The very piece of film I was thinking of, Iain. And a useful extra snippet – where did you find out about the A-26 being modified?
Presumably, then, the US were experimenting at leasta year after the Dams raid – IIRC the A-26 didn’t arrive in Europe until the summer of 1944? (though if you’d told the crews who tried to land them at Gt Dunmow in a monsoon it was summer…)

You’re not an archaeologist are you, unearthing a thread this old?

Adrian

Does anyone else think that the first photo reminds them of a mother hen and her chicks?

Or am I just warped?
(on second thoughts, don’t answer that!)

ADrian

Ah, now that I wasn’t aware of, the hedges do rather block the view. Glad to hear it. By the way, if you read this before I edited it last, I was shouting at myself, not anyone else.

Lets hope somebody does something similar with the other side.

ADrian

And no sign of Bicester, or the airship hangars at Cardington….

Adrian

(got my Dad’s goat, when he was a local builder, that with all those squaddies at Debden HE ended up on the hangar roof cleaning out the gutters!)

didn’t want to admit I’d ever been to Wantage….

Anyway, you can now triangulate it on a map! Don’t however try to get to it off the M4 without a big green Bedford full of chaps in combats…

Adrian

Go to:

http://1914-1918.invisionzone.com/forums/index.php?

You don’t need to join to read. (it’s surprising how many Flypast Forum members turn up there!)

and search for “Harry (or Henry) Allingham”. Once agin this year, aged 109, I beleive he went to St Omer to lay a wreath.

I believe there may be an RFC mechanic as well, as I think Harry was RNAS, but you may need to inventive in your searching. Veteran or survivor in the relevant sub-forum may work, but you’ll probably get a lot of other stuff too!

Good luck!

Adrian

There were a number of designs at Airspeed that sound a lot like these, but never got off the drawing board.
Bruce

Probably a good point – no doubt Mr Shute was more than capable of designing his own aircraft for his novels, given his other job!

Adrian

Nick,

There is a map on the wall and some history in “The Bell” at Aldworth – well worth a trip to one of the best real ale pubs about IMHO.

There are several footpaths crossing the old airfield and at this time of year while the land is under the plough you can see where a lot of the hardstandings etc were by the chalk in the soil where they were dug out. It was an odd-shapped airfield, with the three runways almost meeting in the middle. There are a number of air-raid shelters surviving in the woods between the airfield and the village, and a number of large earth banks which look to have once housed vulnerable buildings (fuel?) rather than aircraft, and much of the fence round the wood is still the WW2 era barbed wire. Oh, and there are AMAZING bluebells in spring!

ADrian