Emotional reaction risks a poor outcome….

The setting is magical compared with the sad pile of scrap it would appear in a museum.

TT you beat me to it!

My thoughts entirely Smirky/TT.

Problem is, now her existence has been more widely publicised, she is likely to attract the wrong sort of visitors, and she may well fade away panel by panel, component by component, ever more quickly as a growing market for “Genuine Easy Elsie 617Sqn Lancaster souvenirs” builds via assorted internet auction sites etc :-(. The attraction of a ‘quick buck’ will be enough to make the logistics of reaching her an inconvenience, rather than an insurmountable problem, for the “treasure hunter” brigade.

Surely the Swedes have as much right to “claim” her as we do after all this time, so maybe the second best outcome would be to recover her to a Swedish museum, and preserve her there in a secure “as found” diorama, akin to the Halifax at Hendon.

From what I have seen she is way beyond an affordable “short-term” restoration to something that looks like a Lancaster (to the eyes of most casual visitors), so even were she brought back to UK she would probably end up in a long “very expensive and unlikely to be completed” queue of over-ambitious restoration projects, and end up corroding away and/or being scrapped at some point in years to come, or she would be preserved “as found” anyway and most casual visitors to wherever she ended up would think “what was all the fuss about, she’s just a pile of scrap anyway?”.

As TT says, despite the 617Sqn provenance – and so far as I am aware she is not a true Dambuster (i.e. op Chastise airframe) anyway, the UK is not short of Lancasters… the likely cost of recovery and “restoration” of her in any form might be better directed towards prolonging the lives and condition of the Lancs (and other types) we already have.

Maybe we need to offer to help the Swedes recover her to a place where she will preserved, so that she can be protected from opportunistic souvenir hunters or scrappies.

I agree that the Tirpitz missions were in some ways just as important to morale as Chastise, but it is 617s “Dam busting” story that captures the general public’s imagination. Were she one of the aircraft lost during Chastise then maybe recovery to UK might be a higher priority (even in her current condition/location), but I think the “Dambuster” link is a bit too vague to expect much public support, especially when they start to understand what is involved in terms of cost and time, given her condition.

Personally I’d love to visit her where she lies, leaving her as some sort of memorial to the crews who undertook such “impossible” missions against all the odds. In my view anything else would be “second best”, (even including a generous benefactor bringing her home and funding a complete trestoration – after which she would probably bend up being more of a re-creation than the genuine Easy Elsie anyway).

The threat of her fading away due to plundering now seems too high to leave her where she is… but “Knee jerk” reactions based on emotion rather than clear thinking rarely make for succesful long-term outcomes.

It is a tough call, but I think I’m probably with TT and Smirky on this one.

Huge relief – long may the lack of interest continue!!:dev2:

Ditto

Problem is, even when ‘Eng-er-land’ inevitably get knocked out, we will still face hours of televised matches on mainstream channels featuring countries that the majority of us don’t care about…:mad:

I suppose the good news is that, now having access to digital TV, I/we have more channels on which to try find something else to watch, though most of that currently seems to be news about Septic Bladder and his involvement (or not) in the alledged bribery (or not) surrounding Qatar World Cup – yawn…….

I suppose that’s the beauty of digital photography.

Yep, mistakes cost you nothing, and with the ability to delete poorer images ‘on the fly’ if necessary you are less likely to run out of “film” too ;).

The photo of SM845 looks pretty good to me, well done Alan.

Paul F

~Alan~

Most photo-editting programs (even the simple/freebie ones that come rolled into Windows O/S etc ) have a means of selectively “lightening” shadows without burning out the highlights in the same image. You may be surpised how much info the camera records in what intiially seems to be a very underexposed “shadow”. This tool can help overcome the dreaded “silhouette” effect of shooting against a bright background without any adjustment or spot metering. The tool has to be be used with care, and an eye on the overall image, but it can often turn a “useless” looking shot into a “passable” shot if all else fails!

So long as you use “spot metering” and the “spot” is fairly full of the aircraft then the camera will probably cope anyway. If you forget to set to “spot metering”, or forget to set exposure compensation (as per earlier posts) the post-production option is always a last resort…..

I note you lens has image stabilisation – my Canon 75 – 300mm lens has IS too, and it means you can often shoot at lower shutter speeds than the old rules of thumb suggest. I can use ISO200, at max zoom, and still get sharp images as low as 1/125 hand-held on a good day. At that sort of shutter speed the props blur nicely.

