TobyV–

That idea sounds rather Bombardier-like (and BTW, one could regard the still-in-production Bombardier Q400, one of which prettily appeared at the Toronto waterfront show just last weekend, as another “last deHavilland”)…

There are still a good few HS748s over here in Canada, too. The type was quite popular on low-density northern routes and/or for cargo. Saw three 748s ex-First Air at Carp, Ontario, during the airshow there a couple weeks ago, parked nose-to-tail in the grass beside one of the hangars. One looked almost flyable; the one behind it was minus props and a few other bits; the next one back was missing outer wings and parts of the tail…At least there wasn’t a fourth one behind that composed of shredded aluminum! IIRC I heard at the show that the intact one was going to a college as a training airframe. Despite the significant amount of use made of HS748s here, I don’t think any Canadian collection harbours one. Hmmm!

Hope the RJX, a type I hadn’t even heard of, avoids the chop. Far, far too many such airframes have been lost because their significance was realized years, or decades, too late. AW Scimitar…Supermarine Sea Eagle…Canadair Argonaut “Arcturus”…Halifax PN323…Martin-Baker MB5…the only flown BAC TSR2…OK, it’s on a different level, but even the Lancaster that led the Dams raid survived the war intact, only to be photographed in dereliction…then scrapped soon afterward. Even an icon like the prototype Mosquito exists only because a certain DH employee was magnificently disobedient to corporate orders to have the grounded W4050 burnt…

S.

Interesting to read of the Lucas/Tuskegee project yet again…This one has been making the rounds on and off since about 1988, when there was a press conference involving Lucas and (I think) the screenwriter who was working on the story for the film at the time. The film was to be called simply “Red Tails”. It seems never to have gone beyond the preproduction stage. I recall there was mention of use of CGI for some of the flying (in the late 80s…yikes) and I wouldn’t be surprised if Lucas were sitting on the idea until the CGI technology caught up with his vision for the film…viz the CGI Jabba sequence (and others) in the 1997 re-release of “Star Wars” that had not been in the original 1977 release because Lucas was ahead of the state of the art in what he wanted to do. Could be the same thing with this. Lucas is a military history and flying enthusiast (you can’t miss the “air combat” style scenes, cribbed holus-bolus from classic war films, in the 1977 “Star Wars”…the attack on the Death Star is copped in considerable detail from “The Dam Busters”), and he did wait a couple decades to finish his three “Star Wars” prequels…so we’ll have to wait and see whether “Red Tails” someday does appear. Anyone seen anything concrete recently on it?

In the interim, of course, there HAS been a film completed on that subject, the not-too-bad 1995 HBO cable-TV movie “The Tuskegee Airmen”. But there are just enough glitches in that production to make me wish Lucas would, indeed, make his version…with only the most judicious use of CGI…

S.

Hi all–

As was mentioned above, there’s only one extant complete Bristol Blenheim, the Mk.IV in Finland. Besides that one, there is one (possibly two??) Mk.I nose section(s), and the Greek wreck recovery (of which I’d not heard till now). But, thanks to lots of Canadian farmers’ need postwar for the “winged hardware stores” that surplus BCATP aircraft represented, there are a good few Fairchild Bolingbrokes extant, there being little difference between one of those and a Blenheim IV. Both recent flyers were late-production Bolingbroke IVs; G-MKIV (which crashed at Denham in 1987) was RCAF 10038, G-BPIV was RCAF 10201. Off the top of my head I can think of at least twenty survivors in North America that are substantial enough to be the start of at least a museum airframe each. Several of these are already restored and on display, and of course one is being restored to fly at CWH (as a P&W-engined IVW) using the best components from eight IVs recovered from Manitoba in the 80s; most of the fuselage of that one is from RCAF 10117.

I gather from this thread that the former G-MKIV is being refurbished statically for IWM in TT finish, while G-BPIV is eventually to fly again with ARC? Or am I still mixed up and there are three Bolingbrokes at Duxford now?

S.

Hi Peter–

Nice pix; the one with the sun setting “through” the old BCATP hangar is suitably spooky, bit of a Stephen King aspect to it! I enjoy visiting old airfields, it’s usually a rather melancholy experience. Flew over the amazingly intact Picton station eight years ago; that would have to be the choice for a visit at ground level, virtually every building is still there (or at least was as of a couple years ago), lost in time. Most of the others I’ve visited are in the process of disappearing, but those can be the spookiest. Old #16 SFTS at Hagersville, now host to a lumber company, has eight or nine hangars still in reasonable shape, but the “groundside” portion of the base is just overgrown roadways and ghostly foundations. Sometimes, though, an old airfield will make a reappearance as…an airfield, like Dunnville (#6 SFTS) did, to my delight, a few years back after decades as a turkey farm! Then there’s the Kohler satellite field, now a dragstrip; the Gananoque one with its ghostly lone hangar in the middle of nowhere, half-full of a magnificent ex-RCAF Canso; and, well, the old Malton base that’s now Pearson International Airport! Funny the divergent fates of old airfields. Somebody oughta write a coffee-table/historical book on that subject. Hm. Maybe that someone oughta be me. :rolleyes:

Cheers

S.

Hi OW–

I’m not Mark12 but will take a guess anyway…Bubba Beal’s incident with the Hispano 1112 at Reno in the early 80s that (iirc) resulted in his donating the Buchon to one of the museum groups?

S.

Stewart et al–

Interesting thread (and a concept I’m sure most of us toy with from time to time)…What I’d attempt would of course depend upon the size of the windfall. Only a truly huge jackpot (over $100mil) would spur me to try buying any sort of Warbird and operating it on the circuit (if that DID happen, a certain Fury and a certain Mustang would be moving northeast)…I agree with Melvyn, a “small” lottery win wouldn’t cut it in that regard, and in my own case with that sort of win I’d be doing things like paying off my house and probably buying two cars, a new one and something vintage and interesting for cruise-nights in summer.

A “midsize” pot (say, $15mil) would be where things would get interesting. With that sort of coin, I would likely be acquiring things to assist existing initiatives. For example, I’ve long mused about how nice it’d be to buy Seafire PR503 and one of the ex-RCN Furies, and present them on longterm loan to the Shearwater museum. Or bankroll the rebuild of the Omaka (NZ) Bolingbroke…or the CAvM Beaufighter discussed elsewhere on the forum. I wouldn’t have to face the worries and colossal expense of operating any of the above; but they’d be on view, restored, in places where they’d be much appreciated, and as an enthusiast, that would suit me just fine.

S.

Now that’s a propliner…

Hm, too bad there isn’t one of those still about. Aesthetically it looks like a mix of 049 Connie and DH91, with four Fury engines! Yum. How many were built?

S.