Ken Ellis explores the RAF’s last Sunderlands and how Britain had to go overseas for its museum examples

FEFBW MR.5 SZ577 being ‘slipped’ at Seletar, 1954.

Dumbarton-built MR.5 RN293 ‘F-for- Fox’ of 205 Squadron chocked on the Seletar slipway in 1955, having just emerged from minor servicing.
It had been a long time coming; seven years after the Shackleton MR.1 entered service with the RAF, the first example for the Far East Air Force touched down at Changi, Singapore, on May 25, 1958.