Snapper

definitely remember that the RAF had to shoot it down because it was a hazard to Heathrow traffic. Even now Ossama Bin Laden has a hundred martyrs with footpumps blowing up pigs to wreck the skyways of Britain..... Meanwhile CrabAir have one old Hawker Hunter warming up at Leuchars to save the country from Bears and balloons. Tally Ho Ho Ho.

Where did you get it from????? This is an American issued wirefoto print. All press issue pix published in the UK had to be passed by the official censor, who used a red pen to mark what he did not want shown. At The Times all these censored prints survivem but a catastrophic cock-up in 1986 allowed all the uncensored prints to be lost. They were kept in a shed on the roof of the old Times building and it was just forgotten about..... Captions were deliberately vague. Unit names and anything of use to the enemy was obscured - which has a detremental effect today. Typically, this means that many prints are now almost "lost" because not indepth notes survive. Identification marks on uniforms and buildings had to be scratched off negatives. This was "easy" with glass plate, but harder with the newer films becoming available. Newspaper pics from the UK were pooled, as were American stuff. You would have British Official on one hand, which were pix taken by the military - which now reside in Lambeth, and then the British newspaper Press pool - which was all the stuff done by the great unwashed. Sometimes the caption would name the original source, such as the Times, The Daily Sketch, or their syndication arm, The Graphic Photo Union. Papers like the Mail and the Express rarely had their names mentioned in Press Pool pix, but regionals like the Yorkshire Post or Western Mail would - as would any Associated group local titles. It's a lottery The pic shown is an example of a wirefoto - hence the caption down the side. These were usually managed by the Associated Press and United Press from the USA and detail will be minimal. I cannot determine whether this a a Signal Corps pic issued by them, or one by a press snapper. A good find......

Atleast it isn't bound for Beijing like so much metal these days. I'm still amazed my Iltis and Renault 5 haven't been nicked from my street. If the Churchill ends up in loving hands, then good. But it is a shame the way monuments are disappearing as people lose interest in the past.

Just for a minute I'm back working at the Melody Maker. Next stop Steve Hillage.

Is that film any good???????? BTW - my brother in law Roger, who we know as GUEST - got the Iltis started last night after a hiatus. Battery connection problems were the fault....... The MOT is imminent. No problem.......

Definitely - this was on the pix disk I sent you. I love those snaps, some of my best for what has been an odd year - no work since Odyssey due to poor health (barring a happy week on the Somme in October - pix to be posted soon).

Don't start me on field walking Tony. I've got a day over there on the 28th - but we're up round Bethune and on towards Armentieres visiting specific graves for a couple of projects. As soon as I get back, I need to go straight away. I have no interest in souvenir hunting per se, but am always pleased to find bits laying about. Some people are just naturally lucky and of course there are those who are just down right dispicable, raiding archeaeology sites and robbing the dead for profit. Just so you blokes know, metal detecting is ILLEGAL in France and possession without a licence will lead to your arrest and a good kicking in some areas on the Somme. Fair dos. This is just an aside,,, I know the real interest is in 'our' man. God bless him. I've been to Beugny - it's a typical little hamlet of happy nothingness. There are many cemeteries and memorials in the area, particularly up around the Queant sector where vicious fighting took place in the autumn of 1918. I've never done any field walking round there, but the country is little different from the Somme....it is beautiful like all agrarian France is.

I think Greg Lake calls this song his 'pension'. It does have something about it, like Jonah Lewie's Stop The Cavalry, which I really like. My favourite Christmas record is still I Wish It Could Be Christmas Every Day by Wizzard, if only because Roy Wood is so bonkers. These days we are all supposed to be a bit 'right on' and like Fairy Tale of New York, which is excellent, but I've never understood the Shane McGowan cult. Poor old Kirsty MacColl literally lost her head on a Mexican holiday...and the culprit never went to jail. However, the best Christmas no1 will always be Benny Hill's 'Ernie' in my book; which brings us loosely back to Jack buying a WLF - because we NEVER found out who wanted him to start a milk-round, even though I have asked. Nice to see that The Simpsons did a version of the Animals album cover with Spider Pig flying over Battersea Power Station yesterday (which brings us back to Floyd...) I wonder if the RiffRAF were required to shoot this one down like last time? Doubtful... I think it was Lightnings that did the job, but someone on HMVF will know for sure. Happy rambling.....

