WIX Archives

Re: John Dale

Posted by Ron Henry on Wed Aug 07, 2002 02:44:24 PM

In reply top Re: John Dale posted by Christer on Tue Aug 06, 2002 02:16:10 PM

: Yes, Cees, You?re right!
:
: The story is that JD found the log of P7350 and, when flic
: king through it, he realized that this Spit had an interes
: ting history with a combat record including victories. He
: decided to donate the aircraft back to the RAF.
:
: It?s possible that he flicked through a Spiteful log as we
: ll but, found nothing interesting in it.
: If I could be beamed back to 1948 and got the chance to fl
: ick one through, the best thing that could happen is that
: all the problems and the efforts to rectify them could be
: followed. But then, of course, I?m a certifyable teccie nu
: tter. I wonder if I?d be leaning against the crate contain
: ing ...... oh well, got dreaming again ......

I'm inclined to treat the P7350 log story as folklore. I don't believe the logs ever accompany a RAF a/c that's sold as scrap. Indeed, quite a long time ago I heard a RAF navigator talk of participating in final flight of a Liberator to the MU at Lichfield (I think). The crew parked the a/c, walked to an office to hand over the keys and the F700, and were told to throw the log on the office stove.

As for the (few) production Spiteful logs, I'd think that most of them read something like:

1. Production test flight(s)
2. Flown to MU.
3. Sold for scrap.

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