And Just Yesterday….. few more years and we will see a Spitfire?
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Sadly I think the Tiger Moth needs restoration again judging by the last picture I saw of her in India!

David, which picture was that? All the recent pictures i have seen , that tigermoth appeared in good condition.. and flying as recently as October 1st (attached pic).. so wondering what picture it is that you saw..

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about that old Indradhanush exercise

http://www.bharat-rakshak.com/IAF/today/contemporary/1320-iaf-international.html

While the Typhoon was a fast and agile, the Su-30MKI took the manoeuvrability honours primarily due to its vectored thrust, which helped it gain the edge in close combat. However, to emphasise that size does matter, in visual combat situations the Typhoon pilots invariably spotted the huge Sukhoi aircraft at significantly longer ranges, thus gaining the initial advantage. By all accounts, the Typhoon exhibited a very creditable manoeuvring performance with its canards, although it was found to be somewhat less agile than the Su-30MKI. For the IAF the real training value of Ex Indra Dhanush lay in the concept of long range interceptions, BVR combat and experiencing the capabilities of the latest avionics.

RAF Units, IAF Units, various maintenance depots, repair and salvage units. etc etc .

As of 1943, some 1100 Hurricanes were flying around in the Indian Subcontinent. Atleast 7-8 IAF Squadrons and an equal if not more RAF units would have operated Hurricanes during the time, plus a few operational training units and various independent flights

As of 1945, within India, there were nearly 211,000 odd personnel of the Air Forces (125K+ RAF, 30K IAF, 40K Non Combatants, Civilian trades) .. that is like a little army in itself.

I don’t think the number of photos is relevant ( 400k is peanuts, frankly ).

Just loading the home page, at 07:50 on a weekday, took 34 seconds, without accessing the actual image gallery; just seven small static thumbnails on a basic HTML page. Edit: that’s on an 80 Mbps connection.

The metric we use at work is that each one-second delay in page loading costs 10% of visitors to abandon. By 20 seconds, we’d be out of business.

Do let me know if you’d like any profiling assistance.

400K is a pretty large number for a website. Its definitely not peanuts. even for a huge corporate entity, let alone an organisation run by volunteers. And yes when there are enough visitors on the rest of the website, even if your home page has nothing but text in it, it can get slow.

That has probably been scrapped already the Indians are quite cavalier about chopping up historic [ or nearly historic] artefacts.

And what do you base that on? – if we had been, there would have been no good number of Spitfires, Tempests or Liberators around for the rest of the world to enjoy.

The Sea Hawk is the navy’s property. and there is a good likelyhood that they will put it back together.

Regarding the Sea Hawks in Kerala – Some links

http://www.warbirds.in/kerala/thiruvanathapuram.html
http://www.warbirds.in/kerala/cochin.html

What insignia would the aircraft wear after transfer to the Indian Air Force?

David, it would have had a “Checkerboard” pattern /band on the rear fuselage – like this one.

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Wonderful Pictures. Having finished a book on the Westland Wapiti (Due to be out soon) , i have a special entry in it for the Wapiti K1289.

These photos are probably from its career earlier with the RAF. And that black band (or red) suggests 5 Sqn?

It ended up with the Indian Air Force No.1 Squadron in 1939..

Though it was forcelanded at Pushtakara in that 1941 incident, the aircraft was recovered the very next day by the Flight Commander , who flew it back Peshawar. I assume the aircraft was SOC soon after .

I should add, I have one photos of the ac in the book. from its days of No.27 Sqn RAF where it has ‘H’ code on the forward fuselage and dark band.. Based on info I have – in its no.1 Squadron IAF , it had the checkerboard markings (instead of the band) and carried the code W on the nose in Red. so the photo in this thread predates both these periods

I cant make out the serial in the second photo.. will try and see what comes up..