News to me, thank’s Moggy. As I haven’t been “up the smoke” for many years I might take a look after going to the Enbankment Monument opening in September.

To be honest, the chances of your getting anywhere near the Battle of Britain London Monument on the day of the unveiling (18th September) are very slim indeed. All the available space on the embankment itself, of which there isn’t a lot, has been quite rightly allocated to the veterans, and to representatives of those veterans no longer with us.

Even the Battle of Britain Historical Society, who are responsible for the monument, have had to arrange for two large ‘boats’ to be moored by the monument so that its members can view the unveiling. At the moment, places are only available to BoBHS members, at £50 per head, though the plan is for unsold places to be made available to the general public, possibly at £100 per head. I would expect that these boats will sadly also hide proceedings frfom those on the other side of the river.

See here http://www.battleofbritain.net/bobhsoc/monument.html#booking for the ‘official’ version of the above.

Now, back on to the topic, the exhibition also includes some ‘personal’ relics etc. from our museum relating to the Spitfire, so I’m very much looking forward to seeing our stuff on show.

Geoff.

Geoff K (Saturday only)

The AM cards for aircraft losses are Accident Record Cards, AM Form 1180. The aircraft Movement Card will also be worth getting, as it will show the entries that A-B have left off.

There may well be entries on the AM78 between ‘OAPU’ and ‘ATA’ to explain why JP182 was being ferried by the ATA to Kemble. It might have gone from OAPU to the MU at Kinloss for repair or mod & have been on the way back when it was lost.

BTW will you be at Legends this year? I’ll be going on the Saturday.

Geoff.

Kev,

Looking at the other Halifax from that batch , those that also had No 1 OAPU as their first unit, all then went to No 301 Ferry Training Unit, which was at Lynham to train crews to ferry aircraft overseas. From there they all either went to No 148 Sqn, No 624 Sqn, No 1586 Special Duties Flight, which were all based in the Middle East, or ‘Mediterranean Air command’.

As ‘No 1 OAPU’ is the first unit mentioned in ‘The Halifax File’ for JP182, I would assume that the previous entry on the Movement Card would be a Maintenance or Storage Unit, to which it went after being rolled out of the factory. I see that No 45 MU was at Kinloss, so was JP182 en-route from the MU at Kinloss (either from storage or from having been modified for overseas use?) on delivery to the OAPU at Kemble Was the mention of ‘ATA’ placed on the Movement Card when JP182 was ‘lost’ whilst in their hands?

Geoff.