KevinK

It sounds like avoidance of being on the back side of the drag curve. This is normal for any aircraft, but perhaps the B-24's optimum cruising speed was a little close to VMD? When combined with the aircraft's reported tendency to "hunt" in pitch, it might just be a way to establish a little positive margin.

Oh yes: BUA/BCal, East African Airways, Gulf Air, Nigeria Airways, Ghana Airways, Oman, UAE, MEA, Sierra Leone Airways, Air Malawi, Air Ceylon and the RAE.

126 mph, I believe!

No - that's aftermarket !

Well, given that the world's oldest known buildings are at Göbekli Tepe in Turkey, dating from around 11,500 years ago, I would say that 1997 is pretty recent by their standards.

Francesco Baracca?

Oh, and one more - how could I forget it, especially as I've just acquired another one - the Vulcan! 354P / F354 Avro Vulcan B.1 1/96

A few more missing from the list: F128 R-100 airship 1/500 355P Handley-Page Victor B.1 1/96 350P Bristol Britannia 100 1/96

The topic was "jets 50+years" and "active service" is a bit of a stretch for the BBMF.

One that's been missed off the list so far is an aeroplane which has been much in the news lately, and not in a good way! Still in production - the Boeing 737, first flight 1967, in-service 1968, therefore comfortably more than 50 years old as a type.

Sorry - no, I'm building one right now! 😎

A minor point, perhaps, but the injection-moulded Aeroclub 1/48 R.E.8 builds very well.

Well, yes and no. Wikipedia shows it just inside Washington state, near the Idaho state line, but about 2500 miles from Washington DC. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usk,_Washington It nearly is: according to the Wikipedia entry, "Usk was named for the River Usk in Wales around 1890" From what I can find on Google Maps, it's as near to the back of beyond as makes no difference (so it's probably quite nice there).

It was indeed around that speed: the original Kodachrome, marketed from 1935/6 to 1962 in 8/16/35 mm formats was 10 ASA, increasing to the dizzying speed of 12 ASA by 1955. Kodachrome sheet film for large format cameras was as low as 8 ASA. Kodachrome II, introduced in 1961 was 25 ASA.

It may be a bit late now but there are good walk-around photos of the backup Skylab CSM-119 at: http://heroicrelics.org/ksc/apollo-csm-119/dsc05850.jpg.html and another CSM (105) displayed as the Apollo-Soyuz exhibit at the NASM: http://heroicrelics.org/ksc/apollo-csm-119/dsc05850.jpg.html