Keeping warm in a Catalina

Thanks Dave, brings back memories, great pictures, any more?

The Mildenhall show for me was a bitter sweet event(and hence I was not in the photo) as I was told the previous night my father had died in a car crash, whilst in the digs for the night.

Trying to remember some of the names in the photo.

Martin, Mick, Roy, Russell, Mr Rushen x 2, Mr Legg, Dizzy and John.Happy days, spent freezing our butts off at Barkston Heath, the experience moderated by the buxom Gwen at the pub 😀 The Chilli Con Carne was always excellent.

DXB Driver.

Ah happy days. Myself and a very good friend Mick Allen spent two weekends in the very cold hangar at Barkston heath painting the aircraft. John Cruikshank visited on the first saturday while we were still prepping the aircraft which included removing intakes for the cabin heating system and plating them over. John

As this thread has turned into something of a nostagia fest, these rather poor images may bring back some memories John. This is G-BLSC’s first re-paint when it became ‘JV928/Y’ in the freezing cold hangar at Barkston Heath in April 1985.

The first two show the primer coat and the third shows the overall white that went on before the green/grey camo’.

The last shot shows the Catalina at Mildenhall in 1985 on one of its first UK show appearances (Biggin Hill Air Fair was the first UK show). Not everyone had their black ‘babygros’ at this point! The two pilots up front are John Watts (left) and Dizzy Addicott on the right. Forum members Ex-Aviator and Beaufighter VI are both in the group whilst I am far right in the 2nd to back row – and still a current crew member.

Ah happy days. Myself and a very good friend Mick Allen spent two weekends in the very cold hangar at Barkston heath painting the aircraft. John Cruikshank visited on the first saturday while we were still prepping the aircraft which included removing intakes for the cabin heating system and plating them over. We susequently went on to paint the plain sailing Tigercat and also the Catalina for a second time. Mick is still very much in the plane painting business ,the Kennet Seafire being one of his finest .

John

The Mark 3 Lancaster (at the School of Maritime Reconnaisance) had heating vents from over the manifolds and down the sides of the main fuselage.
Their crews could be recognised by the large vent in the seat of the pants area in their flying suits.
If one became cold, all you had to do was to enlarge the suit’s vent and back over the one from the heating system.
A few minutes of Mr Michelin inflation worked wonders!

Mo

The Nimrod had a tv crew on board. We linked up and stooged around Folkestone before heading for Manston. We also linked up with Arthur Gibson in his camera ship GFOTO for some air to air photography.

From what I remember some clown wanted to do air to air with a Nimrod so we were airborne for at least another hour!

The picture of this appeared on the front cover of ‘Westwings’ the RAF St Mawgan station mag. Didn’t the Nimrod shepard the Cat from somewhere?

A picture on the water too! Must be a rarity there Joe. In keeping with the thread…..looks cold.

Have quite a few pictures of the Catalina on water, but not with John and Paul. There was only a short period, when the aircraft operated with both of them before John’s accident. I think Paul was in RAFG for the first few seasons? But I guess you know that.

I think the picture was taken on Loch Neagh, Paul was doing his water landing checkout.

And yes, my memories of that period was; it was either cold or wet or both (but quite exciting on occasion :eek:).

A picture on the water too! Must be a rarity there Joe. In keeping with the thread…..looks cold.

John Watts on the left, Paul Warren-Wilson on the right.

Ah, the one I was thinking of is a former RCAF P51 pilot & general flier of all things warbirdish

No sir. John was killed in a Tornado collision in 1988. Doing his day job.

John was British. And hellishly proud of it , sir!

Was? must be a different John Watts & not the one I was talking to at Chino yesterday

Can’t remember the name of that pub nearby but it was a welcome break between work.

http://houblon.co.uk/

John was British. And hellishly proud of it , sir!

Ho Ho. 🙂 This was 1985. John Watts parked his black Datsun 280Z (or something similar) outside the hangar at Barkston’ and when G-BLSC received its gloss white lower hull and wings sprayjob, plenty of that drifted outside and covered his car too!

The Canadian chap?

From what I remember some clown wanted to do air to air with a Nimrod so we were airborne for at least another hour!
Then we had to down some champagne, would rather have had a hot cup of tea.

Well at least I didn’t wear a red nose for the occasion!:dev2:

It’s been more than 25 years. Really good talking to you Pete. We should catch up soon.

From what I remember some clown wanted to do air to air with a Nimrod so we were airborne for at least another hour!
Then we had to down some champagne, would rather have had a hot cup of tea.

Hold on Pete. I’ve just remembered when we got to Manston we still had more than 1/3rd full tanks remaining! Did we really need to freeze all the way from Marseille?

[QUOTE=Beaufighter VI;1744569[/HTML]A good eight day adventure.[HTML][/HTML][/QUOTE]

I would’nt have missed it for the world Pete.

Not sure it thay are the same type being discussed here, but Shackletons also had cabin heaters fed from the aircraft fuel system.