The WW1 stuff at Kew isn’t what I’d call extensive. It’s alright for operational squadrons but the training squadrons in the UK are almost totally forgotten in their records.

Also the Documents Online are pretty thin, I looked at a few while at Kew once and most of the service records are a couple of pages, certainly not worth the £3.50 price to view them away from the Archives. Also the scan quality was poor with of them, I could barely read the text due to pixelation.

On the other hand, you might get lucky and find one of the good files.

There are three No.754 Sqn airmen listed as killed on this date, but I suspect that the Lang Craig you have read about is the Lang Craig 6 miles NE of Arbroath.

Yeah, I guess it could have hung around at an MU for a year or so before being issued when 19 OTU began to re-equip.

If you want change, just look at some of the German cities.

But even accredited museums have their share of problems. I was told recently about one accredited national museum who accepted loan of an item. They found it was too large to fit through a door so took a saw to it and then glued the aforementioned item back together once it was through the door. The cut & shut had destroyed the item’s structural strength and seriously devalued the item.

Surfice to say the owner was not best pleased.

Along with Nick I count myself as very lucky to have come away from the closure of Millom with the loss of only a single relay from a display board. But that hadn’t stopped stuff of ours being moved around by the un-named individual without us knowing about it. The first I knew was when we turned up to collect the display and most of it wasn’t there.

I once knew an ex para who had served in the late 40s / early 50s, he had taken part in a number of practice drops where Jeeps (and presumably Series 1 Land Rovers) were slung under Varsitys and Dakotas.

On one he said that his Sergeant had given the platoon a roasting because the vehicle was too slow getting down and ready for action, so next time some bright spark didn’t attach the static line. Apparently he said words to the effect of, you wanted it down quicker. The platoon then got to pull the field gun home by human power.