We were outside the Abbey to watch the flypast. I’ve seen Spitfires over the capital before, but never with a Hurricane. The second pass with wings waggling was brilliant. Always seems more memorable than seeing it at an airshow, somehow.

Wouldn’t have missed it for the world.

DD

It’s no surprise that the Lake Sebago Corsairs are being discussed on the American WIX Forum.

A poster there makes reference to Canadian war dead…does he know something or has he just assumed wrongly that they were RCN aircraft?

DD

As you probably know, most of the remaining Meteor 14s are NF(T).14s; lots of them were allocated as display airframes so they had a high ‘survival’ rate.

I have an Aviation Photo News B&W print of WS807 coded J , but it’s in the overall silver and dayglo strip scheme, unfortunately. I could try and email it to you via pm. Whether 807 ever wore the scheme you prefer, grey/green camouflage with big areas of dayglo painted on, I couldn’t say – but that scheme is certainly eye-catching.

DD

Checked, the T2s were XK669 and XK670, but some of the other C2s were used for training and given the dayglo (One source suggets this was when they were used for aircrew training by 51 Sqn, but they carried letter codes when in that role).

I don’t think that the dayglo carried for a while by some Comets was connected with any training role; rather it was following the trend at the time to put dayglo on any a/c that wasn’t a combat type, in the cause of high visibility to help prevent collisions.

The only RAF aircraft that didn’t get the dayglo treatment, without checking further , that I can think was the Britannia fleet. The USAF were certainly plastering the stuff on all their transports and tankers, even some Air National Guard fighters had it for a while.

Just my opinion, I stand to be corrected.

DD

The question was posed and answered on the ABix Forum (Air BrItain Information EXchange) yesterday.

Thanks to Terry Murphy for posting this:

“Enhancement of the photo shows the marks to be B1766. This would be for a French serial for
c/n.66.

This aircraft was previously NC15811 and F-APFD, of Spanish Civil War fame.
It was used by the Basque President to escape to France, where it remained
until captured by the Germans in 1940.

It was subsequently wrecked during a test flight.”

So the roundels are French after all, and of course ‘B17’ stands for Beech 17…. Simple really when it’s explained like that!

DD

—– Original Message —–

Have you tried Military Aircrew on PPrune?

I’m sure you will get a lot more people on there that will be able to answer why the majority of JP4’s were prematurely retired from their intended role.

DD

Not that great an idea if the Gnat pilot didn’t turn his ‘headlight’ on!

Can anyone confirm whether Scimitars in the Fleet support role ever have a Harley light fitted?

Yes, the Airwork Scimitars at Hurn had Harley lights fitted in the nose.

Coming out of Cowes in a sailing boat on a beautiful June morning, what could be better?

Well, a Merlin engined Spitfire circling overhead over a dozen times, for a start!

The only slight fly in the ointment was the buzz-saw noise of the tiny racer thingamy tucked in behind the Spit’s wing, making far more racket than its size warranted, and drowning out the sound of R-R.

Thankfully, they did split up for the last few passes.

Perfect.