And while we’re about it, where’s the ‘Like’ button?

Darn good job the screen didn’t bust. 😮

232 was a former North Weald resident, back in the day

Silly nationalism doesn’t have (much) of a place in the warbird world.

An interesting comment, coming from the country where they deface anything and everything they get their hands on by plastering them with stars & bars. I’ve seen examples of L-29s, L-39s, Magisters, Strikemasters, Gnats and Iskry given this treatment. If this isn’t an example of ‘silly nationalism’, I don’t know what is!

The other observation I would make is that the US seems to be the only ‘first world’ country where there are still substantial numbers of WWII 4-engined bombers rotting into the dirt unprotected from the elements. I should look a little closer to home before being so openly critical of your cousins to the North!

The loss of Charles Church effectively stopped the project……….

Exactly. Without that sad event, we’d probably have had airworthy examples of the Lancaster, Battle, Spitfire 22, and who knows what else, for much of the last 2 decades

Yes, he has a couple of Zeros I think, along with a reconstructed Betty fuselage.

Another former Duxford resident moved on to pastures new. I wish Mr Harada well with his continuing endeavours to preserve Japanese aviation history.

I would say that the cockpit/flying clothing/re-enactment segment of the preservation movement is very much a minority niche area compared with the mainstream museum and airshow movements. If it dried up and went away tomorrow I doubt that too many people (in comparison with what must run into millions who attend airshows over the course of a season) would miss them to be perfectly honest. I’m sure the traders in instruments and other cockpit paraphernalia would be upset though!

Oh no! Now where are they going to put all those Burmese Spitfires? 🙁