I seem to rember reading that more Bf/Me 109’s were lost taking off/Landing than were shoot down.

Its not too hard to build a new wing the stumbling block will be cost.

When you think of the construction ita a fairly stright forward construction you just need to know what your doing and have deep pockets, there may even be a spare wing or two in store.

What gets to me when an older aircrat dose crash people start jumping up and down shouting that they are not safe to fly and must all be grounded.

They dont have any intrest in aviation apart from when they are jetting off on holiday,

The vintage aircraft we see are better looked after than the moden day airliner in my view.

If we ground all Spitfire as one has crashed then the same rule MUST apply to 737s 747s and 757s and so on you cant have one rule for the small warbird operator and another for the multi million pound airline operator.

Pacific Sun

Rising Sun Aviation Heritage Centre

Pacific Air

But I do like Texantomcats Divine Wings (as long as people dont tink it has some thing to do with Divine Brown and a certian UK actor)

Cant help much but offer some advice,

A relitive of mine was awarded a medal for shooting down one of the first Zeps to be bought down by ground fire, it crashed in to the Thames Estuary, he knew some people who were in the Navy at Southend and was able to get them to collect some of the wreckage, including a small section of frame (about 6ft long) and a section of the fabric,

These were loaned out to a museum who looked after them very very well, another museum requested a loan of the collection, after gaining the famialy s permision they were packaged up and driven by the origianl museum to the exhibition where they were to remain for a number of weeks.

At the end of the exhibition the collection went missing and has never been found. 🙁

These were ireplaceable we dont blame the museum they were orginaly loaned to its the second museum that were “looking” after them that are to blame if they were lost than so be it, but if they were stollen I hope that who ever took them reads this and understands how much they ment to the famialy.

I was never lucky enough to meet the man that they were awarded to, he died before I was born but his daughter is still alive and is now getting old I would be a dream if we were able to reunite her with her Farthers medal and Zep parts but sadly I dont think that will ever happen, sadly I dont think we will ever see them again, they probaly sit in some scumbags private collection.

All I can say is, loan them to a museum you know you can trust, make sure you keep detailed description of every thing you loan out and take photos of them, sign a contract with the museum making sure that they can not sell them without your permision.

It was painted at Southend, made a nice site seeing her there.

Got some nice shots there mate, I do like the wide angle Sea Vixen low over the embankment,

Most of the RAF stuff should arrive Friday or Saturday
Civil stuff Saturday-Sunday