First light

The thing I like about this book is that having read it through once, you can return and dip into it anywhere, and you are immediately back in the thick of the action.

A veritable must for any aviation Enthusiast or historian

Ground Running

On one of my last visits to the Tangmere Aircraft Museum, the propellor had been removed from the Hurricane, the exhaust stubs were connected to a duct that ejected the exhaust outside the building, and the engine was run for a short time, (as I recall it was 5 min running and an hour in between runs), to enable patrons to appeciate the sound of the Merlin when running.

I personally did not appreciate the sound since running with the propellor off meant that the engine could not be run at anything like full load.

IMHO it was an expensive waste of engine hours

Ambassador/Elizabethan

I was pondering the other day about the Ambassador which was referred to as the Elizabethan by BEA.

How many Ambassadors were built? Were they all built by Airspeed at Christchurch

Was BEA the only operator of this aircraft before selling them on to Dan-Air. Who else operated them?

Were there any proposals to convert these aircraft into a turboprop version as was done to th HP Herald

Bombing Germany

Those who think the Allied bombing ofGermany was wrong should tell us what alternative action we could have taken to achieve the same result. If as they advocated in 1940, we had sat on our hands and done nothing, we would not have been able to bomb Germany because we would have been suffering beneath a teutonic jackboot.
The RAF and USAAF bombing campaigns were very effective in carrying the war home to the German nation. Not to have responded to their provocation would have been a mistake of unimaginative magnitude. During the period from early 1941 to June 1944, Allied air raids were the only large scale offensive actions that took place in the European theatre.

Remember Winston Churchill’s words “we will never surrender”. It must not be forgotten that for 2 years after the Battle of Britain the United Kingdom as the unsinkable Aircraft Carrier, fought on alone against the advances of the Third Reich in Westen Europe, albeit with the status of a favoured customer of the USA, whose proficient production Engineering experiences were used to our advantage

IMHO I feel that “Bomber” Harris was justified in his decision to bomb Germany as a strategic objective

Dai Lee

Airccrasft in films

A sudden flash reminded me that in the FILM of “Jesus Christ Superstar”, two Israeli(?) Fouga Magisters overfly a wadi in which the action is taking place. Does anybody else recall the scene?

Shoreham

[QUOTE=Pure Lightning;1650232]
I’ve never been to Shoreham …how big is it /QUOTE]

Runway 03/21 ashphalt approx 1100m
Runway 08/25 Grass about 1200m

These figures are off the top of my head and should be confirmed by the airport authorities or their website

The Bridges at Toko-Ri

Mickey Rooney, you mean…. 😉

You’re right of course, the old grey matter wasn’t working properly.

Dai

Nobody has as yet mentioned the 2 great B17 films, “Twelve o’clock high”, and “Memphis belle”

There’s a nice job foryou to get into, pagen01, with “Twelve o’clock High ” (Gregory Peck): “Memphis belle” which coincidentally was on one of the cable channels last week, being more recent should be easier.:)
I seem to recaat they had 5 airworthy Fortresses while filming “Memphis Belle” in the UK, and one of the B17s crashed and was written off.:mad::mad::mad:

There was the Fairchild Packet that crashed in the desert and was botched up to make as single engined aircraft in “Flight of the Phoenix”