A film/movie on this man would be really worthwhile.

Baz

(without the UFO crap!)

I know.

Let’s park one on an aircraft carrier on the Thames in the open, let it rot and see how the Americans like that.

That’s what they’ve done to G-BOAD.

Did they pay £17m for it?…..er…….no.

Even if we had £17m they wouldn’t sell it to us.

Try buying an F14 and export that to the UK.

There are only 2 for sale and they will firmly stay in America.

However, a loan to Duxford museum, if we build a special hangar for it and find an airfield with a long enough runway to land the B747 and transport it intact from that airfield to Duxford, you never know.

.

“dorsal” ?? no thats a fish!

Mark Pilkington

Dorsal is good, it refers to a plan view on a 3 view drawing.

At RAF Akrotiri back in the 80s I worked alongside the USAF on the airfield during their operations. The crew would follow their U2 down the taxiway, then chase it down the runway and pick up the outriggers dropped by the pilot at rotation. On this particular day the U2 rotated nose up 70+ degrees and from my angle I could see the port outrigger still attached, they reckoned that by the end of the runway she would be about 10,000′. The ground crew drove over to me smiling and said he has released it. Sure enough about a minute later there was a small plume of dust rising in the overshoot area off the airfield. Whether they found it (intact) I don’t know, I doubt it. The pilots were great, although they didn’t talk much about U2 ops, they were all Vietnam veterans and often would act as duty pilots in ATC. If you was interested, they would talk about their exploits (long after their duty bit had finished!) and take time and care to explain air warfare hithero unknown to us limeys. I had/have a great deal of respect for these men.

Baz

I like US PR Spitfires, I recently cobbled a couple of side views together.

I take it that they didn’t come back with a dustpan and brush to clear up that mess?