The type of airplane and camera were less important than the weather over England. Were the skies clear up to 45,000 feet during the week before the Normandy invasion?

The weather over Europe didn’t seem to deter to RAF from high-altitude PR sorties but of course a few photographs of British ports the week before D-Day wouldn’t really have told the Germans very much.

The success of RAF photo-reconnaissance was based on almost continuous coverage of key installations (from before the war) and carefully noting the changes in activity. Many ports would have had invasion craft and many places army units but the Allies put much effort into misinformation for the Germans and without extensive coverage it would be very difficult to know when the invasion would start, and more importantly virtually impossible to say where it would land.

Possibly because in the JU86R they had a perfectly good camera platform almost immune from interception?

You’ll have to enlighten me about the Ju86R version, but the Ju86P was only produced in small numbers (<50?) and the Luftwaffe gave up with that after a few were shot-down or damaged…

…compare that with the number of PR Spitfires produced (>1000?) not to mention any other high-altitude PR aircraft.

According to Pierre Closterman’s book, The Big Show, a Bf109G was intercepted and destroyed over the Orkneys…

It seems to me that there was a great failing here; the performance of the Bf109 or Fw190 was surely comparable to the Spitfire, German camera technology was certainly capable, and it is a lot easier to fly over Britain from occupied France than it is to fly to Berlin from Britain.

The Luftwaffe must have been aware what the PR Spitfires were doing (some must have been shot-down and examined); so why didn’t the Germans do the same?

Unusual WW2 RAF Bomber or Fighter Piston Relic Ashtray:

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/UNUSUAL-WW2-RAF-BOMBER-OR-FIGHTER-PISTON-RELIC-ASHTRAY_W0QQitemZ360117793274QQcmdZViewItemQQptZUK_Collectables_Militaria_LE?hash=item360117793274&_trksid=p3286.c0.m14&_trkparms=66%3A2%7C65%3A1%7C39%3A1%7C240%3A1318

I agree…..it’s very, very unusual! :rolleyes:

Have you tried bubble-wrapping the wife? :diablo:

Seriously, if your airframe components are aluminium-alloy and your garage is reasonably dry I would have thought that they would last decades without serious damage. Are they particularly old, fragile or valuable?

One a purely practical level, keep them out and dust them when you have a chance to admire them, wrapping them up sort-of defeats the object of owning them in the first place doesn’t it?

Poor taste, yes…..and bad publicity…..but as there is no such thing as bad publicity, good publicity…

…and free too!

There seems to be a lot of this around at the moment.

I predict that any minute a manufacturer of brassieres will launch a campaign to find (because apparently, according to them, there is a dire shortage) enough large-breasted women for a customer survey; result…

…loads of free publicity on the internet and in the tabloid press.

Captain Mainwaring: “We shall fight them until we have just one round each, and we’ll use that on ourselves!”

Captain Mainwaring: “By the way, how much ammunition have we got?”

Sergeant Wilson: “One round each, sir!”

So an ‘artist’ that nobody has ever heard of gets millions of dollars worth of free publicity by proposing to do an ‘art installation’ using the executed remains of a convicted murderer…

…the convicted murderer that nobody has ever heard of gets millions of dollars worth of free publicity and coincidentally he is fund-raising for an appeal.

Assuming they weren’t all murdered…..what do the family of the victims get?

Sounds like a ‘win-win’ situation to me. :rolleyes:

Is it just me…..or are advertising budgets a bit tight at the moment? :rolleyes: