Here’s a couple….

There was a super documentary made in about 1979, called ‘B25 Mitchells Do Fly IMC’. No cheesy heroics, but plenty of REAL flying. Most of these a/c were, of course, veterans of ‘Catch 22’. It was about the crossing of the Pond by about half a dozen for the making of the film ‘Hanover Street’, starring Harrison Ford. There was a real wartime pilot, I think named Parish, along for the trip, and the pilots, as well as the Usual Suspects at that time, included John ‘Jeff’ Hawk, bless him. They were all together for a mass take-off, I think at Goose, when there were some burst tyres and crazy taxiing….! They ended-up splitting into two groups, one took the shorter (Colder) northerly route, and JH taking the the southern (Warmer) route via Madeira etc. There is some magical footage of them in formation through broken cloud to Fleetwood Mac’s ‘Albatross’. This was all an amazing effort, especially as some of the a/c were pretty rough. JH’s advice to all and sundry to ‘Baby them (The old a/c.) along’, has always stayed with me when flying old a/c……! All the a/c were named, and some stayed in the UK, at least for a while… “Laiden Maiden’…..et al. I believe Parish passed away before the documentary went onto release.( JH ended-up on the bottom of the Med’ in, er, unusual circumstances.) If you can watch it without feeling a very warm glow inside, you ain’t alive. 🙂
.
The other one that strings to mind, is the supposed ‘combat’ in 633 Squadron. There is some footage at altitude, and you can see the vapour-streams off the wingtips of the Mossies as they reef into some hard turns…..oh to see THAT today…….!!! :diablo:

Damned close….

…..every time I watch that video, I’m amazed. It’s as close a close call as one will see. A very high anal pucker factor….:eek:

?

I’m not a great jet fan, and know little of what you speak, but that won’t stop me suggesting that the Tornado would have been the Blenheim of WW3. Rubbish, but the best we had at the start.

Moggy

…and it won’t stop me suggesting that there is NO comparison.

They Got It Right…!

Years ago, like a lot of folks, I tended to dismiss some of the older B&W stuff. Strangely, much of the colour stuff shot later now seems more dated. A few years ago, I’d recently re-watched the original Dambusters. A few days later, I was watching the attacks on Baghdad, filmed by news-crews live, both with normal cameras and with Infra-Red. I was immediately struck by how superb some of the effects were in the Dambusterss, even allowing for it’s vintage….!!!

Baffled.

I have always been rather baffled by the mindset of some architects. Some seem to have an overweening desire to stamp their name which overrides common-sense and good taste. In Birmingham, next to the preserved Moor Street Station – which is actually a splendid project, there has been permitted the latest – at least the third encarnantion of the Bull Ring. This resembles a vast, ugly turd, embellished with little shiny disks. It is perfectly ghastly. Why such vanity designs are allowed to creep onto aerodromes I don’t know, when it’s obvious that a hangar, or version thereof, is both efficacious and blends well with the environment. Plucking a historical design off the shelf migh also save a lot of wasted fees as well….:diablo:

Jigs.

And have UK CAA approval for use?

In fairness, the CAA, or EASA, concern themselves with the Airworthiness issue, not workshop equipment which doesn’t fly. As long as a hole etc is the right size and in the right location, there’s no issue. After suitable analysis, it might be possible to simplify some aspects of jigging, but Graham is perfectly correct in highlighting the jigging issue. Everything had to be interchangeable, so everything had to be jigged. In the end, Mosquitos were churned-out at quite a rate. I think Airspeeds alone built ten a week. Many wooden assemblies were farmed-out to furniture factories, – a tribute to the well thought-out jigging.

One final thought…..given the immense effort required to reproduce what is a high-performance a/c, it would seem totally illogical to only produce one…… IF there were sufficient interested parties – prepared to commit financially…it’d go a long way to making the financial side look a bit more realistic….

Digression.

So you dont think there were new tail units manufactured for the Proctuka’s-It would have been easier than modifying a Proctor tail

Not wishing to pursue this on this thread (Start a separate thread if you wish to pursue this one…:) ) but there was only one ‘Proctuka’. It flew horribly (Possibly only once..!) and, as far as anyone is aware, it never even left Lands End where Viv built most of his replicas. Whether the tail-unit retained some parts we’ll probably never know, but it certainly looked like a Stukas, so was probably mostly new. A new/revised c/s was built to add the required crank and the cockpit area was heavily modified to resemble a Stuka too. At a glance, with it’s final paint-job, it was…..:p…..OK-ish. Had it flown safely, I’m sure it’d have been used. Whether the other Proctors which were never converted ended-up at Borehamwood Studios I have no idea, but I have several other photos of Proctor parts at Borehamwood buried somewhere.

Looks like the remains of a ‘Proctuka’ -G-AIEY is the best known but there were two others -the fin and rudder assembly looks Proctor too!

It’s not Viv’s dreaded ‘Proctuka’, as the angles are wrong. I presumed the tail-surface in the background was the tip of a Mosquito tailplane, but looking at it again you may well be correct…..
A lot of stuff was lurking around even up until as late as the 1970’s. I was offered about four containers crammed full of Mosquito spares in the early 1980’s, but at the time I had no suitable storage, and I recall it all went to the USA. I was very sorely tempted I do know. Merlins, radiators et al, and not corroded junk either. Of more interest to this thread, I do recall that when the Strathallan B35 was sold to Kermit Weeks, it went for what was – even then – a pittance….my memory may be fooling me, but it wasn’t much more than £100,000, I was very sorry to see it go, but at least it was nice to know it was in safe hands.