I would doubt the cockpit shot is actually JG891 as the Tasmanian Devil artwork of George Gilbert is not visible on the top tank cover.

Doug tells me that in the original photo he can see the curve of the top of the “G” so he thinks it’s JG891. I don’t know which date the “Tasmanian Devil” artwork was added but Doug’s logbook states he flew both aircraft on 21 July 1943 so that tallies with the ORB.

Cambridge Evening News – Aug 28

Well the good old Cambridge Evening News has caught up with the Duxford news at last.

Their Editorial hopes that “…every effort will be made to resist the plans …”

BTW – I was in the Planning Office at Cambridge City Council a few days ago and was horrified at the proposed plan for the Marshalls airport site. For those who know and love this airfield (and I have happy memories of my first Tiger Moth solo there many years ago) the housing is proposed to run from the southern boundary (Coldhams Lane) towards the NW corner. It looks as though the north eastern corner will be left – possibly as a “public open space” – and the historic buildings on Newmarket Road will be left in situ. 🙁

IIRC the Rover Gas Turbines for aircraft use were partially developed by Alvis Ltd – hence the Auster J/1 and Chipmunk visiting Baginton.

If RPSmith is reading this have a word with Jim next time you see him – he worked on them when he was an apprentice at Baginton … and I seem to recall he may have had some souvenirs in his Mum’s shed many moons ago!

It was one of the participants in the 1946 SBAC display – “Flight International” will have a period photo.

I read the same text about a week ago and thought… ‘neat’… how many capital ships can claim to have been sunk twice? (perhaps a couple of the big US BBs after Pearl?)

USS Phoenix survived the attack on Pearl Harbour and was sold in 1951 to Argentina … she was sunk by HMS Conqueror in 1982 as the A.R.A. General Belgrano.

G-ORDY came up with a photo of the Wizard last September:

http://forum.keypublishing.co.uk/showthread.php?t=48764&highlight=Wicko+Wizard

Roger Smith.

And I have photos of all his other designs too – we corresponded for a while in the 1980s and Geoffrey kindly sent me lots of prints … including the Miles Pusher project that he designed and which was built at Woodley.

His son published a book on “Waltzing Matilda” some years ago.

There was a proposal a couple of years ago to site a service area midway between the A11/M11 junction and the A505/M11 junction. That was turned down.

Cambridge Evening News this week had another article in which Michael Marshall was talking of a possible move to Wyton.

Build 5,000 houses on the Cambridge Airport site and Cambridge will be effectively cut off for traffic entering the town from the East. Its bad enough now – can take 30 minutes to queue some mornings!

Spitfire & Harvard, close formation, over the office at 1:10 today.

Now where’s that Buchon when you need it …..