Dublin Movements, November and December 1976
My records for these two months are few, so I am combining them in one post. The star sighting for me was the French Navy C-47 on 15 December, which took me by surprise as it made an early left turn out off runway 24 towards Killiney and Vartry. I had not known it was in and it was the first time I had seen one of these silver, white and dayglo machines. Thankfully several more would visit before their retirement in the mid-1980s. Aircraft "23" was originally 17223 of the US Navy, delivered in 1944. After disposal by the French it was bought by Basler for their BT-67 turboprop programme. As N96BF, on 16 December 1994 it crashed on takeoff at Lobito, Central African Rep. and was destroyed. BCAL 707 G-AYSI was a rare enough vistor to Dublin. This partic u lar machine was later sold to TAMPA Colombia as HK-2401-X but was destroyed when it crashed after an engine failure on take-off at Medellin on December 14, 1983. 17 November OO-SKF ...