The real fireworks are staying right here

PLEASE to remember, the fifth of November, gunpowder, treason and plot, I see no reason why gunpowder treason should ever be forgot. History has a long memory until events, places and people fade from consciousness and are relegated into the dusty archives of ageing brains.

Until the 1970s Australians enthusiastically embraced the

English Guy Fawkes night tradition, commemorating the failed 1605 republican plot to blow up parliament and assassinate the protestant king.

It is still commemorated annually in the UK, even if Australia’s Generation Z no longer understands when or why. Queenslanders enthusiastically marked Cracker Night until the late 1970s.

It didn’t end well for Guido and the gang, just as it often didn’t for many Queensland kids, dogs and houses, until the fun police intervened, banning selling fireworks and lighting bonfires at the start of the summer bushfire season. For pyrotechnics on a grand scale, you can’t beat a USAF B52 raid.

Never mind assorted Chinese manufactured bungers, catherine wheels, Roman candles and other delights, even several tonnes of conventional iron bombs dropped from 40,000 feet by day or night can be quite spectacular.

The nuclear strike capable B52 Stratofortress first flew on April 15, 1952. That’s less than a month after Queen Elizabeth II’S accession to the crown on February 6.

The Korean War was at its most intense with the RAAF still operating piston-engine P35 Mustangs.

In July a RAAF Wing operating de Haviland Vampires deployed to Malta as Australia’s contribution to counter Russian influence in the Middle East.

Since 1950 RAAF Lincoln bombers had contributed to the Commonwealth response to Communist insurgency in the Malayan Emergency.

Now plans have been announced to deploy six B52 to RAAF Tindall in response to Chinese posturing over

Taiwan.

Purpose specific facilities will be built to support the deployment, which will supplement B52 permanently deployed to Anderson AFB in Guam, from where they also supported the allied effort in Vietnam until 1975.

None of the current crews were alive when the B52 entered service in 1952, when they would have been flown by parents and grandparents.

The BUFFS as they are popularly known have a proud service record, but they are not finished yet.

With planned modifications to extend their operational life until at least 2050, they could reach the milestone of the first type to operate for a century.

The real fireworks are a long way from being history.