More Desert Kittyhawk data

Since my last post here on the topic, further images by Jakub Perka have been released (the full set are here) and two videos plus a later one.  It is now reported that it is near the Farafra Oasis in the Al-Wadi Al Jadid in Egypt.


The first video, above, the second and a third, going by subsequent damage, here.

There has been a great deal of speculation on the identity of the aircraft, which seems likely to have been narrowed down to one possible example, but I'll wait for official confirmation before agreeing with the summations offered so far.

There is a long thread on WIX here, which develops as further information comes into the public domain, and other threads on other forums as well, as well as a post on the Vintage Wings blog here.

There is an Australian connection, in that there is an Australian made 120 volt battery found at the site, above.  However that does not mean it was an Australian pilot or aircraft, just Australian equipment was fitted, as it was to many Commonwealth Desert Air Force machines.

Sadly, while it is clear that there is appropriate official interest, a certain amount of damage has been done to the wreck since discovery by people attempting to investigate it without the correct tools and there are some pieces visible in the first images that have disapeared in later ones.

I hope to report in due course that the aircraft has been recovered and will be properly conserved and put on display at an appropriate location.  But there's a long way to go and it is not out of the woods (or rather desert) yet.

US Training Codes

It is always good to welcome another new resource.  John Voss has launched his website covering the known Flight Training Codes for USAAF units in the USA. (The website.)  There does not seem to have been any reliable documentation of what units bore which numbers, but John has undertaken the tedious task of trying to compile know and found information into one place.

Not as exciting as some other data, perhaps, but it will provide another jigsaw piece to track back what Grandfather did during the war, I'm sure.  Any thoughts, data and feedback to John.

[Website image - official USAAF Photo from W.T. Larkins collection]

le Strutteur

It is great to hear that the remarkable French Memorial Flight association have flown their rare Sopwith 1&1/2 Strutter.  It's a magnificent restoration (though nothing less is expected from these craftsmen) and bears what is one of the most eye-catching schemes from any era of aviation.

 Another neat thing is the Strutter is one of the first (probably the first) aircraft fitted with a dedicated 'airbrake' system.  A video (here) on the Flight's website shows (on the ground) how it worked.

Perhaps even more impressively, the test pilot appears to be wearing a beret.  Sometimes life exceeds art.

[Photos from the Memorial Flight's news blog here, reproduced with acknowledgement.  Details of the Flight here and the Strutter here.]

Intriguing Posters

My contact in Portugal, Ricardo Reis, directed my attention to this excellent poster website, part of the Nanyang Technological University of Singapore.  A big thanks to Ricardo.

The website has an extensive selection of posters of all kinds from all over the world, including many familiar ones, and many other less well-known ones - very easy to lose yourself for hours looking through it!

Let us take just two examples - British posters for a foreign market.  First is an unusual British W.W.II poster to tell the Russian allies where some of their war materiel was coming from.  This is an approximate Hawker Hurricane.  The headline reads "From the British People" and it is by Reginald Mount, dated 1941. [Cat No. P0504]

The National Archives in the UK have an exhibition featuring Reginald Mount's work (here) which includes the artwork (without the text) for the above image here. [Cat No. INF 3/328]  The TNA notes read: 

 "This image was ‘No. 5' in a series of posters (the others included a tank, lorry and parcels), designed possibly for British factories, but more likely for export to the Soviet Union, as the finished design is accompanied by Russian text

In 1942 Lord Beaverbrook had returned with a collection of original Soviet posters, which were published, with English translations, in British factories and the British looked to provide posters in return. 

The hand represents the British merchant navy carrying war supplies to ‘Russia', in this instance a Hawker Hurricane. The Hawker Hurricane equipped numerous Soviet squadrons at a time when industrial production was dislocated by the German onslaught."

 Mount undertook a good deal of artwork for many years, including the poster for the great film The Ladykillers. 

- - - -

This second poster is even more unusual, and somewhat enigmatic.  It's printed in Britain ('Nott'm' - Nottingham in fact) and is clear enough in its aim, as the catalogue notes state it reads 'On to Japan!', written in Arabic.

It's a great graphic design, by an artist signing himself 'Sevek', and the aircraft, cleverly composed into an arrow with the engine's exhaust stubs acting as the barbs behind the spinner/point could also be a Hurricane, almost.  There are other versions with English text, such as here.  Sevek had been a pre-war student at the Art Academy of Vienna, he then worked with the Austrian branch of Metro Goldwin Meyer (MGM) and, as here, later, propaganda posters for the British.  [Source.]

Going beyond the obvious answers, who was this Arabic language version for, and why?  I wonder if it would have meant much in it's presumably middle-eastern audience? [1945 P0495]

We will be returning to this resource.  A search on 'Aircraft' or 'War' came up with a wonderful array of posters along those themes.

Found Kittyhawk

On this Polish forum* a set of photos were recently posted, apparently of a previously unknown Curtiss Kittyhawk Mk.Ia.

It was apparently found by the poster's friend who works in oil and gas exploration.  No date or location have been given, although the aircraft is certainly somewhere in North Africa.

There has been a great deal of speculation about the aircraft and images, including a fair amount of (reasonable) caution and some scepticism in case they are a hoax.

 However these two images are (in my opinion) certainly of the real thing.  Several people familiar with the P-40 family have not found anything that seems suspicious in them.

The close up images are definitely of a British Commonwealth Kittyhawk, and, crucially, not of a known survivor.  It will be interesting to see what happens next.  [UPDATE:  More info here.]

[*Images by Jakub Perka posted online by 'Awot', reproduced with acknowledgement.  Google translation here.]

Warped Walrus

Just paying around with the stitch app on the iPhone. RAAF Museum Supermarine Walrus HD874.

Baffling Bombshell

It's not unusual to find a Hollywood star in a bizarre looking promotional still photograph. But sometimes there remains a question behind it. A while ago, I came across this image of Rita Hayworth, with another woman, embracing a very large bomb. What is particularly odd about it, beyond the oddness of the image itself, is that these bombs seem to be a set of Nazi era German bombs, in fact the main blast bombs of the period used by the Luftwaffe. There are some more conventional photos of most of these bombs linked here, confirming that the examples in the Hayworth still are the real size - presumably the real thing.

Yes, Max is that big, and we'll just go straight past all the obvious jokes. But why would Rita be set up to have her picture taken with these (is it as obvious as that she was a 'bombshell' of the time?). And who is the other woman? Another actress? There's no film of Rita's that seems to relate to the need to happily embrace large German bombs, so there's no obvious connection there.

And of particular interest - and the reason for the post - how or why would the image be with a set of German bombs, rather than the more obvious and likely American munitions? It could be that a set of clearly labelled German bombs were on show for another purpose, at a location such as Freeman Field where the great post-war display of Axis aircraft was put on. This enquiring mind would like to know - so over to you dear reader.

There is a 'PS'. Rita's likeness was allegedly attached to the Bikini Atoll atomic bomb, but that appears to be a myth, as explored here.