After poking round more in various places I can not find another copy of the picture or of the same aircraft from the sameor similar angle.
The closest I can come is the Miles Hawk and am wondering if any made it to the US (or, conversely, if the picture was taken in the UK and made it to the US sans airplane) Would anyone recognize the aviator in question as one of the Miles brothers or others associated with the Miles organization? This could be a long shot because apparantly everybody and their brother got into the act. (I'm assuming it is not Blossom in the picture)
Have also requested NASM to put another print up on their web site if they can that does not have the background blanked out with clever (?) photographic tricks. This is not Lenin's tomb and this isn't May 1 for goodness sakes.
The common language not being so common is funny sometimes, but not when you must spend loads of dollars getting the Harrier manuals translated from English into American. Stuff like night line check calling for "...a fuel sample cup and a torch..." can go terribly wrong with a literal minded kid who only speaks American