Details of the Daring Airdrop at Tristan Da Cunha

163 points - today at 3:56 AM

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Comments

echoangle today at 8:53 AM
Very nice story.

One thing I often ask myself in these situations: What do the inhabitants on these islands actually do?

There are 259 of them in this case.

Are they self-sustaining? How do they pay for stuff the want to import? Do they live off the cruise ships they supply? And do people generally stay there or do young people generally move to mainland?

Edit: For economy, it looks like they live off exporting langustas.

markb139 today at 10:24 AM
I think this was also a “look what we can do at short notice” kind of exercise. Just in case a country was thinking of maybe trying to take over another set of islands in the south Atlantic
connorgurney today at 6:17 AM
I think this is one of the few things as late that makes me feel genuinely proud to be British, because, beneath the hostility that feels so rife across our country recently, we’ve so many good people making things like this happen. Bravo.
kitd today at 8:55 AM
I'm no expert but that looks like an impressive feat of skill, coming blind through the clouds and picking out a relatively small patch to land on. Remember also it is late autumn there, pretty windy (according to TFA) and the wind would probably be doing weird things off the sea around those cliffs. All in all, very cool.
cbsks today at 5:25 AM
Amazing! Tristan’s entire website is a treasure. It’s a throwback to when the web was great.
rimeice today at 9:19 AM
Tremendous stuff. Made better by the throwback web styling. Almost broke out in to the national anthem halfway through the article.
Neil44 today at 9:09 AM
In case you're as interested as I was, they have google street view.
dmos62 today at 7:53 AM
What a heartwarming article.
fnands today at 9:25 AM
Visiting Tristan Da Cunha is on my bucket list. Just a shame it takes so long to get there, but maybe that's part of the appeal.
wmanley today at 8:53 AM
Wonderful. I love the poem at the end too.
musikele today at 8:19 AM
The only reason military should exist is to perform such life-saving, not life-ending, missions...
qingcharles today at 7:21 AM
Literally one of the worst places to fall seriously ill due to the fact you are absolutely and totally stuck in the actual middle-of-nowhere.
stavros today at 8:38 AM
> The plane flew between Inaccessible and Tristan

My god there actually is an island called Inaccessible Island! That's fantastic.

bananamogul today at 5:09 AM
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bcjdjsndon today at 9:53 AM
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