The aircraft you would have seen at Staverton would almost certainly have been a Piston Provost.In those days CARG used to host a Miles/Percival fly in with a trophy for the best turned out visitor. There was several Piston Provosts there that year and on departure one refused to start. Eric Lambert, our tame engineer attempted to hand swing the Leonides, but all that happened was a series of pops and bangs from the exhaust which would sound like a cartridge start.

We were all convinced that Eric would come to a sticky end,I cannot remember what happened ultimately,but I think the aircraft was still there the next day.

On the subject of Typhoon cockpits,there were 2 in Bucklands scrapyard just outside Cheltenham in the early 1980’s.Did they both survive?

Wasnt there a hand painted sign at the entrance to the coal yard which was inscribed ‘RAF St Pancreas’? I am sure there is a photo in exsistence of it somewhere.

Canberra WE142

Hi,
Just found your web site and found it very informative.I am disposing of part of my aviation artefact collection and one of the items is the nose skinning from WE142 with the ‘London-Christchurch’ inscription on it.I hope this will be of interest to someone.It is on e bay at the moment.I am hoping to dig out a photo of WE142 at Heathrow prior to the start of the race.

As an aside Flowers Yard also had some Bristol Hercules exhaust collector rings,which i believe went to Canada in 1995/96 and now reside on Halifax NA337.