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Showing posts from May, 2013

THE LANDING GROUNDS

Early Aviation around Melton Mowbray. The small market town of Melton Mowbray was once an important link in the aerial defence of these Islands, detached as they are from the mainland of Europe, at a time when even the concept of an airfield or aerodrome as we understand it today was but a mere whim in the fancy of an increasing number of enthusiasts who were tinkering with the mystery of the yet to be understood practicalities of the concept of powered flight, man in control of a dirigible machine which he could literally fly in the sky to wherever he wished to go.  But how forward looking were those daring young men at the time?  Around the turn of the last century, a non-stop saga of wars and related conflicts around the world were being created and exacerbated , often stirred by the increasingly confused politics of an expanding and competitive  Europe. Britain had ensured that Queen Victoria's red-coated troops were retained and widely  ensconced  in a pretty-well perma