A rare weekend away in Suffolk meant I had the chance to take in some otherwise never visited before places of interest, and one of these was the fascinating Long Shop Museum in Leiston. Based mainly on the history of the towns Richard Garrett and Sons steam engine works, there is also a display on the nearby RAF Leiston airfield and the work of the 357th fighter group that was based there during WWII.
And having visited the former airfield and taken a moment to pause for thought, this incident in particular that is shown in the museum illustrates for me the unnecessary fine line taken by some pilots which in some cases cost them everything.
Rob[ATTACH=CONFIG]256065[/ATTACH][ATTACH=CONFIG]256066[/ATTACH]
By: Malcolm McKay - 4th October 2017 at 10:05
Don Gentile managed to do the same thing but survived.
By: Adrian Barrell - 3rd October 2017 at 13:09
I was referring to them for scale only. The barrel looks like it scales at about 28mm dia, too small to be a .50 cal. Just an observation, it wouldn’t be the first time a museum has attributed an artefact to the wrong crash.
By: Wyvernfan - 3rd October 2017 at 08:18
The cartridges are not connected and are a separate display but in the same cabinet, tankbarrel.
Rob
By: Adrian Barrell - 3rd October 2017 at 07:47
I’m not sure that fragment is from the P-51. The two cartridges next to it look like 20mm which makes the barrel much too small to be a .50 cal. Looks more like a .30 or .303.
By: AlanR - 2nd October 2017 at 22:23
We visited this museum a couple of months ago.
The section on Elizabeth Garrett Anderson was very interesting.
By: jeepman - 2nd October 2017 at 20:47
Garratts and thus ultimately the Long Shop Museum were also the source of the original FE2B nacelle frame which formed the basis of the RAF Museum’s reproduction. It had been retained by the company when production was stopped at the conclusion of WW I
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October 2, 2017 at 7:45 pm