That is sad – did alot for aviation for the masses…..blue skies Sir!

P38 nose?

Thanx for this – I find it brilliant that such a venture is looking at the aviation heritage. Very good!

Round here, they are covering fields with ugly solar panels….I think sometimes turbines can be nicer…..just put lights on them to help helios!

I recognise that wheel…..it must be 30 years since I rescued that wheel and 4 of its brothers from a farm just outside Witney!! I remember seeing 4 x Horsa wheels on a farmer’s hay bale trailer. I went to see him and he said ‘I have 4 gliders, bought them from Brize at the end of the war’. ‘Pity you don’t still have them’. He said ‘yes, I do!’. He took me to the smallest shed in the world and a bucket of metal fittings he had left after he’d burnt them!! Rescued them. One was painted up with the OXAC lettering and the rest given to an ungrateful Museum of Army Flying! Also gave them several undercarriage legs, nose wheels and lots of fuselage parts we had recovered at the same time.

I remember that ‘Ju88’ prop and Peter saying it was from Blewbury. I am sure it originally came from another Peter who was in the RAF at Brize….saw him in 2005 at Oshkosh – he used to write small books – will try and remember his name Ju!

I had not considered that! Sorry for my incorrect diagnosis of when it might have happened! That would also explain the minimal visible damage to the fairing (which would have been worse if it had been the first bit hit by the bird). There is not much to damage in there so (once through the skin – that is not speculation!), with any luck, the leading edge took most of the energy/damage.

I repaired a Hunter nose that had taken a bird in the 1990s (XE601) for our static Hunter – the skin took most of the damage at that much higher speed.

It shows how, even at slow speeds, how much energy there is from a birdstrike. Hence why we wear clear visors down