A minor point of interest. According to my copy of WR Chorley, Beebe was the oldest member of the RCAF to die on operational service with bomber command.

Mark

Just a quick thaught.Cutty Sark was,to all intents and purposes,a Museum.I presume that all brick and mortar Museums have,not only night security guards on site,but also intruder and smoke alarms.I have no knowledge wether Cutty Sark had these befor being dismantled or not,but I would have thaught that during her vulnerable state,security would have been tighter than it seemed to be.I know there was CCTV survielance but these “tapes” are usually used after an offence has taken place.Knowing the area well,they’re usually used to crack down on skateboarders.
I think they’ve treated her as a “building site” relying on CCTV,being fed to a wall of screens,covering the whole of Greenwich (maybe more),being viewed by a tired,solitary operator.As far as I know,the guy who took the video on his mobile,which was shown on Sky News,allerted the Fire Brigade.
A sad,sad day for “good old Greenwich”.

Well luckily there was CCTV and the Metropolitan Police have just released a photo of a suspected arsonist.

Mark

Many thanks to you all for this excellent response.

Is it likely that at any time either during or after the war an aircraft may well have been scuttled for any particular reason. ie heavily damaged in raids or perhaps after the war too complex/expensive to repair?

Quite a few were scuttled at the end of the ward. There were a few movement cards with the words “Scuttled” written on them floating around.

Mark

There is an article about the new “Dambusters” movie in today’s “Sunday Express”. However there is really very little in the article you won’t know already plus a few howlers.

e.g. the film is described as a “Hollywood” remake (since when was New Zealand part of Hollywood?) and have a chuckle at this –

“The only Lancaster bomber still able to fly is based at Conningsby (sic) in Lincolnshire. Filmakers hope to use it for scenes for the new movie.”

The Canadian Warplane Heritage will no doubt be upset to learn that their Lanc is no longer airworthy. Of course not that long ago the “TV Times” reported (in a piece on “Foyle’s War” ) that their was only one airworthy Spitfire left in the world.

Colin

Were there any Eagle Sqn members on the original raid and how many will be on the remake? 😀 😀 😀

Hollywood rewriting history again I feel.

Mark

The Dutch national airline is facing calls for an inquiry into its role in helping Nazis to flee to South America, after the discovery of documents suggesting it played an active role in smuggling suspected war criminals out of Germany.
KLM, Royal Dutch Airlines, has always denied it had a policy of assisting the Nazis to escape justice at the hands of the Allies after World War II, when hundreds escaped to Argentina.

But papers revealing the activities of a mysterious Herr Frick in trying to help Germans to cross into Switzerland and then fly to Buenos Aires have raised fresh questions about the behaviour of one of Europe’s best-known airlines in the mid-1940s.

“The documents give the distinct impression KLM was intensively involved in transporting Nazis,” said Marc Dierikx, an aviation historian at the Institute for Netherlands History in The Hague. Argentina provided sanctuary for many Germans fleeing Europe after the war.

It was the refuge of leading Nazis such as Joseph Mengele, the doctor at the Auschwitz concentration camp nicknamed the “Angel of Death”, and Adolf Eichmann, who oversaw the death camps where millions died.

The existence of a shadowy network of Nazi sympathisers helping to organise the escape route was depicted in Frederick Forsyth’s novel The Odessa File.

Suspected war criminals could not obtain official papers to leave Germany. But some adopted false identities, and KLM acknowledges some of its passengers were probably fleeing Nazis.

However, the airline says its role was not to police its passengers but to carry those who turned up with valid papers showing they had completed security checks by the Allies.

In papers unearthed in Swiss archives by Dutch documentary-makers, Herr Frick, said to be a KLM representative, is documented in October 1948 asking the Swiss authorities to allow potential passengers from Germany to cross the border without the proper papers.

Sander Rietveld, a journalist on the Netwerk program, said: “It is a memo from the Swiss border police about a visit of the local KLM representative, Herr Frick. He asked the Swiss police to allow Germans without an Ersatzpasse – permission of the Allies – to enter Switzerland so they could board planes to Argentina. On this occasion the Swiss police refused, although we know that in reality they did allow Germans to pass without permission. The point is that it shows KLM actively approached the Swiss police.”

KLM said it did not know of a former employee called Frick but passenger lists unearthed in the Argentine capital show long lists of German names, including at least two former Nazis.

Opposition MPs are demanding an independent inquiry, and Bart Koster, a spokesman for KLM, said he would advise the company’s board to commission one. He told Radio Netherlands: “If we really want to be sure what happened, we have to have a thorough investigation.”

An inquiry could reopen controversy about the role of the Dutch royal family, as the late Prince Bernhard, father of Queen Beatrix, was on KLM’s board in the post-war years.

But Mr Koster said there was nothing in the board minutes or in KLM’s archives to indicate the airline had been involved in the transportation of Nazi war criminals from Germany.

The name Herr Frick rang a bell and I thought Ello Ello Ello……..

It was posted in April and I wonder if it was the 1st.

Mark 😀

A pity they don’t still have corporal punishment out there in the colonies.
One little slapper that deserves a right good slapping.
Be lucky
David

Me too and I wouldn’t charge her too much for that service….. in fact…… I might do it for free seeing as though this one would be one off.

Mark 😀 😀 😀 😀

Found another website about underwater warbirds:

http://www.divetheworld.com/Diving/warbirds/index.htm

It reports about an upcoming attempt to recover a Beaufighter from Norwegian waters. Anyone knows more about that?

And a tastefully made video about a dive to a sunken Sunderland (T9044) at Pembroke dock:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SAIIY5SjDGI

Tillerman.

Now that is a nice video. Very touching and really brings home how young these guys were.

Mark