First ‘hot air’ balloon? First balloon surely. :diablo:

Does anyone have any drawings or photos of the attachment points…

Not sure…..are the red things either side of the radiator catapult spools…..anybody?

…did each spit have its own crew?

That seems to have been the case at the beginning of the war; that each aircraft and pilot was allocates two or three ground-crew who looked after ‘their’ aircraft…

…remember the pilots just borrowed the aircraft…..and had to sign for them!

Later, due to the pressures of war, I think the RAF changed to a ‘pooled’ maintenance routine where any aircraft could have been worked on by any ground-crew member.

Although perfectly reasonable from a theoretical point-of-view I remember reading about squadrons chasing V1 flying-bombs that one squadron gained many more kills than any other squadron and that a well-known pilot (forget who) from that squadron put it down to the fact that his squadron was the last in Fighter Command to still be operating the old maintenance routine, and that that gave the pilots and ground-crew much better motivation and morale.

If a car is parked on your driveway, on your property, does it automatically become yours?

If being in possession of a car was illegal I suspect that the law would view it as your property in that case!

If I found a bag of cash on my driveway and took it to the police station should I be charged with counterfeiting when it turns out to be fake?

If there is an illegal sawn-off shotgun in a bin-liner in my garden and my neighbour finds it while cutting his bushes should I have a right to a ‘defence’ under the law?

The only monumentally stupid thing in this case is to perpetuate a society where ‘doing the right thing’ can get you into more trouble than deliberately flouting the law.

…he has behaved with monumental stupidity.

I’d hardly call it monumental stupidity.

So let’s see now, somebody throws a bin liner into your garden…

…are we to phone the police just in case there is a firearm inside it? :rolleyes:

And if there is, doesn’t the fact that it is on our property make it ‘in our possession’? In this case I don’t see how this man could have avoided prison.

How can there be ‘no defence’ against this crime when if he had taken a kitchen knife gone into a nursery and butchered half-a-dozen three-year-olds he’d have been protected by the law?

Ridiculous! The law is an ass and if the Judiciary cannot be allowed to interpret the spirit, rather than the letter, of the law we should replace them by a computer; it would a least save us some money.

Good to see Britain isn’t being left behind in the space race! :rolleyes:

But surely that need not preclude comment on the fact that the situation exists.

Absolutely not, but as with so many things, just how ‘low’ this crime is will occur to everybody except the person (or persons) responsible.

The fact that “we can get away with it as no one cares or the police haven’t got the time” seems to me symptomatic of what is wrong about the UK these days.

But if ‘they think they can get away with it’ the fact that only a dozen or so collection-boxes were taken is a good thing isn’t it?

And as for it being symptomatic of what is wrong with the country maybe it’s a symptom of something that’s right! 🙂