottish stories, with Luftwaffe images of the bombing of Clydebank, as well as the famous photograph taken by a Spitfire pilot flying from Wick which led to the sinking of the German battleship Bismarck after it wa