Hello Morton,
Many thanks for sharing your stories with the greater group and for the best wishes on the book. It's been a bit hectic of late, as I have been finishing off a series of virtual Canberras for Flight Sim 2004, of which are now complete and I can return to this worthy project!
For all those that have sent over photos, I will now have some time to devote to finishing up the clean-up and sending them back over to you. I have been adding your written contributions to the manuscript but will have to chase some of you down still for ranks, real names and locations!
LR and Harvest Reaper, cheers for all the details on ejection systems of late, and for filling me in on the early T.4. I had heard something about old leather seats in these, and some of the Aussies on the Canberra Crazy forum were mentioning their B.21s had them but I am not sure on this. Frankly it still seems amazing to me you can squeeze two bang seats in a Canberra pit let alone one, and that they even had inches to spare to shift the pupil pilot to the left. It blows my mind, yet I know it can be done as I had to 'make' this very modification when I made my virtual T.4. I wonder if Teddy Petter ever imagined this need would arise when I he laid out the A.1? Amazing foresight in his design.
Speaking of the T.4, we have heard several anecdotes about the bomb bay and even upper equipment bay being used for 'unorthodox' cargos- did anyone ever have experience of the T.4 nose cone ever being used for anything? From what I know, it seems it was always left essentially empty apart from the pitot head wiring and some box-looking objects.
Ok, all for now, I will back on here soon with a new line of questioning no doubt. By the way, does anyone know any former armourers that I could get in touch with? I am light on the weapons and stores aspect of things and would love to do some digging there.