No hesitation in bringing this back, but with a question.

Does anyone know numbers of wounded and numbers trapped in the November 1940 bombing of the BSA Birmingham works? Some discussion here: http://airminded.org/2010/11/19/tuesday-19-november-1940/ and relating to the Liverpool Blitz.

I’ll dig up my dad’s diaries from the attic. He spent most of the war in Birmingham where he was in the Home Guard, and he also kept a diary for over 60 years – more Mr Pooter than Samuel Pepys, but at least it’s contemporary material.

PPRune has it as a Citation.

http://www.pprune.org/biz-jets-ag-flying-ga-etc/434322-bhx-closed-due-accident.html

A lot depends on your budget, as you say, but in general you can’t go too far wrong with the offerings from Nikon or Canon.
People can get hung up on the detailed specifications, but you should always remember that it’s the photographer that makes a good and memorable picture. But you know that anyway, I’m sure!
I’ve always reckoned that there’s a lot of sound advice on this site. He’s obviously a Nikon man, and Canon users may beg to differ, but it’s still worth a browse.

http://www.kenrockwell.com/

There used to be a B-26 fuselage section in the scrapyard near Warrington back in the 70s – I assume it’s long lost now. Anyone know for sure?

That would be the first of the Fairey Long-range Monoplanes, J9479, crashed near Tunis.

My Constellation book (M J Hardy, David and Charles, 1972) has it that Lockheed wanted to go ahead with a turbine-powered L-1449 in 1953/4 but were held up by delays in the PT2F engine, a civil version of the T-34.
A number of alternatives were looked at including the Tyne and Bristol Orion from the UK and civil versions of the T-52 and the T-56.
The two British engines were in their early stages and the T52 never saw production, so it came down to the T-56, or more accurately the civil 501.
By this time the 501-powered Electra was taking shape and the jets were coming. Lockheed pulled the plug on the turbine Constellation in early 1955 and instead went ahead with the piston-powered L-1649, which had the new wing originally designed for the L-1449.
Strictly-speaking we’ve drifted off-topic here: the L-1449 was a turbine version of a Constellation, but it was not a conversion of an existing airframe.
Boeing did re-engine a few C-97s, btw, as the YC-97J with T-34s.
As far as later conversions are concerned, like the Basler DC-3, another driving factor is the more limited availability of avgas in remote areas as opposed to jet fuel.

Bit of thread drift I know, but can someone with good colloquial French (as opposed to my ancient O-level!) tell me why the Ouest-France report refers to the distance the plane was dislodged by the tide in miles rather than kilometres? Yet the water depth is given in metres.

After all,they were the architects of the industrialisation of slaughter.

Those who know what happened in the Soviet Union in the 1930s may want to dispute whether this dubious honour really belongs to the Germans, but in the scheme of all-out war disposing of 200 prisoners is, unfortunately, neither here nor there.