It’s a Mk.9 seat attached to some wood….

Thanks Dave, not a lot for £5K then!!:eek:

Blimey, that sounds good for a Bucc cockpit, oh for the room!

Because they insisted on the span being no more than 99feet to fit through the unmodified doors of the existing hangars…

That’s a well worn myth and I’m amazed that it still comes up.
Recent discussion, http://forum.keypublishing.com/showthread.php?t=122758
Hangar clear spans of the era were 120 ft and 150 ft for a A and C & D types respectively.

Paul, I kind of agree with your comments, it can be all too easy to run these retrospective comparisons and ‘what was betters’, indeed it’s now easy to overlook that the Stirling was the only four engined bomber design from the outset to get put into production, both the Halifax and the Lancaster emerging from twin engineed specifications.
However good debate and information can come forth from discusions like this on forums.

I personally think that the Stirling could have been an ‘almost great’ bomber, had a full width and length bomb bay been used along with the the longer 112 foot span (or even the 135′ Super Stirling span) it would have brought an unrivelled capability to Bomber Command some two years before the Lancaster.
It’s interesting that the two types had the same cruising and maximun speeds which suggests the power of the Stirling was fine but the shorter span (comparative to weight & fuselage size) was a limiting factor in operational ceiling.

As it was it was a remarkable machine of the uncertain Expansion era, especially when you consider that it was designed to replace the likes of the biplane Heyford, however as with many other types procurred at the time it quickly became absolete as huge advances were being made in aerial warfare.

Talking of the angle of incidence problem, didn’t the Whitley suffer from this as well which gave it it’s nose down stance in flight?

As far as I’m aware BAE pass on all their uneeded historical drawings, photos & data etc to their own publicly accessible archive (there is some care about their heritage) collection at Farnborough.
I would certainly contact them before lending too much credence to the destruction story mentioned.

Other pre BAE company collections are worth trying as mentioned above, ie Brooklands for Vickers stuff.

The AD designation may of helped, but ‘SPAD’ was coined due to the apparent ruggedness of this single seat, single engined combat type, a nod to the original WWI aircraft which shared the same attributes.

I passed by and said “hello” to Joe McBryan (aka ‘Buffalo Joe’) at Coventry Airport yesterday.

Worth remembering that two of his aircraft are at St Athan at the moment with his good pal, Bruce Dickinson, business CAL.
I have heard from a good source that there maybe a connection between St Athan and the Atlantic Electra soon, but should stress that I don’t know the validity of that.

As it is Electra G-LOFC is a semi regular, and very welcome sight at Cardiff where it can be seen flying circuits on occasional weekends.

Great shot! What a shame though, for me this was the most interesting 10 in the fleet, especially with its history, I wonder how many hours it had clocked up by the time it landed?

Thanks Jelle, so we should be comiserating about the last K.4!
I didn’t realise it was ZD241s last sortie today, is its fate confirmed yet?
Did the three variants formation take place at all?