Bf109E CF-EML, seen probably much as it currently looks, but this shot and the next one were taken in one of CHAA’s hangars at Tillsonburg, rather than at Niagara South airfield where Mr Russell’s fleet was based.

Ace’s office…

Parked with the Hurricane during a spell of very British weather…

CF-EML taxiing out for its duo display with the Hurricane.

Goes without saying, I miss seeing these…but then I’d have declared nuts anyone who told me 15 years ago that I would see a DB-engined Messerschmitt airborne over southern Ontario…ever! Thanks, Mr Russell.

S.

Here are a few pix of the Russell Group fighters…taken during two of the CHAA Wings & Wheels car/air events of the past few years at CHAA’s Tillsonburg, Ontario, base (I took my 1962 Studebaker Lark to these shows).

Spitfire MK912/C-FFLC, Mr R’s initial post-lawsuit acquisition. I referred to this Spit as “Mad Mickey” for the furious-looking mouse cartoon on the cowl! (And I decided the reg stood for “Conjured Forth From Legal Confrontation”…):rolleyes:

C-FFLC with another charismatic British classic, a Healey roadster…

The Spit taxiing at T’burg

Airshow pilot Rick Volker belts past in the Spit

Hurricane and 109 to follow…

S.

Indeed; some Spits, for instance the time-capsule OTU Mk.I at Chicago, are especially valuable as artifacts for reference, to establish the sort of details we see being thrashed out with great effort on this forum regarding, say, the Hornet, Whirlwind and Stirling cockpit projects. Fortunately there are enough Spits extant that not only is it practical to operate some of the survivors, but critical mass of the type has been achieved so that a cottage industry has come into being in support. (Compare that with the Tempest situation.) There’s certainly room for both, and some of the museum Spits really should remain static permanently.

As to not enough possible “Spitfire reincarnators” to render viable a theoretical haul of hulks from underneath old airbases in Myanmar…surely that would be at least partially because never before has such a haul been mooted as a possibility! And I’d think that even if Mr Cundall’s effort were to bear fruit, not all of the resulting airframes/parts would perforce become projects to fly: surely some would become museum rebuilds, and some even conserved for display as found. I think there’d be enough interest to find homes for any number of exhumed Spitfires. Heck, if I had the space and the cash, I’d take one on…and it’d become one of the “as-found” displays…

S.

AEG G.IV twin-engined 1918 night bomber in good nick on show at the Canada Aviation and Space Museum (former CAvM/NAM), Rockcliffe (Ottawa), Ontario. One of just three survivors from the substantial war-prize haul brought to Canada in 1919 (the other two being a Fokker D.VII and a Junkers J4/CL.I).

We Canucks have a particular fondness for the Siskin, since it was the RCAF’s first fighter type (though obsolescent when acquired). One is said to have survived inside the Kingston (Ontario) armoury as late as the middle of World War II, but it is of course long gone.

There’s possibly an easier way to get at least the look and feel of a flying Siskin. Remember the French Latecoere 17 replica built for a film in the 1980s? It was made over from the basic airframe of a Noorduyn Norseman. I once chanced upon a disassembled Schweizer AgCat cropduster in a storage yard, and remarked to myself that it had the feel–and the size–of a Siskin. Did a quick sketch based on three-views of both types. With all-new wings and tail, and extra cosmetic-only struts added to the undercart, the result was a pretty convincing theoretical Siskin lookalike, with even the big uncowled R985 up front looking “right”…

Is there anywhere an online (or print) listing of extant inter-war military aircraft? A few that come to mind, not mentioned in this thread yet, would be the Romeo 38s ex-Kabul scrapyard, Hendon’s Hart Trainer, and the Blackburn Ripon in Finland. I bet the full list would be surprisingly long and very interesting!

S.

Col Pay’s H87 Kittyhawk was disinterred from the earth in Alberta…

And some of the folks at the Canadian Air & Space Museum (nee Toronto Aerospace Museum), when it was still based in the old deHavilland Canada facility at Downsview, were trying to investigate a persistent rumour that said a war-prize Messerschmitt 262 was buried on the old airbase…nothing was ever found, and with the present circumstances at Downsview I doubt anything ever will be–whether or not part or all of a 262 is interred there.

And then there are the F2G Super Corsair remains said to be buried at Hopkins Airport in Cleveland…the airframe (less engine, which went to the Crawford Museum) of N5590N, the 1949 Thompson Trophy champion, used for firefighting practice at Hopkins in the fifties and said interred once too crispy to be of further use. Again, little chance of verification, and what would be down there would be unrestorable anyway.

S.

James–

Interesting. Not sure off what (aircraft, factory equipment, etc) the plate would have come, but datewise it would be postwar…during wartime the Malton aircraft manufacturer was called Victory Aircraft, descended from the aviation division of National Steel Car (which company BTW still exists, building railway cars here in Hamilton). It became A.V. Roe Canada Ltd. when it became an Avro subsidiary after the war, strong links with Avro having been formed, of course, as NSC/Victory took on the manufacture of Lancasters (and one each York and Lincoln) during World War II.

S.

Martin–

Wrong fighter; Walt’s P-47 fuselage was off by itself in the brambles next to the remains of a Seabat helo, under a sheet of corrugated metal…what was inside the mid-section of the YB-36 was a P-63 and also parts of an XP-82. (The latter is now being reconstituted to flying condition by Tom Reilly.)

S.

…Incidentally, the pic of “RAB” at the top of the thread looks like a painting, as distinct from a digitally-drawn image. Is it? And if so, who executed it? I’s a very nice piece of work. (Whether or not it’s digital it’s awfully nice.)

S.