MYSTERY OBJECTS

[Tripps]

Now I have my season ticket for Duxford - I can go and walk down the inside of a Concorde any time I wish. I thnk I'll wait for the warmer weather though.

[Whyperion]

I assume the liveries were painted on each side of the same aircraft.

[Tizer]

Well done Whyperion, you've cracked it with your succinct answer! The photos are of the same aircraft, French Concorde 02, F-WTSA, on 26 October 1974 having arrived at El Dorado Bogota airport, Columbia, from Lima, Peru. For advertising purposes the aircraft was painted in Air France colours on the LH side and British Airways colours on the RH side. However the plane may have still been owned by Sud Aviation because commercial flights didn't take place for another two years. (Photos and information courtesy of an article by Brian Aquith, Chairman of the Concorde Study Circle, published in `Picture Postcard Magazine', March 2018).

Incidentally, there are postcards showing Concorde aircraft in BOAC livery. These are all artists' impressions; BOAC and BEA were amalgamated to form BA in 1974.

Tripps, we have one at the Yeovilton Fleet Air Arm Museum too, as shown below. And the second photo, taken at the same museum, shows one of the wood mock ups from the design stage. Behind it you can see some of the black test shapes that were used in wind tunnel tests.

[StoneRoad]

I assume the liveries were painted on each side of the same aircraft.

Well done !
That is what I should have thought about - especially as I've suggested similar for various restorations. (mainly railway carriages, with long histories including a change of owner ... one side and end in each, as without a mirror that is all you can see at any one time).

[Tizer]

I did offer a clue but it was a devious one - I suggested using `lateral' thinking.
I've seen the livery trick used on `classic' military aircraft too. I think the Avro Lancaster of the Memorial Flight might have had that treatment at some point. Perhaps Panbiker knows? I seem to recall something like a serious camouflage-only job on one side and a fun `girlie' nose art job on the other.

[PanBiker]

BBMF Lacaster has its permanent marking of "City of Lincoln" (it's official designation) on one side (port from memory) and the other varies according to various anniversaries and the like. When I visited a few years ago the nose art had just been updated to "Phantom of the Rhur". It's had a few changes since then, the new BBMF website does not give it's current livery.

[Stanley]

Keeping the aeronautical theme, what can you tell me about this pic?

[Gloria]

I think it's a Sunderland flying boat.

[Tizer]

Gloria's got the `flying boat' right but it's a Boeing Clipper. There's got to be more to Stanley's question that that so let's see what else folk come up with. There appears to be a US flag painted on the nose and it's probably military, not commercial. There must be still more to come!

[Gloria]

Eisenhower's personal transport?

[StoneRoad]

"Atlantic Clipper" from the fin number, so not one of the ones that flew to Casablanca Conference or had any specific celebrity status. I suspect the pilots, even when under military "ownsership" in WW2 would have remained as PamAm staff.
(Churchill & Beaverbrook flew in a BOAC variant)

[Stanley]

You are all close enough, it was the Boeing Clipper and this one is on the first transatlantic service in 1939.The airline was Pan-Am.

[Stanley]

Lots going on in this pic for you to get your teeth into. What can you tell me about it?

[Gloria]

Is it a mill steam engine which has been stripped down with the boiler taken away?

[PanBiker]

Whitelees Engine?

[StoneRoad]

Nice lot of overhead belt driven machinery there. Including a large lathe. Toolmaker / foreman's glazed office (store).

Apart from the two large gear / flywheels - there are what look like either large oil pots or maybe small pumps on the main bench.

Looks like a stationary engine erecting shop !

[Stanley]

"Looks like a stationary engine erecting shop" is close but there's more to it than that. Look carefully.....
Clue, it was in 1916.

[plaques]

Shell turning lathes. Alfred Herbert's, ?

[chinatyke]

Making parts for tanks? Tank track supports/axles/thing-a-mi-bobs?

[StoneRoad]

Date clue makes me think of shells, but the castings etc look more like parts for field guns (artillery pieces).

I know Boston Lodge (The Ffestiniog Railway's workshops) were used for producing shell casings and my memory of those images doesn't quite match the mystery picture.

[Tizer]

Is the 1916 clue not to do with the war but rather relates to something else that happened in Barlick then?

[Stanley]

I've got to give it to P even though he has the place wrong. It's an engine building shop at Burnley Ironworks that has been turned over making lathes for making shells. They are the machines on the shop floor. Johnny Pickles made shell lathes in Barlick in WW2 and I often wonder whether he got the idea from what BI did in the Great War, he was always closely connected with the firm.

[Wendyf]

Can anyone identify what is just showing up on this 1960's aerial photo?

[chinatyke]

Some peculiar square patches with tracks leading to them. Is something growing under protective nets? Tree saplings?

[Marilyn]

Bee hives?