Chugalug (your #5014),
Your remark about the Peugeot 403 echoes almost exactly the concluding remarks of the Road Test in Motor and/or Autocar ca'55):
"This car feels as if it has been screwed together - by engineers"....D.
ricardian,
Thank you for the lovely picture of the nicest thing it was ever my good fortune to fly. But your "more on this aircraft" - ain't ! The link takes us to the much better known ML407. This is PT462, another of the 20-odd originally converted by Vickers (how many are flying still, I don't know).
This is not a geekish point. I at first glance thought "what's happened to the r/t mast ?" (originally they were all vertical on the Spits). Now they seem to be set back at various angles on this conversion. I believe some of the MkIX(T)s have had teardrop canopies put on, and I suppose they would need the mast to be bent back for the open rear "bubble" to fit. But PT462 has the old, small canopies, they shouldn't need this. So why ? (there must be people reading this who know the answer).
This gives me an an opportunity to slip in a bit of text I've been hoarding for some time. It may be of interest:
Somewhere or other I saw a familiar shape. Shrouded as it was in a large loose tarpaulin, you couldn't mistake it - a Spitfire. I went over to have a look. Even with the cover on, there was something funny about the outline of this specimen. As I got closer, it seemed to be a two-humped camel.
This was my first sighting of the Mk.IX (T) - (indeed, I'd never even heard of such a thing before). I looked at it, interested. Who had done this ? And where ? And how ? And for Heaven's sake, Why ? I glanced along the fuselage. It was in the colours of the Belgian Air Force - so this must be an official "mod". When I got back to GK, a few people had heard about these things (it seemed there was more than one), but nobody knew much.
Only years later did I learn the full story (
inter alia, from Wiki). The conversion, I first heard, had been done by Oxford Air Services (wrong - it was Vickers). The RAF had no interest in the thing apart from supplying surplus ex-war Mk.IXs for the job (true). Some 20 Vickers models were built (but there had been earlier one-offs). They had, apparently, been sold to India and Eire for their Air Forces. The Soviets had one or two "home-builts" (I doubt whether anyone got any royalties !)
To this, I could add "Belgium", and (so rumour went) "Holland". Curiously,for all the thousands of Spitfires which went to the scrapyard after the war, several of these 20 have survived, and often appear on TV and Press to keep the memory alive of Mitchell's incomparable masterpiece.
There is, I think, only one flying "Hurricane" left (in BBMF), which is a pity, for it did most of the "heavy lifting" in the BoB, but never acquired the "star" status (in public esteem) of its more glamorous rival.
Now we come to the most beguiling question of all - the "Why?". For a long time, I could see no sensible military purpose for the thing at all. But some time ago we had a discussion, on this very thread, about the feasibility of a TM direct to Spitfire training programme, and concluded that the idea was
not impossible. Of course ! This could be exactly the way to do it ! It made sense.
You are a country building up a small, young Air Force. You have light aircraft flying around, and you can buy low-hours Spitfires for a song (In India's case, they already had battle experience with the Mk.XIVs, and had still got them - (except for the ones supposedly buried [???] in Burma
). Why buy Harvards to bridge the gap - they will cost dollars, which then were like gold - when there is a much cheaper option (for sterling, too) ?.....D.
Cheers to you both, Danny.