Thanks Goran, very interesting. Good stuff.

He likes a crafty tank. You probably get the odd tug on the History Channel in between all that amour, sorry armour. Now the Tudors are over, we'll probably be getting the Stuarts. Everyone needs a light tank now and again.

sold. My mates would definitely love that idea. When I got the Iltis we were going to restage the Blue Max through Leigh On Sea using it and a Land Rover. We were going to play Snoopy versus the Red Baron and chase each other round the town. Maybe we should still do it. At Mil Od there was a superior little tableau with WW1 re-enactors doing a dramatised bit of Uptiddlyup stuff. I need a pickelhaube for Christmas.....

As much as Yes don't do anything for me, Rick Wakeman appears to be a right laugh. I suppose we also have to mention Emmerson Lake and Palmer in the same instant. More loons. Lynyrd Skynyrd were a class apart for me and I regret never seeing them. The survivors morphed into the Rossington Collins band who had the guitar skills but not of the pzazz dished out by Ronnie Van Zant. They were due to appear at the Rainbow Finsbury Park when one of them killed himself on a motorcycle. I still have unused tickets for this gig. Somewhere in my archives I have one of those weird albums made for fake US radio interviews where the deejay at WKHMVF could "ask" carefully prepared questions and then play the answers at thirty three and a third. I suppose it is open to abuse. I also remember seeing Molly Hatchet at Reading - they made several albums, two of which have their moments. While they were on my mate Pete Harris kept standing up (it was a sunday afternoon) and people kept shouting at him to sit down. He ignored them long enough for someone to lob half of water melon at him which landed perfectly round his neck. I can remember him wimpering. I wish I could tell you the band were playing Flirting With Disaster at the time. Which leaves us with Blackfoot and, of course, the Allman Brothers Band. Where would Jezza, Hamster and Captain Slow be without Jessica?

Something different, though. I wonder where stuff like this ends up when they've done with it? Presumably there is a Volvo or Scania of sorts under that frock?

Try imagining what was going on in the Admiralty following the loss of HMS Repulse and HMS Prince of Wales. They were both ill-starred ships in many ways - the Repulse, a battlecruiser of 1916 vintage, much modified - and oft known as HMS Refit - a Guz ship, meaning she was from Plymouth and the even less loved Prince of Wales, a new KGV manned from Portsmouth, but thought of as a Jonah given so many problems, not least her poor gunnery performance which some said caused the loss of the mighty HMS Hood in action with the Bismark- a crime too great for some in the Navy. Off they went to frighten the little yellow men. With only air cover from Malaya, a flight of Brewster Buffaloes - against hordes of Vietnam based Japanese aircraft. The poor PoW was hit by a torpedo which lifted her bodily out of the water - can you imagine that? - and wrecked her power, leaving her a sitting duck. On the bridge Admiral Tom Phillips, a believer in sea power whereby "well fought" capital ships could beat air power, stood with Captain Leach and watched his world crumble. Repulse carried on fighting to the end, dodging torpedo attacks and fighting back. But the end was inevitable. She went down in six minutes with great loss of life. PoW foundered and with them went the hopes of the Empire. In that half an hour, British Imperial power came to an end. The Repulse survivors manned guns on the destroyer HMS Elektra so the crew could help rescue others. What amazing men. Her captain Tennant, who had been beachmaster at Dunkirk, survived. Good. Sadly little Tom Phillips and Captain Leach went down with the Prince of Wales. There was an occasion when Phillips, arguing against the value of modern aircraft was warned that one day he would find himself on a sinking ship and he would say "That was a great...mine". And so it came to be. God bless the men of Repulse and Prince of Wales. Never forgotten.

treasure.

No - anything they could paint it on - even large trailers. Jack would probably have one on his head.

just don't serve any more bloody cous-cous.

