i would love to know the date it was taken ?????
Does this Andy Thomas have a site or email ??????

IIRC Andy didn’t know the date it was taken.

Slight misspelling(s): it was BK156 (and the navigator, P/O Juliusz Zywicki P-2535, has drowned).
BK516 (BH-K), No. 300 Sqn, was lost with the entire crew on the night of 13 March 1943 on a Gardening mission to St Nazaire.

Sorry for the delayed answer – no access to the web during Christmas time.
I am suprised by the amount of doubt over a thing that seemed to me to be pretty easy to check. I am quite positive that a quick glance in any book on Dutch Spitfires by Harry van der Meer will produce a photo of a 3W-coded Mk XIV. I have a scan of one such photo at home and will try to post it here later.
I am also suprised that noone seems to be looking for a single photo of a VL-coded Mk IX, as if that was a foregone conslusion. To me it seems that one guy has made the mistake years ago, linking this code with Mk IXs of the unit, and since then many authors, rather than check themselves, have copied and spread this incorrect information (this also applies to the website).
According to eyewitness reports confirmed (indirectly) by paperwork, 322 Sqn Mk IXs were coded 3W from the very first days of their service with the unit in August 1944.

See a Spitfire in Poland again. Preferably see it in nice company.
Come to Legens again. Preferably… etc.
Spend a lot of time over THE BOOK. This I can do alone.

[QUOTE=’568 crew;1647976]The Way to The Stars: Avro Anson, Bristol Blenhiem, Douglas Boston, Boeing B-17G’s. [/QUOTE]
Also Hurricanes and Boeing B-17Fs, I think.

Where Eagles Dare 1968,
Ju-52 HB-HOT / A702 ‘CN+4V’
Bell 47 dressed in gaffer tape as early German machine

And T-6s rammed by the bus.

Numbers or proportions?If you took one-hundred British armament workers and one-hundred Bomber Command aircrew in the middle of 1943 and then went back to see how many were still alive a year later I know which group I’d pick…..bad wages or not!

Of course. But if you took 100 Londoners and 100 Bomber Command ground crew in September 1940 or, for the other side, 100 civilians in Hamburg and 100 German soldiers on the Atlantic Wall in the middle of 1943, I bet you wouldn’t pick the civilian option. We can play finding similar comparisons: either those where it was better to be civilian or those where it was better to be military, but the point is that it is a gross exagerration to say that in WW2 being a civilian was generally and universally less risky than being a military. In some periods and areas it was, in others it wasn’t.

Mark -According to some I work with the world is ending in 2012 so I wouldnt worry about keeping it updated for too long

Is that before or after the Olympic Games??

Olympics? I thought he meant the European Cup in Poland/Ukraine.