How strange: at that time there would have been no nukes at Manston but the RAF reaction seems extreme for a ‘friendly’.

In October 1956 three Aeroflot Tu-104s diverted into Manston and seem to have been well-received: resident 92nd FBS did at the time store its nukes onsite.

I don’t think Jack was aiming to raise a storm or even debate on whether the date is this or that. I think he was just trying to highlight the lack of widespread remembrance of it: it was quite an important date after all.

It was a fair point well made, but speaking for myself I was glad that others hadn’t forgotten or that Radio 4 thought it pivotal enough to mention at 5.30 that morning.

A good time to revise the thread title perhaps?

Just trying to stay civil and on-track ( 🙂 ): from the other discussion thread it seems that FN4 was not fitted to Lancaster but it does present some very interesting alternatives. Walter previously posted this:

The FN4A was used on Whitley V, Stirling and Manchester aircraft whereas the FN4B was used on the Saro Lerwick and the Short Sunderland, superceding the FN13 on the latter.

Though most likely Sunderland, wouldn’t it be amazing to think a large Manchester relic like that survived?

Any record of one in Aus?

Fair comment SJ but all they need to do is get the job card checked by another member of the team before it is co – ordinated etc,sometimes ones immediate supervisor would do that !

Fair point: though hopefully he/she would at least ask the question, “What’s an effin’ guage?”

I despair…

I like American spellings because they preserve two Tacitean principles; brevity and clarity. American spellings are also largely devoid of any Romance taint or Johnsonian reconstructions, all of which keep us more firmly in contact with the language of our forebears.

But they must face the charge of turning nouns into verbs: a common habit in the UK now. Terms such as ‘medalled’ (or medaled?) to mean, ‘received a medal’ and ‘platformed’ to mean, ‘the train has arrived at the platform’ being two commonly-heard examples.

And though it meets the ‘brevity’ brief, I cannot agree with ‘aluminum’ unless we also agree on ‘titanum’ and ‘plutonum’ etc.