Apparently they were lossmaking. The attendances were always noticeably smaller than for the Sunday daytime shows.

that’s a shame – they always seemed to have a unique atmosphere not equalled by daytime shows -or so I thought anyway. Perhaps it was the smaller attendance that contibuted to that atmosphere.

But why loan the museum’s only example of the early Griffon engined fighter of the type that saw operational use during WW2 when others Spitfires were available

Isn’t a Mk 22 loaned to Kennet for their Mk 46 Seafire restoration?
Cees

No it was traded to them for their element of involvement in the seemingly failed attempt to recover Sgt Copping’s P40 to the UK for display at Hendon.

Of which I guess there is no further news

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rY0WxgSXdEE

Why is it always assumed that “those in the field” had to mix paints, when paints came in specific tins and aircraft were usually painted in factories and MUs?

As someone brought up on a diet of Commando comics and Airfix kits, I blame Humbrol. IIRC, in the Humbrol Authentics range one of the HB paints was described as Sky Type S. It was the only paint with the Type S suffix in that set of paints. I think it must have become ingrained after all these years and “sky” and “type S” have become inextricably linked like a Pavlovian response even though I know damn well that sky is a colour and type s is the type of paint – s for smooth with a smaller particle of pigment size to make surfaces less draggy and provide some small increase in speed

if you swing the google street view around you can also see the unique former control tower for the Portland Naval Air Station which was perched on the top floor of the Officers Mess.

There’s a much bigger bit of Mulberry harbour sitting in the Thames about a mile in front of my beach-hut at Southend. Might take a bit of digging to get it out of the mud though and someone ready to weld it back together again… 😉

There’s also a couple of the Phoenix caissons grounded in front of Portland Castle. I always assumed they were made as spares or something and never made it across the Channel but it seems they were actually part of one or other of the operational harbours. 10 caissons were refloated and brought back to Weymouth in 1948 although 8 were given to the Dutch in 1953 to help repair their sea walls after some bad flooding.

Long way from historic aviation – sorry!