😮

quick look under the bed, Is there anything else we can get rid of?!

Do the Poles want to buy some Nimrod MRA4s ? :diablo:

There were a number of ex-Soviet Bloc aircraft that turned up on the fire dump at Farnborough around the early 90s, presumed to be from a ‘clear out’ at RAE/DERA. They were belived to have been used in a UK equivalent of the Nellis ‘petting zoo’ and to evaluate systems rather than from any flight trials (Any such trials for the UK would have been more likely carried out at Boscombe, West Freugh or Woomera – or possibly Cyprus).

India and/or Egypt were always seen as the most likely source for these.

But they weren’t the first time Soviet hardware had been seen at Farnborough – I once spoke to a chap who recalled seeing ‘substantial parts of Soviet aircraft’ there during his RAF Service in the 60s. He wouldn’t be anymore specific.

Other sources have led me to beleive that some Soviet jet hardware was recovered from Egypt during the Suez Crisis, and there is apparently a document in the PRO giving an evaluation of the Hunter and/or Lightning against the MIg-15 (I haven’t seen it, but the guy who did says it doesn’t say that flying trials were carried out.)

That’s an interesting picture. Is it captioned? Unless it was staged for the book, presumably it was taken somewhere in Newcastle as G-ABUU was allocated to 131 Squadron ATC during the last war. However I cannot trace any Hawker Hart, let alone K2977, having been allocated to the same ATC squadron or any other ATC squadron in the north east. Can anyone else shed light on this?

Quick google found this:

http://www.tyneandweararchives.org.uk/DServe2/dserve.exe?dsqIni=Dserve.ini&dsqApp=Archive&dsqDb=Catalog&dsqCmd=show.tcl&dsqSearch=(RefNo==%22SX125/9/29%22)

Level Item
RefNo SX125/9/29
Title Air Defence Corps Cadets working on two aircraft in the George & Jobling garage, Forth Street, Newcastle upon Tyne
Date c1940
Description The photograph shows Arthur George supervising the cadets. The two aircraft are a Comper CLA7 Swift (G-ABUU) and a Hawker Hart instructional airframe (K2977).
Format 1 photograph, black and white

On to Dakotas of 31 sqn. 31 Sqn aquired many of their a/c from airlines in the Middle East also including some DC.2s which the RAF called DC.2Ks.

This one seems to be a VIP flight a/c “P”.

Note it has Cyclone engines.

And one of the elusive DC.2Ks AX755 “O”.

The history of 31 Squadron (First in Indian Skies) has a couple of the pictures of the DC2/3s that you show – it also mentions them having what was described as a ‘DST – Douglas Sleeper Transport’ – I did try to marry up serials/registrations at one point, but couldn’t find a DST purchased by the RAF, but one of the DC2/3s must have had sleeper compartments. Must go back and look at that again, as IIRC I’d tied it down to one or two aircraft

The 31 Sqn aircraft were US airlines aircraft – my memory fails me on which airlines!

A few of the RN Communications squadrons seem to have had a few, – 701 (Heathrow), 712 (Hatston), 725 (Eglinton), 730 (Ayr), 740 (Machrihanish), 776 (Speke/Woodvale) , 778 (Arbroath), 781 (Lee on Solent), 782 (Donibristle), 787 (Wittering) and 799 (Lee on Solent)- and most of the pics seem to show the 3-tone US scheme (e.g. ‘Merlin 29’ of 782 at Donibristle)

What is slightly intruiging is that 778 and 781’s aircraft were in use at a time when Overlord stripes may have been in use……

RAF Travellers (other than the impressed DR628) seem to be camera shy as well mind you!

I think the silver one that Pagen refers to is FZ433 of the 201 Group Comms Squadron in 1945.

IMO, the most interesting ones are the pair purchased in the US and flown there as EB279 and EB280 for Air Attache/British Air Commision use – never seen a picture of those!

At least one UK Museum turned down an offered Shack in the hope that one could be kept flying.

The TR-1 looks similar to the U-2 but it is a larger aircraft all round , I cannot see any significant comminality between the two apart from role , layout and manufacturer .

Not quite – the TR-1 was structurally identical to the earlier ‘2nd series’ U-2R version, but was given a different designator for political reasons.