Sprue Bits

Announcements, Corrections, & What-Not

MAY 2002:  GLOSTER GLADIATOR BOOK REVIEWS by Jim Schubert

Reidar Berg of Norway advises that he is involved with a team that has recovered four more Gladiators.  A quite complete airframe was recovered from "Little Haugfjell" near Narvik.  Another, flown by Craig Adams, was found an hour's drive away at "Hogfjellet" in Salangen.  Reidar said they found the serial number but he didn't say what it is; he added there wasn't much left of this plane.  The other two were recovered on the large island of Senja about two hours drive from Narvik in company with a crashed Swordfish near the village of Sifjord.  There was little left of these two planes, their having been stripped by souvenir hunters over the last 60 years.

I expect we'll be hearing more from Reidar and his team about the fate of these finds.


JULY 2002: JAPANESE SUBMARINE AIRCRAFT BOOK by Jim Schubert

I have been taken in!  I noted in my review of this fine book that the author Tadeusz Januszewski had omitted mention to the Suzuki 18 Shi MXS12 submarine borne bomber.  Well, Tadeusz e-mailed to suggest that I note the date of the issue of Le Fanatique d 'le Aviation that carried the article about the MXS12- it was APRIL 1!  "APRIL FOOL'S DAY!"  Apparently Le Fana does this to "entertain" their readers.  Therein lay my problem.  Like most of the citizens of the USA, I am monolingual - I don't read much French.  I can, sort of, decode some French using ill-remembered high school Latin but that leaves out all the subtleties and nuance of an old and beautiful language and makes me the "April Fool".

Sorry about that.

 

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