80 Years and Counting

It missed WWII by a year and doesn't exactly have the most fearsome name in aviation, but there are few trainers as influential and long lived as DeHavilland's Chipmunk.

And by long lived, what we mean is that the RAF were still using them in 1996, so 50 years service. Some of it was Royal. His Majesty completed his first solo flight in one in 1969 and held a pilots licence shortly afterwards.

They're still used for training today, and by display teams all over the globe. In these images by Paul Johnson the Red Sparrows team can be seen.

We've amassed several Chipmunks for this year and you'll be able to see a one off tribute to a modestly named but incredibly important piece of aviation history which, well, just keeps going.

Amongst them a very rare variant, the only one flying and the very last of nearly 1300 Chipmunks to be built, courtesy of our friend Simon Tilling.