Danny, could your ancient aviator have been Flt Lt Ignatowski, always known as Iggy? The name is probably Polish so maybe I have it wrong. As to the Minx, we can recommend OMD-270 as used in Hastings, 50psi oil pressure when cold, zero when warm ... eventually the old girl ran her bigends with a great clattering.
Fareastdriver, salvage dumps were indeed wonderful places. Binbrook in 1949 featured a Frazer-Nash rear turret from a Wellington on a tubular stand so we could spin it via the manual operating handle; conical bomb tails with fins and propellors for fusing; approach indicators with red and green glasses and spirit levels for lining them up; bomb dollies which were (fortunately for the populace) too heavy for us to pull to the hill down into the village; sundry armour glass which defied all attempts to break it; and a trolley-acc with Villiers engine which I managed to get going, to the great annoyance of my father who had condemned it the previous month and the greater annoyance of myself when he made me take it back.
Chugalug has suggested we might stretch this thread to include a child's eye view of the postwar RAF. Sixty years ago in faroff Aden, Khormaksar's kids kept a Cold War secret. This great untold story is here if you want it ...
