Hi Elliott,

My trip to Wales was very eventful! I had the BBC knock at my B&B door at 7:30 the morning after I got to Llanidloes. I had a nice two hour conversation
about my Uncle and his crash site. At that point I hadn’t even been up to see it. That evening I went up to have a look at the area where the Whitley came down. I took my GPS with me. It turned off as we got near Waun Garno and turned on again at the gate which leads to the pathway to the hillside. Five minutes after we got there a freak thunderstorm came out of the blue. So we waited for it to pass. I think roughly 20 minutes. We didn’t get a chance to look at the crashsite that night. So, we decided to go for some pub grub. On the way down from Waun Garno (the way we came up) we noticed the road had been completely washed out by a flash flood. So we backed up and went to a northern road, only to find it was washed out too… I think we spent an hour looking for a way down from the hillside that night! Talk about bizarre!

The next day proved to be much nicer with warm weather. We did find a part from my Uncles Whitley. It was near the top of the hillside which leads to the windmill farm. I also talked to a fellow who’s father came up shortly after the crash to see if he could be of assistance. It proved to be quite a
gruesome site. The rear turret of the Whitley was found a half mile north of the crash site with the gunner still inside. They also found someone outside the plane who had apparently managed to walk or crawl away from the wreckage and die. Anyhow there’s more to the story but it would take me forever to write it up! Still on the hunt for a picture of Whitley P5057!

Cheers,

Todd

Hi Todd

Glad it was a successful trip. I would be interested in hearing the full story if you have the time to put it down for posterity. I can put it up on the website if you.

If you can post a pic of the part you found I may be able to ID it for you.

Cheers

Elliott

Does anyone know if there are any records available detailing ministry contractors during the war? I am interested in finding out some details on a particular company e.g. where they were based.

Cheers for any help

Hi Dave

It depends what kind of contractor you are after. I have a long list of proprietory contractors who supplied components for the Whitley. Are you more interested in those contracted to carry out repairs/overhaul etc.?

Tally Ho Phil 😉 What the big hole in the wing 😮 , Flak damage :confused:

No – that was the result of a lightning strike!

I agree with you too Peter. Seems such a shame to break up this wonderful project. 🙁

I do agree but I would shudder to think what the combined cost of such a project would be, and as a static, with a huge amount of work still to be done there would be few people prepared to pay that kind of money.

I’m sure most of Mr Howell’s wonderful collection will find a good home – let’s hope so.

Elliott,

I am 99% sure it was a ‘Privateer’.

That would account why I thought it was a B-24, similar and family and you thought it was four engines, a tall single fin and looked like a Warwick.

What say you?

Mark

That would be more like it!

Bruising from the storm in the 1970’s would be my guess.

Mark

Hello Mark

I visited the diorama a few weeks after you and I recall (i may be wrong as it seemed EXTREMELY exotic for that part of the world) that the smoking aircraft was a vickers warwick! This was a fair while ago and there were so many wonderful distractions in myanmar I wouldn’t put any money on it, but it did stick in my mind.

Elliott

Having played ‘hunt the Spitfire seat’ for a number of years, I’d be pretty certain that, pre-ejector seats, pilot seats were type specific, albeit that they may have been supplied from a specialist sub-contractor. There are just too many ‘lumps and bumps’ in aircraft for a ‘one size fits all’ not to compromise the designer, in my view.

A bit like Dunlop wheels. They all look very similar but there are scores of them, with minor differences to diameter, width, brake, bearing spread etc.

Any other views?

Mark

Whitley pilots and navigator seats were all made by AW. Incidently, we just turned up a Whitley navs seat.