FAA MUSEUM – XV333’S SERIALS

Plazz has posted a pic of XV333 in the carrier deck display in the FAA Museum showing its rear fuselage and underwing serials. Where on earth did they get the idea that Buccaneer serials should look like that? The Museum has lost all its credibility for historical research and accuracy on this one.

Happy New Year!

Here’s a question.

Are there two lengths of Queen Mary? Of the pics I’ve been looking st, the panel aft of the mainwheel seems either to be short or long; i.e. the cross bracing seems more of a X than >< – but the pics and drawings I’ve got seem unclear on this point. While thise seems daft, it’s not unprecidented; the world famous Routmaster London Bus comes in 2 lengths, easilly distinguisable by the centre window being square or rectangular. You’d never notice, then when it’s pointed out, you can’t miss it.

As to why Queen Mary, I have no idea – perhaps cos it looked as long as an Ocean Liner?

The QM has been through many iterations and many were built during the war and many after the war. There have therefore been a number of subtle changes to the design because of changes over the years to the road transport Construction and Use Regulations. For example, I think the QM pictured at East Kirkby is not a genuine WW2 example, but it was built in the late 50s/early 60s. The bit sticking out behind the wheel is different to the WW2 ones, and so is the trailer wheel. I think that the East Kirkby trailers were rescued from a farm at Willoughby (near the coast) and that when in service they were pulled by S-Type Bedford tractor units.

In the late 70s/early 80s there was a different version of the QM trailer which had the wheel right at the very back of the load deck (I think Bruntingthorpe had an example of one of these a few years ago). These trailers were very difficult to handle on the road, especially round tight corners, and I did hear that these trailers may have been dubbed “Queen Elizabeths”.

Latterly, the basic QM configuration has been retained but with the use of twin normal-sized lorry wheels at the back. Whilst the QMs were generally built by Taskers of Andover (and later by, I think, Trailmaster after Taskers went under), the twin-wheeled versions have been built by the likes of King, Oldbury and also Trailmaster (I think).

Would welcome contact with anyone who has more data on QM and other vehicles of RAF.

Keep on Trucking.

Gp. Cpt. Cunningham also managed to land a Vulcan there as well so I am told, so you can land anything there once…

Are there any piccies of the above event floating around anyone’s hard drive?

JC landed, I think, the first of the two Comets to be used as training airframes at Halton.

Halton had a total of three Vulcans, the last (B1A XH479) flown in from Waddo by a crew from AAEE. The date was 28th June, but I’m not sure what year – probably 1967. There was an article in ‘Air Clues’ describing the preparations for the mission, including pics of the landing.

In 1946/47 as part of Project Ruby, USAAF B-17s and B-29s operated from Marham, dropping a series of bombs onto the U-boat pens at Farge. the B-17s carried Disney rocket-powered bombs on external bomb racks mounted under the wing root area.

The B-29s were used to carry Tallboy, Grand Slam and Amazon bombs (the Amazon a US equivalent of the Grand Slam in terms of weight, I believe). To load these biggies, the 29’s bomb doors were removed and special releases were fitted. To get the bombs into the aircraft a hole was dug in the ground, the bomb put in the hole and then the aircraft was towed over the top of the bomb which was then winched up to be carried semi-submerged in the belly of the aircraft.

The Grand Slam was designed to be dropped from an altitude that the Lancaster could not get to. Only the B-29 could get it to its optimum release height (35,000 + ft?). There were some pics of the Marham-based B-29s published in Flight at the time.