Creaking Door, you are quite right the tail did come off in flight, it landed in the bog not far from the main site. It failed between frames 35 and 36 a couple of inchs forward of the spar to the tailplanes. It lost the tail planes and the turret on the way down but the tail oleo was on until impact.

The aircraft was not recognisable as a Lancaster after the ground had finished with it, the state of the engines was almost purely down to the ground conditions being extremely soft allowing a comparatively slow decel. Think of the Hurricane remains at the RAFM in the BoB hall.

I have not yet watched the program since I was in Scotland last night and stupidly BBC Scotland didn’t show the program (they had Landward, Contury File for Scotland, and much better than Country File to be honest) but I had it recorded at home so will watch it soon.

I think the National Archives might be interested in that collection of reports since they have a not against the whole of 1944 saying they are missing and since they are a public record they are meant to be deposited with the National Archives after a maximum or 30 years though if Brune’s latest idea gets through ti may only be a decade or so.