Blue Peter’s epic fall guy
QUESTION Did Blue Peter’s John Noakes hold a number of skydiving records?
Blue Peter presenters have come and gone over the programme’s 60-year history, yet few are recalled with such fondness as John Noakes and his trusty collie, Shep.
John began his skydiving career for Blue Peter in 1968. His original series of 4,000ft jumps took place at Pau, France, and were filmed by Charles Shea-Simonds of the British Parachute Association, who recorded that ‘the general feeling was that another poor sucker had been bitten by the bug’.
He was right. John completed 17 descents from light aircraft with the Royal Air Force Sports Parachute Association and the Army’s Red Devils in 1970-71. In 1973, the RAF Falcons asked if he would like to make a five-mile free-fall jump.
Jumping from the edge of space took serious nerve. It also required a stint in a compression chamber simulating the altitude of 25,000ft.
In the chamber, John was instructed by the doctor to turn off his oxygen supply. He had been given a simple addition to solve on a piece of paper which became increasingly more difficult.
John’s writing became very large and uncontrolled until he eventually just sat with his fingers trembling, his face pale, and his lips blue. The same procedure followed for the Falcons.
John continued his ground training at Abingdon, Oxfordshire, where he made a series of 12,000ft jumps from a fourengined Hercules transport aircraft. He wore a Skydiver parachute fitted with an Irvin Automatic Opening Device (AOC).
He successfully completed the five-mile jump over Salisbury Plain on May 15, 1973. It involved John linking with three Falcons together with several other three and two man links. The links were broken at 6,000ft and each parachutist moved to a clear space to fall stable and wait for the AOC to operate and the canopy to deploy.
John achieved three ‘firsts’: he was the first civilian in Britain to make a five-milehigh free fall; the first outsider to join the Flying Falcons; and the first TV presenter in Britain to talk to a camera while falling through space.
The jump saw him enter the Guinness Book Of Records. His exploit was recorded in the Blue Peter film The long Fall.
Richard Crossley, Birmingham.
QUESTION In the boardroom of the TV series NCIS, the NCIS Shield on the wall is surrounded by signatures. Who do they belong to?
I POSeD this question to Pauley Perrette, who plays forensic officer Abby Sciuto on the show in an online Q and A.
The large picture with the NCIS shield and blue background is covered with the signatures of real NCIS officers — not, as has been reported elsewhere, members of the cast and crew.
Ali Stoneman, Altrincham, Cheshire.
QUESTION The road accessing London’s Hammersmith Bridge is called Castelnau. What is the origin of this unusual name?
PARlIAMeNT permitted the Hammersmith Bridge Company to construct a toll bridge from the north side of the Thames to the south side, Hammersmith to Barnes, and development began in 1824.
Major Charles lestock Boileau de Castelnau, brother of the first baronet of the name and a scion of an old Huguenot family enriched by the wine trade and Indian service, bought land on the south side of the river on both sides of what was then upper Bridge Road in 1842.
The house he built on this estate was called Castelnau (Newcastle in english, pronounced Kastelno) after the family’s lordship and castle near Nimes in France.
He also had 20 pairs of identical semidetached villas (now Grade II-listed) built on the road, and a further terrace of shops and houses built in 1844. After his death in 1889, upper Bridge Road was renamed Castelnau Road and the estate was assimilated into Barnes. Many Huguenot families who settled in london are remembered by roads and sites in the areas they lived, such as the Minet family, the Champion de Crespigny (Crespigny Road and De Crespigny Park), Cazenove and Courtauld.
Peter de Loriol Chandieu, London SW4.
QUESTION For D-Day in 1944, the Allies had a pipeline called Pluto towed across the Channel to supply petrol to Normandy. What became of it?
I WAS intrigued by a recent letter from a correspondent about the Pluto pipeline.
My fellow volunteers and I at the epsom and ewell History Centre became interested in Pluto some time ago when a local came in and related how she recalled seeing a trench being dug across epsom Downs to install Pluto during World War II.
We then looked into it further. Pluto was a far more extensive system than just the pipes across the Channel. Much of Pluto can still be identified by marker posts displaying a yellow square divided by a vertical black band.
For any readers who may be interested in further information, our website epsomandewellhistoryexplorer.org.uk goes into a lot greater detail on the development, testing and laying of Pluto. Bert Barnhurst (volunteer), Stoneleigh, Epsom, Surrey.
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