Shackleton Polar Flight

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Shackleton Polar Flight

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Details

Location

Ballykelly, RAF Ballykelly

Year

1963

Date

Production 01/02/1963

Length

01min 06sec

Audio

mute

Format

16mm

black and white

Source

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

Courtesy

Broadcasting Authority of Ireland, Department for Communities, ITV

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

This footage shows an RAF Shackleton being prepared for a special flight from the airbase at Ballykelly. The purpose of this flight was a very strange one and required some digging in the archives for newspapers of the time. The craft was to fly over the North Pole and drop, via a parachute, a container full of Irish peat onto the ice. Apparently, this action was as a “tribute to the North Pole.” It gets even stranger when it is revealed that the drop also contained some chocolate Penguin bars – apparently because the Arctic doesn’t have any penguins of its own. This possibly raises more questions than answers but it’s certain that the RAF crews had a sense of fun at least.

Credits

An Ulster Television Production.

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