Sabre from JP656

I believe the Caen Museum and the Sabre from JP656 recovery, which appear separately on DaveR’s list, are in fact the same engine. The Typhoon replica which hangs in the Museum is painted as JP656.

Foulness targets

I think the ‘targets’ in the fifties would have been more likely Tempests than Typhoons. The latter had mostly disappeared into smelters in the late forties but a number of retired Tempest TT.5s were sold to the Ministry of Supply and were allocated to Foulness in 1956. Indeed, the RAF Museum’s example was recovered from there by 33 Sqn in 1958, for use in their presentation of standard celebrations, and thence to Middleton St George gate.

photo 38

Vampire T.11 XJ774 was allocated to the Central Navigation and Control School, Shawbury, which became the Central Air Traffic Control School in 1963 – as suggested 170 posts ago (engaging Slightly Smug Mode).

Wg Cdr Derek Walker was killed in a P-51D at Hendon.

Typhoon Identified

It is MN304, FJ-N of 164 Sqn, taking off from Thorney Island, 2 or 3 days before D-Day. Photo was RAF Official – now part of the IWM collection. On the evening of 5 June 1944, its pilot spotted the Invasion fleet setting sail and was so excited he forgot to lower the undercarriage when landing …

Only one RAF Yak?

If there was a Yak in RAF markings in 1944 it was not Storrar’s – he started 1944 at 53 OTU as CFI, then commanded the Air Dispatch Letter Service based at Northholt, before commanding 64 and the 165 Sqns at the end of the year – all in the UK. He did not reach Italy until January 1946, when he was WCF 239 Wing.

The attached photos show his Yak in RAF markings, with his ‘JAS’ marking, and two shots of the Bulgarian defector’s Yak 9 in its Bulagarian markings (over Russian stars) at Bari in 1946. If the triangular marking beneath the tailplane is a serial, then the two aircraft are the same – both showing ’72’ over ‘7087’.

181 sqn Typhoons (EL codes) could have been photographed at one of dozens of bases as the unit was part of one of the 2nd TAF’s mobile Wings. However, 181 were at Lubeck for a month immediately after the end of the war – and so was Ju352 ‘Air Min 8’ which was captured at Flensburg but used by RAE Farnborough to ferry captured equipment to the UK. An apparently full log of its jouneys can be found in Phil Butler’s excellent ‘War Prizes’. It was also at Schleswig, another Typhoon base along with Flensburg, so there are at least three options for the photo location.

In this same immediate postwar period 41 sqn (EB codes) was based at Lubeck with Spit XIVs.