Many happy returns of the day Bruce.

The Skua was not a dive bomber, it was a dive bomber and fighter – which sounds risible, except it managed quite well in the anti-bomber role in Norway; it was of course, completely outclassed facing land-based fighters, never part of the original expectation.

See our forthcoming Skua& Roc book at the bottom of the page.

Thanks for the plug James!

FAA suffered from overburdened specs – had to get every role into broadly two types, in 1934 torpedo-spotter-recon and dive bomber-fighter. Norway however showed that high performance fighters were needed. Hurricanes and Spitfires hurriedly converted, Wildcats etc. bought and no room for dive bombing any more. TSR therefore became TBR and even more overburdened. Fighters could no longer carry AS bombs so TBR had to do anti sub as well. Throw the availability of radar into the mix and result was Barracuda, a collision between as many different types as possible.

Fulmar was a stop gap and insurance against failure of Roc. A veteran said to me recently ‘the FAA got the aircraft the RAF didn’t want’ – Fulmar is case in point. Warmed over Fairey Battle submitted for a requirement as a light bomber, which it loses to the Hawker Henley. Spec then cancelled. So not only did the RAF not want the aircraft, they didn’t even want the requirement! And this failed light bomber gets pressed into service as the FAA’s chief fighter! And shoots down more aircraft than any other FAA type (not saying an awful lot).

Plus ca change… Now we have GR7s doing everything.

Anyone got any pics of RAF photo-recon Mossies?

Yes, it’s the second prototype Seafang F. Mk 32 (see the “Royal Navy” marking) VB895, admittedly a navalised Spiteful. Griffon 89 engine, contra-rotating propellers and upward folding wings.

And another Supermarine dog by some accounts. Interesting difference of opinion between two test pilots. Mike Lithgow (Vickers Super’s test pilot) said he could never understand why the Navy went for the Seafire 46 instead of the Seafang. Eric Brown on the other hand said that lots of testing was done on the Seafang and in his opinion it never would have made a suitable carrier aircraft. The Sea Fury (and soon afterwards jets) made both rather irrelevant in any case.

Thanks James (and my apologies for not getting a copy of HT to you as I promsied – there’s only one in my whole organisation and I just couldn’t lay hands on it!). Exactly the sort of clarification of intent that was needed. It’s a little like the recent “future evolution” story that all the papers ran with as “what scientists say we’ll all look like in a 1000 years”. In fact, the guy that theorised was NOT an evolutionary biologist, and was being paid by a men’s magazine to speculate on future evolutionary pressures.

The same sort of misrepresentation and bandwagon jumping, followed by indignant protestation (understandable to a degree), occurred with this story. The media think that the public won’t understand the subtleties, so they extrapolate their own simplistic conclusions and run with them.

Yes, the culprit is the media and not one or other school of history. Take it from me as someone who works with the gentlemen of the press that we should expect little more. I can tell you now, if ye seek the truth don’t bother looking in TV documentaries, however scholarly and reliable they may seem.

Can I suggest James and Stuart settle any remaining differences like gentlemen, I think the BBMF can provide the weapons – Night Reaper for JDK and a Vb for Stuart. Place your bets…

Mrs Thatcher decides to take back the Falklands (hurrah)
Mr Eden decides to take back the Suez Canal (Boo)
Discuss
Personally I think both decisions were correct but for different reasons.
One final point, I think the Egyptian casualties were 600 not 6000 but high enough anyway.

Careful with that can, those worms will get everywhere.

Some fairly different issues at stake really. Little time though I have for Thatcher, at least she did not conspire secretly with an ally to invade another country, basically for business interests. It’s also a bit too easy to blame Eden for the downfall of the British Empire, though I think the writing was on the wall anyway.

With 20/20 hindsight, one can see how things might have turned out differently with different handling during, before and after Suez but the people acting at the time didn’t have that luxury. I suppose if Britain hadn’t tried to do something to stand up to Nasser, the country would have seemed to be pretty well emasculated anyway so it really was a last throw of the dice.

I think there are a fair few people who would put the Falklands in the ‘boo’ camp as well though now you mention it.

On the plus side we had Wyverns at Suez and SHARs at the Falklands so hurrah! on both those fantastic aircraft and not a word more about the politics.

Interesting programme alright, even if it did suffer from the modern documentary maker’s blight, the need to ‘dramatically reconstruct’. I wouldn’t have complained if there had been a bit less of James Fox looking pensive and more of that superb Wyvern launching and in flight footage. The sound of those contra-props sent a shiver down the spine even on that little bit of voiced over film.

Most of the footage was very well chosen, though some was a bit stitched together. E.g. ‘Israel only had world war two era piston engined aircraft until France sold her fifty Mirage jets’ (cue some library footage of Israeli Mirages from various angles then, oops, some Meteor F8s) but nowhere near ‘Midway’ levels of inappropriate footage.

Did quite well to explain the background as well in the previous two programmes, though the fact they were trying to draw comparisons with Iraq was maybe a bit obvious.

Can we see more of that Wyvern film please?

Here is a nice angle shot of the MB-5. (top image) .

Seeing this I can understand slightly more why the replica looks the way it does, this pic is quite foreshortened. I wonder if they were working from this rather than the classic side on shot?