Damien Burke et Gary Parsons (document en anglais)

Doubles team Damien Burke and Gary Parsons dodged the rain showers and ignored the tennis...words served by Damien, pics by both.

Rain stops play

As if the weather wasn't bad enough, Legends also had to compete for the attention of the great British punter with Tim Henman and his antics at Wimbledon, the on-off-on again semi-final being a hot topic in the commentary booth. Saturday's weather was mostly dreadful, although the constant rain throughout the morning finally gave way to drier conditions in time for the flying to start - however, decreasing visibility and the onset of more rain curtailed the display at 16:00, preventing the 'balbo' from happening, but at least most of the participants had put up a good show until then.

Sunday morning at Duxford wasn't looking good. Saturday's awful weather looked to have settled in to stay and an early morning arrival found the airfield practically deserted compared to previous years. Thankfully the rain moved off, the cloud base gradually lifted throughout the morning and a strange bright circle could be seen hanging in the clouds. Rumour had it this was called 'the Sun'.

A quick run down the flight line walk found one of the living legends - Bud Anderson - a WWII Mustang ace. Bud brought down more than sixteen Luftwaffe aircraft in his time in Europe, and went on to fly in Vietnam. The Scandinavian Historic Flight's P-51D is painted to represent Bud's personal aircraft, 'Old Crow'. Also attending were Pete Brothers (a Battle of Britain Hurricane pilot, 16 victories), Don Blakeslee (P-51 pilot, 15 victories), Robert Goebel (P-51s again, 11 victories) and Lee Archer (P-51s, one of the famed Tuskegee Airmen, with five victories).

Time please

With the flightline now being cleared, it was time to pick a spot to watch the show from. But first, a quick recce as there appeared to be a 'new' Catalina skulking down by the M11 end of the airfield. This turned out to be Super Catalina Restorations' ex-Greenpeace example, newly painted in Coastal Command colours. They'd been up until late on Friday night finishing the painting, and had hoped to fly her in the show, but sadly ran out of time. Still, she looks good and will be flying any day now. But back to finding a spot to watch from - rather than go for the usual spot down by the M11 end, we thought we'd try the opposite end of the airfield instead. It would be quieter, being further away from the flightline, but hopefully not having the light against us would help with photography. This turned out to be a good move, although on Saturday 'light' was a misnomer.

Fifteen-love

Centre Court Belles

Forget Anna Kournikova, these are the real crowd-pullers this summer

Kicking the show off at 14:00 was a unique formation of Grumman aircraft - not only did the resident Bearcat, Hellcat, Wildcat, Avenger and Tigercat take to the air, but we were also treated to the first UK appearance of the very rare Grumman F3F and G32A (a two-seat F3F), specially imported from Chino just for the Flying Legends show. It was hard to believe these two tubby little biplanes had been in crates only a week before! Taking off, it was easy to spot the family resemblance to the Wildcat - similar landing gear arrangement for a start. The noise, however, was distinctively different. Once all the Grummans were up they came back for the formation pass, which was a hell of a way to kick off the show.

Two Corsairs and the RNHF Sea Fury took to the air next while the F3F and G32A ran in for their display. A precise formation display ensued from pilots Steve Hinton and Stuart Goldspink - they were certainly better performers than expected! Following them, the remainder of the Grummans came back to display while their older sisters landed. TFC owner Stephen Grey was back at the stick of his favourite - the Bearcat - after several years battling illness, though as camera shy as ever.

Thirty-all

While Stephen taxied in, the Corsairs and the Sea Fury returned, zooming in and blasting the crowd with the sort of noise only these big fighters can produce. A quick pairs display from the Corsairs was followed by an excellent solo display from the Sea Fury, which looks superb in its Korean war markings.

Aces served

Saturday had sadly not seen any sign of the BBMF, the weather grounding them at Coningsby. Sunday, thankfully, was now brightening up nicely and the Lancaster could be seen circling in the distance. Running in while the Sea Fury taxied, the Lanc was soon joined by one example each of Hurricane and Spitfire, and they all gave their usual somewhat sedate displays. It's worth noting that it's only really at Legends that you realise how conservatively the BBMF fly, because just about everything else gets thrown around the sky with much more energy - like the two Skyraiders that took to the air next! Hard on their heels, a pair

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