Years ago I wrote to the IWM re them possibly donating the nose the YAM effort, and I got a quite snotty reply back from Dr Alan Borg, basically telling me that the nose section ‘was not suffering unduly’ and would be staying put at Lambeth. As it happens, much later on Dr Borg was one of the ‘experts’ who told the Heritage Lottery people that there was no way that Campbell’s Bluebird could be restored without ‘considerable loss of original fabric’- and how bloody wrong we have proved him!

Yup- it’s simply to increase the effective area of the rudder, and was standard on some batches of late-build Lancasters.

What a fabulous exhibit, anyway. :eagerness:

2016 is a normal year for the bomber followed by the major service at ARCo and back to work in 2017 as I understood things? ‘Grounded’ is a bit strong- the major services have never put her out of action through the show season, not even the re-spar work. Last year’s fire damage was I think the first year she missed since the major re-riveting etc of the wings kept her on the ground through 1979. Not a bad record!