Yes, indeed. My point (badly made) was that we all tidy up our history in the light of later better information, fighter pilots did too. All the original documents (recognition books, ORBs, digests etc) refer to the He 113. I wonder what they thought hapened too them when they crashed on UK soil? They never found any!

Eddie, Jonathan,
The evidence is that, sadly, some “He 113″s shot down in the Battle of Britain were really Hurricanes and Spitfires. 🙁 ID was made on a fleeting view for the most part. Colours were the least of the clues I understand, although Eddie’s logic sounds sensible to me too.

Cheers

This whole 113 business has been quite fretful over the years and could fill a book in its own right. One late individual who will be nameless ( but it’s his Spitfire that’s in the U.K. Science Museum) described to me in detail how he was bounced by a 113, even recounting the position of the guns as being different from a 109. He subsequently (IIRC ) claimed to have shot it down in to the sea and was totally adamant as to his recall.
Or as another German pilot once remarked over his tenth beer ,
” I was shot down three times during the war; and that includes once by the enemy”.

One of our volunteers who is quite remarkably an ex spitfire and test pilot still remembers his first posting to Sicily where an abandoned 190 was put through its paces by his C.O. and Flight leader.Think he was in 602 Squadron at the time.Did his training in Rhodesia and finished the war in another Squadron in Burma before returning to test fly here in S/E Queensland.Anyone know of many 190,s abandoned in the Med??

I have a shot somewhere of a captured FW 190 in the med with one u/c leg collapsed having just been ground looped by an american pilot. There was a lot of it about…..
PS. Could you check that squadron number?

2. It was the world’s FIRST a/c to mount a rotodome – a rotating radome.

Ken

I think others, including Grumman with the Hawkeye and Lockheed with the WV-2E ,would take issue with that statement.

We certainly had another two, NF754 and NF755, both captured in December 1942.

Wasn’t the Pembrey aircraft, after evaluation, part of the catalyst to have the two-stage blower fitted to the Merlin. IIRC this mod was designed by Stanley Hooker at Rolls (who later went on to develop the Harrier’s engine design)

Part of it IIRC. I think the 2 stage blower started for the Wellington VI ( high altitude) using a first stage off of a Vulture ….? I’m sure there are Merlin 60 experts out there who know the story far better.
You could try Hookers “Not much of an Engineer” for his version . I’ll see if I can dig my copy out.

With all this earlier nonsense of “Tu62” and “Tu116” airliners being touted unnoticed, it is not surprising that this thread has latterly descended into such hysterical gibberish as to be offensive if it were not so peurile.

Chris, I had to get the book out to be sure.

If there were any rumour about buried Stirlings, the extinction of the type would surely derserve a serious attempt to locate them. Even large subassemblies can be useful. Didn’t the RAF Museum order an aerial survey to hopefully find some wrecks Stirling sometime ago in Egypt?

Cees

It was a close friend of Jack Bruce then at the RAF Museum ,who had witnessed the burial first hand – it was a big operation incidentally with other material being dumped. Jack certainly didn’t need any convincing. The problem at the time of discussion ( late ’70’s IIRC) was one of politics, versus available resources from the RAFM, versus the possibility of reasonable success. As I remember both the RAFM and the FAA museum had had some recent issues on the Halifax and Skua recoveries which tended to mitigate against such an adventure. I was present at a meeting with Jack and Bill Sayer when the recovery concept was discussed and mulled over due to the perceived risks mentioned above. The survey you are referring to above I was unaware of but it might have been a resurrection of this issue. My gut feeling is that it is likely that the material would have been excavated and sold off post the RAF departure , probably during the expansion of the base by the Egyptian Air Force.

Ref Stirlings in Egypt.
A number of RAF Stirlings were buried at RAF Kasfereet after the war c.1946.The undercarrages were pulled up, the wings cut off , then they were bulldozed into one or more large trenches by the airfield.
I looked at photography of the base some time ago, it was in use by the Egyptian Air force and it is quite big. I really don’t know if it is worth following up after all these years, unfortunately the reliable person who supplied the info is no longer with us so the search would have to be from scratch. Also Egypt………….? 🙂