Warbird Information Exchange

Found this shot the other day...........

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Don't touch my junk!!

Now that is pretty!

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Ain't no sunshine when she's gone!

Great shot!
But who took the turtle deck off!!!
Jerry

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"Always remember that, when you enter the ocean or the forest, you are no longer at the top of the food chain."

Supermarine

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Don't touch my junk!!

Very nice! I'm always torn between the low-back and high-back Merlin Spits....!

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Cheers

Daren

Who took the pic?

August

This plus a further ground shot were the standard give away 10x8's that Bill Ross would generously pass out to those interested enough to write to him.

The shot was taken in October 1967, the photographer was not specified.

The livery is actually quite inaccurate and the Brown/Green camouflage should be Green/Grey for a Mk XVI carrying these correct 'C' type roundels.

I discussed this with Bill on one of the several times I met him in the US, Canada and the UK and he told me that he had been advised technically by our own 'Battle of Britain Memorial Flight'. Forty years ago such was the knowledge of our 'b/w war' that even the BBMF got it wrong.

Woody Woods corrected it when he became a subsequent owner and his son Chris took it one stage further, at a later livery change, putting it back in the overall light blue scheme as it actually was, operated post WWII as the personal aircraft of ACM Sir James Robb.(well almost )

PeterA

Fascinating, Peter.

Although the correct knowledge was plenty available in 1967 if you knew whom to ask. No respectable modeler would have gotten those colors wrong, even at the time, and books and articles by such as Bowyer and Robertson, the Ducimus pamphlets, and even the Profiles and Aircams and Harleyfords had the correct info on the colors. The BBMF just wasn't especially careful about its research, which shows in the colors of their own machines of the time as well. Modelers were well ahead of full-sized warbird owners in researching colors at that time as, often, they still are.

August

Bill Ross's Spit is a Mk XVI with the Packard rather than Rolls Royce engine and usually .50 cal machine guns with the low back and bubble canopy. When Bill had the plane, the paint looks funny to me with that glossy finish.
Chris Woods blue paint scheme looks nice in the photo, I never saw it in person. I think it is now with Mike Potter in Canada. Personally I don't like the bubble canopy as well in either the Spit or P-51. They look a little too pretty and streamlined, without that classic aura, which the P-51B&C have. My pick for best looking plane is a cannon equiped Merlin engine Spit Mk V, or Mk IX. Bill encouraged me when I first got interested in warbirds. As a low time pilot I needed a plane that was relatively safe and easy to fly such as a Spit. Bill is famous for his P-38, but he told me he wished he had never sold the Spitfire. His daughter is a pilot and hang glider and lives in Aspen.

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Bill Greenwood
Spitfire N308WK

SL721 is with M. Potter in Gatineau.

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Olivier Lacombe -- Harvard Mk.4 C-GBQB