Not so bonza Ghostrider, the pattern is full

The Australian counterparts to Maverick and Iceman.  Or would that be Icebloke?

Source: Melbourne hawks in review

Here we see a pair of McDonnell Douglas A4G Skyhawks of the Royal Australian Navy Fleet Air Arm 805 Squadron (VF-805) coming in low and hot over the RAN’s only operable aircraft carrier of the time, HMAS Melbourne (R21) sometime in the 1970s.

While the RAN FAA traces its lineage back to the Great War, it was only after WWII that it was able to stand up fixed-wing carrier squadrons, flying Hawker Sea Fury’s in Korea. After a brief interlude in Sea Venoms, 805 Squadron picked up their Seahawks in 1968.

The two ‘Hawks shown above were part of 21 A-4s operated by the RAN between 1967-84 with #887 eventually transferring to New Zealand from where she was sold in 2012 to Draken International (where she still flies as a contract aggressor in Florida). As for #888, she crashed in 1979 but her pilot, a U.S. Navy aviator on exchange duty, was rescued.

The Webley-Fosbery Automatic Revolver

A semi-automatic revolver is something I’ve been fascinated by ever since I got a copy of Ian V Hogg’s Complete Illustrated Encyclopedia of the World’s Firearms somewhere around 7th or 8th grade. 

I lugged that book around in my book bag for almost the entire school year and tried to read through it anytime I had a free moment.  This was in the mid-80s so no SWAT teams were called out because a kid had a gun book at school.  Considering the books and magazines I carried and read at school (no porn!) I can only imagine how many suspensions I would have racked up today but I digress…

As usual, Ian at Forgotten Weapons gets to play with the coolest things