…and I bet all three triplets are by a different father! :rolleyes:

Not much to go on!

Photo taken from above ground level…..terminal building viewing gallery? Concrete apron.

Northern hemisphere? Sun to the south (or east, or west :rolleyes:)? So apron edge possibly running north-south…

…Croydon?

Complete guess obviously! 😮

I don’t remember the other memorial…..well it doesn’t have a tank does it!

I had the privilege of meeting Ken Small, in 2001 I think. He was selling his book, out of the back of his car by the tank, to raise funds to maintain it as a memorial. I remember him saying how much money it cost to keep painting it and how upset he was that somebody had sprayed ‘anti-war’ (:rolleyes:) graffiti on the tank a while back!

I bought a copy of his book, made a small donation and congratulated him for recovering the tank…..he shook my hand and I remember him being close to tears.

…when we come to a tragedy like Slapton, where the US took the hit…

Yes, and doubly so, as failings by the Royal Navy possibly contributed to the scale of the tragedy.

The photo below is of the memorial at Slapton Sands to those lost. It is a Sherman DD (Duplex Drive) amphibious tank which sank during part of the exercise (although not due to enemy action) and which was recovered in 1984 largely due to the efforts of the late Ken Small who wrote a book ‘The Forgotten Dead’ about the fateful Exercise Tiger.

I think you must mean this BBC page don’t you…

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/devon/3666355.stm

…and yes, that’s Tommy Atkins…..not G.I. Joe! 😮

Kev35,

I’ve just posted a link to your excellent pictures onto this thread in ‘historic’ about airfield beacons.

http://forum.keypublishing.co.uk/showthread.php?t=52881&page=2

I hope you don’t mind or think that it distracts from your thought-provoking thread.

…the New Zealand, Argentinian and Israeli airforces has retired theirs? Years ago?

The Argentine Air Force (Fuerza Aérea Argentina or FAA) still operates some A-4AR (modernized ex-USMC A-4M) out of a total of 36 that were delivered between 1997 and 2000. The A-4AR serial numbers are C-901 to C-936. Two have been lost in accidents and, other than those in squadron service, the rest are in storage.

That’s like saying Antonio Meucci didn’t invented the telephone first…..Alexander Graham Bell did since he had more wealth!

Well I think when it comes to an argument about what constitutes a military force, size does matter!

And we’re not talking about a small difference here; for every Finnish aircraft the RAF had about four-thousand!

Funny that you should mention Antonio Meucci as I would say that the argument as to who invented the telephone here is based on what is officially recognised and what is recorded on bits of paper against who actually produced the first working telephone.

I don’t know what it is like in Finland but in Britain the Government and the Ministry of Defence don’t do anything quickly. It is inconceivable that the discussion about the formation of the RAF didn’t go on for months if not years before its ‘official’ formation date. I’m sure there are official documents somewhere that mention the ‘Royal Air Force’ that are dated long before March 1918 and at that time the aircraft and personnel that would form the RAF were already fighting on the Western Front.

Would you agree that the Finnish claim to have the world’s first independent air force cannot extend any earlier than the donation of their first aircraft? No aircraft – no air force?

I don’t know when the actual decision to form the RAF was officially taken or by who but I’m absolutely sure that it wasn’t taken on 1st April 1918. Possibly it required an act of parliament; I don’t know?

So even though the RAF was ‘officially’ formed on 1st April 1918 it could be argued that its actual existence predates that as the aircraft and personnel were already in existence and an official decision to form it had already been made.

Don’t take it personally; I’m only playing devil’s advocate! :diablo:

Incidentally do you have an equivalent to April Fools’ Day in Finland? I don’t think it is an accident that the RAF was formed on this day because the formation of the RAF couldn’t possibly have happened without the involvement of the Royal Navy and the British Army and this was probably what the other two forces thought about the idea of an independent RAF.