MORE ‘RASPBERRY RIPLE’, SIR?
IN JUST 42 minutes the Treasury was £665,000 better off after collectors, operators, and agents from the UK, the USA, Australia and elsewhere had made a beeline for Phillips' auction rooms in New Bond Street, London, for the latest in a series of auctions of MoD airframes.
With many agents bidding, it will be some time before the number of airframes exported will be known.
In all, 19 lots were 'hammered' (a Canberra being withdrawn). Of interest was the first appearance en masse of Defence Research Agency (née the good old Royal Aircraft Establishment) airframes. With the wind-down of both Bedford and Farnborough there will be more test aircraft, complete with their attractive red, white and blue 'raspberry ripple' colour scheme to come.
It was in this area where some of the bids raised more than a few eyebrows and there must have been signs of great satisfaction on the faces of Phillips' staff and the men from the Ministry. Two Viscounts, extensively modified for avionics and radar testing that would prove very difficult to reconvert into a more traditional role went in the region of £140,000 each. The same buyer bought both, reportedly only for the Rolls-Royce Dart turboprops.
Th…
