True, well “ish” – it doesn’t seem to have had much attention for a long time. When it first arrived, someone at the museum said the long-term plan was to put the aircraft on jacks so that the undercarriage could be sequenced. I don’t think anyone would fancy doing that now! It’d also be nice if they took the tip tanks off, in fact I never worked-out why they were put on in the first place! :p

Sorry, yes it is minus 7sqn marks, not sure if they were ever applied to ‘904?

Applied to both T.19’s. If you have a look at Bywat.co.uk, the photograph he has on there is the same picture that NAM used to have. The original photo does have the 7 Sqn blue circle and the “04” code, but for some reason they’ve subsequently been airbrushed out. I think it was because someone at NAM wanted the aircraft to look as if it was still with 85 Squadron.

When the aircraft first arrived at Newark it still had the markings applied, but they kindly covered them in grey paint. However, if you stood at the right place and looked from the right angle, the sun would hit the tail in such a way that you could still see the markings very clearly. Sadly though, they’ve now either been worn away completely or someone has removed them as there’s no trace at all now.

It’s a shame really – okay, they have this thing about local interest but it’s a bit annoying to have real in-service markings removed just so that representative 85 Sqn markings could be re-applied. And even then the result looks crazy as the dayglow trim was never re-applied. Poor ol’ 904!

Hey, some of us have fond memories of those bushes! Worth the scratches for all the magnificent sights and sounds!

Here’s a question – does anyone remember any aircraft using the secondary runways? I assume they were abandoned in the 1950’s but I’ve never seen any pictures or recollections of the Shackletons using the long-ish NE/SW runway. I remember seeing UAS Bulldogs using the little N/S runway back in the 1970’s once but I guess Bulldogs don’t count as they could have managed with the taxiways! I remember a chap who had been watching the comings and goings since the days of the Lancasters and he recalls that when the U-2C was based there on detachment (think this would have been very early 1970’s?), it was seen performing a long approach to the SW runway (for reasons which nobody can quite fathom) which started over Newquay – not a good way to keep one’s presence quiet!

Did anyone get any photos of the Atlantic’s that deployed to SM one time, think it would have been around 1979-80? I was on holiday at Tregurrian watching the Biggin Hill air show on TV in a caravan (no really!) and I saw an Atlantic drifting-in… which seemed a little odd for a Sunday afternoon. After the show finished I walked up to the airfield and there was a whole line of eight Dutch Atlantics parked at the airport, and another six French Atlantics parked further round (where the control tower now is). I’m also surprised that I’ve never seen any pictures of 19 squadron’s deployment to SM around 77-78. The whole squadron turned-up, accompanied by 100 Sqn Canberras, and used the old V-Bomber ORP. Think they stayed for two weeks?

I still haven’t found so much as a single photo of 7 Squadron’s Canberra T.19’s. It’s amazing that they were buzzing around for 3-4 years and yet the only photo I’ve ever seen was one which Newark Air Museum had on their web site years ago. Then for some reason they airbrushed-out the 7 Squadron markings on it! Oh well, I guess it’s my own fault for throwing-away all my old photographs. When I think back to all the stuff I photographed at St.Mawgan in the 1970’s and subsequently dumped the whole lot, I realise what a bad move that was! Wish I’d kept the long shots of the south pan with all the Canberras parked out there, in various colour schemes (silver/dayglow, grey/dayglow, camouflage), and the snaps of RAE Bedford’s red-trimmed Nimrod popping in a few times. The French Neptunes, all the German F-4F’s, RF-4C’s, German Navy Starfighters, CAF Argus’, and of course the shiny 27 squadron Vulcans, one of which always seemed to turn-up on Thursday afternoons to fly a few circuits. Seemed to be almost as regular as the French 135 visits on Fridays! Ahh, those were the days!

I was even more of a Dads Army geek last year – went into Thetford to find the street where they filmed the infamous episode with Hugh Madoc as the U-Boat captain, and Cpl Jones with the bomb down his trousers. The street looks just the same but the satellite dishes on the cottages make it look a little odd! Then I drove out into the Stanford Battle Area to find the track where they filmed the closing titles clips of the characters marching past the trees. It’s still there, but boy is it a long way from civilisation – and you have to dodge the tanks firing!

Will it ever return to operational flying again I wonder?

On the face of it, you’d think not, as the airfield is out of the MoD’s control. But you have to wonder what the future will hold, and whether the concept of military units sharing facilities with CAA facilities is one which might have some merit. Given the country’s dire financial circumstances, I guess anything’s possible, but it does seem remarkable that the MoD hasn’t abandoned St.Mawgan entirely.

I still think it’s an act of supreme folly that Culdrose wasn’t closed and all the assets moved to St.Mawgan, to be combined with other FAA, RAF and maybe even some AAC units. It would have been a much more logical outcome than maintaining the distinctly under-sized Culdrose.

I suppose much will depend on how successful the civil operations continue to be. Has anybody heard how the situation is? Does the long-term future look any better?

I will strenuously avoid further public comment on that subject … back to TSR2…

Pagen, I’m not sure if you were implying that I was criticising the drawings? I was simply asking if they were going to be converted into camouflaged illustrations so that the countermeasures pods would look in-context. Seems that they will be camouflaged in due course, from what Ronnie has said.

One of the things I’ve been pondering whilst writing my TSR2 book is the information currently available on the subject, and I was wondering what we might expect from whatever publication his artwork is going to appear in. It’s been something of a revelation, trawling through the available books, magazine features and website material on TSR2. So much of it is based on gossip, flawed reasoning and mis-information. For example, a great deal of importance seems to be placed on Stephen Hastings’ supposedly seminal work on the subject (which commands ridiculously high prices on Ebay these days!) but thanks to a very helpful chap, I borrowed a copy to read it, and it’s quite remarkable that his book is perhaps the most misleading one of all! Apart from the fact that it was written by someone who just happened to be a Conservative MP (*ahem*), he devotes most of the book to his views of what a great aircraft TSR2 would have been, and how the Government used the project to destroy Britain’s aircraft’s industry. Obviously, our aircraft industry wasn’t destroyed at all – it went the way it did because of circumstances, and not because of TSR2. Likewise, it’s easy to portray TSR2 as the great “wonder plane” when it never actually had an opportunity to prove itself, but Hastings never addresses the very obvious point that a “wonder plane” isn’t much use if we don’t need it or can’t afford it! The whole premise of the book is based on flawed propositions.

Sadly, the fundamental problem with TSR2 is that almost every author who has grappled with the subject, has fallen into the trap of pursuing the traditional line that the project was somehow sabotaged by the Government of the day when it clearly wasn’t, and we get further and further away from the very obvious conclusion that Britain was actually in serious danger of buying an aircraft which couldn’t be afforded, to perform a role which another aircraft could have handled for a fraction of the price (ie- Buccaneer). The irony of the story is that if the aircraft had finally entered RAF service around 1968-9 (although it might well have been 1970), the very role for which it had been created would have no longer existed by then – how absurd would that have been? As I’ve said many times before, TSR2 really is the James Dean/Elvis of the aviation world – credited with so much potential simply because it’s dead. I think it’s a typically British attitude towards a very British subject.

One other amusing bit of trivia I like is that we always refer to the aircraft as “The TSR2” whereas in fact the term merely applied to the programme. The actual aircraft was the Vickers-Supermarine Type 571, oddly enough, but nobody ever refers to it as that!

Sounds like you’re as much in the dark about NAM’s plans as I am with my publisher’s! I think it’s a dark plot to keep the poor drones under control:p