Departed During 2022

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Jean-Luc Godard

#201 Post by TheGreenAnger » Wed Sep 14, 2022 1:55 am

I am surprised that nobody has noted the passing of "nouvelle vague" film writer and director Jean-Luc Godard.

I remember when I first arrived in the UK being somewhat shocked to see a very explicit sex scene appearing in one of his films, on the then, new, and very "arty", Channel 4, while my 14 year old English half sister was watching. I made some cack handed attempt to change the channel and was told by her not to be such a "wally", thereby learning a new English word. She was far more worldly wise and clearly viewed by my backward colonial Calvinism and cinematic philistinism with some amusement!
Jean-Luc Godard, the French-Swiss director who was a key figure in the Nouvelle Vague, the film-making movement that revolutionised cinema in the late 1950s and 60s, has died aged 91. French news agency AFP reported that he died “peacefully at home” in Switzerland with his wife Anne-Marie Mieville at his side. Liberation, quoting an unnamed family member, reported that Godard’s death was assisted, which is legal in Switzerland. “He was not sick, he was simply exhausted. So he had made the decision to end it. It was his decision and it was important for him that it be known.” Godard’s lawyer Patrick Jeanneret told AFP Godard’s death followed “multiple disabling pathologies”.

Best known for his iconoclastic, seemingly improvised filming style, as well as unbending radicalism, Godard made his mark with a series of increasingly politicised films in the 1960s, before enjoying an unlikely career revival in recent years, with films such as Film Socialisme and Goodbye to Language as he experimented with digital technology.

The French president Emmanuel Macron tweeted: “We’ve lost a national treasure, the eye of a genius”. He said Godard was a “master” of cinema – “the most iconoclastic of the Nouvelle Vague”.

Film-makers who paid tribute included Last Night in Soho director Edgar Wright, who called him “one of the most influential, iconoclastic film-makers of them all”.

Born in Paris in 1930, Godard grew up and went to school in Nyon, on the banks of Lake Geneva in Switzerland. After moving back to Paris after finishing school in 1949, Godard found a natural habitat in the intellectual “cine-clubs” that flourished in the French capital after the war, and proved the crucible of the French New Wave. Having met the likes of critic André Bazin and future fellow directors François Truffaut, Claude Chabrol and Jacques Rivette, Godard began writing for the new film magazines, including Bazin’s soon-to-be-influential Cahiers du Cinema. Godard struck a maverick note from the start, defending traditional Hollywood film-making and promoting the likes of Howard Hawks and Otto Preminger over more fashionable figures. Godard also had a reverence for Humphrey Bogart, something that would come out in his first feature, Breathless, which he released in 1960.

Before that, however, Godard eased his way into film-making via a series of short films, such as Charlotte and Véronique, or All the Boys Are Named Patrick in 1957, which prefigured his loose, apparently slipshod film-making style. An earlier idea of Truffaut’s, about a petty criminal and his girlfriend, had been abandoned, but Godard thought he could turn it into a feature, and asked for permission to use it. Truffaut, meanwhile, had scored a major success with his own feature, The 400 Blows, and his clout helped Godard get his project off the ground. Shot on the Paris streets in 1959, with negligible use of artificial lighting, and a script written day-to-day, Breathless turned into a bona fide cultural phenomenon on its release, making a star of Jean-Paul Belmondo and winning Godard best director at the Berlin film festival.

Godard went on to make a string of seminal films in the 1960s at a furious rate. His next film, Le Petit Soldat, suggested the French government condoned torture, and it was banned until 1963, but it was also the film on which Godard met his future wife, Anna Karina, as well as coining his most famous aphorism, “Cinema is truth at 24 frames a second.” Other highlights included A Woman Is a Woman, a self-referential homage to the Hollywood musical, which again starred Karina, along with Belmondo and won more Berlin awards; the extravagant, epic film-about-film-making Contempt, with Michel Piccoli, Brigitte Bardot, Jack Palance and Fritz Lang; and Alphaville, a bizarre hybrid of film noir and science fiction.

