The NAM Shop caters for a wide range of people that just call in to make purchases and don’t go into the museum each time – hence the separate trading company that covenants all of the profits to the museum charity.

To back this up, as a customer, there have been several occasions when I’ve just gone into the shop at Newark whilst passing as I didn’t have time to visit the museum.

Have stuff for kids like dress up / handling collections / try outs / exploration pack: (quiz, pencil, bookmark wind up 50p aeroplane). Avoid press button / pull handle consoles or computers. They press the buttons, the computer lights up, but their brain is switched off.

Added to which, anything mechanically interactive is prone to breaking, adding maintainance costs to the equation. Something as an ejector seat they can sit on, or a flight helmet they can put on, can be attractive to kids.

One thing that seems to be popular (if my two are anything to go by) are the ‘Press -a-penny’ machines, where you put in a penny and a £1 and get out a enlongated penny with a suitable image. I never see the attraction, but going by the number we have accumulated, they must turn a profit.

It also looks to having had blue paint, although I expect that’s a function of the images / paint decay.

Why? Plenty of evidence of early 108s being painted blue pre-war. From the relics, I’d say it was originally blue but then overpainted with wartime Greens.

A number of websites give the identity as 2126, but unconfimred -link shows how it’s now displayed

http://www.eurodemobbed.org.uk/image_view.php?a=64882&s=2126_bf108.jpg

CWGC Debt of Honour register has more details on each casualty

There were also plans to utilise her great fuel load, hence loiter capacity, to act as a long-range interceptor to catch Soviet aircraft coming down from the North Cape

Is there any evidence of that or is it just heresay? It strikes me that TSR2 has exactly the wrong airframe to be used as a long range interceptor – small wing in comparison to the fuselage, it would have had a poor high level loiter performance. It was designed as a fast, low level strike aircraft – and not one with a huge range, it was a tactical aircraft.

Similarly, it would not have been terrible agile for the same reason – pre fly by wire, the best dogfighters had a large wing area – the F-15 being the prime example.

Yes DaveF68, here on the most complete site of the collections destroyed by fire of the MAE carried out by a friend :

http://www.pyperpote.tonsite.biz/listinmae/index.php?option=com_content&view=category&id=46:les-appareils-detruits&Itemid=56&layout=default

Thanks Phillippe. I recall at the time it all seemed a bit ‘hush hush’ in those pre-internet days, and reading a report that it was beleived one of those lost was ‘a B-26’ – although it turned out to be the Invader and not the Marauder.

“RAF Coastal Command took it over in 1945 for anti-submarine missions, and during D-Day festivities it was signed by celebrating pilots whose names are still visible on the empennage. Soon thereafter aviation pioneer, WW1 fighter pilot and dashing entrepreneur Sidney Cotton acquired the Electra (as G-AGTL) for his private use including photo reconnaissance over Eastern Europe and the Middle East. A close friend of Ian Fleming, Cotton is often cited as the inspiration for Fleming’s most famous fictional character, James Bond.

From Cotton the Electra returned to the RAF as a flying testbed for active radar countermeasures before finally entering a less demanding peacetime life, initially in the hands of a well-known peer of the British realm followed by private and commercial owners on the Cote d’Azur, in Corsica and Valence. “

It wasn’t Cotton’s most famous machine though, he flew s/n 1287 after the War (according to g-INFO until 1957) . Pre-war, he flew the aircraft now N12EJ. Hadn’t heard of him using G-ATGL as a spyplane post war.

http://www.flytoanothertime.com/Fly_To_Another_Time/Lockheed_10_%26_12.html

As N12EJ still exists, maybe Pagen could arrange to have it bought and then donated to Hendon? 🙂

It’s either an Avro Arrow or XR219…..