Some lovely shots on both your threads Kodak, thanks for sharing them. Some happy memories and some interesting formations, especially the two Harvards and the Comet!
Hard to believe it’s now almost 11 years since we lost both the P38 and the Mosquito, what a terrible week that was…:(

Just to clarify things slightly, all Mk.IV Blenhiems were originally going to be named Bolingbrokes. Somewhere along the way the idea was dropped at Bristol, but the documents issued to Fairchild had the Bolingbroke name all over them so the name stuck in Canada.

It could well be that what you have is an Allison V-1710 piston. The Allison has a slightly bigger bore than the Merlin, so many racing Merlins have been bored out and fitted with Allison pistons. The slightly dicey element here is that the Allison piston won’t fit onto the Merlin con-rod, so the top end of an Allison con-rod was welded onto the bottom end of a Merlin one!
There was an excellent article in AirEnthusiast about modifying Merlins for racing and that’s the process as the article describes it.

The Firefly might well be AS.Mk6 WD826, at one time flown by the Royal Australian Navy Historic Flight based at Nowra in NSW. As far as I’m aware, she hasn’t been flown for quite a few years and would need some serious work if she were to fly again. Pic on the link below, is this the machine you’re thinking of?

http://www.adf-serials.com/gallery/Firefly-WD826/AC_N1_WD826

The cokpit section of a Viscount 804, G-CSZB, is displayed at East Midlands Aeropark. I’m not sure what the interior is like.

http://www.eastmidlandsairport.com/documents/aeropark-viscount.pdf

“The rate of roll of the Messerschmitt was inferior to the Spitfire at high speed. Since you have to roll before you can get into a turn this gave the Spitfire pilot another advantage at the start of any turning dogfight at high speed.”

Another related factor was that the narrowness of the cockpit often meant that the control column couldn’t be moved far enough to give full aileron deflection without fouling the pilot’s legs, perticularly larger pilots or those wearing thicker clothing. I’ve seen this mentioned both in contemporary and modern pilots’ accounts of flying the type.

The Roberstsbridge Aviation Museum in in East Sussex. There was a thread here about the collection a while ago:

http://forum.keypublishing.co.uk/showthread.php?t=38162

The smaller version was code-named ‘Highball’, which was intended to be carried by Dh Mosquitos and used against shipping. 618sqn were formed to use the weapon in Europe, but they ended up being posted to Australia towards the end of the war for operations against Japanese shipping instead. In the end Highball was never used in action.
There was also a version code-named ‘Baseball’ which was envisaged as a ship-ship weapon, but development never went very far.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No._618_Squadron_RAF