Goodness 40 years – I fondly remember visiting for the first time within weeks of it’s opening on the way home from Biggin Hill following an RAF Flying Scholarship assessment.

It had more of the hushed feel of an art gallery then with the aircraft as the works of art…….

Nice pics. Shame the Albatross wont be ground run. Still, the money from its sale will hopefully go into other projects?

So is the Albatross moving on – and where to?

or do you mean that TVAL will be the recipient of the funds from its sale to the RAFM and TVAL will use the funds to create/purchase more reproductions/restorations – such as that original Camel from the USA

Mosquito colours warrant two monographs by Paul Lucas in the Scale Aircraft Modelling Combat Colours series. So to paraphrase:

MSG/DG was night fighter scheme, DG/OG/MSG was day fighter scheme and DG/MSG/Night was the night intruder scheme

The book on Mosquito fighter colours suggests that the factory standardised on the MSG/DG scheme for FBVIs

(1)to allow any Mosquito to be ultimately allocated to any role, with daytime fighter / bombers requiring the MSG uppersurfaces to be refinished at MU/unit level in OG. Mosquitos could also be finished in the night intruder scheme by adding black undersurfaces at MU/unit level.
(2) to avoid disruption on the production line as Day Fighter/Intruder and Night Fighter/intruder were built on the same line

having said that, in response to queries from HQ AEAF about the unsuitability of the DFS for daylight strike aircraft, the Air Ministry replied that they did not know who was refinishing Mosquitoes in the DFS…….

I guess circumstances dictated that some Mosquitos in the day fighter role retained the MSG uppersurfaces.

There’s a contemporary drawing in the current edition of the “other” long established historic aviation monthly which shows a Ricketts typewriter with an altimeter, ASI, Sperry Artificial Horizon and P4 compass all squeezed over to the RHS of the cockpit

come to think of it, has a crated wartime airframe ever been found – above or below ground.

I know there have been rewards around for crated jeeps for many years – and nobody has claimed them yet.

There used to be a crated Universal Carrier at Jacksons at the Rocket Site in Misson near Doncaster but I don’t know what came of it.

Churchill’s Land Rover went for £130,000……

as they say, provenance is everything….

The ideal would of course be to recover another Halifax, restore it completely and place it next to W1048 – then we can all move on and grumble about something else.

Have to disagree about the Skua though – at the moment it’s displayed as a jumble of disconnected parts – which frankly could have come from any aircraft. I hope that the work going on in Norway has some benefit on this side of the North Sea as well and that eventually we see a complete Skua at Yeovilton.

Come to think of it, Bluebird Mike – what are you going to do when you’ve finished the Barracuda……….

So, looking at it another way, assuming for this discussion, 8 or 9 -off the top of my head – airworthy for the film itself, that means there have been a total of about 85-90 airworthy Spitfires in those 40 years – so there must be about 35-40 that were airworthy that aren’t any more.

Be interesting to know the reasons for this attrition.