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Scouse1

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  • in reply to: Wellington crash in Birmingham August 1942 #773050
    Scouse1
    Participant

    Thanks for that – I knew someone would have the answer at their fingertips.

    My father was in lodgings in Tyburn Road, Birmingham at the time, and was garage foreman at the Tyburn depot of the department store Lewis’s. From checking with maps, the crash site would only have been about a quarter of a mile away. I’m guessing the Latex Rubber company was part of Dunlop’s.

    The entry reads: 1 am. A Wellington crashes by the canal by digs. Go out in uniform leaving Mrs W [his landlady] in hell of a panic.
    Ammo exploding and terrible fire. 4 men killed and 2 saved by bailing out. Dozens of coppers – give them a hand to hold the crowd back. It sets fire to a store room at Latex Rubber. Out by about 2 and so to bed.

     

    in reply to: DH Comet 1 Prototype #795017
    Scouse1
    Participant

    A bit of digging has disclosed that the Comet clubhouse fuselage I referred to earlier in this thread was the second prototype G-ALZK, with some additions from an unidentified ex-RAF Comet.
    I must admit that it seems strange that major parts of the world’s first two purpose-built jet airliners were sent for scrap as late as the late 60s/early 70s but ho hum, what’s done has been done.

    https://abpic.co.uk/pictures/view/1194223

    in reply to: DH Comet 1 Prototype #795199
    Scouse1
    Participant

    Bruce, thanks for that information. It’s jogged my memory that it was Martin Painter that I exchanged emails with years ago and who fed me the information about the fuselages’ identities.

    in reply to: DH Comet 1 Prototype #795488
    Scouse1
    Participant

    By the late 1960s, there were four Comet 1 remains to be seen at Farnborough. Two cocooned fuselages, a fuselage in BOAC markings in use as some sort of clubhouse, and a truncated centre fuselage.
    In the early 2000s I exchanged a few emails with a Comet researcher. Unfortunately, they’ve vanished into an internet black hole, so I’ve got to go from my memory.
    The gist of the information  was that F-BGNX, now at Salisbury Hall, was one of the cocooned fuselages. The other cocooned fuselage was identified, although I’ve forgotten the details, and the incomplete fuselage was reckoned to be a surviving chunk of the prototype G-ALVG. The identity of the clubhouse was still a mystery, though.
    I took the attached picture at the 1968 Farnborough, with the possible remains of G-ALVG in the background . The next show I attended was 1974, by when there was nothing to be seen apart from a fuselage in the far distance somewhere at the Laffans Plain end.
    Can anyone else throw some more light on things?

    in reply to: I was told by my parents… #798104
    Scouse1
    Participant

    I was told by my parents that I was reduced to tears by the sound of a Sea Fury doing a rocket assisted take-off at Hooton in the mid-1950s, but my own memories of that are hazy, to say the most.
    Much more in focus is the memory of a USAF air to air refuelling demonstration at Speke in June 63. A KB-50 flew past with an RB-66, F-100 and F-101 trailing along behind. My memory is that it was a hose and drogue system, with the recipients not actually engaging with the hoses. At the age 11, I felt cheated! 

    Edit: I’ve cross-referenced with another website for the exact day and aircraft involved.

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