confirming some notes more explicit than others
Dear Ian,
Not A&AEE, I was happily there for a while. I have had a scuff around some of my father’s papers and also keepsakes given to me after friends died such as their Notes and odd manuals. One thing at the back of my mind is how well and how frequently Notes were updated. Amending them was a chore. A carton of booklets and a wodge of amendments was dumped on your desk. You quickly learned to do the most recent ones first otherwise you spent ages cutting out and gumming in strips, scoring out and inking in only to open an envelope of amendments and find a complete printed page or pages that superseded your labour! In ideal circumstances Unit Notes would be assiduously kept and updated but the risk that privately held copies such as those in my hands would be incomplete was real. [There is a company that prints “repro” Notes to a high standard but these comments are just as valid and the same holds for records at DoRIS]. Ferry units would have to be particularly “hot” given the nature and variety of aircraft. It is no mean testimony to your father that he flew Mosquitoes and did so in a ferry unit, his skills would have had to be rated well above average on both counts. During wartime when shadow factories were there to ensure continuity of supply aircraft would be constructed to drawings and schedules that differed slightly and were fitted with propellers from multiple source even when the maker itself held a licence. That a de Havilland aircraft was built in a non-DH factory, with non-RR engines and a non-DH HSP Hydromatic is not something I would read too much significance into. Two aircraft side-by-side with consecutive numbers might be subtly different. As I said before it is not always granted to us to have the time and height to put wrongs to right.
Best Rgds
The “E”