Thanks Cees

We have a lot of parts to work with – now it just comes down to money and time! We have enough parts to rebuild the wings, but some of the panels will be new material – all these parts came from crashed aircraft so missing or badly damaged parts will have to be replaced.

I don’t think we need Marks fuselage remnant as we have so much fuselage material anyway.

Great news about N1521 – sounds very interesting – i’m sure some more parts will turn up. Please let me know what happens…

Cheers

Nice collection of Whitley bits Elliott,

I agree, you cannot talk enough about Whitleys. Do you have enough wingbits to reconstruct one complete set? Would be nice if the RAFM bits and Mark Evans’ bits would be combined. But that again would be a pipe dream I think.

If all goes well we have another look at the remains of N1521 during August this year. We already have approaval of the game keeper. The lake was recentely made deeper and the soil was dumped nearby. This will dry out and when sufficiently firm to walk over it we can further investigate, but we think that only small bits are down there. It was also said that a metal concentration was located in the lake but they seem to have dug around it, don’t know if we can do something there. I will keep you posted on that.

Cheers

Cees

Thanks Tim – your help moving the centre section will never be forgotten! I’m waiting for the jig to be delivered – once it gets on, i’ll send you a picture.

Don’t start me about the goat shed – less said the better.

I agree, the work done by Elliott is amazing, true dedication to the cause!

The piece of fuselage owned by Mark Evans was more like 25 inches long, not 25ft. Still a very impressive piece though.

It came from a remote Scottish island I believe, the Whitley had crash landed and as was too remote to salvage so it was broken up on site, many parts being used by the locals. The fuselage section was used as a goat shed IIRC.

That’s alright – always happy to talk about Whitleys 🙂

The project holds:

Port and starboard outer wings
Large sections of port and starboard inner wings
2 Merlin Xs
A pair of undercarriage legs
Engine bearers – approx 1.5 sets
Completre set of original wooden blades
1 Rotol hub
Centre section – 90% complete
FN16 front turret
Large sections of front fuselage cockpit floor + a multitude of smaller parts including canopy remains
A variety of small-medium sized sections of rear fuselage
Several bomb racks
Pilot and navs seats
Throttlebox

The RAF Museum have the rear end of N1948 which is currently on show at the Midland Air Museum – this is the largest surviving Whitley part on public display and is well worth a visit.

Mark Evans has a section of fuselage from BD232 measuring around 25′ long

I’ll try and put some photos up

Hi Mark

This goes back years – I was in touch with one of the crew members sons long ago. An aircraft in this area was allegedly spotted by a diver in the 1990s – the only exposed part was a bit of the canopy. From this it was concluded the aircraft was a Whitley as one was known to have come down in the vicinity. I do not think they were able to relocate it again.

I spoke to the latest diver who has taken up the search – he told me that he has not found any evidence at all that an aircraft is even there and if there is one, it is buried under 4m of mud.

It’s not clear to me why this was reported the way it was in the aviation press as nothing at all concrete has ever been found. An optimistic, but extremely misleading report to say the least.

Sounds more likely than Defiant. Very good find!

Sorry Peter

Steering this back onto the original topic if I may, so noone can ID the seats then?