BSG – Bournemouth possibly isn’t the best example for comparison if you take into account the fairly pristine Herald and BAC 1-11 that were dismembered there . Lasham have their problems – however the story is quite bleak with most aircraft outside.

I take your point David, I meant more about how Bournmouth is set up now. With a fence all around the site, airframe for airframe the two collections are probably not that far apart. Bournmouth has “open cockpit” policy and will take you around the aircraft and get you “hands on” and interested.

I admit I have zero experience of running a museum and may well be speaking out of turn, but from what I saw at Bournmouth a few weeks back, I think the Lasham guys could emulate it in some ways now.

IIRC the group at Lasham are quite independent and seem to stay happy working without assistance from elsewhere, on an earlier thread I think Bruce was planning to try and take a look at the Drover.

They have a small collection inside of relics, from memory a Hunter seat, a mid upper turret piece from (IIRC) a Lancaster, I just think that if they looked at Bournmouth as an example, they could move up a gear but as above, thats been debated to death on the forum!

Seriously the first rule for a pilot who has bailed out in enemy territory where armed squads of soldiers or local militia would be after him was ditch the pistol, or if capture wasn’t appealing, then use it to commit suicide.

I do speak from some actual knowledge of pistols and their potential – I own quite a lot of quite serviceable working ones. Sure they look glamorous in a wild western sort of way but glamor ain’t much defence against serious firearms.

I recall in “Tornado down” when John Peters and John Nicoll met up after their ejection, they said the drew their pistols, laughed and dropped them and put up their hands, the bad guys had AK-47’s….. so you make a very good point !

At the risk of thread drift, I read a book about the siege of Singapore and there were details there of army officers with (IIRC) .45 Webley revolvers with considerable range shooting across the causeway with some effect.

There has been a lot of debate on here since I joined and probably before about Lasham and what is and isn’t done there.

I was there a few weeks ago and they were working on the engine intakes of the Meteor which I believe are hard to find these days.

The Sea Prince is in a bad way, the Starfighter as well.

I used to work there,

Any chance you remember the wind tunnel models at all ? I’d love to know what it is, now sat on the floor by the Vampire, near the “Squirt” (which is also well worth a visit)

thanks for any info you may have ?:confused:

Christopher Chant….

I remember having a book by Christopher Chant, colour picture of Lancasters on the front, “WW2 Aircraft”, you know the layout, one or two pages per type. The Brooke Bond tea card collection was in there as well as the “air ace” and “commando” types as well.

When I was about 10 my father bought me “Spitfire At war” & “Hurricane At War” which were my first serious “grown up” books, princely sum of £4.50 each, I still have them. They were for me to read on the way to Ilfracombe on a family holiday rather than comics etc, and he bought them in a bookshop close to the Cathedral in Winchester – odd that, it was 1975 – 1976 and its all just come back to me like it was yesterday…..

Well, the RAF does have female fast jet pilots now so I guess in the interests of equality a pair of Y-fronts or boxers should be fair game.

any white smoke yet Baz?

what was the final decision ? ….