Happy birthday!

What’s the the rather natty yellow floatplane?

Cheers

Alistair

Not too sure it was the Uk Government that got it right about free admission to museums. I seem to recall it was an European missive to do with not charging for the nation’s heritage. Which doesn’t explain why Duxford still charges. Do they charge at the Manchester IWM?

It was the UK Government who are responsible for it, but it’s only for certain national museums, who were able to afford it because of changes to the VAT laws.

The full story is here:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/arts/2183071.stm

Cheers

Alistair

Did Shorts ever build nice looking planes ???

The C Class Empire Flying Boat was a lovely ‘plane…

Zeppelins!

Co-incidentally I found this new book review on Hyperscale
http://misc.kitreview.com/bookreviews/zeppelinsbookreviewrb_1.htm

Might be interesting to some of us here

I’ve been pestering my local bookshop for it for the past week…

Zeppelins do seem to get overlooked – there’s been hardly anything in the media about the 75th anniversary of the Graf Zeppelin’s round the world air trip. :confused:

Cheers

Alistair

Chiz!

3) Chiz – Oi James! What does “chiz” mean? I’m a youngster you see, born in ’79, so I haven’t a clue about all this Molesworth stuff 😉 😀 🙂

Ashley

I was born in ’75 and I know what chiz means. (Having just read my better half’s copy of the The Compleet Molesworth.)

I dunno, kids these days… :rolleyes:

Chiz is the opposite of whiz – a whiz is something good or wizard, while a chiz is something unfair. A complete chiz is really, really unfair.

Molesworth is really worth reading – there’s a lot of references how the boys of the 50s were really into ‘planes – Molesworth 2 is forever pretending to be a Meteor or a Canberra.

Cheers

Alistair

Certainly the same aircraft type. The relative concerned did have south coast connections so maybe taken in the Bournemouth to Southampton areas.

Anybody guess a unit and date?

According to British Flying Boats by Peter London, Southamptons served with the following squadrons:

No. 201 (Calshot)
No. 203 (Iraq)
No. 204 (Mount Batten)
No. 205 (Singapore)
No. 210 (Felixstowe and Pembroke Dock)

It’s a Southampton I, made in response to specification to Requirement 11/25 and so the photo’s probably between 1926 and whenever it got upgraded to a metal hull… (early 30s?)

Sorry I can’t find more.

Regards

Alistair

These are lovely photos – thank you very much.

Excuse my ignorance, but what is happening in the second set of photos? Is it practice for pilots “bailing out”, so that the first time they do it isn’t when someone’s shooting at them?

Thanks

Alistair