Ref post 50, Photo’s I have just scanned being among about 200 contact prints I bought recently at Cosford all appear to have been taken circa 1950.

Very interesting John – A Hamilcar with ‘D’ roundels!

In FlyPast years ago an article was published
about a ditched Defiant.

Adam Smith, the former curator at East Fortune once claimed to have seen a sonar scan of an aircraft in Loch Ness that was the right size for a Defiant (around the time of the Beaufighter purchase, it might have been the same FP issue) however I’m sure previous posts on this forum have established that there are no ‘missing’ Defiants that it could be, and that the underwater ones in that part of Scotland are in the Moray Firth. What Adam actually saw does intrigue me, as he wasn’t the sort to make stuff up. He was on here, but hasn’t been active since 2012.

There was also a report in the Telegraph in the 80s of a ‘WW2 bomber’, said to be a Wellington, that had crashed in a bog in Yorkshire, but which surfaced from time to time due to the build up of bog gases in the airframe before sinking again with a burp!

One that did exist was the Lancaster in the Forth just north of Kincardine Bridge – HP57 Rescue was interested in that at one point. Not sure how much may still be there, I’ve stood on the new bridge looking at the mud at low tides a few times but not seen anything.

Others that may be salvageable are the alleged Barracudas in the Loch of Strathbeg, but as a nature reserve, it may be difficult to get permisssion.

Which is more than we thought 30 years ago, when it was thought only three survived in the States (XS690 and XS694 being the resurectees, ‘690 having been reported as ‘dumped in the river’ and ‘694 as ‘scrapped following ground loop’ – I’d love to know where ‘694 was before it turned up at Kissimmee)

There is still a bit of mystery about what happened to XS691, USAF records show it transfered to a non USAF organisation, and there is a possibility it maybe went to NASA for spares.

http://www.air-britain.com/sampleaeromil.pdf

I’m surprised more isn’t made of VAT by the ‘Exiters’ – national Govts can choose to impose VAT on goods, but once imposed they can’t remove it or charge less than 5% without EU approval.

And ‘EU’ imvariably means the non-elected Commission rather than the talking shop parliament.

So who is the UK TIGHAR member?

And now we sadly learn that the great man has passed away.

It just shows how something as innocuous as fall can have major repercussions for someone of that age – my own father-in-law (93) has just moved out of hospital following a long stay after what was initially a small fall at home.

It’s a Snipe rudder – at ~1.26 shows that it has a balance on the rudder – the Camel had a straight rudder leading edge.

[ATTACH=CONFIG]244211[/ATTACH]

But the side view of the rudder does seem to suggest F6425 or F8425 as serial – none of which are Snipes! Need to check if any late service Camels had Snipe rudders