Thanks Duggy

Duggy, great photos, thanks. Can’t recognise the airfield. RAAF Richmond?

AM, I acknowledge being wrong on the LDF Wellesleys, but in honour of the new Trump era I need to say that I didn’t say that and it’s going to be great, really great, when we get to the bottom of this well of Wellesley whimsy. Luckily your AM has date stamped these photos Oct 1937. Surely this is a gunners cockpit converted into a Trainer version?  The AM would not lie, AM. 

AM, from what I can make out, the 1938 Long Distance Flight Wellesleys were twin cockpit, albeit with fully faired ‘Malcolm hood’ type canopies. Being aloft for 48 hours required sharing the piloting task, and amphetemines. The photos may show a development concept for a Trainer – LDF version. The Wellesley that crashed in Western Australia was sold, in situ, by the RAF and recovered by an enterprising salvager. This aircraft was then sold to the RAAF and was used as a training aid in the RAAF Engineering School in Melbourne. It was presumably scrapped around 1943, when there was a wholesale ‘clean up’ of obsolete types. No doubt the geodesic became a CAC Mustang or pressure cooker. 

Here’s a full Wellington airframe and detail shots of the Wellesley airframe. Thank God you don’t have a Wellesley restoration project! 

Here’s a Wellesley stick. 

Maybe on some desolate hill in Ethiopia, the remnants of the East Africa campaign. There was one which crashed in the desert in Australia after the Long Distance Flight, but it was recovered, at the time. I have some original photos of the interior structure of the Wellesley. It is appalling. Where one engineering idea would do, it incorporates fifteen. It is like the simple idea of geodesics mated with a car differential and triple expansion steam engine. It may be considered a kindness that nobody can have the opportunity of restoring one, as fifteen lifetimes would not be enough. However, travelling to Ethiopia to look for Wellesleys and other obscurata would be very interesting.