Hi Steve
If I remember rightly we had two spectres at one time. I think the first one came with the aircraft which was the wrong type but somebody mentioned that it may have had something to do with Valiants. The second one we obtained from Shuttleworth which was the correct one. Eventually after we had delivered the aircraft to Cosford one of the flight commanders in the hangar decided to give the remaining things we had left in our little building away. The Spectre ended up in a collection up north somewhere but I do not know exactly were. The Whitley parts were taken to Cardington.
They were good times restoring that aircraft andI still have all of the press cuttings from our roll out day.
Hope you are well and keep writing .
John

I was absolutely amazed at the trade practices or lack of being carried out. Electric drills and aircraft full of fuel don’t go well together. As for lashing trestles and fork lift trucks to the fuselage ,that just defied belief. As someone who assisted in dismantling the Canberra at long Marston the Coventry Canberra should have been easy. A nice hangar to work in would have been luxury. Try doing the same job in a muddy field in October which I might add was achieved in five days. Granted it had no engines to remove but we had to remove the fin and break the fuselage at the rear transport joint. I think if I wanted a plane dismantled they would probably be the last people I would employ.

At the time of the K4 conversions one of the companies bidding for the work was French,Sogerma I believe. Anyway they sent a team over to Brize who I had the pleasure of hosting for the day. Had they become the prefered bidder they intended to dismantle the aircraft and take them to France on barges! If you think of the time that ASI took to dismantle the Nimrod for Cosford which is an aircraft that comes apart a lot easier than a VC10 ever will then you can see that dismantling XR808 is going to take a lot of time and money.

John

Yvonne
Think the website is excellent but more information about what aircraft is on major maintainence ,how it is progressing and what scheme it will appear in would be really good. As an aside would it be possible to maybe organise a BBMF photocall with all of the aircraft outside after winter overhaul and before the AOCs validation day. I am sure that people would pay money for the opportunity to photograph these wonderful aircraft at their home base instead of relying on seeing them at airshows and maybe never seeing the one you really want a picture of.

John