Yes, a very interesting programme. No mention was made of LMF but I wonder if that came into the equation.

Mine is Stores ref 6B/214 and is a Mk111F, it also says it is Isothermal calibration. I guess this is an earlier one, I don’t know when the ICAN system came in but guess that was post war. If that is any little help to you

My old pilot served in three air forces. He was under training in the Polish Air Force when Germany invaded in 1939 and escaped via Hungary to France, where they joined the French Air Force. He was sent to continue his training to North Africa and when France adopted the Vichy regime these left for England to join the RAF. He eventually signed on to age 55 and would have left the RAF in the mid 1970’s, although he continued in a civilian role for some time after wards.

Absolutely super.
This took me back well over 60 years to when I was a nav/rad on Mossies. My pilot was keen that we be the best crew and so I had to continue with my commentary until I could no longer see the target blip as it disappeared into the permanent echo at about 300 ft range.
One night our target was a Lincoln and we did the normal, I got a real shock when my pilot said “you can look up now”. The Lincoln was over twice the span of the Mossie which I normally saw and it looked as if we were about to crawl into the bomb bay.

I’m afraid people are judging those times by todays softer standards. The general public did not want a war, they had strong memories of the last one which had only finished 20 years earlier. But they did not trust the jerries, as the Germans were derisively called. As a child of 8 at the time, I had been raised on the mantra that “the only good german is a dead one”. We had also been scared by the prospect that we would be bombed and gassed immediately the war started, but that had not happened, the jerries were not going to win in a few days. Living as we did some 7 or 8 miles from Dover we had been warned that they would invade when we had to abandon France. I well remember the general air of defiance, and being told. “When (note when, not if) the jerries come, you boys are to put sugar in their petrol tanks. The village had a fairly well organised, and armed, Home Guard, and I learnt later, a squad of determined veterans with a well stocked bunker in the woods, ready to resist any invasion.
If it had come we were also told that on no account must we leave the village, in order to keep the roads clear for the army.
I suppose if they had it would have been very rough for us, but we didn’t think of that. We were going to win!

As a diversion, a few years ago I saw this in a Paris furnishing exhibition

It had a glass insert to turn it into an occasional table. When I showed an interest in it the German who had made it asked me where he could find bits of old aircraft. Afraid I have lost his card

An early mark Spitfire is an absolute No. 1