Idling away a wet Thursday morning I came across this post from way back in a thread about visiting the aerodrome.
A friend of mine told me North Coates was his first posting in the RAF. They went to re-open it as a Bloodhound missile base in the late '50s I believe; the 'chiefy' in charge found a Robin type hangar had a large padlock on it; on cutting it off and opening the doors, they found the hangar crammed full of Beaufighter spares. Now this was embarassing to the chiefy 'cos they weren't on his inventory and he would have to account for them, so he ordered the airmen to dig a hole in the airfield and bury them! As far as I know they're still there.
With the current interest in Burmese Spitfires a pile of Beaufighter bits on our back door has to be worth following up.
And first dibs at any engines OK?
SGC