I’d almost given up hope of hearing anything from the RAF museum in response to my history search request, but today I got an email from Peter Elliott, the Senior Keeper in the Department of Research & Information Services. He very kindly attached a scan of The Duke’s record card.

Marshalls SV and probably fitted all the helicopter starting equipment.

Central Vehicle Depot at Hilton near Derby. Now demolished and replaced with a housing estate. As far as I can tell, The Duke spent about a week there.

RAF Catterick, now part of the Catterick Garrison, was transferred from the RAF to the Army in 1994. Up until that time is was used as a depot by “various squadrons” and the RAF regiment. This tallies with the record card, which shows that The Duke was stored there (I think) from 1985 to 1994.

There’s no mention of RAF Boscombe Down on the card, which shows that The Duke was sold by the RAF from House of Commons website implies that Aston down was a storage facility, operated by SERCO, who’s responsibilities included “Support in the disposal of surplus MOD holdings including surplus vehicles”. The date of first registration on the log book is 1st April 1997, so I assume the MOD sold him to DERA who later became QinetiQ. Peter pointed out in his email that vehicles used by research organisations were generally on the civilian register, which seems to match up with the evidence.

It is possible that from 1994 to 1997 The Duke was unregistered on an airfield somewhere. On 24th March 1997, the Road Vehicles Registration and Licensing Regulations were altered with respect to the procedure to be followed on transfer of ownership (log book stuff, basically). The Duke was registered on a Q plate a week later on 1st April that year.

It’s still a mystery to me how QinetiQ is registered as the keeper of the vehicle from 1997 when the company was only founded in 2001. Still no word from QinetiQ, who I contacted a few weeks ago. Contacted Marshall SV today to see if they have any information.