For the record, the photo of the P-47 dispersal was taken at Burtonwood NOT Speke. It first appeared in Roger Freeman’s Mighty Eighth War Manual but I had doubts about it. Borrowing the ATC vehicle, I toured the old Speke Airport’s perimeter but, as suspected, could find no likely area. Soon afterwards, I checked a wartime aerial photo of Burtonwood which accurately showed the dispersal later to be occupied by the P-47s. The photo was in one of the many volumes of The Army Air Forces in WW II, I forget which. but they are now available online. I wrote to Roger with the correction and in defence he told me that the back of his photo was stamped ‘Speke’ and it seems that it remains uncorrected in the IWM collection of his archive. Roger agreed with my findings and that the photo had been mis-captioned. Thus are myths perpetuated!

I would also suggest that the caption is wrong in that the P-47’s are there for scrapping & not redeployment, as dozens if not hundreds of P-51’s were scrapped there & the P-51 was replacing P-47’s in front line sevice at the time.
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