thank goodness that in the UK we have many enthusiast run museums of many kinds.They have grown into a fine resource without the shifting policies of the big ones. At a certain point I stopped advising people to loan..donate items to the RAF museum because they had enough stored which could never be displayed and also threw away items which had been recovered at great effort.

A mistake corrected finally…

And a recent documentary on Pearl Harbour absolved the 2 radar operators on the headland for failing to alert the base HQ. They did relay the information about multiple ciontacts but it was assumed by an officer on duty to be a flight of B17s. The documentary also proved that even if the warning had been assumed to be an attack there was no way to launch enough fighters in time.

Historic sites will always be subject to salvage both legal and illegal. The legal issue of war grave is explained well by Ross. I have been involved in marine archaeology and aircraft research and co ordinating a few recoveries in the Uk . At a meeting of the BAAC at the RAF museum around 1982 I voiced my opinion that recoveries by organised groups and individuals should be approved as soon as possible and not delayed. On land this was because metal detecting was easier and growing as a hobby, high ground wrecks were more likely to be removed by wheeled equipment such as quads and ex mil tracked vehicles. In many cases the high ground wrecks were going for scrap with some parts going to assorted hobby collectors public and private, for example the 80 percent complete P38L on Plylimon Wales was dispersed across the UK since 1970. Some historians such as Malcolm Spaven and Keith Bryers felt that sites should be left alone on high ground as a memorials. Sadly this is not practical and I feel it is time to get the wrecks down and undercover. Sea salvage is very hard to control unless you put a guard ship on site or the site is overlooked by a manned coastguard type location.

Gary Brindle..former researcher for BAAC.

The Spitfire to England,6 Buchons to Europe and a Mustang staying in the USA.

Also http://www.divesrilanka.com/Kalkudah%20Consolidated%20Catalina%20PBY-5A%20Dutch%20Squadron%20321%20Y-78.html

That list shows zero Halifax…now we have 3 plus a nose section, shows the effort which has been made in recent years.

There are other publications available if you want dense areas of text, well researched listings some diagrams and images and few if any adverts.These are members journals and a world leader is Air Britain.Also Cross and Cockade is another example. A search on aviation research history via google will produce more. Some content is better suited to a book and thanks to the on line sources it is a lot easier to find specialist titles.

As a subscriber to Aeroplane Monthly I take part in regular market research sent to me by the editorial team. One result has been an increase in workshop articles.

It is not dumbing down to write in a non technical manner and also explain background to events when not all readers have specialised knowledge.Photo content and design of layout has to keep up with wider trends otherwise the end result looks dated and browsers will avoid purchase.