By 1965 Godard’s marriage with Karina had ended in divorce; their last feature together was Made in USA, a homage to American pulp fiction that ran into copyright trouble in the US. By this time Godard was also thoroughly identified with the revolutionary politics of the age, and his film-making reflected this: he set up a film-making collective named after Dziga Vertov, the Soviet director of Man with a Movie Camera, helped to shut down the Cannes film festival in 1968 in sympathy with the student riots in Paris, and collaborated with young Marxist student Jean-Pierre Gorin on Tout Va Bien, a study of a strike in a sausage factory featuring Jane Fonda.

Godard also met, in 1970, film-maker Anne-Marie Miéville who would become a regular collaborator, and later partner after the breakdown of his second marriage, to Anne Wiazemsky, who had starred in Godard’s 1967 study of student radicals, La Chinoise.

His 2001 feature In Praise of Love marked a comeback, being selected for the Cannes film festival, while the release of Film Socialisme in 2010 preceded the award in 2010 of an honorary Oscar (the citation read: “For passion. For confrontation. For a new kind of cinema”). Typically, Godard failed to collect it in person. His 2014 film Goodbye to Language saw him pick up a major film-making award, the jury prize at Cannes, and Image Book, which was selected for the 2018 Cannes film festival, was given a one-off “special Palme d’Or”.
https://www.theguardian.com/film/2022/s ... dies-at-91
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Re: Departed During 2022

#202 Post by PHXPhlyer » Wed Sep 14, 2022 3:12 pm

Fred Franzia, creator of ‘Two Buck Chuck,’ has died

https://www.cnn.com/2022/09/14/business ... index.html

Fred Franzia, the man behind “Two Buck Chuck” and other value-priced wines that revolutionized the industry, has died. He was 79.

Bronco Wine Company, the 49-year-old company he helped create with his brother and cousin, announced his death on Facebook, writing that it’s “truly saddened by the passing of its founder and CEO, Fred Franzia.” He passed away early Tuesday morning with his family by his side at his home in Denair, California, the company said.

Franzia championed affordable wine for the masses and frequently criticized his higher-priced competitors. “Who says we’re lower priced? We’re the best price. The others, I think, are overpriced,” Franzia told the San Francisco Chronicle in 2009.

Perhaps his most notable contribution to American culture is Charles Shaw, a.k.a. “Two Buck Chuck.” The wine, sold exclusively at Trader Joe’s since 2002, earned that nickname for its affordable price that undercuts its higher-priced competitors. “Take that and shove it, Napa,” he once said in an interview.

“Core to his vision was a belief that wine should be enjoyed and consumed on every American table,” Bronco’s statement said. “When asked how Bronco Wine Company can sell wine less expensive than a bottle of water, Fred T. Franzia famously countered, ‘They’re overcharging for the water — don’t you get it?’”

Bronco Wine is one of Ameria’s biggest wine companies, with a portfolio of more than 100 brands spanning from wine, spirits and ready-to-drink cocktails. Wine Spectator estimates that it’s the 13th largest wine marketer in the US, moving more than 3.4 million cases last year.

Notably, he never owned the boxed-wine brand that bares his family’s name. His parents sold the label in 1973 to Coca-Cola prompting him to start Bronco Wine. “My dad, he was not a fighter,” Franzia told the New Yorker in 2009. “He just folded. And he and I went through a period of no communication, I think for five years. I just was pissed.” (Franzia boxed wine is currently owned by the Wine Group.)

He’s survived by his five children, fourteen grandchildren and two sisters. In the statement, Bronco said that his “entrepreneurial spirit, tireless dedication, and his commitment to both his family and to the Bronco family will forever be remembered. His legacy will endure for generations to come.”

I have consumed many gallons of Two Buck Chuck (now $3.49 a bottle) and many boxes of the wine that bears his family name. ^:)^

PP

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Ian Hamilton

#203 Post by Undried Plum » Tue Oct 04, 2022 5:22 pm

I'm so sorry to have to relate to the forum that my old flying and drinking (usually in that order) pal Ian Hamilton QC KC has died.

I never agreed with his separatist and republican politics, but I always enjoyed deep conversations with him on a huge variety of subjects, usually with a glass of the water of life in hand. He was that very rare, in my personal experience anyway, creature: an honest lawyer. Above all else, he was great fun, even when pished.

Back in the 1970s, long before satellite navigation was useable in light aircraft, he tried to persuade me to join him on a trans Atlantic flight in a Cessna 172 as his navigator. I declined because he was that dangerous man: an old bold pilot.

