Is that so? P38, Firefly, Vampire, P63, Mosquito ,Blenheim – and thats just a few from the UK. The list is still growing, and we will keep losing pilots & planes until flying is banned altogether. Is the risk acceptable?

I believe that if you add up the total number of historic aircraft lost in museum fires since 1979 – Canadian Warplane Heritage, Le Bourget (Not sure about the location of this one – certainly in France), Yanks Museum – you’ll find that the number is more than those lost in flying accidents in that time. Add onto that hurricanes – Fantasy of Flight, and the collection at Galveston – and it greatly outnumbers them.

Anyone care to have a go at the maths?

Adrian

They’re all frightfully keen …

Actually, just to change the track a little, has anyone else ever wondered how much effort went into recreating (or possibly creating a chocolate box version of) Edwardian England for “Those Magnificent Men…”.

Sure, there’s Bedford power station – a bit hard to paint out, I suspect – and VW engines in various aircraft, and I’m sure we can come up with a list of nits to pick as long as my arm, but for what was essentially a bit of lightweight fluff the recreation of somewhere akin to Brooklands was an impressive effort.

Was it the first pig to fly, or the dog, that had a placard that flaps to reveal the piece of card came off a packet of Scott’s Porage Oats?

Adrian

Saw 633 Squadron again last weekend…

there’s a sequence near the beginning when the Mossies land and line up on the pan and I spotted a Land Rover in amongst all the jeeps and other ground equipment – priceless!!

Land Rovers crop up quite prominently at least a couple of times in 633 – at one point two of the characters are driving round in one,so there’s no mistaking it.

There’s also at least one post-1951 Fordson Major appears, and keep an eye out for the twin Lewis gun mounting on the ground that keeps creeping into shot, with the two barrels sticking out of the cooling jacket in different directions…

The annoying thing is that real period vehicles must have been in better supply back then!

Adrian

Good to see the Pterodactyl (or is it the Granger Archaeopteryx? It’s extinct, whatever it is!). I’ve been there several times and don’t recall ever seeing it, it’s so well hidden in the murk. Pity, as it’s a survivor of a weirder age – wouldn’t it be nice if OW got their hands on it?

Adrian

Point taken… 😮

Adrian

Easy way to assess which is likeliest. Compare the number of aircraft lost in accidents to those where sabotage was demonstrably the cause. If the former outnumbers the latter, then accident is most likely. Anyone care to come up with a few numbers?

Coming soon: Leigh-Mallory shot before crash, by Duke of Kent…

Adrian

RAF Great Sampford’s perimeter track is tarmac over concrete and I would presume that the current surface is original as it closed in 1945. Some is used by farm vehicles, but most of the repairs look to be patching or putting scalpings down.

It was home of a demonstration, in front of the inventor, of laying Sommerfeld tracking at speed – the main runway was completed in less than a day, IIRC. What really startled me, however, was walking past roadworks in Oxford in December and seeing stuff almost identical to Sommerfeld tracking being used to stabilise the lower section of roadbed before the tarmac went on top.

I don’t know about six feet deep, but the depth of concrete must have been reasonable as the last time I visited Great Dunmow a great deal of soil had been removed to retrieve concrete left behind when the perimeter track had been dug out first – so there must have been a quite a bit left, and there was at least eighteen inches of soil on top of it so a lot had been taken out the first time around.

Adrian

You know – I never thought of that, clothes, food, weapons. That’s a grave…..that’s not right if thats the case?

At risk of seeming very rude, and starting a bit of a flame war, the Russians have a very different attitude towards death, and the dead, to us. Like it or not, we have to accept that. Of course, if there’s a legal position involved, it might be different…

(dons tin hat – we’ve had one or two of these before, anyone remember the head in the carrier bag?)

Adrian