Mildenhall Limos - HMX-1's fleet

[ursa_major]

In advance of President Obama's state visit to the UK which begins this week, HMX-1 have deployed some of their assets to RAF Mildenhall to ferry POTUS around while he's here. Over the past few days, one or two of the VH-46s and the VH-3Ds have been up on air-test flights after being shipped across in C-17s. We took the chance on them being visible from outside the fence at the weekend and headed across on Saturday morning. After a stop for a bacon roll & coffee at Littleport, we headed round to the 11 end. We could see all 6 helos parked out on the apron in front of the hangar where they're staying whilst here, so we decided to go further down the road to try for some pics. No sooner had we turned left at the junction than one of our party noticed that some were strobing. A rapid retreat to John's field, and after a very short interval, all 6 taxied out and departed on a dry-run of the route they'd be using to & from Stansted this week. They returned almost exactly 2 hours later. Looks like the US chappie was correct on the date, but out on the time - there was certainly rapture in the viewing area on Saturday. If that's what the Apocalypse is going to be like can we book another one for next weekend please?

[bentwaters81tfw]

Those Bullfrogs look nice in that livery.

[ursa_major]

They certainly do - pity they went out when they did, the sun wasn't quite far enough round to give us the light for front 3/4 shots as they departed. But that's minor scales, we saw all 6 of them out & back. Some friends who've gone across today have 'blanked' - the helos have remained inside their hangar with the doors closed all day.

[F-32]

Nice capture!

[jimbuna]

Cool shots.

Edited May 23, 2011 by jimbuna