Any ideas what is happening to the Milestones hall? With the spotlight on the BofB hall I have not known that milestones was suffering a similar fate. Actually like the P-51 and Tempest showing what is under the hood, sadly cutaway exhibits seem few and far between.

I have quite a bit of sympathy in the argument for returning significant aircraft to their homeland. given certain conditions. Sadly, because of history, the UK would not have a great deal to gain from such a policy.

There seems to be a lack of joined up thinking at Cosford and Hendon. Cosford concentrates on the Cold war, plus prototypes and test aircraft . Hendon has the WW1 exhibition so it makes sense to have a large WW2 exhibition and concentrate on these at hendon. By all means show the falklands, Gulf wars, Korea, Afghanistan etc but make the core of the collection the machines, and crews from both world wars, with over 75% of that content being RAF. Always thought it a travesty that there is not one Transport Command aircraft at hendon!

Surely IWM get a good amount of revenue for ARCO,TFC, Classic Wings etc? Having a ‘season ticket ‘ will generate more cash in the long term through the cafe and shop but I am not a fan of having that as a standard ticket. The Portsmouth dockyard is the same as Chatham, fine if you are local but the price is expensive for a single visit. I probably visited Duxford about once a year in the 90’s and early 2000’s, but have now not been for 5+ years. Its a 220 odd mile round trip and at £16/£18 is too expensive in IMHO. Particularly when Hendon is 40 miles away and the only charge is to park. I know they are different experiences but a day at Duxford is likely to cost £50+food, Hendon £10+food etc.

The price of that ‘Stampe’ is crazy! It is not like its a partically rare type either so I wonder why they went to all that trouble to build a replica?

Im afraid there are an increasing number of sites that, under current rules will not hold a flying display again. In this I would include Kemble, North Weald, Lee on Solent, Shoreham, and many more. Basically you can not display over habitation, industrial areas, retails areas, and major roads. Unless you can make sure these places are empty.

This was the first ‘war film’ I had seen at the cinema in years and is the whole ‘bitty’ nature of it, rather than telling the whole narrative, something that has been seen before? While I applaud bring these subjects back into the new film domain I would prefer a more traditional way of doing things.
On the subject of the first scene, is it me or is the Dunkirk ‘perimeter’ shown far too close to the town, I thought it was not on the very edge of town until the very finals days? It showed it almost close enough to mortar the beach.

I took my non aircraft interested wife to see it last night. the cinema was 80% full and a very mixed audience. It is very different from the war films of the 40’s-70’s. No real complete narrative of the complete event, just snap shots. The cinematography was first class and harrowing in places. The sinking scenes were particularly powerful. Trouble is in the old style films you needed to know nothing before hand but with this you have to have a overall idea of what happened at Dunkirk to follow it. I would aree there seemed a lack of troops, and it gave the impression that the navy lots lots of ships and the small ships saved the day. It is certianally very modern in showing that there was not a great deal of ‘stiff upper lip’ on display. I do not think the film will transfer easily to the small screen.