graveyards

Graveyards

While working at York, I passed this scrapyard on a daily basis. Then one day, a strange sight beheld me.
The following weekend, I visited the yard with friends. There had been a delivery......

The delivery included Lightning F1A XM169, a Sea Venom/Vixen, a Canberra, and a whole boatload of
other stuff. In the middle of it all was what looked like, at first glance an S2 Buccaneer. Further
investigations revealed it was a Scimitar fuselage, minus cockpit, which the proprietors told us had come
from the range at Pendine.

The opportunities for photos were difficult at best, but I made the most of it. If I’d have has a trailer, I could have carried away an arrester hook and a bang seat from the Canberra. As it was I had to make do with a few inspection panels, the ejection handle from the seat and a couple of other small bits and pieces. This shot shows the seperated cockpit of XM169 from the remainder of the fuselage. At the time, the cockpit was remarkably intact, most of the instruments were present, but the seat was missing. It was rescued by Ken Ward, and it now rests in his private collection in North Yorkshire, as recently covered by Flypast magazine.

Buccaneer XV867 made an emergency landing at Leeming with a hydraulic failure. Rather than be fixed, the virtually undamaged aircraft was written off, and several months later appeared here, where it still lies. This Scimitar fuselage was first mis identified as a Buccaneer. Note the early bang seat in the right foreground. Some remains of a canberra were also present. We did also come across a tail boom, a serial number on which was clearly marked identified it as a Sea Vixen.

This unidentified fuselage lies close to the Bucc, but so little of it is visible, definate ID is virtually impossible. It is almost totally buried in steel plate scrap, which makes it dangerous to attempt a closer inspection.

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11 Mar '01


The opportunities for photos were difficult at best, but I made the most of it. If I’d have has a trailer, I could have carried away an arrester hook and a bang seat from the Canberra. As it was I had to make do with a few inspection panels, the ejection handle from the seat and a couple of other small bits and pieces.	This shot shows the seperated cockpit of XM169 from the remainder of the fuselage. At the time, the cockpit was remarkably intact, most of the instruments were present, but the seat was missing. It was rescued by Ken Ward, and it now rests in his private collection in North Yorkshire, as recently covered by Flypast magazine.


Buccaneer XV867 made an emergency landing at Leeming with a hydraulic failure. Rather than be fixed, the virtually undamaged aircraft was written off, and several months later appeared here, where it still lies.	This Scimitar fuselage was first mis identified as a Buccaneer. Note the early bang seat in the right foreground. Some remains of a canberra were also present. We did also come across a tail boom, a serial number on which was clearly marked identified it as a Sea Vixen.