There were lots of examples of this; basically it was to differentiate them from RAF variants. Also applied to foreign exports, usually in the 50-series.

The current master version of the FAA aircraft serials files (which, together with Mick Burrow – not Burrows! – I keep updated) gives the following. We are both working through the types, adding to and amending them with the plan to produce a second edition before too long:

X9560 Not delivered, possibly destroyed in bombing, Cowes 4/5.5.42 [More likely the a/c which crashed on TO Brooklands 1.7.42 after being built at Weybridge (L/C GS Lamb killed)

Mick may have more, but I haven’t got the amends for Walrus from him yet.

Lee

Fouga – Regardless of its unique nature, £1,500 is a lot of money by anyone’s standards and that would buy a lot of kit for other preservation projects. So, I don’t think that saying that a particular museum would be ‘fools’ not to snap this up is very helpful.

Well Rowland White managed to make a mountain out of a molehill with Phoenix Squadron, regardless of how good a ‘dit’ it might be. I’d still like to see what hard evidence was unearthed to underpin this particular claim. And again, why did it take this long?

I don’t know who did this ‘research’, what source documents they used, nor why it took so long to come to this conclusion, but the general consensus amongst most of those around at the time was that Hoagy was simply credited as Flight Leader on behalf of the others. The popular press grabbed hold of this and attributed the kill to Carmichael.

It sounds to me, with Winkle Brown now gone, as if someone is seeking out a new ‘hero’, regardless of whether in the course of doing so history gets slightly massaged.

[Dons superhero cod-piece and star spangled cape….]

HS255 became ZS-BNU (subsequently destroyed in hangar fire in South Africa in 1952) and HS256 became ZS-BNV (broken up c.1953).

There a pic of one of them with SA registration on the fuselage. Pretty well known as it appeared in (I think) Air Britain News many years ago.

Nice pic Duxman – would love a copy!

Lee

[slips back into obscurity]

Steve: Ref post 25, is this it on its way to Tattershall?