Dial S for stolen
Always in the pursuit of more information or pictures of Brooklands I was put in touch with the wife of an ex-Vickers worker and went to visit her. While she made a cup of tea I noticed on her mantlepiece a dial with a Vickers inscription on it. When I asked her about this instrument she told me that her late husband had been given it by Vickers, but I knew that during WWI people had broken into sheds at Brooklands and stolen some of the contents, of which this was pretty well obviously one of these. Shortly afterwards I contacted The Science Museum in South Kensington to ask if the Vimy, the first aeroplane to cross the Atlantic, which they had hanging from one of their ceilings, was minus one of its instruments. They said that the next time someone went up to dust it, they would check. Some time later they rang me to say that there was an instrument missing, so I told them where it was. I wonder if they ever recovered it?