Morley says...

“THEY BOUGHT A MAGNETO AND THE OLD GIRL FIRED UP”

MAD FARMERS, EH? It amazes me that more of them don’t die in bizarre, ridiculous accidents more of the time. But bless ‘em for having the imagination to wonder what would happen. And what luck to find an army disposal store selling precisely the correct magneto for such a daring mission.

I’m wondering though if it was a surprise that the old Ford truck took off under the power of the prop at all, or whether it was just that the thing galloped off backwards. Thinking about it, can see that an engine with a prop designed to pull a plane forward would, when attached to something the wrong way round, pull that something backwards. Also, it seems a bit obvious that an engine designed to lift a huge plane loaded with bombs into the air might just have the grunt to haul an old truck across a grassy paddock… whether the

“LEFT ON CONCRETE A BATTERY WILL REFUSE TO BE RECHARGED”

hand-brake was on or not. Then again, it’s debatable that any of this would have occurred to a bunch of people who had previously though that balancing a radial engine on an oil drum for its first start-up was a grand idea. Never mind.

I’m with you, Andrew, on the theory that the contraption is still sitting in that shed on that farm out there. I mean, if anybody had got hold of it and tried to do anything with it, we’d have heard about it on the news, right? Does anybody out there know about this thing? I’d love to see a photo of it.