I watched “Baa Baa Black Sheep” on Irish TV (RTE). Irish TV usually showed American series in their original American formats without title changes or editing.

BBC are notorious for cutting down running times of US TV programmes. For instance, when BBC showed the PBS series “Cosmos”, they cut 10 minutes out of every episode.

Another aviation related series shown on BBC was called, I think, “Squadron”. It featured a ficticious RAF multi-role squadron which used a variety of aircraft for whatever tasks they were called upon to carry out. It was a good idea but I think it only ran for one series around 1983-84.

In March 1977, two bare metal Skyraiders staged through Dublin on the way from Chad to the US. They were registered N91345 and N91495. Does anyone know what became of them?

I thought that “The making Of…” film about “Memphis Belle” was called “Belle and the Glory Boys”.

“Making Of….” films have been around quite a while. In 1966, ITV made a “Making Of…..” TV documentary about the movie “Grand Prix” hosted by Alan Whicker.

Before 1957, most TV was not recorded in any way – BBC did not receive their first video tape recording machine until that year. Once a programme was broadcast, that was it.

Even with VTR, copies were often not maintained for long as tape was expensive and tended to be used over and over again. If a televised event was REALLY important, then a film recording was made by pointing a cine-camera at a TV monitor. The resulting picture quality was pretty poor but that is where the BBC black and white footage of the Queen’s coronation came from.

I’ve actually seen some TV recordings of mid 1950s Farnborough Air Shows which were from the BBC TV broadcasts – Charles Gardener commentaries and all.

Battle of Britain fighter pilot who achieved some fame after the war when he almost married Princess Maragaret. However, the marriage did not go ahead . “The establishment” put pressure on the Princess to drop him as he was divorced from a previous wife. She ended up marring Lord Snowdon instead.

During the making of the movie “Battle of Britain”, it appears that both Princess Maragret and Peter Townsend were invited to visit the set on the same day – inadvertantly. The film crew spent most of the day keeping them at opposite ends of the set in order to avoid any embarrassments.

Townsend wrote a few books on his flying experiences and featured regularly on TV documentaries about World War 2.

Sadly, both Princess Margaret and Peter Townsend are now no longer with us.

The “35,000” figure I’ve seen for 109s includes all descendant variants.

No – great detail. I’d love to hear the full facts behind “my story”. I heard it back in 1991 when my local branch of the IPMS organised a guided tour of No.2 SoTT at Cosford. It was a really interesting day out. Got to crawl all over Jaguars, Buccaneers, Canberras etc.

Another Canberra story I heard from a Sargeant at Cosford was the tale of the control yoke deploying into “eject” mode at 40,000, even though the pilot was not planning on ejecting.

On the Canberra, as part of the ejection sequence, the control yoke slams itself forward against the instrument panel prior to the pilot departing the aircraft. This prevents the pilot from being “kneecapped” by the “handlebars” of the yoke. On this occasion the aircraft was cruising along when, for no obvious raeson, the yoke slammed forward. The problem is that once this happens, the yoke is no longer useable – the presumption being that the pilot will not be around to want to use it once he has decided to eject. However, there was nothing wrong with the aurcraft and the pilot now had to decide what to do. In the end, the pilot and crew decided to stay with the aircraft and were able to fly the plane with judicious use of the rudder pedals and variable throttle settings. They landed safely.

It was quite a feat of airmanship in fact.