Strange 'Air Ministry' Document?

That really does help, and thanks to all who have responded! I am truly grateful.

Just another piece in the jigsaw.

Auster Modification

In case it helps –

Mod 1670 (AAN No.415) is a modified engine mount created as the result of three defects reported on engine mountings for the Auster J.1 Autocrat and was dated 8th September 1948.

fakes

Being a collector of original period/unmessed with aviation/militaria items in a small way, this kind of thing makes me so angry,:mad::mad: having purchased a very dodgy/EXPENSIVE pair of mk111 goggles…..angry with myself as much as anyone…… after i bought them i had the chance to return them…..I BELIEVE EVEN THE DEALER WAS FOOLED…..caveat emptor etc…..i think collectors can suffer from what i call collectors blindness…so wanting something to be right that they go ahead and purchase the wrong item….I have 2 log books which i know are 100% genuine / period / unmessed with items, one ww11 Halifax and one just post ww11…Dakotas in burma etc….I love to see items on auction sites etc… revealed for what they actually are on sights like this….LONG MAY IT CONTINUE…..Any chance of a prosecution in this case?:confused: (faked up log book)… I wish dealers would stop selling unused logs which keep turning up….having said that, there is probably some scum bag out there working on producing new/unused books as i write this!….:(

Thanks, AgCat.

That certainly is very helpful and convincing supplementary information.

14671 is the number on all the docs. Looks as if the signature is B Highlands.

Also found another document in the log from De Havilland Engine Co Ltd.

It details a Gypsy Six fitted to DH Tiger Moth K2112 at Cranwell and has a typed date of 26 April 1939. Apart from the fact that K2112 wasn’t a Tiger Moth (it was a Hawker Hart) the document refers to it as the starboard engine!!! When I folded back the bottom of the form, where it had been tucked under, I found another inked in (and original) date; 1945. The rest of the document had been typed in, although I suspect the “stbd engine” bit was original and, sadly, didn’t make any sense once the faker had typed in the Tiger Moth bit.

You couldn’t make it up. Although somebody clearly did.

I have seen aircraft log book entries for Austers serviced by Boston Air Transport which make reference to maintenance schedule BAT/Auster/2. These date from the late 1940s/early 1950s. The Licenced Engineer’s number in those days was 7190, which would pre-date the number on the scammed document.

It looks to me that the page may have been taken from a log book certificate for an Auster J1 issued by Boston Air Transport, or its later successors Boardsides Aircraft Maintenance or Lincs Aerial Spraying which continued to use the same schedules, which has been ‘doctored’.

Yes, that is exactly what I believe it to be.

The AM & Crown stamp is cleary fake, as is the typed in date which also happens to be typed on a different typewriter.

It could well be a genuine page removed from a aircraft log book to embellish it.

Look out for the programme, Merlin3945.

I’ll tip you off. Sometime next year.

There is a lot of that latter kind of thing about at the moment. And more people than you’d credit being taken in by things that aren’t credible. 😉

Andy,

To be perfectly honest with you if I was to offered a log book at the right price I could almost certainly be taken in by this kind of scam. That is at least until I started doing some research on the airframes etc.

I know there will be a lot of this and other scams going on just now. Look at the control stick scams not so long ago and the ebay spitfire pieces or dambuster pieces that we see almost any day.

I suppose the best defence against this kind of trade is to not have dealings with this type of trade at all.

Trouble is these people seem to never get caught.

Looking like someone got a blank original log book and decided to do a real hash job.

It cant be too difficult to research the squadron ORB to find out which aircraft were with the squadron at the time. I recently did this for a pilot with 65 squadron.

You have to wonder why go to the bother of producing a very very poor fake.

Beats me.

Yes, certainly a blank log book that has been filled in with poor research!

Why do it?

Because it was worth the scam for the faker who managed to take somebody for an expensive ride.

There is a lot of that latter kind of thing about at the moment. And more people than you’d credit being taken in by things that aren’t credible. 😉

Looking like someone got a blank original log book and decided to do a real hash job.

