As I have said before, all you really need for a round trip to Berlin, is 400 gallons of high octane fuel attached to yourself by some means of an aluminium based frame……

With regards to the spitfire having a higher drag than it’s contemporaries, they being the BF109, the Hurricane, and the P40; are we sure about that?

Why would the Americans waste serious effort modifying a spitfire to do a job that a home grown A/C was perfectly capable of doing?

Tony I’m not suggesting that you can, what I am saying is because modern manufacturing methods tend towards machining from solid, there are no drawings to support this method; in fact I believe to satisfy the CAA you have to show that there are no longer any servicable units available, before they agree to newly manufactured components by alternative manufacturing methods, and materials, and even then the process can take years.

An interesting aside, I believe (from memory) that the Merlin crank can be ground, but the amount that is removeable is something like 2 or 3 thou; where do you go for that undersize bearing? I would imagine there is quite a lot of remetalling old bearings going on!

“I hope that the lengthened version of your short story, meets with your approval”

Indeed it does………….However, the sight was advertised as incomplete because the glass and frame head was missing, (and still is!) as was the bottom plug, these I knew about, the adjusting ring I did not, the brass ring in the box (it’s origins are unknown to me) doesn’t even fit the sight, let alone be the correct one; don’t recall being offerd a full refund, but can well imagine that I asked you if you had any Spitfire parts, (on which we could make up the difference) and basically what your saying is you didn’t have any then, and over the eight year period you haven’t had any since?

If you want to tell the folks why I wasn’t able to get hold of you, (over the subsequent years) to ask if you had anything in yet, be my guest, personally I put it down to experience, (and the fact that I sold the empty box on ebay for £20, which helped sweeten the experience)

“Does anyone have a definitive list for all the aircraft recovered by Jim Pierce?”

It would appear all of them, David.

I suspect the problems are the same for exhibiting at purely aviation events, as they are for broader military events, these being, the transport and the accomodation (for two or more days shows) Shoreham is a long where from anywhere, and an event that opens its doors early requires those attending to be there even earlier than most other events, that coupled with the fact that it would only be a one day event, with no evening attraction (for example I believe that Hendon RAFM had a forties band Saturday night).

The Damyns hall military event had vitually zero aviation participation, as was the case last year, although in previous years there was an abundance of Spitfire replicas; I noticed too that XXX aviation prints had a large tent there.

In my view an up and coming event with an airstrip, but if the organiser wanted cockpits and other displays, he should make that known more widely, as word of mouth via the military vehicle boys only travels so far!

Forties events a very popular, but how many cockpits from that era are out there that can be travelled around?far more cockpits from the 50’s 60’s and 70’s but how many events cater for that era?

“Among a plethora of figures, he shows that 19 Spitfire Squadrons destroyed around 530 aircraft (at an average 28 per Squadron,) while Hurricane Squadrons destroyed 656 (at 22.5 per Squadron.) So the Hurricane destroyed more in total, but fewer per Squadron.
If nothing else, it shows that the old saying that “There are lies, damned lies, and statistics” still holds good”.

The facts here are undeniable, and yet there are still those (in perhaps a form of inverse snobbery) that want to show the Hurricane was better at the job; debate after debate has raged trying to show that the Hurricane was better to land a more stable gun platform, less prone to overheating on the ground, easier to repair battle damage, and on an on, an yet the official figures are beyond dispute.

Perhaps this is a new venture by “Spitfire4hire”, I haven’t seen an update from them in a while……

I don’t believe the use of the word ‘nazi’ is appropriate to describe anybody. It conjures up a lot of nasty images.

I have thus removed a comment above, and deleted some other responses to it.

Bruce

So you deleted my response, to add your own which is essentially the same wording….

Isn’t that the sort of thing the Nazi’s might have done?