Speechless Two: In conversation today with a lifelong friend of mine who was around the same South Coast airfields as I was back in the late 50s and early '60s (and incidentally preceded you on a gliding course at Christchurch by a year) he told me that he is convinced that the Messenger that was damaged at Portsmouth following loss of its propeller on take-off was silver, and thus not 'KKG as the official record has it. That fits in with your memory of KKG's incident happening at Christchurch. BTW, the Comanche that Ben Heron had at that time was a single, not a Twin: a 1959 Model 250 N6183P, memorable not just for retaining its US registration but also for its unusual (in the UK at least) brown/white colour scheme when most Comanche imports of that era had red, blue or green trim.
atb1943: Didn't Mr Jones also own a GAL Cygnet, G-AGBN was it? Never did visit his strip, and seeing the first 310 registered in the UK remained an unfulfilled ambition. I didn't get to see one of those until 1959 when Airwork had the Cessna dealership at Blackbushe and the lime green demonstrator 'APUF was there along with the first UK 150 and 175 — exotica indeed at the time. Fascinating place in those days, Blackbushe, not least for the in-transit traffic at the US Navy facility. I recall Neptunes, WV-2 Warning Stars, even a Martin Mercator once. Also remember a trip to view the legendary Sandhurst Harvards, and some others that were at Church Crookham, I think. Later, a field at Lasham hosted the dismembered hulks of many RCAF Sabres and CF-100s, plus some Fleet Air Arm types. Foolishly, the discovery of girls in later years prompted me to throw away thousands of photographs taken at those times — most unwise given my later career as an aviation journalist/photographer.