Friday 24 December 2010

If You Are Interested In Speed And Breaking Speed Records,

look out on Christmas eve, for the program, 'Bluebird: The Spirit Reborn' to be broadcast on Christmas Eve,Friday 24th December at 19.30 on Sky News and Sky News HD and repeated Wednesday 29th and Friday 31st December at 19.30, the legendary record breaking Bluebird superboat in which speed-king Donald Campbell died after crashing at 328mph is to live again - 45 years after the tragic accident that sealed both their fates, the wreck of the jet-powered Bluebird K7, which sank to the bottom of Lake Coniston in January 1967 before being found and raised by divers in 2001, is now being re-assembled piece by piece,
the wreck above is being taking apart and totally rebuilt, literary rivet by rivet,
the aim is to put the phoenix-like reconstructed craft back on the water in a year's time - and run it at speeds of up to 100mph, a team from Sky News has not only followed the Bluebird project for an exclusive behind the scenes look at the re-build, it has also used hi-tech 3-D computer graphics to recreate second-by-second the crash and help pinpoint exactly what went wrong in the fatal record attempt run, backed by the pilot's daughter, Gina Campbell, a small team of diving enthusiasts and volunteer engineers based in a workshop in North Shields on Tyneside is putting the original Bluebird back together using 90 per cent of the original parts and fabric,

Campbell's daughter Gina is enthused by the project to rebuild her father's craft: 'I'm envisaging an enormous public response to coming to hear it and to see it, I think it will send the shivers up a lot of people's spines, I can almost feel it now, in fact I am tingling, it will be a thrill to see and to hear and to smell,' Donald Campbell died trying to live up to the achievements of his speed record breaking father, Sir Malcolm Campbell, and Bluebird shares its name with the series of high speed aerodynamic cars in which both Campbell's smashed records, for some unpublished till August 2010 pictures of Bluebird and Campbell have a look here, it for me is amazing that with no official backing a group of people can try to do the seemingly impossible, to re-build and run Bluebird, I wish them every success.

1 comment:

Bill Arthur said...

Hi Stan I may be able to help in your project!!!
I live in South Shields and work for RR as a 53 year old Gas turbine engineer in Qatar 28/28 rota so i do get time off. Time served toolmaker...so if you ever need help/advise give me a shout..Regards...Bill billart3000@yahoo.co.uk