Mystery Ventura Q Geoff Dobson photographed a Lockheed Ventura in half US/half RAF markings as AJ311 at the Pueblo Weisbrod Aircraft/International B-24 Museum some years ago and asks if it was ever delivered to the RAF?
A Apparently not, it does not appear on RAF records and Aircraft of the Royal Air Force since 1918 says that substantial numbers were diverted to the RCAF and USAF, so this one probably never left the USA.
Laddingford mystery Q A photograph in the March issue showed a small fuselage stored at Laddingford and asked for an identity.
A Replies from John Martin, Robin Owen and Bob Smith suggest it is a K&S Jungster, a scaled down Bücker Jungmeister designed in 1959 by Rim Kaminkas. Mr Smith mentions that as a letter D was visible it might be G-DAJW built by A.J. Walters at Benson, which might also explain the RAF markings. Mr Owen is building an example, started in 1975 at about the same time as Jack Benson’s. Mr Martin supplies a print of Jungster F-PYVI.
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One query asks about knobs on the Henschel Hs 129 fin.
Henschel Hs 129 Q Terkel Henningsen asks the purpose of two small knobs, one on each side of the fuselage, below the fin on the Henschel Hs 129 – on some photos they look like holes and in the adjacent photograph one can just be made out below the white 4 on the fin.
A sketch of a torpedo attack trainer.Torpedo Attack Trainer Q Jim Laws is a theatre lighting designer who teaches lighting history and is interested in building a torpedo attack trainer, of which some 20 were built as early flight simulators by the Strand Electric & Engineering Company in World War Two – they were world leaders in stage lighting. Mr Laws has a number of generic plans and a lighting inventory, plus many of the original types of spot and floodlighting and could simulate the way controls created dawn, dusk and waves. While he is clear on the lighting side, he needs to know how the epidiascope works, the servos it needed and the way various modules linked to each other, and what the pilot/torpedo aimer needed to learn. Can anyone help him?
