Greetings Danny. Congratulations on all your magnificent contributions to reach this milestone of 10000 posts in this thread.

A few pages ago #9438 you reminded us that you [QUOTE]Never flew the Spitfire Mk. IX - reckoned to be the best of the Merlin Spits - but had a few hundred hours on the Mk. XVI - the exact same thing, but with the Packard Merlin replacing the Rolls-Royce. Couldn't tell the difference.

At Valley, 20 Sqdn, 1950-51. Happy days !

I was there Danny !!! Imagine 6 year old FG on the beach and in the sandhills at Rhosneigr watching you and hooked on aviation for life ! From then on it was the Vampires T11s, a school visit to Valley, model aircraft including my own Keil Kraft Spitfire, magazines and books etc etc. Later CCF ATC (first flight in an Anson at Cottesmore) and from school to an apprenticeship and a career working on VC10, TSR2 (2 weeks before they cancelled it), BAC 1-11, Tornado, Hawk, Typhoon….

Reading through your posts I was delighted to find a mutual acquaintance I met W/Cdr Alex Hindley in India when posted to work on Jaguar. It’s a small world.

This and other PPRuNe threads have been a great help in understanding the world that both my father and my father-in-law lived in WW2 Both passed by the Gateway of India in Bombay in 1942, my father as a Lt RNVR at HMS Sheba, Aden and my wife's father as a Sgt, 565th Field Security Section (Intelligence), RA attached to 33rd Indian Corps. Troop ships, convoys, Indian railways, dress, sickness are all in the threads.

So now I've retired I am back in my late fathers home …under the flightpath to Valley. Thanks Danny

Danny Congrats.

Dunno about York's carrying coal, but brand new Hastings, straight off the production line, were used to carry coal to Berlin, and they still had coal dust under the floor when they were scrapped!

A big BZ, Danny, and very cunningly achieved too, not to mention providing a pleasing similarity with the old joke about Shackletons, although in this case it's "10000 posts flying in loose formation"!:ok:

Jack

Thanks for breasting the 10k tape for us, dear Danny42C.

We now resume our normal random programming ;)

Whew!
 

I was beginning to get worried that Danny would miss the 10,000th.

Well done Danny! Thank goodness you found this thread 5 years ago - you have inspired us all with your wit and amazing memory. Long may they continue.

I would like to add my best wishes and congratulations to our revered Chief Pilot. Danny you have, with a combination of modesty and determination, made this thread into the unique inclusive multi tiered ramble through history, geography, and memories that it has become.

All have been welcome, all may contribute, and we have all become the richer for it. Our virtual crew room has become packed, yet by its very nature it can always accommodate all comers. Well done, Sir, and here's to the next 1000!

What can I add to what has already been said !


Well done Danny and thank you.

Congrats Danny. I'm just a reader of the forum and only on page 209 at the moment. I really enjoy the posts and you can't beat reading personal stories of lives and experiences of everyone who posts on this forum.

Delighted to see you're still posting away and long may it continue. Roll on 11000 :-) Looking forward to catching up.

To all my well-wishers.

My sincere thanks to all for the congratulatary Posts sent in about me. But I've always regarded having this Thread to scribble in as a privilege to be grateful for. How many old "mute inglorious Miltons" must there have been, who've gone to the grave without a hearer for the marvellous stories they were itching to tell - but with nobody to listen !

Now let us join in welcoming Farmer George (#10002) and R14SS (#10009), aboard this Prince of Threads and hunt around in our infinitely extensible Nissen cyber-crewroom for another couple of ricketty chairs for them to perch on - while they listen avidly to the Wisdom of the Ages, which is always on tap round the smoky old coke stove (chimney pipe glowing dull red) and defy the freezing weather outside !

FG, so I had a secret, small admirer watching me as the 20 Sqn Spitfires trundled in and out of Valley ? ('Y Fali', I'm told). Did you ever hear of the Spitfire wheel which fell off as a chap got airborne from 19 (?), and did an unbelievable amount of damage in Rhosneigr (judging by the claims on MOD !) There being no ready market for Spitfire wheels in Anglesey, we got the wheel back and were able to find cause of the bother.

Or hear about the Beauty Competition (ca '50) which went badly wrong - but such matters wouldn't interest a six year old but the Lead Soldier Man (a year later) was right up your street. And did did you ever see a little green Bond Minicar (Google) - only one on island - buzzing about ? (sometimes with the then 'squeeze' - Ann Pearce [Bangor], where are you now ?) That was me !

Bit hazy about r/ws, as I remember, we always used 19/01 all the time, was a small short E-W r/w, landed a Vampire there once in teeth of a howling gale one day, no trouble. Looks as if they've built a long 14/32 for the Hawks.

Yes, Alex Hindley was the best of bosses, went to India and grew very rich, but came to a sad end, I'm afraid (reported by old friend Flt Lt Niel (sic) Ratan Ker (RIP). No use raking up now).

Memories, memories !

Danny.

Welcome Farmer George! While you were watching Danny & Co. at Valley in 1951-52 another little lad was watching the Brigands, Hermes, Argonauts, Dakotas and Constellations at RAF Khormaksar, Aden. Our account of a very different boyhood there began with #3515 p176. Thanks for reminding me of HMS Sheba, the Royal Navy's base at Steamer Point, whence came a couple of our classmates at Khormaksar School.

There were only a couple of RN families and their children returned home to Steamer Point after school, a source of regret to them as they could not be full-time members of the pestilential Khormaksar Kids, but of great relief to their parents (as in: “Have you heard what those bloody kids have done NOW?”)