I recall one dark winter's night at Edinburgh Flying Club, which was located close to the threshold of Rwy 26, hearing on Edinburgh Approach which we always had on the bar's VHF together with the Tower frequency. Ian called announcing that he was inbound from Birmingham. I could tell that he'd a drink in him, but he was almost always able to keep an even keel even when practically slaughtered. The ATC guys, all of whom used to drink at our bar together with the airport police (EFC was located within the secure area of RAF Turnhouse, as was the Tower), also noticed that he was probably pished.

He was cleared to land on Rwy25 which had runway lights while the much smaller Rwy 26 did not. He landed on 26! The airport cops had called their City police brethren because they didn't want to have to deal with a drinking buddy from EFC themselves. Ian taxyed to the grass parking area in front of the bar and literally fell out of the aircraft. He had a passenger, a BBC producer or soundman who had begged a lift to Embra as he'd missed the last flight of the day. The passenger was stiff with fright. He was loaded into an ambulance in a seated position, almost catatonic with fear. The polis found an empty gin bottle in the aircraft and it seems that Ian had swallyd the whole bloody lot during the flight.

The CAA prosecuted him, but made a complete arse of the indictments. Ian, a top class QC who had turned down a promotion to the High Court as a senior Judge because he did not want to swear an oath of allegiance to the Crown, defended himself. He was, by all accounts, a truly brilliant courtroom lawyer.

In those days there wasn't actually any statute law in the ANO setting a blood/alcohol limit. The city police had breathalysed him and he was found to be many many times over the drink driving limit, but the Road Traffic Act does not apply to aircraft or their pilots. He had that charge thrown out as the cops had acted ultra vires. He was also charged with making a "heavy landing". He pointed out to the Judge that if that was a crime every pilot in the world would be in prison. He walked away from the trial a free man with all charges having been withdrawn by the Prosecution. He got into his car and drove straight to the EFC bar to celebrate. What a man!

He had a wee Cessna 150 which he used to rent out to a select few EFC members at mate's rates. That thing ended up, down actually, in the Sound of Mull in mysterious circumstances, but that's another story, not about Ian.

There's a very brief video clip of Ian on the BBC News website. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland- ... s-63132771

I'm often asked whether the Stone which he returned to the nation at Arbroath is the real thing or is it a copy. I've looked into Ian's eyes when he told me that it's the real Stone. I have absolutely no doubt whatsoever that he was telling me the truth.

This evening I shall be raising a glass of Mac30 to a very dear friend. Here's tae him. Whaa's like him? Nane.

There's a rather charming version of the tale of the Stone, told from Kay Matheson's viewpoint in the form of a play. Some of the speech is in the Gaelic, but there are Sassen subtitles.



The greatest regret of his life was that they broke the stone when removing it from the Coronation Chair at Westminster.

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Loretta Lynn

#204 Post by TheGreenAnger » Tue Oct 04, 2022 6:52 pm

Loretta Lynn, whose tales of heartbreak and poverty are among the most celebrated in the country music canon, has died aged 90.

Lynn died at home in Hurricane Mills, Tennessee, on 4 October, her family confirmed.

Beginning with 1966’s Don’t Come Home a Drinkin’ (With Lovin’ on
Your Mind), she topped the US country charts 16 times and was nominated for 18 Grammy awards, winning three. She recorded 60 studio albums in all.

Born Loretta Webb in a one-room rural Kentucky cabin in 1932, Lynn was one of eight siblings and the daughter of a coal miner – a fact that led to her signature song, 1970’s Coal Miner’s Daughter.

She was married at the age of 15 to 21-year-old Oliver Lynn, a month after she had met him. Despite Oliver’s frequent infidelity and struggle with alcoholism, the couple remained together for 48 years, until Oliver died in 1996. They had six children together, three of them before Lynn was 20.

Oliver bought her a guitar as an anniversary present in 1953, and Lynn started a band with her brother Jay Lee, Loretta and the Trailblazers, while she lived as a housewife, now in Washington state. She began writing her own songs and released her debut single, I’m a Honky-Tonk Girl, in 1960. It was released on a small independent label, and she and Oliver doggedly marketed the single themselves by driving from one country radio station to another. “Because we were too poor to stay in hotels, we slept in the car and ate baloney and cheese sandwiches in the parks … we were on the road three months,” she later remembered. The song was a success, reaching the country Top 20, and led to her being signed by a major label, Decca.

