VoyTechGreat to see the lady fly, even in nude…
BTW, what is the purpose of the little window in the side of the fuselage just ahead of the windscreen?
And why is she called Stork?
VoyTechI bet it won’t be half as good as this Red Baron film thoughhttp://youtube.com/watch?v=Ksf3RKFIpvk
This one has speed & agility just right.
VoyTech‘FF GP’ probably means ‘First Flown by George Pickering’
Air Britain’s military aviation magazine ‘Aeromilitaria’ has recently ran a series of Spitfire I serial-by-serial listings. These are more detailed than the Morgan/Shacklady book. The N3029 one gives the folowing info:
Deld 9 MU 15.9.39; 66 Sqn 28.9.39; Shot down by Bf 109, forcelanded 5.9.40 (P/O RJ Mathers OK); 66 Sqn; Shot down by Bf 109, crashlanded nr Gravesend 14.9.40 (Sgt PH Willcocks OK); AST Hamble 22.9.40; 12 MU 5.3.41; 61 OTU (TO-D) 30.6.41; Landed u/c retracted, Plt Off W.S.Lidner. Cat B. 24.4.42; 1 CRU 23.4.42; AW/CN 20.6.42; 8 MU 23.6.42; 76 MU 15.10.42; Birkenhead 31.10.42; Shipped on SS ‘Peter Mearsk’ bound for Port Sudan 18.11.42; Torpedoed and sunk by U-185 west of the Azores at 39.47 N 41.00 W, Cat E 7.12.42
I also have the Spitfire as the one in which Sgt M. Cameron claimed 1/3-0-0 He 111 on 11.1.40.
VoyTechI take it it will come out in a nice sandy shade?
You meant ‘sanded’?
VoyTechCan you still drink out of it after you’ve done that? :confused: :diablo:
Not to worry! In fact the pic in post 43 was taken after the one in post 44. ‘Know-how’, you know.
And here is a piece of my favourite Spitfire-related pic and info from the last few weeks: two Polish-marked Spitfires with seven Polish WWII fighter pilots at Duxford on 9 September. Seated, left to right: Jerzy Mencel (317, 309 Sqns), Franciszek Tomczak (306), Stefan Ryll (306), Mieczyslaw Sawicki (318), Tadeusz Andersz (315, 306), Adam Ostrowski (317); standing is Marian Jankiewicz (315 Sqn).
VoyTechJust in case there was any doubt about the Spitfire content, here it is spread flat:
VoyTechSo, prize for the best judged Spitfire Pic or info posted this week…:)
Not sure if the ‘Pic or info’ term covers this, but how about my mug shot, courtesy of Mark Dozen?
VoyTechIf the code is CP its 367FS, 9AF
if the code is CG its 38FS, 55FG, 8AF
The code might be QP (check the next photo on the site) which fits nicely with both the Americans and Spitfires.
VoyTechI think Pragues only about two hours drive from Krakow
Much, much more than two hours. Even if I do the driving.
VoyTechseems we are slowly but surely stopping production of everything in this Country!
More positive waves!
To name but a few, you in your Country are not stopping production of authentic airworthy Spitfires, of quite a few nice ales, and over the last few years you have started producing jobs for my countrymen.
VoyTechbrewerjerry, it’s your thread, let us know if you think we’re too far OT here.
From my limited knowledge…
Stalin’s need to expand the margins of Russia’s buffer zone […] was more defensive than […] the US’ post-war global involvements. Never good or justifiable, but Stalin’s Eastern Bloc was always explicable, and tactically understandable as defensive rather than offensive.
James, you are definitely right: your knowledge is limited if you think that Stalin’s Eastern Bloc was defensive.
And of course they came with built in pilots ready to fly… they launched directly from their shipping crates and went straight into battle attacking enemy planes…
Do you mean that Churchill should have sent the RAF to the USSR? Or just that the level of training in the Soviet Air Force was so pathetic that the Soviet pilots needed so much more time to convert onto a new type?
The purpose of the Warsaw Uprising was not to defeat the Nazis, it was to try to take control of Polands capital before the Soviets got there and took control. They weren’t trying to take control from the Nazis, they were trying to take control from the Soviets.
I see, they were fighting the Red Army in the streets of Warsaw! I always thought they fought the Germans…
But, seriously, you might remember that the Paris Uprising broke out at about the same time. Its purpose (in your way of putting things) was “not to defeat the Nazis, it was to try to take control of France’s capital before the Yanks and Brits got there”. In both cases, Warsaw and Paris, Hitler gave orders to wipe out the entire population and to raze the entire city. The Western allies made sure his orders could not be carried out. Stalin made sure they could.
