Admiral Sir John Hamilton Flying Out of Sydenham

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Details

Location

Belfast, Sydenham

Year

1963

Date

Production 03/12/1963

Length

42sec

Audio

silent

Format

16mm

black and white

Source

Funded by the Broadcasting Authority of Ireland under the Archiving Scheme 2

Courtesy

Broadcasting Authority of Ireland, Department for Communities, ITV, UTV Archive

Rights Holder

ITV

It is illegal to download, copy, print or otherwise utilise in any other form this material, without written consent from the copyright holder.

Description

Following a visit to Belfast, Admiral Sir John Hamilton, Flag Officer of the Home Fleet and the Naval Air Command, takes his leave and flies out of Sydenham RAF airport. He pilots himself in a Hawker Hunter Trainer airplane.

Notes

Admiral Sir John Hamilton had a long and lustrous career in the Navy. During WWII, he was in SE Asia and Japan and rose to become Commander in Chief, Mediterranean, and Commander in Chief Allied Forces, Mediterranean.

Sydenham Airport was established by Shorts beside its Belfast factory at Sydenham in 1937. It was opened on 16 March 1938 by Anne Chamberlain, the wife of then British Prime Minister, Neville Chamberlain. The inaugural flight was to Glasgow, Scotland. This became Belfast's main civilian airport from 1938 to 1939. The airfield was requisitioned by the Royal Navy during the Second World War and named HMS Gadwall.

The Sydenham airfield continued to be used for military purposes until the 1970s, including use by the Fleet Air Arm as a naval aircraft storage unit, after which it was used solely by Shorts.