I’m a Honky-Tonk Girl was inspired by the story of someone Lynn met and befriended, and its subject matter – a woman devastated by a breakup – would be visited again and again by Lynn, whose songs often depicted broken hearts or damaging relationships, and often featured feisty heroines. Her second No 1, Fist City, was a threat to other women not to come near her husband, while another country chart-topper, Rated X, addressed the stigma of divorce; 1975’s The Pill crossed over into the pop charts with its controversially frank celebration of birth control.

She kept up a high release rate, with at least two and as many as four albums each year between 1964 and 1976. As well as solo releases she partnered with country stars such as Conway Twitty, with whom she recorded 10 duet albums, and Dolly Parton and Tammy Wynette for the 1993 album Honky Tonk Angels. She recorded with kd lang, and also had a friendship with Patsy Cline, recording a tribute album to her after Cline died in a 1963 plane crash.

Lynn’s release rate slowed from the mid-1980s, but she had a high-profile resurgence in 2004 with the album Van Lear Rose, produced by the White Stripes’ Jack White. It became her best-performing album in the US charts then to date, and was followed by her highest-charting album ever, 2016’s Full Circle, which featured duets with Willie Nelson and Elvis Costello. Her most recent album is 2018’s Wouldn’t It Be Great.

She wrote a successful autobiography, Coal Miner’s Daughter, in 1976 and her life story inspired a 1980 biopic of the same name. It starred Sissy Spacek as Lynn, and earned seven Oscar nominations, with Spacek winning best actress for her performance.

Lynn is survived by four of her six children: Clara, Ernest and twins Peggy and Patsy.
https://www.theguardian.com/music/2022/ ... es-aged-90
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Not 2022, but relevant to a previous

#205 Post by Undried Plum » Tue Oct 04, 2022 8:38 pm

I didn't particularly like Peter Gibbs. He was a bit too full of himself for my liking.

Nevertheless, he was a member of 'my' Flying Club at the time, so I was always friendly towards him at the bar.

His floozie at the time of the incident was a bit tasty, but I was otherwise involved at the time. My lady partner caught his eye, but he wisely recognised that I'd have ripped his throat out and torn out his lungs if Gibbs had tried to make a move on my lady.

The Beeb made a little audio 'podcast' about what happened to him at Glenforsa in Ian Hamilton's wee C150.

Make of it what you like.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/b066fqcr

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Re: Loretta Lynn

#206 Post by Undried Plum » Tue Oct 04, 2022 8:58 pm

TheGreenAnger wrote:
Tue Oct 04, 2022 6:52 pm
signed by a major label, Decca.

I worked for Decca Survey Overseas Ltd. DSOL. Deezol. The boss of Decca Survey had been promoted sideways after he had rejected The Beatles at Decca Records.

DSOL was later bought out by Racal. It was the only Company of the Decca group not to be converted into the Racal acronym, because some PR cleverclogs had reckonised that Deezol would become Arzole.

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Re: Not 2022, but relevant to a previous

#207 Post by TheGreenAnger » Wed Oct 05, 2022 2:30 am

Undried Plum wrote:
Tue Oct 04, 2022 8:38 pm
I didn't particularly like Peter Gibbs. He was a bit too full of himself for my liking.

Nevertheless, he was a member of 'my' Flying Club at the time, so I was always friendly towards him at the bar.

His floozie at the time of the incident was a bit tasty, but I was otherwise involved at the time. My lady partner caught his eye, but he wisely recognised that I'd have ripped his throat out and torn out his lungs if Gibbs had tried to make a move on my lady.

The Beeb made a little audio 'podcast' about what happened to him at Glenforsa in Ian Hamilton's wee C150.

Make of it what you like.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/b066fqcr
I initially heard of Mr Gibbs (RIP) when listening to that BBC programme some years back. I never met him but imagine his demise in the darkness and cold that night had as much to do with quaffing at least one bottle of wine with the young lady who was with him at dinner, and which may have prompted his ill judged decision to fly a couple of circuits in the snow and the dark, as with the hypothermia that killed him.

