ResmorohGot mine in the mid-50’s. Can’t lay hands on them at the moment, but the red one(?) was circular, and the green one(?) octagonal. They were stamped (at Cardington) with my surname and initials, my RAF Service Number, and my Religion. I used them until I finally retired from RAF Reserve Service in 1998. The only thing I did to them was to scratch my blood-group on the reverse just before we set off on Op CORPORATE 48-hrs after our Argentinian colleagues had started the whole unpleasantness.
HTH
Resmoroh
ResmorohDavid,
Almost all of them if the money is right, the political will weak (or biased), and EH’s ability to slap Listed Building status on whatever is severely neutered by a central administration intent on pandering to The Developers in the hope that some of their ill-gotten gains will be given to whichever political party’s war-chest(s) offer to slacken the rules governing Planning Permission.
It is c.15 miles Heathrow to Central London. It is c. 39 miles Central London to Foulness. If some Developer says “I will build an airport to the highest international standards at Foulness. And if you let me bulldoze a few houses/villages/towns then I can get you from Foulness to Central London in less time than it currently takes from Heathrow”. Now I don’t know who owns the freehold of London Airport, but you can imagine them salivating at the profit to be made selling Heathrow for housing development. Heathrow is also on the “wrong” side of London – too many people, too much housing. Essex, on the other hand, would make life a lot easier for many (except, of course, those who’s houses/villages/towns are to be bulldozed) low population density, low value agricultural use, etc, etc.
Now I have no financial interest in a Foulness Airport, but I just wish to try to make sure that the “Save Everything At All Cost” brigade are prepared to look at the hard, cold, decisions that very well might – in the not too distant future – be made by individuals, companies, local councils, and even Parliaments (provided we can manage to elect one with not too many Spoiled Ballot Papers if AV is introduced!).
Reality is a nasty thing. Preserving heritage comes a very poor second.
HTH
Resmoroh
ResmorohI simply refer you to Post #3527. Somebody (no names, no Pack drill) is on the first rung of what might well be an enormously well paid Quango Hopping career. The guys on the ‘shop floor’ have, probably, been had as ‘patsies’.
The VAT nonsense, etc, is niff-naff and trivia. There is a subtle difference between those who just/only want to see the Tin Triangle making a Lot Of Noise at their beloved Air Shows, and those who want/need to make sure it (financially, and technically) actually happens. Lot of difference between the two. The former looking at the world through rose-coloured spectacles. The latter (may be) looking at unemployment.
When will you airshow fanatics come into the real world? Are you just trying to re-live the intense, professional, satisfaction that some of us, very fortunate individuals, had when the Vulcan went and did it’s primary job? Not good enough. How many actually saw the Vulcan on the first lay down of 21 x 1000lb live, iron bombs? I did. Incredible!
If XH558 were to lay down a stick of 21 x 1000lb live iron bombs somehwere in the UK then I would pay good money to go see that!
If not, then please wind your necks in!
HTH (and I know it won’t)
Resmoroh
ResmorohWhatever happens to the airframe and/or the VTTS the XH558 concept will live for ever. It will be quoted, in perpetuity, by historians and business schools as how NOT to organise and run a project. It will live alongside The Battle of Mons, and the Charge of The Light Brigade, in terms of futility! Even modern school history may teach it – and there’s fame for you!!
A good idea . . . . BUT!
Resmoroh
ResmorohThere was (and still is?) a lot of “hidden” goings-on before, during, and after the Falklands War. I believe that Caspar Weinberger was given some fairly high level (honorary) UK ‘gong’* for his part in the shennanigens.
Additionally, was there not some problem with the cockpit switches on various marques of Harrier (and AIM-9). This, I was told, was the problem that resulted in an AIM-9 being fired from a ground taxy-ing Harrier into the remnants of the Welsh Guards Mortar Platoon (ex-Bluff Cove preventable disaster) while they were snow clearing at RAF Stanley?
Or does anyone know (and has read) the results of the CoI?
Just interested. I was there at the time.
HTH
Resmoroh
* GBE no less. And you don’t get many of them to the pound even in UK. Must have been some very “unaccountable” acts of ‘friendship’ towards UK? Even those of us involved in CORPORATE (even before it got its official name) both at home, and in the S Atlantic (and elsewhere), don’t know what was really going on in the political spectrum. A GBE tells me “a very great deal”!!!!!!!!
ResmorohMy main gripes about the LG are that (a) their hardware seems quite temperamental (don’t cuss too loud or it will hear you!), and (b) I never seem to get exactly the same search list – for exactly the same input criteria – from one day to the next!
But apart from that (!!!) it is a useful tool. Life for us researchers would be considerably more difficult without it!
