Graffiti Left By Engineers In Older Aircraft (Canberra)

I passed on a Jaguar noise gear door from one of Colt’s T2s to the Norwich museum on the understanding that the sticker remained in place….

A large sticker stating proudly that ‘Jesus loves prawn*’ with an illustration of our saviour in action……

*might not actually be ‘prawn’

Hopefully they haven’t wrecked this significant bit of British Aviation heritage

Shackleton WR963 has various scribblings from Bitteswell in the port undercarriage bay, and some hastily pencilled wiring digrams inside the front bomb bay where the radar went. On the tailplane front spar where it passes through there’s also “Fly Taildraggers – we do!”.

More Graffitti

I found this poignant set of comments in a HH3 stuck in a field in Pennsylvania a few years back.

QP

PS. She never did get her wings back…

Forget now which one it was, but either Shackleton WL795 or WL756 had “Guy Gibson was ‘ere” written in a fairly hidden area in the tail.

Paul…

It was called ‘Zapping’ when I was in the air farce – occasionally taken to absolute extremes LOL

It was the norm at one time that if your aircraft went away anywhere it would return ‘zapped’

I did see a web site (can’t find it now) which was done by military aircraft mechs. They had a paint stencil that they could use to “tag” visiting aircraft that required their services. Shame I can’t find it now. They seemed to suggest that it was quite a common thing to do.

During some re-skinning work on the cockpit outer side panels on Meteor TT.20 WM224 in the early 90’s, we discovered lines of poetry on the inner skins. This would have been written on the Armstrong Whitworth production line.

That sounds unusual : ) – do you have a photo ?

rgds baz

Worst one I found was on a fairly plywood large gusset plate ‘Failed inspection, replace before recovering wing’ with ‘Don’t worry about it’ written beneath it in a different handwriting just before the wing was recovered in fabric. The plate, incidently, was no longer glued to the ribs it needed to hold together…

Blimey – that would be worrying Eric in a funny sort of way as long as the wing has not fallen off : )

During some re-skinning work on the cockpit outer side panels on Meteor TT.20 WM224 in the early 90’s, we discovered lines of poetry on the inner skins. This would have been written on the Armstrong Whitworth production line.

I believe that in the restoration of some Japanese aircraft the NASM found really pornographic graffiti. Just tells us that each nation exhibits its own characteristics in the expression of desire to leave one’s mark for posterity.

I saw a puma with a huge knob and set of bollox taped under it, it flew for quite a while before anyone realised and removed it :E

Thinking about it, I remember writing on an oxygen drop down panel in a TriStar “If you’re reading this in flight, you’re really in the sh!t!!”. Oh the giggles…

I have seen some good examples in my time. In ’77, morale was a bit low in the RAF and someone had used masking tape on the bottom of a Wessex that was visiting us at Machrihanish. It said, ‘good ‘ere init’..

An old mate before selling his MGB years ago decided to clock it… Upon pulling the speedo out and upon removing the back he found a note saying Ohhhhhh nooooooo not again…

I have photos of some of the sigs in the RR spit before it left the BBMF

..

Blood is corrosive.

Victor XL231 has plenty of graffiti hidden around the airframe! We are finding some on Meteor WS788 too. It’s nice to preserve these personal touches which make part of the aircraft’s history.

Have ever found any blood stains on 231? We could all honestly say that we had shed blood for our country..

Worst one I found was on a fairly plywood large gusset plate ‘Failed inspection, replace before recovering wing’ with ‘Don’t worry about it’ written beneath it in a different handwriting just before the wing was recovered in fabric. The plate, incidently, was no longer glued to the ribs it needed to hold together…

Another fun one was ‘This fuselage was broken before’ handwritten on a bulkhead only accessible when the fuselage was broken again 20 years later…

Victor XL231 has plenty of graffiti hidden around the airframe! We are finding some on Meteor WS788 too. It’s nice to preserve these personal touches which make part of the aircraft’s history.

My autograph is on several aircraft. On some of them you’d need to take them apart to find examples. Ferinstance, the PR Spit at Wright Patt would need the fabric on the elevators & rudder to be stripped to find 3 examples, but there’s at least 5 more on that one airframe. You’d have to remove skins to find them. Sometimes it’s my name & the date, other times it’s #61 & the date. 🙂
I do the same with car restos & customs. Kenny Wayne Shepherd, Tim Allen & Billy Gibbons all own cars with my name hidden somewhere.

Yup my name is plastered over some of her Majesties finest…. On the Jaguar you will find the UC doors scrawled with messages to one another as they were the unofficial way of passing messages to each other, especially if it popped back to the UK etc.