Look like there was as much smoke inside the cockpit of the 108 as it was making outside. Hope the pilot had a smoke hood!

I have now seen the Haynes book on the Tiger Moth. It is not a workshop manual in the Haynes tradition.

On the cover it says “An insight into owning, flying and maintaining the legendary British training biplane”. Whilst I have yet to study the book in detail, a quick flick through the pages shows that it discharges its remit quite well. There are some good pictures, which give an insight into what a Tiger Moth is, and how it should be flown. It seems to be quite reasonable value at £17.99 rrp – no doubt it will be found cheaper on Amazon etc.

The “Swiss” manual is not at all as accurate as it is cracked up to be and I doubt that the Haynes Tiger Moth ‘manual’ is anything what you might imagine if you are only familiar with their range of car manuals. If you bought their Spitfire and Lancaster ‘workshop manuals’, and presumably the one for Apollo 11, and you have a fireside picture book, that is all. I doubt that the Tiger Moth book is any different. I do suggest that you join the Moth Club, and find out just how hard it is to find a Tiger Moth restoration project and just how expensive it is to restore one properly.

Crickey! Must have been a bit hairy. At least you got the jet back on the ground OK. Thanks for letting us know the details.

More on the Beeb:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/8140907.stm

Those clouds look to me like Cambridgeshire.

Ollie: I think the pics of ‘631’ in the MARTSU move are of XN929 en-route to Honington approx 1970 for use as a ground instructional airframe. By approx 1972 its cockpit was cut off and taken to 237 OCU Ground School for use as a cockpit trainer. The later ‘631’ being craned onto the Bark Royal was another aircraft (forget the serial just now).

Your Dit – one of our aircraft is missing – is correct. I was at Honington at the time (approx ’72) and when 809 disembarked they had one less aircraft than what they started with. I think the one which went over the side was XT269 but don’t quote me.

Must say that this thread has thrown up some spectaular photos the like of which I have not seen before. Has anyone got any pics of XV333 (or was it 332?) when it had the 1,000-pounder dropped into its cockpit?