No, they’re MINI’s.

If this was a crash, the speculative types would have been shot down by now and told to wait till the crash report comes out. Funny how things change….

A4 Paper?

Oh. The development aircraft and the first Hawk in which I flew 🙁

If you don’t see anything even slightly dubious about flogging this wreckage for money then so be it. I suppose there is an area of the historic aviation sphere that is perfectly happy to desecrate crash sites for personal gain (either the exclusivity factor or from flogging parts at Aerojumbles). This is dark history within living memory of a lot of aviation enthusiasts. I’ve seen a good number of eyewitness accounts from people who were unfortunate enough to watch the P-38 go in. Flogging one of the more readily identifiable pieces of the wreckage for £5k seems a bit ghoulish. I doubt it will help return another P-38 to the skies, if nothing else. I also wonder how Proudfoot’s family feel about the whole thing, unless of course they have sanctioned the sale.

Where do you personally draw the line with this sort of thing? If I went to Lockerbie next weekend with a metal detector and then tried to sell 747 relics on Ebay, purely for personal gain, for example?

Personally? Well that’s subjective, but I suppose if you’re flogging bits with the deceased pilots blood on it soon after the accident, well I’d see that as ghoulish, and distasteful. A wingtip, of a crash 20 years ago, no, not at all. Rather than making assumptions, why not contact the owners of the aircraft at the time of the crash (TFC) and ask them?
Also, I can think of several Spitfires in the last 2 decades that have claimed the lives of their pilots (and passenger) that have been restored to flight. Scrap material has been sold on, and companies have charged the owners for rebuild. Where do you stand then?
You’d need to come here to Lincolnshire to find parts of the Lockerbie Jumbo, they’re all stored here, or were, when I saw them in 2009.

But I think Duxford have everything 😉

It’s very difficult to be objective about a subject that you’re passionate about. If someone is hired in as a manager of a museum and has the unenviable task of enhancing footfall and there’s a volunteer who has put in decades of effort, there can easily be a lack of understanding or disparity in what has been done, or what needs to be done. Clear and effective communication is the only way forward, which if taken in context can be done.

I must admit to having worked hard on several warbirds with quite a degree of passion (as a volunteer), only for the owner to move them on at short notice. Honestly it can be heartbreaking, but they weren’t mine, they were his.