I think you will find that Alex Henshaw’s book “Sigh for a Merlin” will be useful. It’s in a paperback and has an appendix which states that 11,694 Spitfires (can you imagine that Daz) and 305 Lancasters were produced at Castle Bromwich and the shadow factories at Cosford and Desford. On foggy days Henshaw used the plume of smoke from a local power sation that penetrated the fog layer as a sort of beacon to let down through the murk. The CAA would love that!

As a civil engineer in a former life I spent a lot of time trying to build what architects had committed to paper but I have to say the AAM is a pretty clever building.The bold Lord Foster did a good job getting enough volume to get all the aircraft in on a relatively small footprint. The main clanger was not having access to get the B-24 and the SR-71 in without removing the screen wall. Hangar doors aren’t rocket technology are they?

Err, didn’t Duxford get £5.5 million for the American Museum plus a further £10 million (approx) for the Air and Space Hangar? I would have thought that was a reasonable contribution.

I apologise if this has been aired before but what happened to the Harriers that went to Thailand. According to an Ozzie mate (who inhabits this forum from time to time), they were flown a bit, found too tricky and were consigned to the back of a hangar. Any updates?

Mmitch, a good, if optimistic, point of view. By the way I’ve heard the oft-quoted “fact” that airshows come second behind football but what is the source for that. I can’t believe that airshows do better than horse-racing, if only by sheer weight of numbers that watch the nags.

With regard to the influence of the Comet Racer on the Mosquito can I refer you to Page 360 of the A.J.Jackson book on DH a/c in which he states that “the historic aircraft which provided so much data for the Mosquito”. Good enough for me. It’s rather like comparing a Le Mans winning Bentley with a Routemaster bus. Both useful bits of kit but one is exciting and the other isn’t. The fact that DH built the Comets at a loss so that “Team GB” could win also outweighs anything that the Dove did in my opinion.

This sort of rebuild/replica/restoration discussion has happened before in the world of historic motor racing. I believe it was the late Denis Jenkinson from Motor Sport magazine that took the trouble to locate all the Maserati 250F 1950’s Formula One cars on a particular weekend in the racing season. He realised something was adrift when he accounted for 42 cars when the “works” records show only 36 were built. I may have the exact numbers wrong but you see the point. If a Buchon is rebuilt with a DB 605 and is then “passed off” as a Bf109 then caveat emptor. Personally the sight of an airworthy airframe transcends any esoteric argument about the provenance of an airframe.