Exhilarating Flying with the Tiger Club

The vintage home movie which this post features shows an exhilarating flying display by the tiger club, which is a vintage airplane flying club. I don’t know when this standard 8 film was taken, but it was probably in the 1960s or 1970s.

Most of the film shows a series of shots of biplanes carrying out aerial stunts and tricks and it struck me that the shots are really rather well taken considering the photographer was using an 8mm film camera. The majority of the time the plane is kept in the frame, and there isn’t too much jerking around. I suspect perhaps the camera used was better than an entry level 8mm camera, and probably had a telephoto lens.

There seem to have been several planes from the Tiger Club involved, including some stunts performed with two planes being flown in close proximity.

Towards the middle of the film there are planes with wing walkers and the planes seem to come quite close to the ground and the crowds. I can’t help thinking that today that would not be allowed – in fact I seem to remember that it was banned after a tragic accident a few years ago.

The Tiger Club is still around, and when I looked at their list of current planes, one of the planes appearing in this film (G-ACDC) is listed, but I suspect the others have been replaced with more modern examples.

After the biplanes, there is a sequence with what looks like a spitfire which is also carrying out quite low maneuvers over the crowd.

The final portion of the film shows a biplane carrying out practice bombing runs with flour bags on a vehicle with a target painted on it.

For anyone who may be interested, as I said above the Tiger Club is still operational and can be found at Damyns Hall Aerodrome Aveley Road, Upminster