I do recognise that De Havilland were entering new territory with the Comet – especially for them as I am pretty sure that they had never built a pressurised aircraft up to that time. However, other UK companies had already made pressurised aircraft with Vickers probably being the most experienced in Britain. I can think of NO accident to any other pressurised aircraft caused by structural failure due to inadequate consideration of fatigue stress factors – even in earlier designs than the Comet.

When you look at DH’s history regarding structuralk failures, you will see that it was a weak point in many of their designs. In my opinion they were the “Lotus” of the aircraft world, lightness for performance at the expense of robustness for longevity.

If the Humbrol brand is acquired in its entirety, that problem could be reolved too.

I suppose I was being a bit “loose” in describing the Double Mamba as being coupled but the point I was getting at was that I was assuming that the development of the Mamba/Double Mamba was what slowed the Gannet’s entry into service.

Is that a correct assumption?

The report from The Examiner seems to be quite clued up. Apparently, Revell Germany has just been bought out by its own management and is now independent of the US original Revell/Monogram Inc. Revell Gmbh are now on the acquisition trail and Airfix/Humbrol is in their sights.

On the whole, I would be very pleased with this. Revell Gmbh have had a very imaginative and high quality kit release programme over the past few years – either through re-boxing and re-moulding (with updates and improvements) older models that had once been moulded by other companies (e.g. Frog, Matchbox ) or co-releases (e.g.Italeri) or brand new high quality indigenous kits. Their new Hunter is a gem, as is their Fokker DVII.

If this creates a bidding war between Revell and Hornby (who also expressed an interest in Airfix), even better.

As for the nationality of the ownership – in this day and age that is not really of relevance. As we all know, Airfix haven’t moulded kits in the UK since the early 1980s. The bulk of their production came from the Heller plant in France (the root cause of their present troubles). Their most recent kits were being moulded in China.

Can’t name the original designer but it was initially used as a carrier based anti-submarine aircraft. The version in the picture is the later Airborne Early Warning variant used by the Royal Navy up to 1978.

The Gannet is not that unknown an aircraft, having served with the Royal Navy for almost 25 years.

I try to spread my interests around. Apart from aviation (obviously) and my work (I’m a self employed accountant), I make scale models (mainly aircraft but also other subjects from time to time), sing and act with an operatic society, enjoy reading (mainly aviation related but not exclusively), indulge in some astronomy (at a very basic level) and reading up on space related matters and I generally try to keep up to date with the world in general.

I also own a Caterham 7 sports car so try and make use of that through “spirited” road driving and the odd track day or sprint event.

All in all, I have a tough time squeeezing it all in.

Ant Harringtom – the B-26 Marauder vas re-released a few months ago. I spent part of this afternoon putting the decals on mine. Hopefully it will be completely finished by the end of next week.

Un;ess flying has been going on at a site since before 1908, then Farnborough has to be the oldest continuously operating airfield in the UK.