What about Wasalpan23, someone should contact him/her.

Those 2 minutes and 53 seconds of video are painful viewing. Somehow I don’t hold out much hope for her…

The tail wheel doors are open so it looks like he tried to land it and the undercarriage gave way.

Would be interesting to know what the bloke in the browny-orange is saying, maybe something like ‘we’ll have this back in the air in no time so don’t bother coming looking for it’ or ‘Cameron, this is OURS!’

I think most of us agree that the cockpit interior is real but that doesn’t explain the other photos. Why is there not a trail of debris behind the aircraft and why does the top of the cowling look completely unscathed? Might it have come in wheels down? Are we assuming that it got lost and ran out of fuel?

I still don’t like photos 1 and 2. Why would someone take them from so far away, if as people are speculating it was film/slide and so shots could not be wasted?

Bruce I posted that #103 there are some clever guys out there.

Yes, there are. I don’t know why people are so easily convinced. The rivets and panels line up exactly? Well that’s the kind of thing a good modeller will get right!

Re. the codes/serial, surely if this is a fake then someone could have done their research and found a P40 that had been lost in action and used its serial?

There are no clouds in the sky in photo 1 and then 2 and 3 look similar. We don’t know the time frame of these photos but that strikes me as strange.

Why would a modeller bother? Why do modellers make models at all? They accurately recreate parts that cannot be seen, like the pilot’s seat and wheel bays.

I know this obviously looks like a model but proves my point
http://www.scaleworkshop.com/workshop/lighntingcm_1.htm

David Burke – have any P40s been recovered from anywhere similar before? Could be an old photo?

Scotavia -there is a big assumption that the person who took the photographs is in some way an aircraft enthusiast. If we picked an average person off the street and asked them to photograph an aircraft there is no guarantee that they would take a picture that would include a serial or registration. Similarily if your taking a picture of something you find of interest its human nature to try and confine your picture to the subject.

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The close up of the hatch is puzzling me. Why take it? You would imagine a photographer that close lifting the hatch to see what was inside, you imagine seeing his free hand holding it open.

Also the photos have no sense of scale, obviously there isn’t a lot in the desert to provide scale but you can’t imagine anyone being in that remote location alone, so why is there no one else in the shot like here http://www.peakdistrictaircrashes.co.uk/lj628rec-1.jpg

I think this might already have been mentioned but wouldn’t you see a mirage?

AWOT is keeping strangely quiet considering the interest in this!