Many congratulations Paul. 😀

Hi Mark,
I dunno if Park regularly flew a Mk.V on Malta,but he certainly flew one on May 15th,1943.This was the day that the new airstrip at Safi was opened,and Park performed the first landing and take off as part of the opening ceremony.The event was attended by Lord Gort and a huge number of Maltese civilians,along with troops of various nationalities on parade.
There are a couple of beautiful colour pictures on page 120 of Roger A. Freeman’s book The Royal Air Force of World War Two in Colour.It appears to be a V.b with a Dh prop,a highly polished black spinner,green/brown upper and sky blue undersurfaces. Unusually,it appears to have fuselage style roundals on the lower surfaces of the wing,complete with yellow rings.
The machine also had an AVM pennant painted under the windscreen,all suggesting that this was his personal mount on a more regular basis??
Two apologies-firstly,the photo’s don’t show a serial number as the wingtip gets in the way in a taxiing shot and the other shot is of the undersurfaces.Secondly,I don’t have a (working) scanner,so can’t post the pics.
Hope this is of some use anyway. 🙂

Thanks for the reminder Mark. 🙂 Just out of curiosity,what happenned to the REAL PS888?I know she was passed on to the Thai AF,but what became of her after that-is there any chance she might still be extant??

They were still using the same old ‘jump jump Johnnie’ video when I was flying with 6AEF in 1994-95.The tape was well knackered by then I can tell you!Good thing most of the older cadets seemed to know it off by heart,I hadn’t the faintest idea what was going on because the sound was so duff!
Happy daze indeed…:)

“If only a Sea Fury T.20 would come back to the UK “

Apparently WG655 is under rebuild with Chuck Greenhill at Kenosha,Wisconsin,USA.The airframe work is done and the project was up for sale last I heard.She’s all yours for a few hundred thousand SeaFury…:D

Tangmere last summer,nose detail of ‘XR753’ (actually an ex-Saudi F.53 in the ZF??? serial range,can’t be bothered to look it up at this hour ;))

Ahhhhhhh THAT South African Spitfire.Apologies for leading everyone down the wrong path. :rolleyes: What happenned to the wings Mark12?

The armour plate is usually removed to accomodate a jump seat behind the pilot, similar to those on many Mustangs.