The book is very good, although some plot scenes are lifted from Bert Stiles’ Serenade to the Big Bird.

An excellent clip. Thanks for posting it. Portreath’s four runways and associated taxiways are still in situ but in poor condition, but few wartime buildings survive. Cue blatant plug for my book Stations of Coastal Command Then and Now due out in Feb, wherein all is revealed!

Thanks for posting that. It’s the fullest account of this accident that I’ve ever read. Back in the 1970s I met Bernard Sowerby and he kindly presented me with the Hampden’s radio which he had brought back from a recent visit to the crash site. I passed it on to my friend Doug Darroch who founded the Warplane Wreck Museum at Fort Perch, New Brighton, Wirral, where it is still on display.

A friend of mine saw what was probably this one over Wrexham at 1350 and it returned at 1731. A Hurricane was booked for both the Ayr and Portrush Airshows.

I got a similar one a couple of weeks ago but there has been no recurrence.

A former RAF aircraft fitter told me that removable panels rarely fitted other aircraft of the same type, hence the stencilled or pecilled serial numbers, He was talking about postwar types such as the Varsity. built by professionals, so one can imagine the results obtained by inexperienced shadow factory workers. Fixing holes drilled in different places, etc etc. Hence I think it unlikely but of course unprovable that cowlings were swapped around.