Another case of thinking aloud. What if the apparent change in dihedral was an illusion caused by an aerodynamic ‘flick’ upwards and forwards at the wing root done in order to reduce the effective camber at the root – an early forties idea, trialed on the Spitfire and applied to the P-38 via a mod leading edge fairing? There is no apparent break in dihedral at the trailing edge at all, and to make the rear fuselage shape make sense there can’t really be any break – a ‘higher’ t/e root would make the low rear fuselage even more pronounced, for no aerodynamic reason. The way the wings meet the centreline, defined by looking at the point midway between flaps – only works with no ‘flattened’ centre section – bear in mind that the trailing edge is already slightly curved, according to the flaps.

It makes more sense as a shape if you see the whole wing as dihedralled, curved in plan form, and the leading edge root as lifted.

[ATTACH=CONFIG]256878[/ATTACH]

Northrop Gamma..:D

Not a fake in the sense you describe, but maybe a mock up or model for some other reason, not photographed with any intention to deceive for profit and which has been placed quite innocently alongside other aeroplane photos. The ‘Piltdown Man’ thing was perhaps unfair, but it was meant to illustrate the combining of elements of other genuine articles well enough to fool experts, even if in this case it was never intentional, unlike Piltdown Man.

Is this scenario not just as likely as a completely unrecorded aircraft type, too sophisticated for a homebuild, and yet combining elements from different phases of design orthodoxy and showing peculiar design elements like that tailwheel?

Just something to be considered.

..which helps place it as not a modern ‘deliberately aged’ image. I doubt a faker would go that far!

..and to add that I completely failed to notice the aparrent postage stamp before, so apologies for an earlier post saying there wasn’t one. I thought we were discussing the typing! My bad.

Narrowly missed out by not spotting the ICM Yak 9 rear fuselage.. and you said the G-word.

Does Bartley’s or Tuck’s book name Hill?

I don’t have anything in front of me and all my references are packed away, but I remember looking into this as a strangely obsessed 16 year old in pre-internet days and being led to wonder, by an odd contradiction/discrepancy in the record as published by After the Battle whether another missing aircraft and pilot from this particular action was the one found a month later and Hill’s name became attached erroneously later.

Or possibly (worse) the wrong man was unfortunately buried as Hill. I do remember being warned off this by someone at Key Publishing as potentially too upsetting for someone and implying this wasn’t for kids, but this was 30 years ago. Sorry I can’t be more specific, it’s for someone else to step in and put this one to bed, perhaps? Tangmere, are you still around?

I would suggest that for the story to be told independently by two people who were ‘there’ at the time and who had no real reason to make such specifics up about the death of someone they knew means it’s not fake – but very likely, because of the earlier burial, incomplete.

Yes, I read the details in ‘BoB Then and Now’ a long time ago. It took a while for it to be discovered, apparently. I cannot recall the details of the unfortunate pilot or Spitfire, but I do remember noticing that there was possible confusion between two ‘missing’ casualties.