Thanks to everyone for their ideas and private thoughts. A taxi in Just Jane has been sorted for John's birthday and we're going to drop in at BBMF on spec when the day is right.
John did 11 years flying before high tone deafness scuppered him. He flew the Wimpey, Stirling, Lanc (90 Sqn) and Lincolns, ending up as Chief Fire Controller on Washingtons (115 Sqn), at time that he is still able to recall in amazing detail. His memories of the shortcomings of the early fire control computers are little short of amazing.
He did 'a tour and a bit' on Lancs and his time on them was 'hairy' because his crew was GH trained (radar) which meant his crew used to get pinged for quite a few jobs. He was called back off his honeymoon to do a job which annoyed him. He describes the Wellington as 'cold and creaky' and he can still describe the geodetic frame as if he was teaching on an OCU.
He hated Stirlings because it used to take up to 3 minutes to get the gear raised. Apparantly, after it was discovered that changes needed to be made to the Angle of Incidence, the nose was raised to its 22 feet off the ground but it was too late to fettle the production lines because the jigs had already been made. So they simply inserted a spacer between the wing mounting points and the top of the undercarriage legs. British
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Nothing worked properly in them until the gear was raised, which I assume refers to hydraulic pressure not being up to much. John says that at 10,000 feet though, it handled like a fighter and with a ballsy pilot it could lose a Spitfire 'if you didn't mind being bounced about a bit'. He got off them quickly and says '.. its just as well I did - otherwise I wouldn't be here'. He was the 'Chief Fire Controller' on the B29 and he loved 'em. They allowed trips to the US, coffee and a comfy seat.