Ian16 reminds me of our trip home from Aden in a Hastings: Boys wore shorts in those days and as we headed north I began to feel an icy blast across my legs. The double doors alongside were battered and I could see through the one-inch gap along the bottom. Dad said the Hastings had been used on the Berlin airlift and like the Dakotas and Yorks had taken a battering.

Danny:

I was at Valley on the Vampire T11 in 1961. I was sent off on a solo sortie one day and was briefed to finish up with a flapless landing. Most of the time the runway in use was 20 but right at the end they swapped to 26 (the short runway). Like the idiot student that I was I landed fast with no flaps and realised, rather late in the day, that the sea was approaching rapidly. I got away with it (just) and I never made that mistake again.

Young FED nearly dug a hole on the short runway at Oakington. It was a formation sortie and the normal T/O procedure for a three ship was a pair getting airborne in formation with the third at five seconds. In this case I was the only stude as an instructor was flying No3 on staff continuation. This being so we were going to do a Vic takeoff.

We lined up on the short runway and got under way. I had never flown off the short runway before and I was a bit concerned as we crossed the intersection with notta lot of airspeed on. The leader then surged ahead as he opened up to full chat instead of the 500 rpm flex that we had to maintain position. I didn't lose much distance and as his wheels left the ground the surface changed from tarmac to grass. Luckily I was good at formation flying which is why all three of us managed to fit inside the gap in the trees at the airfield boundary.

There was a bit of inter-instructor bitching when we landed as No 3 pointed out that formation take offs were prohibited on the short runway.

Didn't do him any harm; he later led the Red Arrows.

Several of the Hastings of LXX Sqn at Akrotiri in the mid 1960s still had coal dust lurking in various bits of their interiors

THE PARKHOUSE MEMOIRS – Final Part 24
 

Geriaviator (pp Rupert Parkhouse #10015),
Where was this Shangri-La ? Can I be posted there, please ?.....please ? What's the MQ situation ? Any good local pubs ?
Children can be so cruel.......
Ah, the "Feast of the Passover !" Join the Club ! Better than being a two ring neverwozzer !

Seriously, I hope you will convey all our sympathies to Mrs Parkhouse when next you see her. I lost a brother-in-law (wartime RAF Fitter) that way last month and know how his wife Leny has suffered in his last years.

Makes two brothers-in-law and my darling wife gone in a single year.
Send not for whom the bell tolls.........

But thank you, Geriaviator, for telling us his story so vividly.

Danny.

Danny

Many thanks for your warm welcome to this thread in post #10010. I checked our family photo albums - no Spitfire wheel sized holes in roofs and no Bond Minicar to be seen.

They are using 01/19 for all flying at the moment while they rebuild 14/32. It has taken a year but in March I will be seeing the traffic again over my house, which is on the extended centre line of 32. Bring it on !

W/Cdr Hindley was very kind to me as a first time visitor to India. I well remember a large gin and tonic in his traditional style colonial bungalow. The talk with his family was all about the casting of tens of thousands of extras for the film Gandhi, which his wife/daughter ? was involved with.

FG

Geriaviator

Thanks for your welcome to the thread and your memories of Aden, which I have read in the past year. I have been trying for some time to write up my father's WW2 experiences. It’s a case of .. why didn't you talk to him more when he was alive… I have many of the letters he wrote home from Aden 1942 - 1944 but of course the need to remove anything the censor would not like means they give little information. One question I do have was from another blog … a Catalina was droning over the harbour doing circuits and bumps. Where was the landing area ? in the inner harbour ? and was there a flying boat slipway on to RAF Khormaksar ? The Catalina was very important to my father, as he told me when I , age about 15, was making my Airfix model, "a Catalina saved my life", but he never wanted to talk about "his" war. Only now thanks to the internet have I got together the story. When I've written it up I hope to post it on PPRune.

FG

Thanks from me too, Geriaviator, for the substantial effort you have put into telling Rupert's story here.

As to his career? Well, not everyone is going to be CAS or a famous Test pilot, let alone a Stn Cdr. At least he had the honour and privilege of wearing the Pilot's Flying Badge, which is more than most have achieved. And he served, and did his various duties, and no organisation can function properly without a competent and committed Administrator in the system.

I'm probably grateful, in my more reflective moments, that I was binned from flying very early on ... I'm quite sure I would have killed myself, and anyone else unfortunate enough to be with me!

The Sheep from the Goats ?
 

MPN11 (#10019),
As I recall the circumstances, you do yourself an injustice. In my book the Navy gave you a very raw deal indeed. Too much water under the bridge now, of course; what's done is done and cannot be undone.

And, in my case, I was surprised, at the end of Primary School in Florida, when my instructor told me he had recommended for me the (single engine) future training I wished (what boy, in summer 1941, would not want to be a "Spitfire" pilot ?). Why the opinion was sought at that stage, and not at the end of (still all s/e) Basic School, I do not know and cannot think.

Years later a Wise Old Owl advanced a theory: From almost the first two weeks, when the USAAC "chopped" about 40% of our boys, it is possible to pick (from the survivors who would almost all go on to "wings") the ones likely to take a chance too far one day. := Keep them on single seaters - then they will only kill themselves !

The more careful ones you recommend for a twin Advanced School: they will be more likely to go on to multis and keep their crews alive. :ok: Not very flattering to us - but there you go !

And it lends credence to the story told me just after the war. Aer Lingus (?) was interviewing candidates. "In our opinion", they said, "single engine flying is not flying, and single engined flying time is not flying time". They were not alone in that view. :sad:

Danny.

Gentlemen, today is the 10th.

Gawd! Mess bills!