Gay rights campaigns for pensioners???:confused:

:diablo:

Land ownership and the resultant longer term security that it brings for a collection are often undervalued assets in many forms of preservation – this is a great move up there and a sound basis for the future – well done! 🙂

Obviously heritage centres and preserving former Bomber Command airfields is the in thing at present http://forum.keypublishing.co.uk/showthread.php?t=123188

RAF Scampton has a similar pedigree according to the English Heritage report that is available for that site! 😉

I hope that you won’t mind me tagging the following appeal onto this thread, which seemed like an ideal place as it refers to another 166 Squadron Lancaster.

I have been asked to try and assist a group in the Netherlands who are preparing a commemorative display board in the memory of a crew. Here are the background details:

“In the village of Goudriaan, are 5 graves of the crew of R.A.F. Lancaster ND956, AS-I, 166 squadron that came back from Germany after bombing Duisburg. I was shot down by a Messerschmidt, a German fighter. This was in the night of 21-22 May 1944.

The people and the Municipality of this village take good care of the graves and every May 4th we have the commemoration of our and allied fallen men and women. By this crash two men escaped death, were arrested and brought to Stalag Luft 7 near Bankau in Poland.”

They are trying to obtain photographs of the following crew members:

Flight Sergeant James Kiltie, wireless operator, age 22, service number 986311

Bruce Forrester Bird, navigator, age 23, service number 155025

If anyone is able to assist them please PM me; if you would prefer me to post this elsewhere then also please let me know.

The Neville Franklin (NF) situation was not straight forward, mainly due to the lack of close family in the local area.

The bungalow was already being cleared when NAM was advised of the clearance by the local museum – they had already been in contact with NF a few years earlier over items from the Abbotts (boiler) archive; yet even they found additional items relating to that location after he passed away.

“The Neville Franklin Photographic Collection, which comprises 18,000 photographs and 9,000 slides”, as mentioned on the NAM website was literally rescued out of a skip on the drive. The books, other documentation etc. were removed from the house under the direction of the executor and some items went to auction.

That said I don’t recall there being any drawings or the like, but I couldn’t say for certain. I did collect some unsold (unsalable) items from the auctioneers after the event but it did not include anything of major significance – mainly old plastic models.

As posted earlier the Clayton Shuttleworth drawings and glass plate negatives were passed on to other Registered / Accredited organisations, who at the time were better equipped to care for them.