I found the Valiant reference I had been looking for … in a Valiant article by Dr Norman Barfield, Air International September 1992, p161….’Sir George Edwards recalls a much less well-known but intriguing ‘what might have been’ in the Valiant programme…the redoubtable General Curtiss LeMay, Head of Strategic Air Command led a high-level U.S.A.F team visit to Weybridge to study the Valiant further. Much impressed by its take-off performance, they were even toying with the idea of putting it on an aircraft carrier’…Barfield later claims that one result of the visit was that the B-52 was switched to side-by-side seating as in the Valiant from the tandem arrangement in the B-52 prototype.
The obvious first question is ‘why would LeMay have any interest in a U.S. Navy carrier initiative?’

The price seems very high if you can’t fly them, they’re too stripped for display, and all the useful bits that might be useful as S-61 spares are missing.
Seems like all you’d be getting in scrap metal with a good story.

But I had a laugh…the title of this thread reminded me of a Christmas carol….

Yes, you’ll probably never be able to sing ‘We Three Kings…’ again without stumbling, especially after some Christmas cheer.

I suppose there was a time when the Americans were looking at non-strategic materials for war production but i get the impression that USAAF use of the Mosquito (and Spitfire) was done by field transfers (with an element of offering the pilots a bit of sporty variety).
And it occurs to me that for the UK balsa wood was perhaps a strategic material [from Ecuador, not the Hertfordshire rain-forests 🙂 ]
I don’t know how the Mosquito was moulded but the dh91 Albatross ply/balsa/ply sandwich seems to have been laid up on a heavy collapsible MALE mould (taken out from the inside) …there may have been an article in Aircraft Engineering magazine about 1938

I thought the RAF entry in the 59 race used Biggin….and see http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/military-obituaries/air-force-obituaries/6932787/Air-Vice-Marshal-Charles-Maughan.html That’s the Biggin valley behind the guy jumping out of the Sycamore, surely.

Might be a mix of locations, especially with the Vautours

Well I knew of the major contribution of the Poles to the RAF effort but wasn’t aware of the details of their contribution in France before the fall so the reviewer can possibly be forgiven (on the grounds of youth?). If anybody has seen the actual book, are there any photos/mentions of the sole ex-LOT Lockheed 14 which supported the Poles in France and was destroyed….see post#17 in this previous thread (which contains most useful info from Antoni)
http://forum.keypublishing.com/showthread.php?133311-Aircraft-ID-Copenhagen-late-forties&highlight=polish+lockheed

BTW the last place you’d find aircraft wearing the Cross of Lorraine between 1940 and 1944 was mainland France, surely?

Couple of Rollason Turbulents, Redhill 1968 🙂

Yes I was wrong, edited original