A Subject selection for the new HK Lancaster

[Artful69]

A couple of weeks ago I was performing some Timber Pest Inspections to a series of units in a retirement village here.

 

You meet a lot of very interesting people with interesting backgrounds and stories. I once met an elderly German chap who had an old DB A/C engine in his large workshop (it was a 1 acre block with a truck shed out the back) - turns out he used to be a field mechanic!

 

On this occasion I had the pleasure of meeting one William (Bill) Utting ... a Lancaster pilot from 460 Squadron who completed 36 missions before wars end without loss of any of his crew. I asked him if he didn't mind me taking a few snaps of the pictures in his 'study' room to use as a reference for his 'bird' so I could build it when the HK Lancaster came out (hopefully later this year). Pic's below!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The last one isn't his kite (D-Dog) ... he said he can't remember which Lanc it was - it might have been G-George (the one brought back to Aus and stashed in a museum over east.

His wife, who was also quite chatty, was a WAAAF stationed at Pearse Air Base during the 1940's ...

 

When I Looked up the Lanc online (via Google) I came up with some conflicting information. There's a story about the Maxton brothers who were both crew for D-Dog - one being the pilot ... 

So ... I delved into the records a little more ... 

There's a a photo of them both holding a picture of the "Pluto" artwork in later years ... so the artwork was on the A/C before Bill's crew had the Lanc ...

The end result of the searching - Maxton's Crew flew 30 Op's in D-Dog ... and then Bill's crew took over the A/C to fly Op's during the period in the photo above.

 

I'm going to have to find someone who can manufacture the Decals, I think!!

 

Rog 

[kkarlsen]

Great story!

[JeroenPeters]

Very very cool... Now all we need is the kit

[GusMac]

Nice Rog. A great bit of history. I'm only surprised looking at the list of sorties that the 'average' mission works out at roughly 6 hours. Looking at the list of destinations I would have thought it would be higher. Whatever, brave men and ever fewer left.