This might be a bit of a long shot, but does the piece of nose art below ring any bells with anyone? The story, such as it is, is that it was removed from a Wellington which passed through 18MU at Dumfries during the war. Part of the refurbishment required was a fuselage strip and recover, and the fellow tasked with the stripping of the fuselage fabric decided the nose art was worth keeping. He donated it to the museum in 1979.
It’s a great object for our museum and is about to be moved into a new display, but the one thing the fellow didn’t do was record the serial of the aircraft it came from, the squadron codes or even the date. If it helps, the piece is about A2 size.
Your collective thoughts are most welcome – I’d love to be able to piece together a bit more of the history of the aircraft it flew on.
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By: TEXANTOMCAT - 16th February 2018 at 15:44
Yours is Disney’s Pluto- Wimpey= Wellington (and just happens to be a cartoon character who loves burgers!) 🙂
By: Johnny Kavanagh - 16th February 2018 at 14:29
I’ve looked at this piece for getting on 30 years, and never registered the dark earth background – great point!
There are faint marks on ours from the structure but no clear geodetic marks like yours TT – suspiciously absent in fact. I’ll take a closer look this weekend – maybe it isn’t from a Wellington at all.
I’ve always thought this was Disney’s Pluto rather than Wimpey though? Great item to have nonetheless.
By: TEXANTOMCAT - 15th February 2018 at 16:00
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Snap! We have some Wimpey nose art in our Museum at Sywell too – came off a machine being recovered at Brooklands Aviation. Long live the Wimpey Cartoon Character Nose Art Collectors club! Can you see the geodetic marks on the back of yours as we can on ours?
ATB
TT
By: Tin Triangle - 15th February 2018 at 14:59
Instant thought – The background is Dark Earth, not Black. Assuming the art came from a standard position on the side of the nose, this ought to constrain the date considerably, as most Wellingtons were finished with a high demarcation line between the camo uppersurfaces and black undersurfaces, with only a fairly narrow strip on the upperside of the fuselage being camo, and the likely place for nose art being black.
So it would have be from a relatively early Wellington before the position of the demarcations was changed to the above pattern, I’d say before late 1940. I’m not sure when the Air Ministry order for this was, but no doubt someone will have the date…
Nice piece by the way!
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February 14, 2018 at 7:57 pm