Many thanks! I had a look for G-MKIV as it rang a faint bell. What a waste, to lose an aircraft in such a short period following 15 years of rebuild.

I saw a Blenheim fly over Stirling Castle when I was a kid; the connection here being Frank Barnwell. This must have been in the late ’90s or early noughties. Any idea as to which aircraft I saw?

My comments regarding East Fortune relate to the RAE’s T4 (in effect a Mk.1) which went to Strathallan. Okay, we can get into the semantics of whether East Fortune is a completely different set-up, etc., but I think a lot of people would fear that history might repeat itself if the Shackleton went there – although it’s obviously better than nothing.

I was criticised for this in another thread, but I grew up near Stirling and I consider Strathallan a remote location. Great if you own a car, know it is there and were willing to fuel up and drive out there, but I think the location amongst other matters made Strathallan an unsustainable venture. I can only assume that nobody wanted to buy the Strathallan Shack when the collection was up for sale as, again, it was presumably not viewed as an especially noteworthy airframe when you have a Lancaster parked up next to it.

However, Strathallan is not East Fortune. Semantics or not, I think EF promote themselves more effectively and have a slightly broader scope than the ‘shed full of aircraft’ model which no doubt get a lot fired up on here but broadly is of lesser interest to the general public. To tar EF for mistakes (if they were even that) made by the Strathallan collection is fairly laughable. By your logic, the Canadians should have never sent over Vera, lest she be crushed to death in a hangar at Woodford. Even if Woodford wasn’t on their itinerary, the risk is there, as there is a history of Canadian Lancs being destroyed on British soil.

If you don’t mind the idea of the St Mawgan Shack remaining outdoors then I don’t see EF as a risk, other than the expansive geography you have to cover to get the airframe from deepest Cornwall to deepest East Lothian.

I am puzzled as to what made you angry…you had no time to make the visit or you could have made a visit if you’d had someone to go with…?? Or am I missing something….?:)

I had no time to make a visit. I could have drummed up a bit of interest I wager as at least one other guy I was down with was into his aircraft. However it wouldn’t have worked out with my superiors. Conferences make me angry for a a few reasons, now that I think about it…

I did comment that East Fortune ‘need’ a Shack, given the history of the type up here. That would be a big move though.

A very compelling post. Two things spring to mind though;

During this time it was revealed that the museum still owned the Reid and Sigrist Desford at Snibston Discovery Park, so again, the paperwork was sorted and the museum got rid of the Desford off its books after nearly 20 years.

Why did the Desford end up at a coal mining museum? It is in fairly rough condition now, and would make more sense at East Fortune surely? A rare and interesting aircraft.

There’s a lot of stuff in that collection that doesn’t get to see the light of day, but hopefully one day it will.

Where is this stuff? I’ve tried to get to the NMS collection in Granton, but they are cagey about letting people in. I was informed that they didn’t have much there anyway.

XT852 got munched by JCBs and sent off to China to be turned into woks, so I think that solves any issues there!