Thanks for sharing your sighting Peter, glad to hear such things are resuming.

All the two-seat Spits use Merlins, as far as I’m aware there’s never been a Griffon two-seater.

The Mossie prototype at London Colney is, as I understand it, restored in the configuration in which it last flew. It was kept flying through the war years and used for development work, hence the two-stage Merlins in the long nacelles. 

There was a PR.IV version of the Mosquito that was externally little different to the B.IV, so PR Blue wouldn’t be too out of place on DZ542, although not strictly correct. 

Whatever the finish, it would be great to see an early “glass nose” Mosquito flying, fingers crossed.

A quick search on CWGC shows an LAC Norman Denis Steele 923659 killed on this date, although unusually he is commemorated at Runnymede. 

Thanks Bruce, I knew there was a link of some sort.

According to Lee Howard’s excellent Haynes manual on the Westland Wessex, the shade of red used on Royal Flight aircraft was Gloss Signal Red with Dark Blue cheatlines. Presumable the Heron and other Royal Flt aircraft would have been to the same colour spec.

“By: trumper – 26th December 2020 at 18:34 

Lovely videos, the camera looks like it is free to a degree”

The cockpit footage is great, it looks very much as though it’s a 360 degree lens and the footage has then been edited, the end result looking like a standard camera moving in different directions. 

Great result for the restoration team, a good bit of news to end 2020 on.

The date makes me wonder if the report refers to the first RAF use of Rocket Projectiles, 137sqn equipped with Hurricane IV’s used RP’s in action for the first time on 02/09 on targets in Holland.