And even more difficult are the ones that are parted out to assist various rebuild projects, as I understand some of the Russian recoveries have been.

Some of the survivors listed in the Spitfire books seem to be little more than a firewall and an identity.

Sssssh, you’ll give the game away 😉

Fantastic pictures 5 –14 in black and white could easily be 1940 vintage ?

……0353:G-CFGJ / N3200 by David Whitworth…….

Very nice indeed! Clone out the antenna and add a bit of a sepia tinge and you’ll be about there.

Or more appropriately over Lincoln Cathedral. Symbolically the white cliffs have far more association with the Battle of Britain-era fighters than with the Lancasters of Bomber Command.

Well, every 5 years for the past few decades they’ve themed the September show as the ‘xxth anniversary of the Battle of Britain’, so it wouldn’t exactly be a major surprise if they did that in September 2015 too! 😀

The Furies are a bit of a nightmare, there are a lot of composite airframes out there, mainly mix-‘n-match aircraft put together from parts from the Iraqi Fury cache, sometimes including parts (and identities) from Sea Furies too. There are also examples of crashed and destroyed aircraft being ‘resurrected’ using a different airframe, and airframes being parted out to different projects (but the identity/paperwork surviving, to resurface again at a later date). Much the same as with the Mustangs, in fact.

As to the scope, Cygnet to Fury would do very nicely.

It does sound rather an ambitious task for a startup operation with no track record – restoring one to fly as well as operating the two Classic Air Force examples on lease. Still, I wish them well with their endeavours.

The break-up of the Assault Glider Trust collection is very sad, though. 🙁

The tone of the response to John Green’s perfectly reasonable question is similar to the level of unfriendliness (no, make that downright hostility) that I experienced on my one and only visit to the Museum about 5 years ago. I never went back, nor am I ever likely to.