A recent donation to our Museum is a collection of wartime Dinky Toys. Some of them suffer from the metal rot Dinkys of that age are prone to and are slowly disintegrating, we wonder if anyone has come up with a solution to this problem. The Dinky model illustrated is the pre-war flying boat MAIA, the bottom half of a combination of which the seaplane Mercury was the top, the idea of Robert Mayo, and known as the Mayo Composite. The Mercury was a smaller four engined monoplane designed as a long range machine to carry mail etc, its weight with full load and fuel on board being too great for it to take off unaided. Lifted up on top of MAIA it would be sent on its journey with mail to the far corners of the British Empire. 
On October 6th, 1938, flying from the River Tay at Dundee, Scotland, the combination took off on a record-breaking attempt to send Mercury to Cape Town, South Africa, non-stop. During the flight an engine cowling came off, and Mercury had to fly at full power for most of the time, reducing its endurance. It landed after completing 5,997 miles, beating the previous record of 4,500 held by Germany. After refuelling Mercury completed the journey to Cape Town. Some more flights of the combination took place before the Second World War intervened. 
The flying boat Maia was sunk at her moorings in Poole harbour on the night of May 12th 1941, when a Heinkel 111 of KG55, flying from Villacoublay in occupied France,  dropped a stick of bombs over her with the loss of one life on the flying boat. The Heinkel itself was shot down by anti-aircraft fire with only two crew surviving.