Martin is quite happy to show the film and to talk about the’experience’. Would one Saturday in January be ok, somewhere in Conventry?

If you pm me with your e-mail address I will send through some photos of the quarters at Wildenrath

One for the modellers

You could probably be right with Sylt. This was my immediate thought. I was there when my father was on the drogue flight. The APS used the Mk8 until the unit closed in ’61. I believe the majority of the a/c were flown back to the UK and converted to U16’s.

In 1976 I mentioned to Ray that an old wing was being used as a shelf in a shed / barn in Warwickshire. It turned out to be a WW1 wing of D.H origin. We were told we could have it if we took the barn down. As a result Ray and I spent a happy three days rescuing the wing, which is now in store at Stafford. The garage doors to the house were made of WW1 wings covered on the outside in plywood.

Strange how these things turn up. In about 1993 I recieved a call from a complete stranger who lived near Henly on Thames. He was converting a barn to a house and wanted rid of three plywood covered wing spars which were placed edge on edge to form a wall. Thanks to the efforts of the Tamworth Aviation group I was able to rescue them, but no museum wanted one. I thought at the time they were Hamilcar but when eventually they were donated to the Horsa project at Shawbury, it turned out that they were Horsa centre section spars to which the undercarriage is fitted. One of the spars is now in America.

What else is still out there?

BB

Hope you don’t mind me adding a couple more shots taken during the flight testing at Henlow. The aircraft really is perfection – a tribute to the many years of skilled work and dedication by Skysport Engineering

As you say Bill, not an evening for photography. Hope you don’t mind but have attached a shot of the Dep to your set.