A few thoughts following the Aerojumble today.

Firstly the good points:

Brooklands is an excellent venue and the £8.00 fee for combined aerojumble/museum entry is good value for money; even if I hadn’t bought anything I wouldn’t have wasted my journey (a 200 mile round trip) and as it was spent several happy hours in the museum.

Brooklands museum should benefit from increased attendance and hopefully should be able to offer the aerojumble an appropriate ‘home’ as well as other benefits (such as ‘subsidised’ under-cover venue).

Brooklands is a more central location than Shoreham.

The extra £7.00 for ‘early-bird’ entry is reasonable (although I didn’t take advantage of it today).

The bad points:

The aerojumble itself seemed a shadow of its former self with nothing like the number or quality of stalls that Shoreham had to offer (but I must admit I haven’t been to Shoreham since 2004).

The aero/bike/car format didn’t really work for me as I’m only interested in the aero part. I’m sure it worked for others and there is no reason why it shouldn’t work as long as the aerojumble isn’t totally overwhelmed (this was the reason I stopped going to Popham).

Hopefully this event will go from strength to strength, I will give it my continued support, but I realise that it is early days.

I hope my comments will be taken in the way they were intended and I do appreciate the effort made by everybody who had a stall there today.

Have we given up on this one then?

Thanks for that. I assumed there must have been otherwise certification for air display would have been difficult.

Are there any Seafire 45, 46 or 47 preserved (or even flying)?

According to ‘The Battle of Britain – Then and Now’ Luftwaffe combat losses on 10th July 1940 are:

Destroyed:

Bf109 – 1
Do17 – 3
He111 – 1
Bf110 – 2

Damaged:

Bf109 – 2
Do17 – 3
Bf110 – 2

RAF combat losses were:

Destroyed:

Hurricane – 1

Damaged:

Hurricane – 4
Spitfire – 5

The aircraft lost were easily replaceable of course, the more telling statistic and the more tragic would be the aircrew killed or wounded.

Just checked the completed listing although the bids are private the winning bidder is listed as ‘hurricat’.

It has an A25/22E bolt holding it on, which makes the item British manufacture.

The rivets are 100 degree which confirms this. There is a part number, which reads: EB211677181 X64388.

Could the part number be FB211677181?

Bristol engines all have ‘FB??????’ format numbers but I’m not sure about Bristol airframes.

A nine digit number looks a bit long. Could it be ‘FB21167/181′?

Looked like a Thor to me, the paint job is certainly Thor(ish)…

…but I’d been told there was a Blue Streak there.

Probably duff information.

Finally got round to watching this last night on video…..only took me a month!

On the whole I thought it was quite well done with the emphasis (rightly) on the experiences of the crews involved. The ‘low-budget’ effects didn’t detract too much from the human story.

Unfortunately the program repeated the ‘fact’ that a Lynx helicopter from HMS Coventry sank two Argentine patrol vessels with Sea Skua missiles. In fact only one vessel was present and that was attacked twice and not sunk, although it was severely damaged, many of the crew were killed, and it limped back to Argentina to take no further part in the war. In fairness this was an easy mistake to make and it is repeated in the book by David Hart-Dyke, the captain of HMS Coventry.

The most interesting part for me was the account of how HMS Coventry repeatedly requested to move further offshore (were the Sea Dart system was not compromised) and how those requests were repeatedly denied by Admiral Woodward. I’ve always thought HMS Coventry should have been further offshore and so it seems did her captain!