Report of the March 2006 Meeting

Report by Alan Powell

We had a record attendance in the region of 170 members and friends to listen to an illustrated talk about the recent “Merlins Over Malta” venture.

Clive Denny was accompanied by his wife, Linda, and Howard Cook, to give us a debrief on the September 2005 historic return to Malta of a Spitfire and a Hurricane for the first time in more than 50 years.

Just over two years ago Clive, who runs an aircraft restoration business, visited us and said that he was considering attempting to fly a Spitfire and a Hurricane down to Malta, the island they defended in 1942/43. At that meeting the members of MHAS collected the first of many donations that were needed to fund such an ambitious project. Clive Denny has always appreciated that we were the first to put our hands in our pockets.

The aircraft belong to the Historic Aircraft Collection at Duxford. The Spitfire was built in 1942 and the Hurricane in 1943.

Clive flew the Hurricane and Charlie Brown, of the Historic Aircraft Collection, flew the Spitfire. They were routed through France, Italy and Sicily and encountered unseasonably poor weather on the way. Their arrival, low over the magnificent Grand Harbour at Valetta was a sight cheered by many Maltese. The island was one of the most heavily bombed targets during WW2.

The talk, which was illustrated by video film, was enthusiastically received. Howard Cook, who accompanied the support team in a twin engine Cessna is also a pilot and had put together the video presentation. The video was projected on the digital projector that we obtained thanks to an “Awards For All” lottery grant.

It was an enormous undertaking and the cost of keeping each of those vintage aircraft in the air is approximately £2500 per hour for each aircraft. Due to a sponsor backing out at the last minute they are still raising funds to cover the cost and our members gave another donation. Visit the website www.merlinsovermalta.com.

A vote of thanks was given by Gordon Kinsey.

Our meeting next month will be on Friday, 7th April and is the occasion of our AGM. This will quickly be disposed of and our annual photographic competition will take place.

 

Editors note:
Last year's winner, with the theme "WW2 Bombers" was Alan Powell. His winning entry is shown below, to encourage you to enter! The quality of this reproduction is considerably lower than the original, for faster downloading on the web site, but it's still an impressive image. But maybe you could do better...