I spent a day at Duxford this week and what a fantastic place the Imperial war museum is now with the addition of the new hangar. Stood on the viewing gallery I uttered the words “where is Concord? oh there it is in the corner” Before I explain why I was there have a look at these two images and just try and get a feel for what a vast building the new air and space hangar is. First picture looking out over the Comet airliner shows Concord in the background, centre show is the Vulcan bomber and behind that is a TSR2 (you can just see the wing) which I had no idea was still in existence, apparently there are two. Second picture shows my mate Jerry dwarfed by Concord (He takes a lot of dwarfing).

So what was I doing at Duxford? Answer, crawling about under aeroplanes taking pictures of undercarriage (Got some strange looks) as part of the cold war project we are trying to locate some lost aircraft and also identify wreckage already found. In the last couple of years I have learnt much about identifying crashed aircraft and in virtually all cases the most recognisable parts are usually the engines and undercarriage. The engines however have been in the water for over forty years and unlike the good old solid lumps such as the Spitfires Merlin engine the later jet engines are built of alloys that don’t stand up to the salt water environment. Added to this the dissimilar metals often means that various parts act as an anode and fizz away. One of the reasons Donald Campbell’s Bluebird survived underwater for so long was due to the fact that the Titanium in the engine casing acted as a sacrificial anode and protected much of the vessels structure; the engine however fell to pieces (and that was in fresh water). So that leaves us with wheels and undercarriage and on studying the aircraft we are looking for all their landing gear is different. In the case of aircraft designed for carrier operation the undercarriage and wheels are built like the proverbial. So without being experts on aircraft construction the landing gear provides us with the best possible chance of identifying a particular make of aircraft. The picture shows the nose wheel assembly from a Sea vixen, very distinctive, strong and capable of surviving a 400mph crash in to the sea.