Unless I have lost my mind, a high winged monplane, with what appeared to be floats, just flew over the outskirts of Derby.

Presumably the very same aircraft just seen over Ruddington, Notts! Strange reading your post and looking out of the window in the same moment to see it myself. Looked like a Cessna 182, in which case I’m guessing it will be G-ESSL as that’s the only amphibious 182 in the country at the moment as far as I’m aware.

http://www.airplane-pictures.net/image14666.html

The markings on the tail suggest it’s an aircraft from the 313th Bomb Wing, all 313th aircraft having a large circle painted on the fin. A different letter was used for each Bomb Group, and it’s hard to read in this photo but it looks like an ‘R’, which would make it an aircraft from the 6th BG of the 313th BW. The marking on the fuselage side is most likely a 7 as numbers rather than letters were used to identify individual aircraft.

The He111 was the only Luftwaffe bomber involved in the Blitz that had the bomb load mounted vertically as described, the other types having conventionally mounted bomb loads.

Thanks Avion,

Yep, that’s the DoBAF example, the question still stands though as to whether this is the Prince Barnard aircraft…

Meanwhile, the evidence over on WIX appears to point toward the 1941HAG’s example as having served in a three-tone US Navy camouflage scheme! News to me…

I’m by no means a member of the ‘Roundal Police’, but I thought as there hasn’t been much comment on this I’d chip in. IIRC the colours were swapped in the late 1920’s, there are pics of various 20’s types such as the Flycatcher and Gamecock with blue-white-red, but go forward into the 30’s with types such as the Hart and it swaps round to Red-White-Blue.

It’s one of the little-spoken of facts that at around this time the British military began to be wary of the French, and war with France seemed most likely to be the next major european conflict. This continued to be the case until Hitler became a serious threat in the late 30’s. I think the swap of fin flash colours was to ensure that they didn’t look like the French ones, and later in the 30’s fin flashes were done away with entirely for a while.

This ‘war with France’ thing was also the reason why RDF (Radar) stations were placed along the south coast, aswell as up the east coast, which is why Fighter Command ended up with RDF stations that were so handily placed in the summer of 1940…

That’s my tuppence worth!

They seemed to have been based at early Heathrow (Heston?), not sure where else?

Slight correction there Pagen old chap, the old aerodrome that was expanded to become Heathrow was the old Great West Aerodrome. Easily confused as Fairey had production facilities at both sites, and the two sites were practically next-door to eachother! Heston is now largely built over, with a chunk of fly-over running across it to boot.

They made a few, technically a Mk.XVI is a Mk.IX with a Packard engine anyway so a change to RR would technically convert it to a Mk.IX. That’s my understanding anyway!