Interesting points. I am a fulltime picture librarian - it was once a brilliant job, but these days we have been consumed by digitisation and there is no time for the old formats. I am very bored. By chance a job came up in the picture archive of a leading museum in the capital and it was made for me. They loved me - but they wanted to pay me £14,000 a year to do the job. I don't mind admitting I could not afford to half my salary and pay over £2000 in fares alone to do this job. This might account for why many of the staff are uninterested. I would guess a lot of museum "professionals" move through the system like many people do in establishment organisations like education etc (I know this from personal experience). There will be few genuinely dedicated people steeped in the subject. I managed a project a few years ago to digitise huge chunks of the print archive of Murdoch's papers (I was part of a team, not kingpin). We had a team of staff under us who were mostly recent graduates who just wanted media jobs. They had good degrees and they were all of the "right sort" according to the men in ties. But they knew nothing and so many of them were blinded with prejudices. We'd get "I don't believe in the Monarchy". so they would do terrible work on anything to do with Kings and Queens - we'd be told, why should I know who the Queen's mother is?. Ditto "I didn't do geography" - translated as "I don't know anything about anywhere - but I've been to Goa and you haven't". "I hate Thatcher" was a blind for knowing nothing about British politics of the 20th century. I don't like sport - means exacly that - they didn'y know Bobby Charlton from Bobby Davro. Don't even start me on our military history. I went grey (not my hair, either). Of course all this highlights a much wider and more deeply troubling malaise. My Dad was a card carrying communist who hated the establishment and passed it on to me in meny respects and there are lots of people and subjects that bore the derrier off me, but I am from an age where professionalism means learning STUFF. It's about pride. This is, perhaps, why some museums are so poor with service. The people are a brand of civil (or sometimes VERY uncivil) servant. They get paid pooey wages and don't have great working lives. Replacing them with financially secure, very kean people is wonderful - and perhaps this is what the museum hoped I'd do, but there is a real world. I haven't even touched on the GWF. I'm a member - hardly posted - and a member of the WFA, but my pleasure is intensely personal and shared with a small gang of mates - I read a lot of WW1 stuff and live for battlefield touring more than MVs, but I don't really want to share it with a busload of others. Their knowledge doesn't intimidate me one bit., I am happy at my level. Happy - it's the clue. But turning people away for elitist reasons, misguided or just plain silly. You decide. I think that WW1 is wrapped up a great deal more in the people rather than the aparatus. Ironic - but, there you go.... Stick with our broad church. Amen.

There was a book ages ago with a mix of original photographs and artwork by the great John Batchelor; I'm sure it was as you say, the Secret planes of the Luftwaffe. It covered all the weird and wonderful jets that never got off the drawing board and some that did. Dunno where you will find this book. It was the sort of thing the Aviation Library, or whatever it was called would sell off cheap as a "come on" for subscribers.

I'm pretty sure the same star was used by both the Anglo-Canadians and the US; but the difference is the ring round it. Can't remember which way round it goes, but one of t'other has a solid ring while the other is broken into segments. I'm sure the US is the latter. Can't think why I can't remember this stuff.

Can't get worked up about television.....

One of the girls from Islington Green school who sang on Another Brick In The Wall is a solicitor with the firm at the top of my road. My mate Scott's mum lived in the council flats they used in the video. I used to know one of Pink Floyd's roadies, a really nice girl. But beyond that I have only ever owned one album - Animals. I could never get my head round any of DSOTM or that stuff, and was sick of sixth formers pretending they liked it to look clever while I was listening to the Rolling Stones and Lynyrd Skynyrd . Same with Yes - yikes.

One interesting aspect is the Black Book, which lists all the people who were to be rounded up. It's fair to assume that a lot of the names on the list would have ended up very dead. There's a rarely seen movie from the 1960s - title forgotten, which shows Britain under German occupation and ends with a US landing in the west leading to liberation. The film finishes with troops massacring collaborator troops who have things like Black Prince cuff titles on their uniforms, quite an attention to detail. Not pretty - but interesting.

Debbie McGhee????????????????????????????????????????????

The Champ is out. It's all academic because I still have the Iltis. A gentleman called out of the blue about it the other night, and although he said he isn't a member of HMVF, I am assuming he must have a line to it because he knew my name. It was all a bit odd really - but any interest is welcome. However, I haven't even put it on Milweb yet.... Not sure of where to go after the Iltis has moved on. I think I want something British and may even go down a path I thought would never appeal......Land Rovers. Being a spanner numpty I don't want anything difficult to play with.