An225 sighted over Duffield, Derbyshire about 25 minutes ago. Never seen her before, absolutely awesome! She was up at a good few thousand feet and still looked absolutely massive- she’s bl**dy huge!! 🙂

Just seen her over Duffield, Derbyshire about 5 minutes ago. Caught sight of her completely by chance, wonderful sight. 🙂

Mike, your confusion is understandable. The G is basically an early D model (later D’s had the ‘bubbletop’), it’s just that it was built by Curtiss, hence the different letter. Likewise, the P51B and P51C are essentially the same, except that one was built at the plant in California and the latter were built at a plant in Texas.

So, a P47G is a Curtiss-built Razorback P47D.

Another problem with early Swifts was the small vertical tail, which caused directional stability problems at altitude and at lower speeds (early F100 Super Sabres had a similar problem). This was solved with a larger tail from the F.Mk.4 onwards.

With regard to the RAFM’s Swift at Tangmere, I saw her with all sorts of panels removed when I was last there a couple of years ago. Apparently a small team from RAFM were giving her a thorough check-over. From what I could see, it does seem that she’s been extensively gutted ( I was told the cockpit is fairly complete though). Despite this, she seems to be in pristine structural nick inside and out.

I did a bit of digging into all things Siskin a couple of years ago, with just the same question in mind, ie, what original drawings and parts survive and what might be reconstructed out of them.

Distracted by other things, I haven’t got as far with my inquiries as I would have liked, but having scratched the surface it seems there are very few if any original drawings surviving. On the plus side, there do seem to be quite a few bits and pieces still about (including rumours of a fuselage frame in Canada, and perhaps a centre section in Estonia), in addition to the RAFM/MAM wings.

If someone felt like ‘picking up the torch’ from me and chasing things up, I’m pretty sure a goodly number of Siskin bits could be rounded up. Any takers?

Can’t find any pictures, but I’ve found this side elavation of the port side on wings-pallette. Apparently the scheme was a camouflage experiment in 1955.

http://wp.scn.ru/en/ww3/f/97/3/3/29

Hope this helps

Aeroplane published a survivors listing at the end of the Hurricane Database section in the October issue. They list 12 as airworthy, with another 8 under restoration to fly. (They actually list 13 as airworthy, but this was before the tragic crash at Shoreham last month. :() The listing comes to a total of 47 survivors, including the substantial wreck on display at RAFM Hendon.

Lovely to see another Spit airborne, congratulations to all involved. Here’s hoping we’ll get a chance to see her fly before she get’s shipped, if indeed that’s the plan.

Peter,

That’s a Wildcat rather than a Hellcat 😉

Nice build Bex. 🙂