As SNAFU says, one advantage of digital is that you can fire away until battery dies or memory cards are full, so you can practice, pratice, practice without it bankrupting you!

Heaven knows how we ever coped in the days of 35mm film caneras when you took the photo and then usually had to wait for a few hours/days to see the end result !

Always amuses me to think that people are astonished by this sort of news….

Communications of any sort have always been open to, and subject to, “eavesdropping” or covert interception, written letters have been opened and reclosed, phone lines have been tapped, and word-of-mouth discussions “listened to” by third parties since the year dot – on-line surveillance is really only the natural extension of that approach.

Why are people so sensitive to the thought that their e-comms are not “100% secure”?

If “people” are interested in reading my day-to-day texts, emails etc then I always assume they can do so at any time, but if anyone is watching what I do then I suspect they must be bored out of their minds with the minutae of life of a typical (I assume!) British 50-something male…. :p

I am less worried by covert “listening” by the authorities than I am by the risk of cyber criminals finding their way into my finances.

CCTV, on-line surveillance – whatever, get over it people, if you are doing nothing wrong then what’s the problem?

My attitude to those that try and convince people that “Big Brother is Watching You” is soemthign to be worried about is that if you’re worried about others reading what you’ve written, or watching what you’re doing, then you probably shouldn’t be doing it (or writing it) in the first place. Get a life! Or, if you’re really worried, invest in an Enigma machine 😉

Shoreham, Eastbourne, Dunsfold, Bournemouth…. looks like those of us in the South East are pretty well catered for!

Please, please, please let the weather and servicability Gods look favourably on at least one of the Shoreham or Eastbourne dates…..

Interesting to see the tailplane in the article photo is described as the tailplane from the TWA “jet”, yet the article says the collision involved a Lockheed Constellation and a DC-7, so one or other is clearly incorrect (and the tailplane looks DC-7 ish to me).

As ever, another example of well-researched journalism :(.

All it would have taken is a moment or two on wikipedia or google (other web sites are available 😉 ) to avoid such an elementary mistake…d’oh!

Great Idea Oxcart!

Eric spoke at our monthly Shoreham Airport Society meeting last week – he gave us two hours standing in front of an appreciative and attentive audience, speaking with minimal notes but a selection of slides, recounting various events from his career – his flight with Ernst Udet, his witnessing Hanna Reitsch flying the Fa61 helicopter inside the Deutschlandhalle, his time flying the Wildcat on Escort carriers was covered, as was his incidental arrival at Cranwell when the Gloster E.28/39 was being tested, plus other events such as landing the Mosquito (first carrier landing by a twin wngined aircraft) and Vampire (first carrier by a jet) on carriers, and his post war evaluation of German types, and interviews of prominent personnel from German aviation after the war ended. He also covered some of the hairier moments he witnessed during his time at Farnborough, including acting as groudn contact when Martindale, CO of the High Speed Flight, was diving the Spitfire to achieve a high Mach number, only to lose the propellor and reduction gear. Eric recounted how Martindale managed to glide the stricken Spitfire back to Farnborough for a deadstick landing – on inspection, not only was the front end missing, but the two wings had a visible sweepback, and gaps of a couple of inches were found at the junction of the wings’ leading edges and the fuselage. He ran through the sobering experience of trying to replicate the conditions that caused the loss of Geoffrey DeHavilland in the DeH Swallow, and said that had been one of the most frightening moments in his career.

He was sporting a JSF lapel badge – when asked about he he said no he hadn’t flown one (yet!), but he had been invited to fly the simulator, which he had enjoyed.

When asked which was the type he had most wanted to fly, but never managed to, his reply was the X-15. Apparently everything had been falling into place to allow this, but he was then told he would have to become an American citizen in order to fly it, and that was a step too far in his eyes, so he gave up pursuing the matter!

Not only did Eric speak for two hours or so, in the interval he happily sat and addressed and signed copies of his books for members of the audience, and was willing to have a few moments chatting to each person in the queue. My only regret was that he had run out copies of his Miles M52 book by the time I got to the head of the queue, however, I was happy to settle for a(nother!) signed copy of “Wings on My Sleeve”.

Yes, what a truly inspiring gentleman – he does deserve to be more widely recognised, and having the Wildcat painted as one of “his”, while he is still around to see it, would be an excellent tribute.