Post-war aviation: Miles Marathon at Shoreham, 1960

Image: © Stefan Czapski Taken: 21 May 1960

On re-discovering this box-Brownie photograph - taken when I was a schoolboy - I couldn’t help wondering whether this aircraft ever flew again. The plane is a Handley-Page [aka Miles] Marathon, surplus to RAF requirements. In May 1960 it was still in RAF training colours, though the civil registration G-AMER had been painted on the rear fuselage. By some miracle the spotter’s notebook I kept at the time has survived, and it tells me that there were four Marathons at Shoreham that day, all equally woe-begone. I believe I’ve located the image with reasonable accuracy - the tower of the terminal building https://www.geograph.org.uk/photo/573952 is visible above the plane’s nose, and the direction of view is roughly eastward. Searching the Air Britain photo collection https://abpic.co.uk/pictures/search?type=marathon&airport=shoreham&date_taken=&information=&tag_fields=%5B%22type%22%2C%22airport%22%5D I found that all four Marathons at Shoreham were doomed, broken up within a few years. Pre-war light aircraft - such as the Tiger Moth - survived for club-flying, but it seems there was no market for the Marathon [dating from circa 1946]. As a period touch, notice the flash Mercedes in the right foreground - with US-style sun-visor.

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