One might question his wisdom but you have to admire a man who did this...
Norman Peter Gibbs, born in 1920, was a former Spitfire pilot with No. 41 Squadron RAF in World War II, serving between January 1944 and March 1945. In 1954, nine years after leaving the Royal Air Force, Gibbs became a professional musician and joined the Philharmonia Orchestra, and joined the London Symphony Orchestra two years later.

Gibbs' tenure with the Philharmonia was notable for an incident which occurred during a 1956 tour of the United States. The orchestra felt conductor Herbert von Karajan had been unprofessional when conducting smaller concerts during the tour, coming to a head when von Karajan left the stage in Boston after the last note was played, neither waiting for applause nor calls for an encore. The orchestra was upset by this apparent slight to both them and the audience, but turned up nonetheless on time for an early rehearsal the next day. When Karajan arrived late, Gibbs rebuked him directly, stating, "I did not spend four years of my life fighting bastards like you to be insulted before our own Allies as you did last evening." Karajan ignored him and continued conducting as if nothing had happened. However, that night during a concert, Karajan refused to go back on stage after the interval until a letter was signed stating that Gibbs be immediately sacked. The orchestra's managers had little choice but to comply and Gibbs never played with the Philharmonia again.
Great Mull Mystery

Little doubt that the poor fellow made it out of the aircraft that night only to succumb to hypothermia on land.
My necessaries are embark'd: farewell. Adieu! I have too grieved a heart to take a tedious leave.

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Re: Departed During 2022

#208 Post by Undried Plum » Wed Oct 05, 2022 5:30 am

Yes. I agree that Peter's death was as simple as you have surmised. He flew it into the water in the dark and swam ashore. Hypothermia messes up yer bonce, which explains to me why he crossed the road instead of walking along it back to the hotel. The somatogravic thing easily explains why he became disorientated in flight, and I do wonder whether the low reading on the vacuum gauge which I experienced when I borrowed that aircraft some weeks earlier had ever been properly fixed.

At the time, and for several years afterwards, there were all sorts of conspiracy theories about his death. He'd quite certainly been involved with the Security Service in some capacity or other and had crossed swords with the masky guys in Norn Iron. The fact that one wheel from Ian's 150 washed ashore was presumed to have been a plant, especially as its serial number was inconsistent with the maintenance records of the aircraft. The fact that no trace of salt was found in his clothing is easily explained by months of rain, but it was thought by the theorists to be so suspicious that it might indicate that the body had also been 'planted'.


Edited to add:

I've now read the Wiki article and noticed a couple of errors.

Peter rented the aircraft from his fellow EFC member Ian, not from Davie Howitt. His PPL had not "expired" and Davie, who managed the airfield on behalf of the Council, would never have asked anyone to present their licence or logbook.

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Re: Departed During 2022

#209 Post by FD2 » Thu Oct 06, 2022 7:35 pm

Captain Vyvyan Howard, last British survivor of the ‘Great Escape’ camp, whose fluent German distracted the guards – obituary

At the notorious Stalag Luft III, Howard spent hours vaulting over a wooden horse to conceal the tunnel ‘Tom’ which began in his hut
By Telegraph Obituaries 6 October 2022 • 5:00pm
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Vyvyan Howard with a Seafire at RNAS Culdrose in the early 1950s

Captain Vyvyan Howard, who has died aged 102, was a Fleet Air Arm pilot, probably the last to fly a wartime Fairey Swordfish, and the last remaining British survivor of the infamous Stalag Luft III prisoner-of-war camp.

In September 1940, having learnt low-level torpedo-dropping techniques in the Fairey Swordfish, Howard joined the newly equipped 828 Naval Air Squadron, flying the Fairey Albacore torpedo bomber, at Lee-on-Solent.

In 1941 the squadron deployed to the Orkney Islands on anti-aircraft and convoy escort duties, and in June 828 NAS embarked in the aircraft carrier Victorious. On the afternoon of July 30, in bright Arctic sunshine, the squadron attacked German shipping at Kirkenes, close to the Norwegian border with Russia.

The enemy were alerted and had strong air and flak defences. Howard recalled: “We launched our torpedo at a German ship in the harbour. As we turned to make our escape, I heard a roar of cannon fire from below us; we were hit, and the aircraft broke up around us. The next thing I knew we were in the fjord and swimming to the shore and captivity.”

