Statement

Herr Goering never knew what was coming after the punitive raid in retaliation for the bombing of Coventry but S - Sugar is just one of the few 100 club to survive not many did.

I often wonder who it was EXACTLY who said that, that 100+ club bomber would be preserved! It wasn't the top scorer either! And now, after 70 years or so, how original it is?

The same could be asked about the old original liberty ship preserved in the US

I think S-Sugar is over in the UK we have G-George at the AWM sadly allot of the aircraft of the 100 club were broken up for scrap when you think an operational life span which was measured in hours (40 hours only) 100 missions was pretty unique. There were quite a few 100+ kites but the mother of them all was ED888 UL-M 576 Squadron with 140 operational trips sadly she was unthinkingly scrapped and broken up in 1947 after languishing for 2 yeas in an MU unit.
Source ~ LANCASTER By M. Garbett & B Goulding Pgs 125-124

Postscript ~The Lancaster was the only aircraft in WWII which could lift the Barnes Wallis designed 22,000lb Grand Slam bomb the largest non-nuclear device dropped in WWII

When I was a little boy in the early/mid 50's, I lived at Chiseldon and we would walk/ride our bikes over to the old base at RAF Wroughton a mile or so away. There were hundreds of bombers all around the perimeter fence in various stages of being scrapped and broken up. Mostly heavy stuff like Halifaxes and Lancasters and some Lincolns that were white painted. They are the only ones I can recognise today, being one of the '....they all look the same to me' aeroplane types. The planes were flown in on a daily basis and also brought in on big low loaders. One such broke free and rolled down the hill into the village destroying houses and cars as it did. There was no real 'fence' as such at Wroughton. It was all open countryside. My friend from school who lived closer than me brought in a rubber handled fire/escape axe that he'd taken from a wreck. I swopped it for something and it had a crown over an AM mark. My dad pointed out one of the big ones that had a big lifeboat slung underneath it. The first thing they did was to cut the legs off so that they fell to the grass ready for chopping up

This is how the big scrap merchants Coopers of Swindon started

Tragic.............things like this always seem to mean more at this time of year. Especially when you consider the pure sacrifice the men made who flew them daily so we could sit here and stuff ourselves with Turkey and be surrounded by the ones we love...........FREE

More sadly, during the mid/late 70's I was the mechanical engineer/engine builder in a very competitive 'modsports' (modified sports cars) racing team. The car LOOKED like a MG Midget but there the similarities ended. Internally it was entirely different. Alan and brother Andy who owned and managed the team both lived at Badbury, about 2 miles away from Wroughton. We replaced all/most of the interior steel panels (except the load bearing/torsional strength and struts obviously) with large sheels of old aluminium taken from the scrapped aircraft. Most was camouflaged on one side including some with the RAF roundel markings and in the white or painted with a light green wishy-washy coloired paint on the inside. Large wing panels were the best. Their dad worked there and obviously 'acquired' loads of 'stuff' - as you do! Various thicknesses made life much easier.