I very much regret to inform you that Military Regulations state that the RAF Ensign should never be used to place over a coffin; only the Union Flag (for a serving member of the RAF or other service) should be used, so the EBay seller is presumably not aware of this. I have however seen the RAFA Ensign used but that is not the same as the RAF Ensign. As a serving RAF Officer I have to say that these are the current regulations regarding the RAF Ensign. You should be OK with the RAFA Ensign however. My sincere condolences regarding your late friend WO Gray, to reach the highest rank of airman is no mean feat.

A very enlightning comment, traditions are as they are I suppose, but would the thought police turn up and remove a flag, or to be specific, ‘ensign’ from a funeral, I would dare them to try. Had I known, then I wouldn’t have put my fathers favourite pipe on his coffin in case the anti smoking lobby turned up.
Pathetic, if W/O Gray lived his life serving the air force that he obviously loved, his family and friends should have the choice of whichever flag or, sorry, ensign, that they choose, if it was an official RAF funeral, ok, but to stick the nose of officialdom in at such a sad time is beyond comprehension, just let them get on with celebrating the life of a serviceman in the way they feel is right and if it means using the RAF flag, ensign or whatever, to drape over the coffin, so be it, the man obviously deserves the honour.

Pete, thanks for sharing the pic of the Lincoln freighter (more substantial than Lincolnian, reg/serial?), would love to see any more or find out any more info.

Sorry, they are the only pictures we took, somewhere at my mothers, the newspaper cutting regarding these aircraft is in a scrapbook, I must dig it out the next time I go there.
I tried to enlarge the original picture to see if I could pick up a serial number, but for some reason these were contact prints, taken with a Brownie camera, though I do have the original negs and the quality of other pics taken with this camera are surprisingly good, perhaps a large print will reveal more detail.

Just as an aside, we’ve just watched the Olympic beach volleyball match between Georgia and Russia, not surprisingly shown live on BBC1.
Yes, a game watched for really all the wrong reasons, apart from the politics, who can resist watching those bikini clad, sun tanned lovelies, the Russians don’t supply rivet spitters from Murmansk anymore.
What a surprise, the stadium was packed to it’s 12000 capacity, guess who won, Georgia of course, they were driven to it by national pride and a biased Chinese crowd, they couldn’t lose under the circumstances.
Interesting to see how reticent the Russian athletes were at shaking the hands of their victors afterwards, were they under instruction I wonder, sad unsporting ******s if they were.

I won’t attempt to get into the politics of this situation, quite frankly I haven’t a clue who’s right or who’s wrong, my only comment is that the Russians wanted to wipe out the Muslims in Chechnia, but seem to want to protect them here?
The point is that they obviously used the Olympic Games as a cover, no coincidence is it that the invasion started on the day of the opening ceremony, it can’t have done the ‘brotherhood of sport’ alot of good, there must be tensions within the Olympic village, I’m sure that the Chinese are seething about all this, rightly or wrongly, they’ve had to put up with a lot of grief over these games, yes, we all know about Chinese politics, but from what I have seen so far, and I love the Olympics, it hasn’t become a political tool and I didn’t expect it would be.
Remember the Suez Crisis in 1956, the Russians used it as a cover to invade Hungary, similarly during all the student protests and all the rest of it in 1968 they chose to destroy democracy in Czeckoslovakia.
Whether it was under the Czar or Lenin, Russia, has somehow exhibited itself as a frustrated nation, why, I don’t know. They should sit back, consider themselves as a world power, which they truly are, and forget stupid, political power assesments, which this is all about, and get on with peacefully using their influence on the worlds stage.

Who? Until his death was announced I’d never heard of him.

That is what I was going to say, but I was worried about inciting the wrath of Mr Rowell, The Grim Reaper.

Hi,

Tollerton ’58 or ’59 perhaps?

And unless my eyes fail me its RF458:

Regards,

S.

Very interesting, where did you get that picture from?
Here’s my photo of the same aircraft from the other side, and also one of the ‘Lincolnian’ standing next to it, my brother took these, I was messing about in the cockpit somewhere, probably attempting to start one of them up!!
These were taken in the spring of 1959, we didn’t come across them by chance, there was an article about them in the Nottingham Evening Post, and my father took us up to Tollerton on our tandem one sunday morning when no-one was about.
I also specifically remember a Brazilian Airlines Connie in the Truman Aviation hangar being worked on, I can only assume that my brother had run out of film and didn’t capture that one.
Incidentally, if you look at the port side of the Lincoln on the other picture, it’s lacking the tarpaulin on the engine cover and generally not looking so tatty, so mine were taken earlier, I don’t recall how long they were left there.