OK…to bumpstart things, here’s me having a go, having been in the UK precisely once and not during an airshow season…! I’m assuming the shot’s a pretty recent one…and even so some of this is pretty wild guesswork…

Lead diamond: Mk.V EP120, T9 ML407, Mk.IX MH434, Mk.XVI TD248

“Upper” vic: a IX, a XIV with four cannon, and I’m guessing Mk.V AR501

“Lower” front vic: Again a IX and a XIV, and a “baby Spit” I’m guessing is either Mk.II P7350 or Mk.V AB910

“Lower” rear vic: Mk.IX (BBMF’s?) and two PR.19s (also BBMF’s?)

Looking forward to hear how far off the mark I am… 😎

S.

Hi all–

Terrific pix, especially the S.M.79, which would already have been quite the rare bird at that time. (I wondered about the apparent backward Ls; figured they were some sort of Arabic character…!)

You’re right, a LARGE proportion of the surviving Fury/Sea Fury population is ex-Iraqi AF, from the famous Jurist/Tallichet mass recovery in the 70s. And usually any attempt to pin down the ID of any of those Furies is an exercise in banging one’s noggin against a wall; some were denavalised FB.11s, some were new-build “Baghdad Furies”, and probably none of the current survivors has all the same components it left the Hawker line with. Even the serials and construction numbers are a real stew. I’ve seen copies of some of the Jurist recovery paperwork, for instance, that indicates fairly clearly that those five-digit 3**** numbers were related to ENGINES rather than airframes; then there are the Hawker “41H/” c/ns, the Iraqi batch numbers (ISS**), the Iraqi AF serials, and (for the ex-FAA Furies) the British serials…which may or may not be reliable. (For instance, the late lamented FB.11 N56SF which crashed three years ago here in Ontario was reported to be ex-FAA TF987; but I have no idea how that ID was arrived at, the only serial I’ve seen linked with that airframe being one of the 3**** engine numbers.) But ultimately, Iraq yielded two dozen restorable Furies…and that is more than good enough for me!

Steve (slightly Fury-obsessed) T