Sixteen aircraft were lost in this raid and on another on nearby Petsamo, a dozen Fleet Air Arm aircrew were killed, and a score, including Howard, were captured. Over the next 3½ years he was held in two small PoW camps, and then in June 1942 was transferred to Stalag Luft III.
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PoW camp Stalag Luft III, which was run by the Luftwaffe for captured Allied airmen until its liberation on April 29 1945 Credit: Hulton Archive

There, Howard was a keen participant in events which were dramatised in the films The Wooden Horse (1950) and The Great Escape (1963). He spent many an hour vaulting over the wooden horse or talking in his fluent German to the guards to distract them.

The entrance to the tunnel called “Tom”, which the Germans discovered, as depicted in The Great Escape, was in Howard’s hut, and the tunnel called “Dick”, which they missed, ran directly under his hut. Howard’s fluency in German led to him attending meetings as interpreter between senior Allied prisoners and the camp commandant, Oberst Friedrich von Lindeiner. (He also learned to speak Polish and qualified as a Polish interpreter after the war.)

Howard thought himself unlucky not to have his name drawn as one of the actual escapers, and in January 1945 he was forced to join the “Long March”, when the prisoners were marched away on foot from the advancing Russians. He recalled that he owed his life to a Polish fellow prisoner who advised him: “Don’t ever take your boots off, only loosen them, or you will never get them on again because your feet will swell.”
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The remains of Vyvyan Howard's hut in Stalag Luft III

After three months of harsh winter weather, and having been strafed by the RAF, Howard arrived at Wulmenau, a village south-west of Lübeck, where he wrote to his fiancée, Bernadette Taylor: “A couple of British tanks caught us today, 2 May at 11.40 hours and the infantry should be here this afternoon. Oh, ye Gods, what a day of joy and rejoicing – cheers and wild waving – all of us, English, American, Polish, Russian, Dutch, French – everybody shouting to the stormy sky.” A week later he telegrammed: “Home today. Be seeing you soon.” They married on June 2 1945.

Charles Vyvyan Howard was born in Hartlepool on November 11 1919 and brought up in Greatham, Co Durham, where his father was headmaster of the local primary school. He won a scholarship to Henry Smith Grammar School in Hartlepool and his first job, in 1937, was in the research laboratories at ICI Billingham. As war loomed, his father advised him to join the Royal Navy and to train as a pilot.

He learnt to fly in Tiger Moth biplanes at Elmdon, now Birmingham International Airport, and it was on weekend leave from there, “a jolly to Blackpool”, that he met his future wife. He was awarded his pilot’s wings in May 1940.

After the war, Howard accepted a permanent commission in the Navy and was based at Culdrose for several years, flying Seafires and Sea Furies and, in the new jet age, Sea Vampires and Meteors.
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Vyvyan Howard with his wife Bernadette and his son, also Vyvyan

In early 1956 he took command of 830 Naval Air Squadron at RNAS Ford, Sussex, flying the Westland Wyvern, the largest propellor-driven, single-seat aeroplane to operate from a British carrier. The squadron embarked in the carrier Eagle for Operation Musketeer, the Anglo-French intervention during the Suez Crisis – the squadron’s 16 aircraft becoming the only Wyverns to see combat when Howard led the first wave, on November 1, to attack Egyptian airfields near the Suez Canal, and flew two or three sorties a day until the action was suspended.

“It was,” he said, “a very small area to operate [in] and after a few days we were competing for the same targets with the other aircraft from the British and French carriers. It was like Piccadilly Circus. We often went against the Egyptian Air Force with their MiG jets. It was an exciting time.”

Two aircraft were lost, and Howard was awarded the Distinguished Service Cross for gallant and distinguished services in the Near East from October to December 1956.

In 1960 Howard took a helicopter acquaintance course before being appointed aviation adviser to the Commander in Chief, Far East Fleet. He spent two years in the Defence policy staff in Whitehall and was British Naval Attaché in Bonn (1973-75).

He spent 10 years working at Halcrow Engineering before finally retiring fully to his home in Mollington, Oxfordshire.

Vyvyan Howard’s wife predeceased him, and he is survived by a son and two daughters.

