Restore or leave this as it is

[Ernie Lazenby]

Thought this may be of interest to restorers. My wife wrote a book thats in the public libraries. Its called 'Call of the Goose' ISBN 0-95-33601-0-5.
Its a true story about her Uncle killed in world war 11 in a Lancaster bomber over Germany. Its his life history but very much more than as it contains the record of the activities of the Goose Squadron 408 based on Lynton On Ouse. The book contains all the details of the planes when they crashed, crews etc etc and the book is now in the squadrons museum. 408 squadron was primarily a Canadian unit with some British aircrew on board each plane hence he uncles position as Radio operator. Elaine has his flight log book with Guy Gibson and Bomber Harris's signature in.
The plane crashed on 27th January 1944 when it was shotdown near the village of Wurges near Bad Camburg. In furtherance of her research Elaine went to Germany and traced witness's to the crash and even managed to trace the radio operator of the ME110 that shot her Uncles plane down.
Some time after the crash when the site was being developed for housing one of the witness's to the crash took what you see in the photopgraph.
Its from the Lancaster which was a Mk2 with Bristol Hercules engines. Plane number DS849X. The part was given to Elaine and we now have it at home.
We believe its from the feathering mechanism of one of the props?
Question is should we leave it as it is or should we restore it assuming it can be restored?

[Ernie Lazenby]

Ooops the photo won't attach because its oversize for the site. I dont know how to re-size it. Can I send the photo as an e mail attachment to someone who can post it, Webb site guru Mike maybe?

[Terminator]

Hi Ernie love to see the picture old friend and I am sure Mike or Bill will be along a little later in the evening to give a helping hand. Whilst on Ernie how you doing not seen or heard from you in ages hope all is well certainly sounds OK. What a great story for your good Lady to actually track all this info down great stuff and so pleased for her.

Cheers
Novie

[riding shotgun]

Not many MK2 Lancs were build so any surviving parts are well worth restoring, especially with a known history, my late grandfather flew 51 ops in Lancs and not of those op's was in a MK2, he also flew in a number of planes shifting them far and wide and again, never a mk2.

Colin

[Renegadenemo]

Ernie,

You have n AOL account, don't you? Mail the pic to yourself and choose the 'optimise' option when you attach it. That resizes it to a nice size for the forum.

[Ernie Lazenby]

Somehow my aged brain has worked out how to do it!

003.jpg

[Ernie Lazenby]

BTW Elaine also has one of the wire guide wheels for the rudder cables. I will post a picture of that soon. Its in very good condition.
The lump in the picture is quite big and heavy. Its rusty and has some molten aluminium of some kind here and there.

[Ernie Lazenby]

Novie. Thanks for your comments. I am in a good place at the moment thankfully black dog is asleep!
I have started to make an other K4 Bluebird for my son. Spent a week designing and making scale running gear for it. Loads in the bin before I got it right.
Getting back to the original message subject.
Elaine and I were invited to RAF Leeming to meet the Squadron Leader who wanted a copy of the book for the camps library. I think his name was John Cliff, he found the story fasinating. Elaine through her efforts has managed to contact all the relatives of the lads killed in the plane and gets letters and cards quite regularly. She also met many of the surving members of the Squadron living in the UK however with the passage of time many if not all have now past away.

Anyway I am interested to know if anyone thinks the big lump could be made to work again.

[Renegadenemo]

Anyway I am interested to know if anyone thinks the big lump could be made to work again.

If it was mine, and as it's covered mostly in rust, which isn't exactly filled with provenance, I'd give it a good clean, strip it down and get whatever I could moving again. The melted aluminium may be a little different in that it tells the story of a post-crash fire. If I could lift that away separately for conservation then that would be my answer. Maybe give our Loubie a look at it to see how best to preserve the provenance whilst allowing some restoration. But don't take my word for it because after many years of battering K7 with a hammer my views on museum conservation are a little less sensitive than they ought to be.
That said, the rear spar fairing I bashed all evening turned out very well, even if I say so myself.

[mtskull]

I don't think this is part of a propeller; There's an epicyclic gear arrangement visible in the photo which would be consistent with this being part of the two-speed supercharger drive.

Just how "restorable" it is remains to be seen but it wouldn't do any harm to get the rust off it; there are people on this forum with better knowledge of the relevant techniques than me, although I understand that a bath of molasses solution might do the trick. Bill? Richie?