Thing that I remember about the Canberra is that crews returning from Luqua were rumoured (it could not possible be true, now could it?) to stow duty free fags in the tailplane actuator space and the customs officers couldn’t check the area as ‘on the secret list’.
Mike (RAF Marham 1956-8)

Absolutely
Mike

Oh, unless, of course it was meant that with no pilot in the cockpit and the engine running, prop blast under the tail would lift it
Mike

Bare metal P-51s actually had a lacquer applied to the wings to prevent corrosion and also to fill any imperfections in the surface – it was intended to have the surface of the wings as smooth as possible to maximise the efficiency of the laminar flow section – in practive the wings tended to get grubby anyway – hardly surprising.
Mike

I see that someone has said that the Spitfire was ‘not a war-winning’ aircraft. Of course it wasn’t. With the exception of the A-bomb (and even that needed to be transported by a B-29) no single artefact was a ‘war winner’. The war was won bay a combination of many weapons and, above all, by the men and women who used them. By itself, the Spitfire wouldn’t have won the BoB, let alone the war – not enough of them and ‘by itself’ would deny it the force multiplier of the command and control system of Fighter Command.
On the other hand, it has also been posted that the BoB would have been won without the Spitfire = a bit nearer the truth but be realistic. Without the Spitfires, Fighter Command would have been reduced to 2/3 of the strength that it actually had during the battle and its fighters – the Hurricane and the Defiant – and there were still some Gladiators in squadron service – would all have been of inferior performance to the 109s opposing them – not a happy picture.
Mike

My vote goes to the Bf 110 – OK, a reasonable night fighter later on but in 1940 it was supposed to be a fast, heavily armed, long range bomber escort and in that role I don’t think that it could be claimed to have been a success
Mike

I get a ‘page unavailable’ message
Mike