I often wonder what happened to the Mosquitoes that were used in the "633 Squadron" film
I was lucky enough to be a 16 year old RAF cadet in 1965 when we went on an annual
7 day camp to RAF Little Rissington (in Gloucestershire ?)
One of my schoolmates and I (who were both mad keen aircraft enthusiasts) got into the habit
of, when we were on an RAF station and 'Off Duty', having a wander round the hangars to see
what we could find (we kept our RAF uniforms on to avoid any problems while doing so!).
Rissington turned up trumps because we came across THREE Mosquitos on one hangar - this
was shortly after the completion of the "633 Squadron" film.
We always asked permission to look round the hangars and a quick chat to one of the RAF 'erks'
got us permission to look round the aircraft
unsupervised.
One Mossie still had fake bullet holes painted across its tail to simulate flak damage in the film.
One aircraft unfortunately had very bent propeller blades where some idiot pilot had landed it
without putting the undercarriage down first - it was back on its wheels. I don't remember
there being major damage to the underside, so it may have been a near miss.
At least one of the aircraft was the bomber variant repainted to look like the fighter and the two of
us had a brilliant half hour using the emergency manual hydraulic pump in the cockpit to pump
the bomb doors open and closed !
I am not 100% sure but I think it was Rissington that we also found a Spitfire and took it in turns
to try and sit in the cockpit - this was a bit of a problem since the seat pan was deeply dished to
accomodate the pilot's parachute and of course we didn't have one! best we could manage was
sort of squatting whilst holding onto the instrument panel coaming with one hand!
I can pass on a few more of the interesting stories from my cadet days if anybody is interested
(under a separate topic)
Richard
link to 633 Sqadron film info :
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/633_Squadron#The_aircraft