Doesn’t look any healthier from the other side. This one taken Jan 2007, so its probably even worse now……

I had been told it was to be retired TODAY 16/12/2010. However I have since had other info which suggests its had a last minute reprieve into the new year. I suspect it will all be over early next year at the latest.

On an related theme the DSA have just issued a tender for the last 6 Jetstreams still in use by 750NAS, available at the end of March 2011.

Two more bite the dust……

😮

Well they are new ones to me! Thanks for posting…

Superglue anyone?

Can only echo other comments regarding the Canberra, I took these in April 2010 and at the time thought there’s only a cockpit section to be recovered out of this jigsaw. Note the tailplanes were also cut before moving.
In their defence I do not think they were given a lot of time or lattitude to dismantle it properly and the alternative probably was it be scrapped in situ, so nothing would have remained.

Just catching back up with this thread after being away for the weekend. Glad my musings were of some interest, as were the pictures.
As far as I know the airfield was known as ‘Cofton Hackett’ which was the name of the nearest village to the aircraft factory. The main Austin manufacturing base being the other side of this at Longbridge.
Sadly the whole of East Works was demolished over the last year or so, in the aftermath of the collapse of Rover Cars and subsiquent site redevelopment, so the place were some 2700 aircraft including, Battles, Hurricanes, Stirlings and Lancasters were made is now but a memory :(. Thankfully the Flightshed itself still stands and is now used by the current Chinese incumbents on part of the site.
I’ve hacked around a googlemaps image to show where the various parts were in relation to today.

Austin Motors – Longbridge

I would recognize the inside of that roof anywhere. Its filmed inside what was known as the ‘Flight Shed’ at Austin Motors works at Longbridge Birmingham.
I worked inside this building for a while in the 1980’s when it was part of the powertrain development workshops at the then Austin Rover factory. The Flight shed and associated ‘east works’ made up the wartime shadow factory built here.

Austin built a number of Hurricane IIB’s here within serial range AP516 – AP936, which covered 300 aircraft, most went direct to Russia, they also built components for another 200 here. The first Hurricane was flown from the airfield here to Elmdon on 8th October 1940

Edit – all 4 reels are shot at the Austin factory, reels one & two are inside the main factory ‘East Works’ Reel 3 is the Flight shed and reel 4 shows the famous aircraft lift from the flight shed up to the airfield. In the background can be seen what was at the time Austin’s car factory. After the war the airfield was built over with what became the main Austin/ Austin Rover/ Rover Cars factory until closure a few years back. I spent many years walking over the top of that airfield, I have several still photographs collected from the period of wartime production but this is the first time I’ve seen any film from here.
Thanks for posting your question !

:eek::eek::eek:

Thanks for posting – when were these taken?

Not seen the picture of it in Camo before as a Jawk Mk1. I cannot believe its been scrapped, I hope its sat in someones garage and they are keeping quiet about it…..

XZ364

Phil, we have had reports from both Sproughton and Bentwaters since 2008 and have confirmed it is no longer at either location. Hence my money is on the cockpit section with this collection as being this one.
The website has a very good handle on the whereabouts of all the disposed Jaguars and other than a couple to be physically identified as being up in the ranges on Spadeadham this is the only one not currently tied down to a location.