Flight International — 22 August — 4 September 2017

STRAIGHT&LEVEL

From yuckspeak to tales of yore, send your offcuts to [email protected]

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36 | Flight International | 22 August-4 September 2017 flightglobal.com

Champion killed

M. François Lafourcade, the

French champion cyclist,

has been killed

while carrying

out his duties of

patrolling the

coast as a non-commis-

sioned flying officer. His

machine capsized and the

bombs he was carrying

burst. His observer was

also killed.

Carrier sunk

The carrier H.M.S. Eagle has

gone at last,

victim of a

submarine in the

western

Mediterranean. She was

fairly large, 22,600 tons

displacement, but only

accommodated 20 aircraft.

In the present year she was

just about the least useful of

our carriers.

Stansted ruling

The Essex County Council

has decided not to appeal

against the High

Court decision

about the

Government’s

proposal to site the third

London airport at Stansted.

The Council will, however,

continue to oppose the

Government’s decision by

every other available means.

Chinese reform

In what could prove the

most far-reaching transport

reform in China

for decades,

Government

officials say they

will throw open the aviation

sector to overseas

participation, including

equity stakes and possibly

foreign managers.

Things are getting very hairy

The last Trump

Armageddon may be looming,

but we can always cheer

ourselves up with newspaper

headlines such as the one

pictured right, which obviously

slipped through on the copy-

editor’s day off.

Seeing treble

A BBC TV news report on the

rising incidence of drunk and

disorderly air passengers was

accompanied by a graphic of an

ancient McDonnell Douglas

MD-11. If we turned up to

discover we were flying on a

trijet extinct since 2014, we too

might need a stiff drink or three.

Bag a Tornado

Back on the subject of old

aircraft, although of a much

more recent vintage, fancy

owning your very own Panavia

Tornado? Pictured left, this Cold

Warrior – the only F2A variant

(an F3 upgrade with F2 engines)

in existence – is on sale from Jet

Art Aviation along with a

Hawker Siddeley Harrier GR3.

From Russia...

Given the storm over Trump’s

Moscow links and his bombast

on the budget for the future Air

Force One – “costs are out of

control, more than $4 billion.

Cancel order!”, he tweeted in

December – the irony meter hit

11 with news that the Boeing

747-8s destined to become the

new presidential taxi were built

for the failed Russian airline

Transaero.

Luckily the aircraft were

never delivered, so there is no

suggestion that Putin’s men

could have tampered with them.

Sadly, even if he wins a

second term, the Donald will

barely get a chance to use the

new jumbos. Assuming the

schedule is met, the transports

will not begin flying until 2024.

Mosquito plans

pulled from bin

Once-secret wartime designs for
developing the de Havilland
Mosquito, saved from the skip,
could be crucial to a charity
realising its dream of returning
the versatile bomber to the skies.
The People’s Mosquito
Project (PMP) plans to use the
20,000 technical drawings,
discovered by Airbus at
Broughton just before the
building they were in was
demolished, to build a flying
replica from the remains of a
Mosquito wrecked in 1947.
John Lilley, the project’s
managing director, wants to
follow the model of the Vulcan
to the Sky Trust, which restored
the iconic V-bomber to flying
condition. PMP, which
launched four years ago, has
raised £75,000 ($98,000), but
needs to reach £6 million to
achieve its aim.
“We got a call from Airbus
asking if we would be interested
in drawings of the Mosquito,”
says Lilley. “They had found a
filing cabinet-full. We took four
bin bags away and have got
them digitised.”
The main boon of the
drawings, Lilley explains, is that
they provide the technical detail
to create a near-accurate replica
while fulfilling regulators’ air
safety requirements. But they
also reveal previously unknown
proposals for different variants
of the wood-built, Rolls-Royce
Merlin-powered aircraft.
The last flying Mosquito in
the UK crashed 20 years ago
and, although replicas are flying
in the USA and New Zealand,
Lilley says “having the OEM
drawings means we can build
one of the safest Mosquitos ever.
They are an absolute coup.”
peoplesmosquitoclub.org.uk

One careful owner

Jet Art Aviation

A Mosquito during the war (inset) and some of the 20,000

classified drawings discovered in Airbus filing cabinets

People’s Mosquito Project/Roger-Viollet/REX/Shutterstock