Company based at Tollerton was called Truman Aviation, apparently no relation but I doubt this. If you look at the hanger wall from the road you can still see the letters.
During the 50’s they repaired Constellations, I remember seeing their tails sticking out of the hanger and belonged to a Brazilian airline, also at that time were converting Lincolns to freighters, my brother has pictures of this that I’m trying to get hold of to publish on this site.
I used to live in Wollaton and at Balloon crossroads was the Merlin test site, which still exists as an industrial area, we used to sneak in there when we were kids.
My mother was strafed by a German a/c attacking this site and had to throw my brother, who was a baby at the time, into a ditch.
One aviation connection with Notts was that my mother used to make parachutes, I believe it was for a company called Cussons, I’ll take a break from this and confirm it from her.
The buildings at Balloon crossroads consist of a T2 hangar and several brick built engine test buildings, with observation rooms, I am reliably informed that the noise used to be unbearable.

My first airshow at Newton circa 1956, the airfield attack by Vampires with lots of flares, then a pass by Canadian Sabres at supersonic speed that took out a lot of windows and frightened the c**p out of me.
My brother had a lot of a/c recognition books that I used to constantly study to the point that in infants school, if a wierd a/c came over I was rushed outside to identify it and had to make an anouncement to the class.
I clearly remember being confused as to whether what had flown over was a C-112 Boxcar or a Noratlas, had to guess at the former.
One I very clearly remember was a very low flying B-36 Peacemaker, what the hell was that doing over Nottingham in those days.
Just read Daves note, by a coincidence it was my dad who really influenced me and who passed away recently, sorely missed at DX on sunday.

OK Chaps,

Sometimes the internet just ain’t good enough.

For reasons that are far too silly to mention here, I need to find some photos of Home Defence Hurricanes in Canada during WW2. Don’t try trawling the web, been there, done that and seen pretty well all of them (well, what there are) but I am looking for images that may not have been psoted up. Any of you Canadian chappies able to help?

There were about seven home defence squadrons although some of those did get sent to Europe around the time of D Day.

Oh, Spitfire.

That has nothing to do with the thread but if I don’t put it in then some people won’t read it.

Thanks in advance chaps.

Melvyn

Get hold of a copy of ‘Captain of The Clouds’, starring James Cagney, available on VHS from Amazon and featuring colour footage of Hurricane units.

I stand corrected about Conningsby, but had realised this on a recent thread from JDK. The beer by the way was Batemans.
I recall that the spitfire flypast was a bit ragged, passing north to south down the western end of the runway on one pass.
They actually put up 11 F2’s, one had to abort and did the shortest landing I’ve ever seen, plus each pilot did an idiosyncratic take off.
My cortina estate overheated getting into the show, where by coincidence we found ourselves behind my brother and old man from Nottingham, and my pal got sunstroke, we almost diverted to Peterborough hospital on the way home, but a couple of pints of Ruddles at Market Deeping sorted him out. Will have to dig out my slides, had a very nice Canon at the time with a 200-400 telephoto, how much does it cost to get the gear to download slides, and where do I get it from.
Just a note to Moggy, went to the BoB 50th anniversary at Coltishall 1980 when fog put paid to what they hoped was to be the biggest gathering of spitfires and hurricanes for many years. That day saw the supposed first flyby by a Tornado fighter variant, the bomber version was already about, he made a very brief appearance through the clag, in a grey and red colour scheme and covered in ordnance, any body else remember this.

Thanks for the info, will try and get to DX tomorrow, why wasn’t Spitfire U-2 visible last sunday, finally to the subsequently disappeared Steve Waugh, Tee-Hee, and why did Brett Lee get so p****d off yesterday, bless him, at least he should survive the old man’s cull.

When I took my father to the D-Day show last year, he was treated like royalty, despite the fact that he was ex Royal Artillery rather than aircrew, and this was both from the DX people as well as the general public.
Had the old boy still been alive we probably would have gone to the airshow yesterday, although he would have been 88 this year, he was such a charmer and clever upholder of his rights, that we would probably have ended up in the control tower, bless him.
Probably would have succesfully demanded his money back as well.