Presumably Lancaster KB976 landed on the grass strip at Strathallan, as well as the Shackleton MR1 and the Comet!

Those are some desperately ugly, tacky t-shirts. Tasteless tat knocked together for chavs and the Britain First crowd, and probably made somewhere in the third world by children.

I fail to see the connection between this rubbish and historic aviation, beyond one of the t-shirts featuring a couple of biplanes.

Nice to see the period photo of XR719. The arrowhead-shaped motif in front of the roundel appears to be different to that painted on the Bruntingthorpe example.

Either way it is a cracking scheme, though part of me wishes they had painted both sides in this exciting scheme, even if only for a short while.

Good news, but are there any civil registered Hunters left?

Earhart has been found. Sort of. Pack it up guys, time to go home. No more holidays to Nikumaroro looking for old medicine bottles.

It is understandable when social media has thin inane way of being able to produce FAKE NEWS and that boring someone said this you said that.

This forum, and others, is just as guilty of that. Witness John Green’s thread whereby he feels the need to inform us every time a Spitfire passes over Chichester harbor. There is nothing to differentiate those posts from Facebook statuses. Even more maddening are the ‘I’ve just heard from one of my sources that something has happened at X’ posts (there was one about that Spitfire that dug in in France), which implies there is a secretive inner network of those-in-the-know who carefully drip-feed information to the rest of us.

You misunderstand, perhaps willfully, what was posted on Facebook concerning the Shackleton, and by whom. The initial post that sparked Merlin’s comment was posted by the Shackleton page themselves. Somebody with administrative privileges to the “Shackleton WR963 – The Return to Flight” Facebook page posted this:

We’ve just been made aware of some very disturbing news and in the interest of clarity thought we’d share it.
On one of our recent engine runs it was found that the trolley acc Batteries were flat. Rather than waste the whole run we decided to charge them from a local RAC representative who kindly volunteered to help out.
We’ve since found out that some old crew members and volunteers have decided to complain about him directly to his bosses and as a result he is under investigation. If this is true then it’s a new low for some people. Not content with trying to defame and malign everything on the project from the outside it now seems that anyone who tries to help will be targeted too. This gentleman helped out and as such may be in trouble with his Job.
These people claim to love the aircraft…but the consequences of their actions may have just killed it. We’re having serious talks about the future of WR963.

Followed by (among others):

While the result for the RAC guy was the right and fair one ,we still have the issue that this sort of rubbish happens every time we make a move , the last time was a month ago when Sam mentioned funding/donations then this and i am wiling to bet the next one will be something to do with the Car Show at the end of the month, It seems this is the tactic in use visit 63 at your peril ,how the hell do we combat that ?!!! DW

And then some calls from others to name, shame, hang draw and quarter those responsible:

They have been removed long ago. But use long lenses to photograph the “wrong doings” of those trying to help the project.

It feels very much a case of if we can’t be involved then we will ruin it for others

They have been named to us however.

And then…

Just a quick update, ive just talked to the RAC guy involved ,the great news is things are ok all sorted

So everything is sorted, and this forum is only getting up to speed with it all a couple of days later, because forums and social media are being somewhat inconsistently engaged. I would say that material isn’t shared enough on here and, if anything, over-shared on Facebook by the Shackleton team. The stuff on Facebook sounds like old men squabbling about the height of a hedge, whereas this forum is getting briefed by disgruntled members.

Or perhaps we shouldn’t label all burglars and vandals as “scum”.
Being a burglar is a life choice and we shouldn’t use hate speech in describing their actions.

How about this “Victims of society who happened upon safe in East Midlands Aeropark remove it for safekeeping but forget to return it afterwards”?

It is possible to refer criminals and criminal acts without resorting to language more apt for The Sun, without being some sort of apologist. A lazy false dichotomy from both of you.

I find it a struggle to understand what phrases such as “There is a link to help out with repairs, I will,….EDIT… I HAVE” even mean. And pasting in three urls then providing a quote from one of them (without specifying which) is just lazy.

Now we need to have factual description of crime rather than a headline that clearly reflects the poster’s clear annoyance with what happened !

Not really too much to ask though, is it. I don’t care about TonyT’s semi-literate ranting, I just want to know about a) what crime has taken place, b) when (incase there were witnesses), c) is there a GoFundMe or similar setup to allow us to donate to the victim. If every thread in this forum had a similarly knee-jerk ‘clickbait’ headline then then the place would go down the pan.

Any chance of a slightly less histrionic thread title?