Maybe mean spirited, but it reminds me of those who buy Mk1 Escorts from Malta and then dress them up as a Ford Mexico. I’m not suggesting that there is such a hierarchy or disparity between the Bolingbroke and the Blenheim, simply that the Bolingbroke is its own aircraft and has its own story to tell. You are basically erasing the story of four Bolingbrokes to make one pseudo-Blenheim with no real history.

It seems almost a shame to build a Frankenstein’s Monster of a Bolingbroke and then pretend it is a Blenheim. I’m surprised there are four basketcase Bristol Bolingbrokes out there, if nothing else. Hopefully not too much original material will be discarded along the way, simply because there is redundancy between the donor aircraft.

I can’t match the photo you posted to any of the Lightnings Arnold Glass had at Cranfield. It seems strange that the wings and vertical stabiliser is missing as well, unless this Lightning was bought simply for parts to keep the others living. The photo doesn’t match the scenery in other photos of the Lightnings at Cranfield, and the scheme doesn’t match any of the others that Glass had. In fact I can’t match the scheme to anything and it seems odd that the serial is completely missing. I’m wondering if this was a Lightning that was kept on as a ground procedures trainer, hence the orange towbar sitting in front? The photographer, or uploader, has simply wrongly attributed the photograph perhaps?

You could answer “would it not be easier to do 10 seconds research and just find out, rather than always posting questions ?” to most of the questions posed on this forum. I don’t find people asking questions irksome and, if I did, it would be fairly easy to avoid answering their question or posting anything in response. I trust the posters on here to be either accurate or ruthlessly self-policing, whereas any nonsense can sit on Wikipedia unchallenged for months; taken as gospel.

As it happens I got the answer to OP’s question via the Fighter Control forum. It appeared in Google’s results before anything from Key. As such I was able to find the serials of the Lightnings in question, as well as some disinformation which was, luckily, corrected by another Fighter Control member.

I’ve had a poke about online to get some information together. To make things easier for Ollie, XS458 is still at Cranfield, and is still live. XS452 went to South Africa and was flown by Thunder City as ZU-BBD. I can’t find anything online that suggests it has flown since 2014 and, like Thunder City’s other aircraft, appears to be up for sale.

The rest were scrapped, though their cockpits survive. XV328 survives at Bruntingthorpe, XS898 is in a private collection in Lavendon, XS899 is apparently at Binbrook and XS923 is in a private collection in the Welshpool area, Powys.

I could be wrong, because I’ve had to Google all of the above information. I’ve basically cross-checked the serials on Demobbed and Thunder & Lightnings. If I’m wrong then this is the sort of value that this forum could add, if anybody could be bothered. It took me about ten minutes to scrape this information together, but I’m not a spotter, collector of Lightning fanatic, so it would take potentially even less effort for others to chime in.

Looks like Reevers have a few Mitchell projects on their books, if their Facebook feed is representative. Seeing sections of B-25 reminds me of the ‘Bedsheet Bomber’ remains at Booker.

As for Facebook, I receive a richer wealth of information on restorations, airframe movements and events simply by following a raft of pages on there. I rarely, if at all, post on any of these pages. A lot of this information never trickles down to the forums, so make of that what you will.

See Bradburger below!