Many thanks Propstrike. I meant shots specifically at G-VFWE last weekend for purely personal reasons but that is a very nice picture. Cheers.

LOL – Legg On Line. Ho Ho.

Back in the late 1960s, I was a very regular schoolboy visitor to Miles Aviation & Transport (R&D) Ltd, a small firm set up by George Miles and based at the old FAA station at Ford near Arundel in Sussex. Derek Emsley, who has been posting on this thread over the last few days, was works manager there and did a great deal to foster and encourage my aviation interests so, along with a small number of other individuals in the industry and services, deserves my grateful thanks. After a gap of something like 39 years (!) I have recently re-established contact with him (connected with the death a while back of Neville Duke but that is another story).

Anyway, the point of this message is that c1969, Derek took me to one side one afternoon at Ford and asked me if I knew what was in the very large wooden packing case that was a ‘fixture’ in the corner of Miles’ hangar there. I didn’t know so he produced a ladder and we climbed into the open topped box and there to my amazement was the dismantled Student! My recollection was that the hinges on the car-type doors had been removed and so we were able to sit inside the cockpit complete with its firing buttons on the control column. So, it is a little known fact that the Student was hidden away at Ford for some time between c1967 and 1970 before going to Shoreham and the various trials mentioned further up. What I do not know – but would be interested to find out – is how the Student was moved from Ford to Shoreham. Did it fly or was it by truck?

All 23 B-17s are listed together with accompanying text in the English language book Red Stars 4 – Lend-Lease Aircraft in Russia by C-F Geust and G Petrov ISBN 952-5026-23-X (it confirms as mentioned above that none were actually supplied under Lend-Lease despite the book title).

WU-15 was NX611, later G-ASXX

The Catalina you mention that was in Australia was the Confederate Air Force example N68756. The RSL Building Society were one of several sponsors for the trip to Australia or during its time there. It made it back to Harlingen, Tx. but had various engine problems subsequently and in the end lasped into disuse and after various moves and misfortunes was saved from the scrapper by an Australian Mark Pilkington. It is currently stored for him on a farm at Midland, Tx.

The machine being ferried to NZ was N5404J and it suffered an engine failure between Hawaii and Tahiti, 16/1/1994. The prop could not be feathered and it eventually came down on the Pacific at night – the crew all got away OK but the hull was damaged and the Catalina sank. Its place in NZ was taken by Z-CAT which became ZK-PBY and is still extant and airworthy, based at Auckland

Unfortunately, I cannot add any more to my post of the 15th September. Original id still not known although my guess is that it was an ex-USAAF OA-10A Catalina that had been surplussed in the Far East, possibly at Tacloban, but that is not confirmed. A Dutch source says that after it was captured by the Dutch military, they used the hull as a bar!