Public Day hoaxes?

[Dave Homewood]

There's an interesting thread running on the Key FlyPast Forum about fake aircraft, fake serials and fake weaponry being created as jokes by RAF and RN servicepeople to fool the public

forum.keypublishing.co.uk/showthread.php?t=66097

Did anything like this ever happen at RNZAF airdays? On any scale?

[phil]

Wow, thats pretty cool, making up an entire aircraft!

We never went quite that far (we don't exactly have large numbers of surplus aircraft!).

The machis were armed up with mavericks and sidewinders for static display a few times. 14 sqn armourers would borrow them from 75.

We always had the jelly bean bombs fitted at airshows. These came about after hours of telling people that no, the large things under the wings were not bombs, but drop tanks. I don't know who first came up with it, but the story we always told was that one tank had jelly beans in it. They would fly over a school and drop the jelly bean bomb and all the kiddies would come out to pick them up, at which time a second pass would be made and the Skyhawk would drop the bomb off the other side, this one was filled with napalm!

Of course you had to pick who you told the story too....

We would sometimes walk past in the background carrying the fibreglass 500 pounder over our shoulder (weighing about 10kg) and then watch while someone who had spotted us tried it with the real one on the stand in front of the aircraft.

I suspect the RNZAF made more interesting 'aircraft' at village green than any airshow.

[Dave Homewood]

Brilliant stuff.