Small Spinner - spot on
GORILLA - most aircraft have a design life of about 48k hours - albeit at high level - Nimrod had a 'dogs life' factor built in to operate at low level with lots of turning and burning. Where the spec was 6mm they made it 8mm and so on. The frames being converted had on average 16k hours and were thoroughly NDT'd and computer recorded. I spoke to the project manager in the early days after a 'warts and all' presentation at Poole, and he concluded that if the MRA4 did not materialise, the lads at ISK could rest assured, that flying the exsisting Mk2 is well safe - with it's initial build and subsequent maintainence, in his words, it's " a brick sh*t house"
Military jet noise - the sound of freedom!