RE: TE566 and images in poor taste

It would be easy to make the following statement.
“Photographs of crash sites can only serve two purposes, 1) in the assistance of investigation into the crash by those officially involved in doing so, 2) to satisfy the ghoulish nature of some strange individuals.”

However we should consider the fact that in following our interest we have all read books/magazines and seen documentary films where scenes of serious injury or fatal incidents particularly in times of conflict have taken place.
To give a few examples I would lay good money that among those that gather on these pages there are few who have never seen the newsreel of the Hindenburg falling in flames with people jumping from the gondolas or pictures of the crumpled remains of Bader’s Bulldog when he lost his legs.
I this electronic age there are some superb websites for those involved in historical research for instance the one that logs hundreds of aircraft wrecks in the Pacific region. Behind every image there is a story involving real people that in many cases ended in sorrow. There are Websites devoted to D-Day that have pictures of the sea running red with blood, others for the Battle of Stalingrad with depictions of the bodies of retreating German soldiers that had frozen to death at their posts.
Compare these with the well publicised photograph of the charred remains of an Iraqi soldier taken at the end of the gulf war, the bones of his fingers still clutching the wheel of his lorry. They all bring home the fact that war is a ghastly business but is it that the previous events tragic as they were took place many years ago, and therefore somehow we find images of them less distressing ?

When the two seat Spitfire fatally crashed at Goodwood the BBC news website contained text and two pictures. A photograph of the machine in flight taken in happier times and single image taken from a medium distance of the crash scene. This reported the event both factually and with respect.
The website that we are discussing here however has scenes taken at many crashes some with several images of a particular incident. The shots of the South African Spitfire crash are taken from only a few feet away, the photographer was standing in amongst the wreckage and in one there is even the charred remains of a shoe in the burnt grass. This is when a website has been set up not to serve the purpose of being factual or informative but to try and shock or be just plain vulgar, and this is what we find distasteful.

I think the issue here is the number and content of pictures of a particular incident, where and how they are collated and the time frame invloved that brings into the debate the question of decency and taste.
The picture of that Iraqi soldier appeared around the world in many mediums and on many news websites within hours of him meeting his maker. At the time it was factual, informative and horrific.
Years later it can still be found on sites where there in nothing but similar images.
Here the fact that, despite whatever view you hold on what he was engaged in doing at the time of his death, he was still someone’s son or father and brother is not an issue. Here the owners of these sites have no regard for the human tragedy involved. It is these sites where the boundaries are crossed from information to obscure titillation and lack of human decency.

The web can be a wonderful and educative thing. One of it’s great attributes is the freedom of speech that it facilitates and encourages however,it is a sad fact of life that there are some pretty sick people out there that have and will continue to host websites where all you can see is pictures of human suffering. Why ? because there are other like minded individuals who gain some perverse pleasure from doing so.
But that’s the risk you take with the the world wide web. You get the whole wide world in your living room, warts and all.

On a lighter note it is a glorious day and a Tiger Moth has just phuttered over the village, I’m on a day off work and thinking about going to my local for a beer or six. All is well in my little corner of the globe.
Cheers !
Phil.A.

RE: What did you think of the Jubilee flypast?

[updated:LAST EDITED ON 05-06-02 AT 11:31 PM (GMT)]Well it was about half the size of the one she got for getting to 25 years ! What can we predict if HM gets to 75 years on the throne four Typhoons ?? (and I’ll bet they will be flanked by a brace of Canberras) 😉
The heady days of the 60’s when the average flyby for the annual trooping the colour was 4 Vulcans and 2 Victors each flanked by a 12 to 16 Lightnings/Hunters/Buccs crusing gently past the bottom of my parents garden in Colchester on their way to London are long gone 🙁

The last really big flyby over the city was probably just after the Falklands, but then I guess transient dictators have always been able just to pick up the phone and order themselves bigger flypasts, than those afforded to reigning Monarchs by the MOD beancounters }>
You would have thought though that the day should have called for some sort of “maximum effort”, I’d lay a few quid that the service chiefs and crews were up for it…………. ruddy beancounters !!

RE: Defiant in Dutch museum

Pilot Officer 33559 Gordon Emery Chandler was from Toddington in Bedfordshire and died on the 13th May 1940 aged just 20 years. He is buried in the Made-en Drimmelen Protestant Churchyard, Noord-Brabant in Holland.
As you are probably aware 264Sqn were the first operational Defiant unit actually becoming operational on that very 12th of May as part of 12 group flying from Duxford. Chandler and his gunner must have been particularly unlucky to get the chop on the first day however they were saved witnessing the wholesale slaughter that there colleagues suffered in the following weeks once the 109/110 pilots “caught on”. I will leap (more hobble if I’m honest) into the attic over the weekend and rumagge for anything on the gunner.

RE: SeaFury references needed

That Wellington is something else!. The man must have the patience of a Saint !!