Of course Polands allies or Roosevelt and Churchil had already sold out Poland at Yalta,
The Yalta conference was in 1945, several months after the Warsaw Uprising.
How do you know they were lend lease? The Soviets had a licence production agreement for the DC-3 (C-47) and produced their own Dakotas under licence… ie they paid for it and owned its domestic production.
The Soviet-built variant, the PS-84/Li-2 was rather different from the Dakota in many ways. For maintenance purposes it would be silly to send these to Bari. During the war the Soviets took delivery of lots of actual Douglas aircraft, to add to their own production.
what the Soviets had done in Eastern Europe is exactly the same as what the colonial powers had done for centuries… Britiain, Spain, France, Germany, the Dutch, the Portuguese, even the Americans more recently.
Never heard of the British or Americans killing the intellectual elite of their colonies by thousand, just like that.
In the case of Stalin the elite class was simple to create… the communist party heirarcy performs that role.
The problem (not for you, I understand) was that there had been a different elite before and this had to be dealt with in the way that Messrs Hitler and Stalin thought right, to make room for the new one.
VoyTechLend lease let the Soviets build what they built better, in the form of KV-1s and T-34s while the US built trucks for them.
Looking at it your way, why did the Soviets continue to use Lend-lease tanks in front line units right until 1945?
If 2,000 hurricanes had arrived in time to fight the Germans over Moscow in December 1941 you might have been right.
You might find it interesting that first Hurricanes were sent to the USSR in late 1941 (rather than to the Far East where the RAF was so desperately short of decent fighters).
Why would Stalin aid his political opponents in Poland?
That’s a good question. One may only ask, why would Roosevelt and Churchill aid Stalin, their political opponent in the world?
Oddly, in the summer 1944 Soviet Air Force Dakotas (Lend-lease aircraft) were based at Bari, Italy, dropping supplies (British/US-supplied weapons, ammunition, medical stuff, etc.) to communist partisans in the Balkans. At the same time Soviets did not allow the RAF/USAAF to use their airfields (not a word about aircraft or supplies) to support Poles in Poland.
Of course, you are right, Poles in Poland were Stalin’s political opponents. I guess any nation trying to feel independent in their own country were seen by the Soviets as their political opponents.
Seem to remember the Russians joining another European war at the wests insistence to add a second front for them.
Are you referring to what Stalin did in September 1939, to help Hitler deal with Poland?
communism is evil. What exactly is actually evil about it?
That may be difficult to grasp if you have not lived under communism. Having read carefully what you wrote I suppose you haven’t, have you?
VoyTechFirst of all it was LEND as well as lease, yet those in the west would charge the Soviets top dollar for everything.
IIRC it was “We lend you equipment, you lease us facilities”. What exactly did “those in the west” lease from the Soviets, apart from a few airfields near Poltava?
Most of the hardware was hand me down stuff the British didn’t need or want any more.
Oddly, the Soviets continued to use this unwanted stuff until the end of the war. Clearly, either they weren’t able to build enough themselves, or the “unwanted” Shermans and Airacobras weren’t that bad.
Much was made about how many US trucks were sent, but then if they hadn’t been sent they could simply have made their own… they already had licence production agreements for lots of western vehicles, the Dakota was one example.
So why did they accept Lend-Lease supplies at all if they could make all that stuff themselves?
Considering the purpose all these supplies were being put to for most of the war I think the US should have been paying the Soviets rather than the other way around.
Perhaps it would have been wise of the Soviets to make that condition before they accepted the first delivery? But in a way the Americans paid their price. The Soviets got lots of raw or semi-finished materials during WWII, and IIRC US light alloy was used to build Soviet aircraft that faced the Americans in Korea.
VoyTechOn the opening page he has one of them which he has captioned:-
A pink Spitfire PRVII, probably P7505….
He is usually correct. 🙂
But not in this case, I am sad to say… (“Good Mourning”?) You can see clearly the early type (‘A’ style) roundel in the photo, while P7505 was not converted for PR duties until 1943, apparently. Sometimes it is the most difficult to see the most obvious things.
I’ll talk to the publisher, and hopefully they’ll have an erratum on this one in the part II they are planning. Especially as, apparently, the man in the cockpit is no longer anonymous, so his log book might provide a clue as to the real serial.
Flying High, despite the miscaption, the book might answer many of your questions.
I am experiencing problems with my PM inbox (something to do with my age?…). If you want to contact me off line, PM Mark(s) or JDK to tell you how to do it.
VoyTechApparently, P7505 was converted from Mk II to Mk V by Air Service Training Hamble, following an accident 30 August 1941 in which it suffered cat. B damage. Depending on the scope of actual damage it may have been rebuilt as a Mk VB if the original wings have been damaged to such extent that they had to be replaced.
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