It cant be too difficult to research the squadron ORB to find out which aircraft were with the squadron at the time. I recently did this for a pilot with 65 squadron.

You have to wonder why go to the bother of producing a very very poor fake.

Beats me.

The maintenance schedules BAT/ Auster/ J1 I would lay odds in the BAT referring to the Company whose maintenance schedule it was or their initials, were requisitioned aircraft still maintained to Civilian Standards BTW? Anyone?

Thanks, Tony. And others!

Just the sort of input I am looking for.

I can cope with the ‘RAF’ content of the book, but these paste-ins that seem to relate to an Auster, whilst obvious fakes in the context they are being used, are a little beyond me in terms of interpreting the civil aircraft content etc.

I just seem to spend all my time sleuthing odd stories, these days.

I think I have pretty much closed my case on this one, but any additional knowledgeable comments like Tony’s and the others would be welcomed.

I have just noticed “Brake cable, starboard” too. On a Hurricane?!

Although not having any documents to compare this with, would they have typed the date as ” 22.2″ in 1940 ?

The outer cover is the tyre and a 600×61/2 is awfully small for a “Hurricane” bear in mind the likes of a Cessna 150 or Piper PA28 will be running a 600×6
A/C will indeed be Airframes (A) and Propulsion (C) the authority number will be his licence number, my CAA one was a five digit numbered one starting with 27 before it changed to an EASA based numbering system. It was a unique number and you could tell roughly how long a person had been certifying by the size of the number, I could look on Monday see if I still have one of the old engineers licence copies at work, his was i think a four digit number, it will give an idea of when his was issued.

Lift struts are on high winged aircraft and are as the name infers, they are the strut that attaches the lower fuselage to the wing as in

Oh and of course why would the Air Ministry be stamping a civilian counterpart document and having a licenced engineer signing it? That sounds dubious.

Interesting indeed, Mudmover.

So, Authority 14671 refers to an A & C Licenced Engineer?

Certainly, the dates and AM stamps are fake anyway. But I’d be keen to know about that authority number!

And no, the log book stops on 13 August 1940 when he was ‘shot down’. Which he wasn’t! The only thing shot down, and in flames, is the validity of this document.

Interesting. The fact it refers to 2 pump outputs infers a Cirrus Minor II Auster J/1,the part nos are correct for a J/1 also.
You wouldn’t inspect an Auster Mk4 to an Auster J/1 Manual-different engine/slightly different airframe.
The big give away for me is the ‘Authority’ -if it is meant to imply A and C Licenced Engineer that high a number didn’t appear till the early/mid 70s

Does the pilot’s logbook continue into the postwar years? It may tally that he owned the Auster and kept the renewed Certificate of Airworthness for safe keeping in his logbook. The Auster factory at Reavsby also carried out repairs and modifications to Hurricanes and Typhoons during the war so that may lead to a source of generic paperwork. I doubt it is a document worth faking but the date typo is deffo an error. Google ‘G-info’ the CAA aircraft register, it may give you the previous aircraft owners names.

Thank you!

The really bizarre thing is that they are pasted into various pages of a Pilot’s Flying Log Book which I realised straight away was ‘odd’. This led to a further look and, loosely, these papers are are supposed to relate to a Hurricane flown by the pilot on that particular page. The book is supposed to be a previously ‘unkown’ Battle of Britain pilot on 601 Squadron, but it is a complete phoney – although a lot of work has gone into it. Serial numbers, though, are all over the place – Tiger Moths that were Gladiators or Harts and another an Avro Rota (K4236). Some of it is quite hilarious in terms of errors, not least of all scrambles and intercepts on days that nothing happened, signature by the CO of 601 Squadron by somebody who wasn’t the CO…not to mention that the named individual does not even appear in the RAF List for June 1940.

As you say, all very strange. The J/1 was a post-war Auster (the first example, G-AGTO is still operational with Mark Miller at Duxford)

The date as typed reads ‘19440’? A typo for ‘1949’ perhaps. The document appears to be a record of annual inspection and work carried out, as part of the aeroplane’s log book entry.