I first heard about this P-38 back in the 1960s when its prop tips were said to be sticking out of the sand, implying that the sea level has risen somewhat. Of course there was no proper preservation movement in those days and no one had any spare cash. For example, I was offered a P-38 cockpit pod by a scrap dealer near Blackpool for £15. That would have gone nicely with a P-38 spread on a mountainside near Aberystwyth, more or less complete in very large sections. The missing bit was the pod which had disintegrated. The only transport available was a Ford Anglia so that project was a non-starter!

But I digress. The Harlech P-38 is quite historic as it was one of the first of the type in the UK and had flown across the Atlantic via Greenland and Iceland, an epic in its own right. After these perilous early deliveries all subsequent P-38s were shipped over. I see no point in allowing it to continue to corrode away slowly and invisibly when there is a reasonable chance it could be saved for posterity. Maybe it could replace the Do 17 in the poly tunnel or acquire one of its own a bit sooner? Just speculating …

Dave Smith

I used to listen on HF to the B-52s coming back from Iraq. They used deliberately non-aggressive call signs such as Foster 15. The voices doing the R/T were definitely American but that could have been deliberate too. I can’t really imagine that they were RAF-flown though. I remember one aircraft repeatedly calling ‘Black Knight Provisional’ with no response. I thought it strange that I could hear them loud and clear on my £100 set from Tandy! Anyone know if Black Knight Provisional was at Fairford?

Well said, Andy. Please come back Kevin and give us an approximate location for this wreck on the lines of ‘x miles off xxx’. If it’s a Sunderland, it shouldn’t be too difficult to identify it or at least narrow it down. Any other type and it gets difficult …

and thereafter it drops to Roc bottom …

CH2787 sounds like an IWM neg number to me.