
Sea Vixen and Seafire as you have never seen them before!
The images in this post were taken by World famous aviation photographer Rich Cooper over the Cornish coastline, near Falmouth, during the RNAS Culdrose Air Day on Jul. 30.
They show two extremely rare privately owned aircraft: the sole flying examples in the world of a Sea Vixen FAW2 (G-CVIX/XP924) flown by Simon Hargreaves out of RNAS Yeovilton and Seafire Mk.XVII (SX336/G-KASX), flown by John Beattie.
Both planes represent important part of Fleet Air Arm (FAA), the branch of the British Royal Navy responsible for the operation of naval aircraft: the Supermarine Seafire was a naval version of the Supermarine Spitfire adapted for operation from aircraft carriers that flew from 1942 to 1950s; the de Havilland DH.110 Sea Vixen was a twin boom, twin-engined two-seat carrier-based fleet defence fighter that served from 1959 into the 1970s.
The shots were taken from Tony De Bruyn’s Skyvan as part of a photo mission with the Aviation PhotoCrew.
Image credit: RC-Pro Photography
Spitfires (or Seafires in this instance) look so cool with the bubble canopy.
Gorgeous birds and awesome shots. Warbirds all around the globe are flying History, they got to be kept in the air as long as possible. Too bad one of their most esteemed colleagues, the Vulcan, is to be grounded…
I just love the Spitfire… as for the Sea Vixen: It originally flew with 899 Naval Air Squadron Fleet Air Arm as “134”
from November 1968 until 1970 from HMS Eagle. The ownership of XP924
moved to the Fly Navy Heritage Trust with a formal donation ceremony at
RNAS Yeovilton on 16 September 2014. The Sea Vixen will in future be
maintained and operated from Yeovilton by Naval Aviation Ltd., a
subsidiary of Fly Navy Heritage Trust.