Duly signed and shared!

The ‘C’ identifies it as part of the fuselage structure, but that’s not much help!

I think Mr Spragg was packing as much detail as possible into that post in order to indicate the depth and breadth of his research. He certainly succeeded in impressing me. His book is evidently not a rehash of old theories and dubious suppositions, but I shall of course reserve judgment until I’ve read it.

I’ve always had a fascination for the Miller mystery and did a little delving in the archives over the years, enough to discover a few anomalies. One was that Twinwoods, then a satellite for 51 OTU at Cranfield, was temporarily closed around that time, so would it have had any Flying Control personnel to record movements? Maybe the pilot just phoned Cranfield from the watch office, or didn’t bother …

I also found an entirely separate reference to a UC-64 crash – in Alaska, I think – caused by loss of fabric from a wing. It may have mentioned other similar incidents. Must search for my notes.

Dave Smith

Unfortunately, Rob, no dates are given but neither No 3 nor 607 Sqn were based at Duxford in 1940. 56 was based there at the time of the final crash. Maybe for the 1940 incident operating from Duxford ws just an assumption
Dave

Possible perhaps. But a mention of en ejector seat in a Ju 87 and the use of the plural ‘aircrafts’ instead of ‘aircraft’ does not inspire confidence. I expect better from James Holland.

Hello again Ollie. Their wartime main office was at 17 Nicholas St, Chester but in 1946 seems to have been at 66 Castle Buildings, Bridge St. At that time, the Electrical Stores and Installation Dept was at 2 Pepper St and their showroom was at 52, Bridge St. The latter is now a coffee shop. They also had a wartime works at Weaver St, Saltney. That street is not on the A-Z but there are factory buildings of wartime vintage along the bank of the Dee. As a matter of interest, Anchor Motors which produced Wellington and Lancaster sub-assemblies for the Vickers factory at Broughton was also in Pepper St.
Dave Smith

Their full title was Carlux Electrical Services Ltd and they operated under an MAP contract to provide electrical work for a number of CROs, including Martin Hearn Ltd, Cunliffe Owen, Lancs Aircraft Corp, Scottish Aviation and Air Dispatch Ltd. This necessitated setting up 66 main and sub-depots all over the UK. The company’s main base was in Chester and in 1939 they were called upon to undertake the electrical side of repair and installation for all types of war-damaged aircraft sent to Martin Hearn at Hooton Park. The chief aircraft type involved was the Anson, but further country-wide contracts resulted in all major British and American-built aircraft being handled. By the war’s end, Carlux had electrically reconditioned 7,537 aircraft of all types. I imagine that the company doesn’t appear in RAF Training and Support Units because they didn’t actually repair airframes.

For the record, the photo of the P-47 dispersal was taken at Burtonwood NOT Speke. It first appeared in Roger Freeman’s Mighty Eighth War Manual but I had doubts about it. Borrowing the ATC vehicle, I toured the old Speke Airport’s perimeter but, as suspected, could find no likely area. Soon afterwards, I checked a wartime aerial photo of Burtonwood which accurately showed the dispersal later to be occupied by the P-47s. The photo was in one of the many volumes of The Army Air Forces in WW II, I forget which. but they are now available online. I wrote to Roger with the correction and in defence he told me that the back of his photo was stamped ‘Speke’ and it seems that it remains uncorrected in the IWM collection of his archive. Roger agreed with my findings and that the photo had been mis-captioned. Thus are myths perpetuated!