DFW CV. Served from 1916 to the wars end. Peter M Grosz described it as “one of the truly great aeroplanes of the Great War.

John

Re Post number 6. Missing aircrew for the RFC and RAF for WW.1 are all recorded on the Arras Memorial.

John

A teaspoon of Castrol R in the fuel tank of any modern motorcycle or car makes the exhaust smell like a real one and makes petrolheads scratch their heads in confusion. a couple of drops in the fuel tank of my Suffolk Punch lawn mower makes doing the garden an absolute joy!

Whilst following the rest of the posts with great interest, I chuckled greatly at the above. Now will it make a 2 ltr Cerulean Blue Saab Convertible smell like a Bugatti type 35.

John

Ex Coningsby Sgt’s Mess when Pete was there.

My information regarding the Vulcan company came from Bruce Robertson’s writing in Ray Rimmell’s publication WW.1 British Aeroplane Colours and Markings, in the chapter dealing with Manufacturers Modes and Trademarks. He states “Firms letters were VN”. I take this to be Vulcan Number. Is there then a possibility that the aeroplane was in fact made by Vulcan (they did make BE.2e’s) and the Darracq made prop has been annotated with a Vulcan mark. Darracq made FE.8 Vickers FB.9,DH.5 and Sopwith Dolphin. I do not know if they made BE’s.

VMEC made BE’s DH, 4’s, 9’s and 9A.

John

Could someone please tell me the identity (serial number) of the P1127 cockpit which was at Newark for the Cockpitfest.

Cheers

John

VN were the marks of the Vulcan Motor Engineering Company. So I posit that they sub-contracted the prop for Darraq (who also made props). So it’s possible that VN 1928 is a Vulcan serial or drawing number. The RAF 1A is of course the standard engine for the BE.2e. Thanks for the clearer picture as I couldn’t read this before.

Further to my original thoughts, there was never any suggestion that the prop was any other than a genuine BE.2e airscrew and perhaps the “shot through” blade was too badly damaged and a ‘good’ blade was retained as the down piece when the others were truncated.

I’m beginning to think that this was a genuine BE.2e prop which had been damaged in combat and brought to Australia. This prop was later obtained and used as a memorial to Mr Littlejohn by Mr Broadbent who had the plaques made, one in appreciation of Littlejohn and another one to record the prop’s history and which perhaps was incorrectly recorded from heresay by genuine mistake.

John

My further thoughts on this are, that if the person who commissioned this miss-read a poorly written note of the action and subsequently did not add the ‘5’ after the two, then the incident on the 25 march could be valid. However if this prop had been “shot through” then I would have thought the ‘wound’ would be worth retaining on the remaining prop blade. Four blade props with three blades truncated were quite often used as grave marker crosses. Could this prop have been obtained in Australia at a later date and used for this Memorial?

John