Is the red and white tail a bit ‘Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade’-ish? To go with the ‘Nazi fighter’ fuselage still in the weeds at Booker?

Whatever they do or don’t do to it someone should at least amend the Movement Card, the last entry still says “Lost”… 🙂

There used to be an armoured Rolls Royce up in the galleries. What happened to it?

The last I heard it was at The RAF Regiment Heritage Centre at RAF Honington.

Now I could be happy if that came to fruition.

I smiled a lot watching that!

It is interesting to ponder that 50 years on from when the site was chosen at RAF Hendon because it was considered well-situated we now find it being overwhelmed by progress. Go back 60 odd years from that time and the site was chosen for aviation because it was open and semi-rural!

Times change, can’t stop that.

Those running the RAF Museum find themselves now with some difficult choices. Certainly I’m sure we’d all like to see the whole collection together and displayed somewhere with an active runway. But the money simply doesn’t exist for that at present.

The BoB Hall, excellent as it was, was getting tired. I am happy to hold fire and see what transpires from the plans: those responsible I’m sure are well aware of the significance of that 4/5/6/7 (delete to preference to avoid argument) month period in the 100 years of the RAF and it will remain a notably prominent part of the new displays. I love Mitch and Aeronut’s ideas for the rolls of honour, I hope someone reads and takes note.

Space at Hendon is getting more and more squeezed as the service gets older and accumulates more history, more stories and more artifacts. Difficult choices indeed.

I REALLY don’t want to enter the wider debate here as I know none of the facts, but on the point of the analysis of the bones, if this statement is indeed the case:

in relation to the recovered bones the Egyptian authorities claim they DNA tested them and wrote to the British Embassy to say these tests had proved ‘negative’ in that they were unable to obtain DNA to compare to Dennis’s relatives due to the age of the remains, contamination and their exposure to the sun. However, in the same letter they went on to say that ‘the DNA in all the bones come from the same person…’

This is indeed an odd statement given that it contains the ‘contamination’ caveat which would cause problems for any findings. If I recall correctly the communications from the laboratory appeared to have been reworded by an Egyptian Defence Official as the communication came from him? However, with a degraded sample it is THEORETICALLY possible that you could recover and analyse enough DNA to make a comparison between the samples provided that suitable markers in each could be identified i.e. fragments of DNA from each sample provided consistent overlap in sequences isolated. At the same time, suitable markers to cross match with DNA sequences that the relatives might share might not have been recovered amongst the fragments, so a match could not be made. With samples from the same person you have all of their DNA complement to potentially match (or find no inconsistencies), with relatives, you are looking at a much smaller fraction of the genome to match in the first place.

Anyhow, I have no idea who, if anyone, did the testing or what they may or may not have recovered nor what they tested for.

The wording of the letter from the Military Attache Liaison Branch is rather odd in terms of its scientific precision. One would normally assume that a statement from a reputable testing laboratory would be repeated verbatim anyway.

Unable to establish the nationality of the body through DNA typing of bones samples? When looking at a European Caucasian? What questions are they asking?