Hi Les,’fraid to say the paperworks in…just got back from RIAT where at least half of the enginering team are RAF and are waiting for “the best promotion of all…..Mr” .

Ah! I see. So JPA isn’t getting in the way of your paperwork then. :rolleyes:

Promote to “Mr”? Days to do getting few?

In ‘t old days(TM), we used to say “6 million civvies can’t be wrong.” But when you get out you find that they are!

Anyway, all the luck squire.

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FMk6John
Suspect fatnav was being a tad serious in his post. As jase says, the windows for the nav in the 9 were usually called ‘Day/Night Indicators’ for no other reason than it was a typically RAF thing to do (just as pilots were ‘seat/stick interfaces’, navs were ‘talking ballast’ and AEOs were ‘self-loading ballast’). :rolleyes:

fatnav is right of course when he cites their use and the need for vis-reps. A few I’ve seen in ‘t’ old days’ (TM) also had chinagraph pencil markings on the inside to, I think, help the navs line up the obliques (is this so fatnav?)

Also fatnav, that’s an impressive list of cranberrys you’ve played with, pretty much everything except an 8. Don’t blame you for not playing with the 8, navs didn’t get an ejection seat in those and had to carry a little oxy bottle on the stbd leg of their growbag in case of roll-out – – but they did have a very smart little swivel chair at their map table. 😉

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You’re right Snaps. 87 taken at Lille, Venderville, November 1939. Bee is fourth from right though (from the man himself).

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Fair enough. I’ll see your rant and raise a semi-rant.

OK. See your semi-rant and raise you a full banter. 😉

You lost me at the third sub-bracket digit thingy. Are there different Canberras then, that their nearest and dearest can tell apart? I thought there were fat cockpits and thin and that was it?

Sorry you got lost squire, the signposts were contracted out. And there was only ever two Canberras, they were just moved around a lot.

Oh, incidentally, and less facetiously, I tip the hat to your case for the RAF’s um B(I)8, but I’m also aware of which country used their Canberras in a declared full-time shooting war and dropped bombs on the enemy, with phenomenal score rates and there’s a couple of ‘A’s in the name, not one.

Ah! You mean India. Yes. good usage of equipment there. There’s also some place down under – Oz methinks – that made a few copies of their own. Had some unexpected successes with bombs carried on the wingtips.

You go on to say “You put a good case for the Canberra going on show. It’s not better than cases for other aircraft,”. I realise there are more deserving ‘frames which is why I rarely air, and even more rarely expand upon, my personal little gripe at the preservation world.

As for the remainder of your post, no quibbles at all, your logic is pretty much unassailable. In fact, probably the sort of arguments I’d like to think I would put if I had the need to. But I don’t! Mostly, aviation museums to me are places where I (and others of my ilk) can re-visit memories and say “I used to know all that stuff!”

Fun, but trivia, and my remarks above are definitely tongue in cheek, Les. Oh, I’ve not forgotten those pics, I’ll dedigitate soon, promise!

I agree, trivia. Pleases those who would have collected cigarette cards in a previous generation I guess. But knowing this forum it will, no doubt, decay into silly arguments . . . or maybe not! 😉

Photos in yer own time that man. As for dedigitating, I think you can get treatment for that these days.

😀

Unlike many museums it was decided to store it where the public can see it, which is very good.

Really!

Doesn’t look all that ‘accessible’ to me. Looks like it’s been stuffed away in a corner and “. . . public can see it.” used as a ready excuse to gloss over the lack of interest in the ‘frame by the museum.

It will eventually be restored fully as an RNZAF example when the museum additions have been built on and there’s room to display it.

Yeah, right. Thirteen years later and still in the same state as it was when it was shipped over!

You have millions of old Canberras lying around the UK, many of them rotting away, so why take one that’s well looked after here off us?

‘Millions’? Don’t be silly. There is NO RAF Canberra B(I)8 in the UK. WT346 was the last and only example on this island. (And I want to hear no rubbish about WV787 at Newark. That airframe is a B.2 with a hybrid B(I)8 nose.)

As to the rant about the NZ Canberra; Dave H is quite right. It’s in safe care in store, like thousands of other important airframes. It’s hardly at risk or in bad hands. Who knows, it might return to the UK.

‘Rant’? I don’t see adding a bold attribute to a line of text as a ‘rant. It’s an emphasis element, but then, you know that. As for ‘being at risk’, that’s not the thrust of this topic. Thrust is What aircraft type are needed to plug some gaps in the RAF Museums collection?

From 1956 to 1972 the Canberra B(I)8s of the 2TAF Strike Sqns stood tactical nuclear QRA alert on a 24/7 basis – an essential component of the UK’s nuclear deterent in the days when the V Force was working up. The B(I)8 was a new design Canberra and, arguably, the most important of them all until these latter years when the PR.9s came into their own. The B(I)8 was an airframe with international appeal, bought by many Air Forces, used in anger by a few (not the RAF though) and considered in its day as a seriously fit-for-purpose aircraft. Earned millions for the UK purse with the export versions and after-care servicing agreements.

But now . . . a forgotten hero of the Cold War. The B(I)8 deserves a place in that ‘collapsing shed’ thing at Cosford. Not only deserves, but has earned a place. A place determined not only by its worth in the history of the UK’s air capabilities but also in recognition of the thousands of RAF blokes who worked/flew it – especially those who flew it. Blokes who knew and accepted that if they were sent off in earnest they would not be coming back!

Everybody pays tribute to the Vulcs and Vics, the Hunters and Lightnings, etc but nobody seems to care (or even know) about the B(I)8s without which the UK’s nuclear capability at very time it was needed most would have been compromised.

. . . and that’s only a semi-rant!

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Could you not replace the glass with modern product?

Not really. Firstly, canopies are not made out of glass. Secondly, getting one in a ‘modern’ product is, I suggest, not as viable an option as sourcing a ‘real’ one.

Maybe, one dark night in the depths of winter MAM’s Special Incursion Team can slip into Cosford and secure the one from their NF.14. I think such an ‘Op’ would be mountable except, they’d have to refurbish the team’s transport bicycle first and there’s a slight division as to the proper colours it should be in.

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Rob
It has been a rewarding finish to the NF14 Meteor at MAM,

Well, I dunno matey. What about the serials, etc?

Anyway, overall WS838 looks pretty good now as the pix below show.

As Rob’s been overworking himself a bit recently (to his detriment), thought I’d put up a couple while he gets his sorted out. Taken on Sunday last I’ve included a pic of Team A making a start on the surrounds and port leg of the Arg.

Neal

My ‘imtelligemce’ is directly proportiomal to the mumber of Laphroaigs I’ve had. Actually thought I was beimg ‘jocular’ so maybe you could catch up om the simgle malts before reading – or summat. 😀

I do kmow what freeloadimg is, was im the mob, it’s a core skill!! :diablo: But in this comtext I thimk I would call it ‘taking advamtage’.

Damm it, seem to be fixated on the ‘m’ key mow. . . . time for bed I thimk.

:rolleyes: