Not to mention that he apologised for that incident – others might not have.

Really? I thought he consistently refused to because he never thought his kid was in danger.

I think he was a nutter, personally.

The answer is included here: http://www.straightdope.com/columns/050311.html

Sadsack- Why Duxford would want two Vulcan’s is a question of a similar perplexity to how Bumblebees fly and what happened to the crew of the Marie Celeste

I can’t speak for the latter, but we’ve had bumblebees cracked for some time now.

Guy Gibson would have to be Sean Bean.

Gibsons wing man Flt Lt Hopgood, Robson Green with his Flt Eng Sgt Brennan played by Jerome Flynn. It would be good to see them two together again.

Woah there! Just had a major double-take. By all means let’s get those three next to a couple of tonnes of high-explosive, but if you’re suggesting that we let them “act” together…

I’m sure I read somewhere that the Phantom now belongs to the IWM. Stand to be corrected though.

Brian

Yes, it’s IWM’s. No, it won’t go in AirSpace (unless they put it in the front bit temporarily). Yes, it will (more than likely) will go under cover, as there’s room for all of their airframes now.

To those of you with an agenda against archaeology, I find it really sad that you’ve developed such a resentful attitude to it as a discipline. I see that in one case at least, this is somehow the result of how it impacts your own aviation historical work, and can only hope that despite the bile and rhetoric you do actually see the achievement made by the discipline (for it’s not a science as has been said, nor is it quite an art) in furthering the understanding of our past. To say “anyone can do it” is both inaccurate and meaningless. Anyone can be trained in excavation and other techniques, but they Also, it takes the same academic rigour and depth of experience as it does to present any research, including Mr Sarkar’s, and to write it up in a meaningful way. Qualifications don’t matter, I agree, but experience does, and in their own sphere, professional archaeologists have lots of it, some of which could be usefully applied to aviation matters. In fact, that mainstream archaeologists lack experience of aviation matters probably explains any bad attitudes that you may come across.The same was true of metal-detectorists for many years, due to fears that their lack of training and academia would lead to destruction of evidence. Archaeologists are now engaging with detectorists, and hopefully recognise their right to their angle on the physical evidence of our past and talk about it rather than blinkering themselves. Hopefully there’ll be a similar reconciliation with aviation archaeology. Slate the individuals, but please don’t tar everyone with the same brush.

This said, I maintain that one doesn’t necessarily have to embrace traditional archaeology to be successful in aviation archaeology; there is quite simply much less archaeology involved in terms of contexts and types of structure or finds. Whoever mentioned the deterioration and need for recovery of wrecks is probably quite right; traditional archaeological material is typically stable in its context and can stay there indefinitely if need be. The same is not true of aluminium, magnesium, and other metals. So there is an argument for a different approach, but again, please don’t denigrate “archaeology” as a discipline, as it seems to me to be “horses for courses”. As for any tweedy ******s who look down their noses; I’d like to think most archaeologists aren’t like that these days! If you come across them, give your side and stick by it, one day they will come around and if you think there’s anything they can contribute to your skillset, you’ll be able to draw upon it.

Regarding the argument as to how a dig should procede ,it seems to me that an average A/C dig (always asuming that exists) shifts more mud than a whole series of Time team type digs, where most of the finds seem to be about 2ft down ; scraping away with a tea spoon, Phil’s whiskers would be around his ankles before he found anything!

That’s because aircraft are buried in only one or two layers of soil, and crash (usually) where there is no existing archaeological deposit. This allows certain freedom in “shifting mud” without the same responsbility to record each change in soil colour and type, and each find and piece of structure. It doesn’t or shouldn’t mean that you just hoik it out of the ground, but it means that essentially there is one artefact to remove from a single context. So archaeology that has built up over decades takes much longer to dig and record than this single thing that has appeared in the ground quite recently, and with little prior or later activity.

I think it’s one reason why archaeologists have been reluctant to accept aviation archaeology; not that they’re right to be like that about it, just that they are quite different in nature. But much like traditional museums and aircraft museums, we can bring the two closer together by increasing levels of professionalism and responsibility, and applying as much in the way of techniques from the traditional field as possible.