I would have thought that some of the responsibility lies with the purchaser.

Yep, it is called caveat emptor and unfortunately it still seems most people only wake up to it after they have been stung, and I ain’t Robinson Crusoe in this matter. Hopefully for me those days are long gone – but there are always new tricks, and any collector must be prepared by making sure they do their homework. In the end it is no good blaming the seller no matter how dishonest they are. When it is all said and done they are just walking in the door we left open through our own carelessness and too often our own greed.

But I think this thread has sailed awfully close to becoming libellous in its accusations and it really ought to be closed or deleted. Sales, if they are fraudulent, and I am not saying they are, are matters for the legal system, not a public forum.

I’ve been watching this thread with a slight passing interest and apart from the fact the seller has appeared back on line, I have to ask two questions.

1) After sixty years, is there anything further to be learned about aviation history by digging up crashed aeroplanes?
It’s not as if The Battle of Britain isn’t well covered in printed matter already. There are even whole aeroplanes–some rebuilt, some not so rebuilt from the period available free in museums for us to study.

2) Why would anyone part with hard earned cash to buy a piece of Ali-scrap (and let’s face it, exhibit 1 on this thread is a piece of ali-scrap) –even if it was once attached to a WW2 aeroplane? The item in question here has all the provenance of the king’s new clothes if you ask me.
Ali scrap = Ali scrap.
Surely as others have said here already, the deeds of the men who flew the things are what count.

Still, there a sucker born every minute as the man once said.
I’ve got some old window frames in the shed, anyone want them?

A.

I tend to agree with those comments, but then I suspect that all of you would have not needed me to to tell you that. 😀

One of my interests is collecting antique firearms which I have been doing for the last 40 odd years. In that time like every serious collector of these quite expensive items I have learnt through painful financial experience to double and triple check things like provenance, evidence of restoration and most importantly if an item is a fake. There is lots of money involved and the level of attempted dishonest practice while not high is still something to be contended with, and believe me I think I have seen most of the various tricks that people will resort to to turn mutton into lamb.

Any collecting field that involves people competing for rare or finite numbers of artefacts will without doubt collect a fair number of people who will take advantage of unwitting, inexperienced or careless collectors. I am not surprised given the amount of information posted on this forum in several other threads in which I was involved that faking is happening, in fact I would say that the item under discussion is probably the tip of the iceberg seeing as how there appears to be little or no attempt by collectors of this sort of material to establish any sort of nationally or internationally accepted standards. Setting standards might seem too much like that nasty word “professional” which seems to upset our amateur enthusiasts however it does have long term benefits and will weed out fakes.

In antique arms collecting faking and creating false provenances exists but there are guidelines which are adhered to by the reputable dealers and collectors and wide publication of known fakes etc. so a lot of these are weeded out – this practice is good for the hobby because it serves to remove the untrustworthy items and sellers. Just simple awareness amongst collectors of an item that is not what it is purported to be will see it frozen out of the market. Also experienced collectors like myself have built up a body of experience and knowledge which allows us to be very discerning as to where our hard earned money is spent. Part of that is following a golden rule that money is not spent unless you have personally examined the item or if that is impossible you have had a reputable dealer do it for you, then and only then do you purchase. As I said I, like all experienced long term collectors, have been burned by a mistaken purchase at some time or other. It hurts but you learn from it and move on.

Buying an item that has collector value but which cannot be physically verified by the purchaser in the conditions which operate on Ebay seems sheer silliness to me. I’ve examined far too many examples of purported rare items that physically made a mockery of their somewhat flattering photographs. So as I said always check the item before you buy and if you can’t have someone you trust do it for you. As for items bearing painted markings and which are commanding high prices I’d either make sure that I was expert enough to know wartime paint from the modern variety or if not have someone who was do the checking. In fact if I was buying anything that relied on painted markings to give it its value that would be the first thing I checked.

That’s a nice job for a replica – is it all metal or a mixture of materials?

On consideration, although I favoured the Botha simply because it continued to be produced even after its defects were apparent, I vote for the Lerwick.

A description I read of its single engine performance which suggests that all it could do was spiral down to a crash landing, the account of the one that put down in a canal, and the one that rolled over at its mooring, drowning the crew when a wing float came adrift were the clinchers. So Lerwick it is.

Aircraft like the Fairey Albacore and Curtiss Seamew spring to mind because they were replaced after service by the aircraft they were supposed to replace.

Some German types like the Bachem Natter and the Heinkel 162 didn’t perform but they never really had the chance so it’s hard to say about them. The aforementioned Me-210 is noteworthy, while the inflammable Heinkel 177 could get a guernsey as well.

The Consolidated B32 Dominator is also a candidate, but it was really only insurance for failure of the B29. Speaking of bombers there is the Boeing B40 which was the bomber escort version of the B17, which was so slow it couldn’t keep up with the bombers, and the B41 which was the “fighter” version of the Liberator, however it did not see service, whereas the B32 and the B40 did.

The Germans holding Pegasus Bridge on the evening of the fifth June 1944 might heartily have wished that chutes rather than gliders had been used.

Moggy

Granted that occasionally they worked, bit like the Botha, but when they didn’t then the casualty rate was high. The use of parachutes was accepted by war’s end to be much more effective and lessened the casualty rates that’s why gliders got the flick.

I think it’s the other way around -not that you’ve got the the schemes wrong, but that the original photograph is the day scheme, which has been hand retouched to colour for the nightfighter scribble for some reason. The airbrushing and treatment of the canopy in the upper of the two pics is the giveaway, IMHO.

Yep you’re right – pity they scrapped it.