Resmoroh
ResmorohNashio966/Peter,
If she’d been left where she was found (and I think that should have happened – as a memorial/war-grave) then she would have been entirely removed by the local scrappies.
When I were in that neck of the woods, many years ago, if the same scrappies could shift a whole ‘dead’ heavy Tiger tank, then a tiddly aluminium a/c would have been something the apprentices would be sent to learn their ‘trade’ on!!!
HTH
Resmoroh
ResmorohForgive me if I pick nits, but I thought the name was ‘Schoons’. But I was no ‘spring chicken’ in a number of the very early Greenham Common Air Tattoos when I was part of the (volunteer and unpaid) Met team. Memories fade but that F.27 display was ‘formidable‘. It also brings to mind Maj “Bertie” Bertelson, RDAF, who used to do similar things with the RDAF C-130!
Resmoroh
ResmorohTsk, Tsk, Andy,
Clearly nobody had taught you how replace “lost” sunshine by the hot wire system!! But the Sunshine Card experts at Met O HQ could tell whether a burn on the card was real sunshine or hot wire (or any of the other devious methods used to increase the apparent sunshine at Boggit-on-the-Briny!!). I don’t suppose there are many Sunshine Spheres still in existence today. Probably been replaced by some gizmo that records milliseconds of incoming radiation per square yard (or similar) – and to 18 decimal places!!. I started my Met O career in the era of the “spirit level & piece of string” and ended it in “gigaflops per second”! But even I could detect a ‘doctored’ Sunshine Card!!!
HTH
Resmoroh
ResmorohThose of you unfamiliar with WW2 meteorological procedures (including PeeDee at post #10!) might well read http://www.rmets.org/pdf/hist03.pdf. I worked with Dick Ogden in the late 50’s. He was no purveyor of “bull faeces”. That paper gives an idea what the met staffs had to do with considerably less technical/comms abilities that would be the norm today. It has to be said, however, that that paper has been updated by some considerable investigation in the interim – but its primary thoughts remain good.
The eagle-eyed amongst you will note that the photo of J M Stagg at the start has been reversed (possibly by an editor who did not quite appreciate on which side of an Officer’s No 1 HD jacket his/her medal ribbons should appear!!).
HTH
Resmoroh
ResmorohIf it’s true it’s a great discovery. But – like Orion – I suspect it’s one of the better spoofs. The Officer-of-the-Day’s spiked helmet had me guffawing! Don’t ‘arf lift a dull afternoon though!!!!
Resmoroh
ResmorohRoadracer,
The cantilever pill-boxes are fairly rare, but there are quite a few around Oakington Airfield. If you put the DOBDA (Defence Of Britain Database and Archive) overlay on to GE you can see precisely where they were/are. Also all the other defence works of early WW2. (NB Don’t leave the overlay on GE. It’s massive and takes half a day to load!!!!!).
HTH
Resmoroh
ResmorohI hope it’s not going to be excavated by historians! I would prefer it was excavated by archaeologists, and the careful, and well recorded results, passed to the historians for them to make their usual ‘wild guesses’ about any set of facts. Archaeologists are not, however, immune from this sort of thing. Any unknown object(s) in a dig are often called ‘religious’ or ‘votive’ sites. I’ll bet there was very little religion in tunnel-digging!! Perhaps some very bad (whispered!) language! And, probably, no votive offerings.
Some educational establishment appears to have more money than sense!
I know that this will upset some – but so be it.
Regrets
Resmoroh
ResmorohIt doesn’t do it instantly, and with modern technical and a/c servicing techniques it should be picked up (if its happened?!) before it becomes a serious issue! But I take your point. Putting an A-380 out of commission with a simple m-i-g thermometer may cause a reduction in whatever airline’s bottom line! But breaking a m-i-g thermometer in the Roach Coach is not going to cause the airframe to go instantly sea-wards at a high rate of knots. Many other things can cause this – but not a m-i-g thermometer!!
HTH
Resmoroh
ResmorohGraham,
In the same way that the “Yes, Minister” and “Yes, Prime Minister” UK TV programmes should have been regarded as Documentaries, and not Comedies, it must become obvious that the USA see the “Special Relationship” as being a one-way process. From us to them!
Graham, do not be surprised! Just be satisfied that what we, in the UK, invent the Americans take commercial advantage of. If you are surprised then you are being just a very tiny bit naive!
A well-educated American rellie was gobsmacked, on his first visit to “Europe”, to learn that the Tower of London had been in existence for c. 500 yrs before America was discovered!! It’s not that I decry that – just that the bit of the planet they inhabit, and the way they think, is not the same bit of the planet that we, in UK, inhabit. Or the way that we think – or, more correctly, how our politicians and Ministries think!!!!!!!!!!
HTH
Resmoroh
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