Originally posted by Flood

I wonder how the train collection is displayed?

Flood.

Simple – most of it isn’t.

We went in March. I hadn’t been for 35 years or so and was really looking forward to it. This has some relevance to the Airspace thread as well. The museum is now so aimed at kids with interactive features and words of one syllable we lost interest very quickly and left after a couple of hours. The flight gallery had a show for kids with a couple of idiot presenters every 40 minutes or so. Didn’t finish looking there either.
Might try again in another 35 years if I’m still breathing.
Went to Syon Park years ago as well. Can’t really remember much but I wasn’t impressed with the stacked cars at the Science Museum. An example of “look how clever we are” rather than what’s the best way to display these exhibits.

Sandys was a plonker of monumental proportions but it was Wilson and Healey that did the deed on TSR2, the P1154 and the HS681. Nobody will ever convince me that Wilson wasn’t in the pay of someone other than the British taxpayer.

As far as I can find out, it was “Bee” in May 1948 in the XP-86, followed in September by John Derry in the DH108.

If it hadn’t been for Geoffrey Tyson, “Winkle” Brown wouldn’t be alive today.
“Winkle” was testing one of the SR-A1 jet fighter flying boats and hit a lump of wood in the Solent on landing. He got out but was trapped under the wing and Tyson jumped in and dragged him out. The SR-A1’s still at the bottom of the Solent, they never found it.
I don’t think I’ve ever seen it, but the Princess was displayed at Farnborough by Geoffrey Tyson one year. There was a fast pass with quite a lot of bank on and the wingtip missed the ground by far less than was comfortable. Apparently the artificial feel on the controls had made them so heavy he couldn’t straighten up.

Even the mock up wasn’t completed.
When it was cancelled all the jigs, drawings and the mock up were destroyed. Barnes Wallis also influenced the cancellation being convinced the design, of the wing in particular, was all wrong.
2 years later, in a programme controlled by Barnes Wallis, a radio controlled scale model of the M52 flew and achieved Mach 1.38, proving that Miles had been right all along.
Wallis never admitted he had been wrong, in fact he refused to discuss it. I really don’t understand that attitude, nobody’s infallible or expected to be.
For further reading, Project Cancelled by Derek Wood is guaranteed to raise blood pressure to levels bordering on fatal. It covers 1945 – 1972 and always leaves me biting chunks out of the furniture and considering a cull of politicians.
Never heard of an M53. Not thinking of the SR53 are you?

Wrong.

The Miles M52 was cancelled by Sir Ben Lockspeiser on the grounds of pilot safety and was never completed.
There were numerous volunteers to fly it, including ex-Luftwaffe pilots who said why are you worried about “enemy” pilots.
The straigt wing was thought to be flawed but Miles had it dead right. All data was handed to the Americans when it was cancelled and the Bell X-1 is basically a Miles M52 with a rocket instead of an afterburning jet.

The French (I think) for a Sunderland or two.

Bill Baird at De Havilland in the 50s for ignoring an instruction from the MD to burn the prototype Mossie and hiding it in various places until the idea of a museum arose.

CAACU at Exeter for other Mossies.

Peter Thomas at SkyFame for quite a few.

Why do some flies buzz and some don’t?