I have been trying to resist posting but feel I must (and see if anyone agrees with me).

Ordinarily I would say that places such as Lebanon, where Islamic terrorists originate from, are just getting whats deserved, but on this occasion I think the Israelis have gone OTT.

To my mind a more appropriate response would be to have sent in special forces to locate and free their captured soldiers and to make strikes against the Hezbollah rocket launching sites. What they have done is to destroy a lot of civilian infrastructure – power stations, roads, bridges, the civilian airport in Beirut, the port, killing lots of civilians along the way and preventing civilians from getting out or supplies getting in. I have even heard they attacked civilian convoys attempting to get to Syria. On the whole, the Lebanese do not seem to be the most radical Islamic nation, indeed theres quite a large Christian population and a variety of other religious groups who probably dont (or didnt) have a problem with Israel.

Hezbollah and the Lebanese government are not one in the same and nor do I think the latter has much (if any) influence or control over the former, although they should probably be trying harder to keep them in line.

Getting back on topic, even if Lebanon does have some Hunters, as has been said, there would be no point in sending them up against the IAF as they would get slaughtered. Aside from the Israelis having top American equipment, they also have arguably the most rigourous training and the most dedication of any airforce in the world with 3 trained pilots for each aircraft. A very large percentage of young Israelis also wish to join their armed forced and defend what they see as their country by religious right and so the ones that make it through are very dedicated to their purpose.

As a follow up to that, I have just found the clip and I cant actually see a Speedbird logo at all, only “B.O.A.C.” :rolleyes: They may well haev added one later or I suppose it isnt inconceivable that it was still around during the early BA years while the Negus & Negus livery was used.

If you go to Hatton Cross tube station, just outside the airport, but once the main station serving the site, there are still blue Speedbird logos set onto an orange background in mosaic tiles on the pillars along the platforms.

Try http://local.live.com instead 😉

I recommend the book “Spitfire in Action” by Squadron/Signal Publications. Its designed with modellers in mind and has excellent 3 views of most marks.

Certainly Summers’ first name was Joseph, most texts I have list him as M. J. Summers so perhaps “Mutt” derived from a Christian name he did not use? Trubshaw was E. Brian Trubshaw or ‘EBT’ as he often signed things!

Interestingly Flt Lt (later Air Marshall) E. H. “Mouse” Fielden seems to be a link between both above mentioned test pilots as he was the pilot of the first aircraft Trubshaw ever saw as a boy. Later he would interview Trubshaw and become his CO in the RAF.

In Trubshaw’s book “test pilot” he seems to express admiration for Summers and says that when he joined Vickers, Mutt had been a test pilot for over 25 years and flown over 40 prototypes so that would add up reasonably well with the information already posted.

Trubshaw suggests however that by 1951, technological advancements were starting to get ahead of him, as Mutt wished to take the Valiant up for its first flight without the use of the powered controls, in manual reversion 😮

Obviously I’ve never flown a V-bomber 😀 but I can only imagine this would be like trying to drive a car thats supposed to have power assisted steering when the PAS has failed, rather than like a car that wasnt supposed to have it in the first place.

Who’s Dale? 😀

I swear I’ve seen the name on here before.. perhaps Ant wasnt actually registered when this thread was started and registered subsequently?

If not, Ant appears to be a member over at http://www.classicbritishaviation.org

On topic, I must admit I dont know of many famous female aviators, save for a couple of recent ones, Barbara Harmer and Beatrice Vialle who both flew Concorde, for BA and AF respectively.