CoF:
Sorry about the delay, I’ve been rather busy lately.
Unfortunately my father died while I was in Sweden and by the time I got to his house in the UK my stepmother had thrown away all his photo albums and everything else associated with his time in the RAF and also much material concerned with the childhoods of my sister and myself. I never forgave her for that, until the day she died.
My database, which already runs to several thousand entries, begins with the Wright Brothers and all powered aircraft since.
I try to record the date, time, duration and venue of the first flights of prototypes and first production, for each Mark/major variant. Other entries concern the powerplant, principal designer(s), brief details of the first flight (e.g. crashed on take-off!), subsequent history and eventual fate. I also record (in code) the sources of the information.
This of course is a massive and never-ending project, but it keeps me happy and gives me an excuse to hoard and re-read aviations books and magazines.
The biggest problem is deciding the accuracy of what turn out to be many conflicting reports, with mistakes being obviously carried over from one source to another. That also makes it intriguing and interesting.
Finally, regarding Lincolns, some time around 1952 a Lincoln had problems at RAF Waddington, just missed the roof or our married quarters and came down a few hundred yards away, fortuitously on a rubbish dump! I will never forget watching, startled, as the crew jumped out and ran for dear life towards our married patch! The aircraft did not explode, however, and was eventually presumably cut up for scrap. I would very much like to have more details of this crash, the sight of which became etched on my 10-year-old memory!
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