That building isn’t a hotel in Scarborough is it? It looks like a building I saw once before that was identified as a famous hotel on the Scarborough seafront. I’m not sure if it is still there today. Just a thought.

Fantastic photos by the way.

Thanks Mark. Very comprehensive as usual.

I guess it would take some weeks to comply with such an order decreeing a colour change like that. After all, each station would only have so many spray guns available, plus the paint would have to be sourced, and some aircraft would be under servicing or too active to pin down for a repaint. I’d think it’s be some weeks to have all the hundreds of fighters of the RAF changed, no matter how quickly each individual aircraft may have been resprayed. So I guess there were Night/White aircraft in the BofB then.

Another query… When did Fighter Command change from the Battle of France style balck/white undersides to the duck egg blue undersides? Did any aircraft actually fly in the Battle of Britain with the black/white paint still applied? Or were all surviving aircraft repainted by then?

Also, what was the purpose of the black/white scheme? Was it ID to stop the French gunners shooting them down? (if so, it didn’t work in Bill Kain’s case!)

John,

I had read that before and found where – a very noted source – Alexandra Palace Television Society – so must be correct:
http://www.apts.org.uk/coronation.htm

Here’s the extract –

The BBC had arranged, with the co-operation of the RAF, to fly telerecordings – that is to say, recordings on film of the television broadcast – to Canada in three stages during the day. This arrangement – “Operation Pony Express” – functioned perfectly. The film recordings were flown across the Atlantic in three Canberra jet bombers which left London Airport at 1.30, 3.15 and 6.20 pm. Each Canberra took a little over five hours to reach its destination and at 4.15 pm, local time, a full telerecording of the BBC Television Programme was broadcast by television stations in Ottawa, Toronto and Montreal. Two of the major United States television networks, the NBC and the ABC, also took this programme via a television link from Montreal to Buffalo. Another major American network, CBS, broadcast its own telerecording of the BBC programme, which had been flown across the Atlantic by the Canberras and then flown on to Boston. Later in the day, NBC switched over to their own telerecording which had also been flown over.

It is estimated that over two million people in Canada and some eighty-five million all over the USA watched the Coronation on television. Approximately 80,000 feet of cinematography film was used for BBC telerecordings. Recordings of the sound broadcast required 3,400 12-in disks and some 250 disks of other sizes, as well as 200 reels (approximately 85 miles) of magnetic tape

As for NZ, there’s a Magister (or is it a Hawk?) in Motat, Auckland.

There’s an Oxford with the Subritzky’s;

A Consul-to-Oxford conversion being rebuilt at at RNZAF Museum

And the remains of an Oxford recently changed hands via Trademe.co.nz it seems

Plus some remains of RNZAF examples are in the Taranaki Museum and with a group in Australia.

None of the are airworthy nor likely to ever be. However a replica is being built to fly by the Subritzky’s which will be cool.

There’s a Singapore Airways Consul being rebuilt to fly at Mandeville too, but this project has stalled.

Well that’s a very fair idea John, as far as visitor numbers goes.

I fear however it wouldn’t happen in NZ for the very reason that existing museums here have a very difficult time as it is to find funding, so one for a foreign force would be more difficult still, unless the funding also came from offshore. It took nearly 40 years to get a proper funding setup for Motat which is one of the country’s premier museums of not just aviation but all other aspects of transport, science and social history. Wigram also struggles along valiantly on a tiny budget, and other museums are worse off still. So I cannot see any new major museums being established in NZ at any time soon, sadly, especially one that has to restore many ex-jungle wrecks. A pity, as it would be fantastic.