Roger,

SS Cars not a CRU, but a member of the CRO.

I quote:-

S.S. Cars Ltd (Jaguar Cars from 4.45) Coventry 1.7.41. also at Bishop’s Tachbrook, Leamington/Boniskens (supported Marshalls) – Whitley, [Also Wellington wings]

Mark

As mentioned in your quote, Marshalls in Cambridge did a lot of repair and modification work to a wide variety of aircraft during the war.

IIRC there is a picture floating around of a trials Tornado with eight 1000lb bombers under the fuselage arranged in pairs.

That wasn’t just a trial, I used to be on TWCU back in the 80’s and i’ve seen 8x 1000lb dumb bombs on aircraft many times, in pairs on the shoulder pylons.
Take off was interesting with the older engines, it was more a case of retracting the gear, hopping over the hedge at the edge of the road and gradually gain height as they flew across east anglia.

Hmmm…the awful truth is certainly coming out tonight, answer is the BOTTOM LINE.

Myself and Mackerel are products of the old time Brit aircraft industry, this supply of product was chopped off at the knees back in the 1980s and has not been replaced.
The ‘warbird’ industry in the UK relies heavily on these past skills as paid for by said company’s along with traditional RAF metal bashing training. What remains of the UK mainstream aircraft industry is now composite based, thus no need for metal bashing, riveting skills etc, or training in such matters.

As previously mentioned the restoration company’s are small concerns, with a bottom line that allow scant financial resources to train the next generation.

Chumpy.

without wishing to be rude, you seem to have a funny view of the current aircraft industry.
to listen to you it would be easy to believe that there’s no one out there that can rivet, wheel a skin or do much in the way of structures. whereas in reality this is exactly the sort of work that goes on at many aircraft maintenance places across the UK daily.
there are even companies still offering apprentice courses in sheet metal fabrication (this includes wheeling skins.).
i myself currently work on a very modern state of the art aircraft with a lot of composite structures…… but it has a lot of fairing and other structures which are made of metal, and when these are damaged we make new pieces by beating the metal over a former, then shrinking/stretching to fit. just the sort of skills needed in restoration, and not ‘that’ rare.

as for restoration courses i think if you are offering NVQ’s in restoration the only way they would work is if you are working on aircraft already, and wanted to get into restoration and needed to familiarise yourself with older fasteners, systems and methods, otherwise you haven’t got the background knowledge of aircraft in general, and maybe the standards that are involved.
would the course include wooden structures and all the associated things that go with them?

on similar lines, quite a few years ago Colchester institute ran a comprehensive car restoration course, this covered all aspects of restoration, from welding, trimming, electrics, spraying, rebuilding components and fabrication (in both steel and aluminium).
the fabrication side included making aluminium and steel bodywork parts, stamping out louvers, wheeling aluminium to make compound curves, etc.
perhaps a course like this might be helpful to gain handskills and techniques. the only draw back i can see was that it was full time for 3 years.

Hi Baz,

PQS is soooo yesterday:D It was PQS, then I think it became SPS QA, then TES-DQAG, then DQAG and now it’s just plain old DQA. Mind you it will probably have changed its name again by the time you’ve finished reading this;)

i used to work at Marshalls, and it was very confusing, you’d just get used to one name then you’d go and change it again!

Thanks, cking (SEa King???). No wonder the damn things were so hard to turn over. With our early RAAF Hercules, all four props had to be pulled round to line up an oil filler after every flight!

Bri

we used to park the props with No 1 blade at the top to stop the oil draining out of the pitch housing if the aircraft was parked up for any longer than overnight….it also reduced the risk of the props being hit by errant ground equipment as well.

i can remember back in the late70’s/ early 80’s when me and my dad used to go to Beaulieu autojumble we used to pass a place in the new forest that had quite a few canopies, both bubble type and frame type, in front of the house and in use in the the garden.
when flypast was first published i seem to remember that someone made the chap an offer and had quite a haul from there.

i use a valiant ‘nosewheel axle nut spanner’ to pop the inner CV joints out of the gearbox on my mini. the spanner was saved from the skip a couple of years ago at Marshalls, who used to service valiants.

the trend still continues though, a few months ago a chap in work used a scrap side window from an AH64 for his garden shed….. a find for the future!

i wonder what the cement mixer is for in the photo…. :confused: