obviously there are exceptions, but i could imagine size would play a factor (oooer mrs!), you average civil airliner is a big old thing, compare it to say a lightning, hunter or a vampire, and you can see what i mean. if you are doing maintenance on an airliner, you’ll be needing cranes to remove major components like flying controls, where you can do it by hand on a smaller military type. it all adds to the expense.

i think another factor is the price and availability of spares, a lot of military spares are sold off at little more than scrap price once an type has been removed from service, whereas there maybe a residual commercial value in civil aircraft spares, so they stay expensive for longer.
i suppose this could also be applied to GSE, compare the price of a set of jacks for a herald along with a giraffe or airstairs, to a set of jacks and ‘A’ steps for a lightning.

but ultimately it’s as you have mentioned, its all about image.

i was under the impression that they could already do maritime strike.
my old unit (TWCU) closed down and moved to lossiemouth. they used to be 45 reserve squadron in the event of war, and were nuclear strike, they are now 15 reserve squadron, and i believe are now maritime strike, with the aircraft being converted to take anti shipping missiles.

there was some debate at the time as to whether the Tornado was as good as the buccaneer for the job if my memory serves me correctly.

AGS implies British as far as I’m aware.

Yes Alan – I’m looking for donations really but I’ll get a list together for you.

Cheers
Elliott

AGS is the generic term for aircraft fastners /spares etc and is used throughout the industry, so no its not just british.

just look at any current aircrafts refuel panel to see loads of graffiti.

we had a scrap C130 in work, an ex RAF tanker. its last tour was around south america, and the 245 bulkhead and the hogs trough were absoloutely covered in stckers and hand written graffiti…was a pity to see it chopped up.

also , until recently you could see written on the back of the hangar wall in pencil ‘hind rudder cables’ and ‘hart brake cables’ next to 2 nails in the wall, these date from when the aircraft were fixed there in the 30’s. sadly after a bit of a refurb, they’ve been painted over. (kind of shows how tight the company is, first coat of paint in 70 years!)

i’ve just read ‘cover of darkness’ by roderick chisholm, it covers the birth and development of the RAF’s night fighting, and the counter measures used against the germans. i found it quite fascinating, especially the bit where he tours germany just after the end of the fighting, interviewing the german night fighter pilots and fighter controllers about the effectiveness of the raf’s countermeasures.
i didn’t realise that the mosquito had such a fearsome reputation among the germans as a night fighter.

just reading this thread shows what a hell of a lot of exporting of jet aircraft the UK used to do!

gillings army surplus yard in Diss,Norfolk has a few of the small gauges (accumalator/hyd pressure etc) that go on the external fuse in case anyone needs them, alond with tornado groundcrew head sets and a few other odds and sodds like tooling.

We never saw that much of the gorgeous Amanda Lamb :rolleyes:
Mind you there is a new actress playing the Scottish Widow now that AL seems to be concentrating on being a foreign estate agent 😀

Roger Smith.

could be the bird before amanda lamb, don’t remember her name, but she’s roger moores daughter.