Captain Vyvyan Howard, born November 11 1919, died September 14 2022

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Re: Departed During 2022

#210 Post by TheGreenAnger » Fri Oct 07, 2022 6:13 am

Ref. Captain Vyvyan Howard, what an extraordinary man. Thanks for posting.
My necessaries are embark'd: farewell. Adieu! I have too grieved a heart to take a tedious leave.

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RIP Phil Read - The Prince of Speed

#211 Post by TheGreenAnger » Fri Oct 07, 2022 10:53 am

LONDON (Reuters) - Britain's Phil Read, the first motorcycle rider to win world championships in the 125cc, 250cc and 500cc grand prix categories, died on Thursday aged 83, his family said.

Read, who competed in the world championship from 1961 to 1976, was a seven-times world champion and an eight-times winner at the Isle of Man TT races.

His son posted a statement on Instagram announcing the death.

Read became Yamaha's first world champion in 1964 on a 250cc bike and took four more titles with the Japanese manufacturer. He won the 500cc championships in 1973 and 1974 with Italian brand MV Agusta.

A rival of compatriot Mike "The Bike" Hailwood and Italian great Giacomo Agostini, Read retired with 52 grand prix wins and in 2002 was declared a "MotoGP Legend" by series promoters Dorna.

Yamaha paid tribute to him as "truly one of motorcycle racing’s greats".

My necessaries are embark'd: farewell. Adieu! I have too grieved a heart to take a tedious leave.

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Re: Departed During 2022

#212 Post by Boac » Fri Oct 07, 2022 11:54 am

Quite a character! Went (slowly!) behind him round the IoM TT circuit in my yoof.

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Re: Departed During 2022

#213 Post by TheGreenAnger » Fri Oct 07, 2022 12:37 pm

Boac wrote:
Fri Oct 07, 2022 11:54 am
Quite a character! Went (slowly!) behind him round the IoM TT circuit in my yoof.
Did you race motorcycles as a yoof Boac? Or was the machine an addendum to a young RAF officer's attraction to the female of the species? ;)))
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Re: Departed During 2022

#214 Post by Boac » Fri Oct 07, 2022 2:28 pm

No and yes. It was beautiful 750 Honda with a lowered frame and racing box, and she was good looking too............... :))

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Re: Departed During 2022

#215 Post by TheGreenAnger » Fri Oct 07, 2022 3:08 pm

Boac wrote:
Fri Oct 07, 2022 2:28 pm
No and yes. It was beautiful 750 Honda with a lowered frame and racing box, and she was good looking too............... :))
Spoken like a true motorcyclist! :-bd ;)))
My necessaries are embark'd: farewell. Adieu! I have too grieved a heart to take a tedious leave.

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Re: Departed During 2022

#216 Post by FD2 » Fri Oct 07, 2022 6:08 pm

Lowered box?

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Re: Departed During 2022

#217 Post by Boac » Fri Oct 07, 2022 7:33 pm

No - she had a racing box...................

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Re: Departed During 2022

#218 Post by FD2 » Fri Oct 07, 2022 7:38 pm

:-o :D

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Re: Departed During 2022

#219 Post by TheGreenAnger » Sat Oct 08, 2022 2:11 am

FD2 wrote:
Fri Oct 07, 2022 7:38 pm
:-o :D
All these stories of birds, boxes and bikes got me to thinking of this...

viewtopic.php?p=346908#p346908
Says Red Molly, to James, "Well that's a fine motorbike.
A girl could feel special on any such like."
Says James, to Red Molly, "My hat's off to you.
It's a Vincent Black Lightning, 1952.
And I've seen you on the corners and cafes, it seems.
Red hair and black leather, my favorite color scheme."
And he pulled her on behind,
And down to Boxhill,
They'd Ride.
Anon... o:-)

[-X TGA RIP James..
My necessaries are embark'd: farewell. Adieu! I have too grieved a heart to take a tedious leave.

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Re: Departed During 2022

#220 Post by TheGreenAnger » Tue Oct 11, 2022 4:02 pm

Talking about Phil Read again, this Motor Sport Magazine obituary gives an interesting perspective on the man. I am sorry to read that he was essentially broke before he died.


https://www.motorsportmagazine.com/arti ... 2-obituary
My necessaries are embark'd: farewell. Adieu! I have too grieved a heart to take a tedious leave.

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