And the Lancs suitability for carrying big bombs was almost accidental. I think the bomb bay of the Manchester was left unobstructed to allow it to carry nautical mines – as the Hampden did. In the event, new designs of bombs were initiated to fit the Lancaster and make use of its capacious bomb bay.

The Stirling and Halifax were built to the specifications given to the manufacters by the Air Ministry and any shortcomings they had were probably down to limits in the specifications rather than the design team.

I’ll excuse them the odd “factual error” or gloss over of the real truth. They did disparage the Halifax but the early versions had some pretty fundamental flaws. I don’t think reliability was the problem but there were major problems with lack of lateral control in certain conditions. The problem was with the fin and rudders and that’s why the later versions had a very different design. On the other hand, they did touch on the Lancs’ ignominious beginnings as the Manchester.

They haven’t been totally open about the Lancasters being used but it was fairly obvious that NX611 and the CWH Lanc were the two featured. Indeed, was not this the case when they trained up the Dam Buster crew in 2003? Obviously, the BoBMF are not too enamoured with lending out their Lanc for the sake of a TV programme.

G-BPLC still chunters overhead Farnborough – I saw her last week. Lovely sound.

For many years the aircraft sat around in storage at the little airfield at the Powerscourt Estate near Eniskerry Co. Wicklow (not too far from Avoca – more famous now as Ballykissangel). I attended two air displays at Powerscourt in 1977 and 1978. The replicas were wheeled out for static display on that occasion (they hadn’t flown for years). The SE5As were based on Currie Wots if I remember. Particularly good were the Pfalz replicas.

I think all these aircraft ended up in the U.S.

The only turbine powered cars were the Proteus Bluebirds which ran in 1960 and 1964. The firstcar was very badly damaged in a 300 mph crash in Utah and a replacement was then built (this time with a tail fin).

I had always thought that Donald Campbell’s jet boat Bluebirds were fitted with the Metrovick Beryl jet engine and later the Bristol Siddeley Orpheus. I think his father planned to make an attempt on the water speed record in 1947/48 with a De Havilland powered jet boat and that might be where the Goblin comes into the story.

Total rubbish journalism from the Daily Express. The Daily Mail and Daily Express are on a mission to enrage the British by creating inflamatory anti-European headlines.
This so called “news” has not surfaced anywhere else in any other media today so it sound like it has been generated completely from within the newspaper office.

Wombat – if you go to the Airfix website you will find that a large number of the original models are still in production and are still availiable. For the past 20 years or so, Airfix have had a policy of “rotating releases” which means that each year they withdraw some of their range and re-release others that had been previously out of production. The number of brand new releases is tiny – especially in 1/72 scale. However, because their production and scope in the 60s and 70s was so vast, they still have an extensive range. Some of the really old moulds are permanently withdrawn – most of these would have ben replaced by more up to date and better quality moulds in the 70s and 80s (the Mosquito, P-38 and Westland Whirlwind fighter for example are now in their second incarnations and are much better kits than the original 50s and 60s versions).

Having said all that, Airfix models do somewhat lag behind the best that people like Tamiya or Hasegawa can produce – but their products are cheap and some are still unique. I don’t envisage Tamiya ever releasing a state of the art 1/72 scale model of an Avro Anson, for example.