Originally Posted by
SATCOS WHIPPING BOY
At around 2/3rds through grading, Sgt Ballard went to war. Respect.
212man has already posted "I assume that was nine hours on the Spitfire - obviously wasn’t total" and I have to agree with that. I really don't believe that Sgt Ballard only had 9 hours
total flying time. No doubt the information sourced from the logbook has been misunderstood when putting this story to print. But then the Daily Mail is not renowned for accuracy in journalism. Even the Daily Mail article headline is poorly constructed:
"Spitfire pilot is added to ranks of The Few nearly 80 years after the Battle of Britain when he fought Luftwaffe with only NINE hours' flying time before he was killed in action aged 23 in 1941"
Eh? This 'sentence' manages to imply that Sgt Ballard had 9 hours flying when he made his operational sortie in the Battle of Britain, on 8th October 1940,
as well as still only having 9 hours flying when he was lost in action in 1941!
And whilst "... the discovery of the pilot's logbook, which shows he had flown an operational sortie on October 8, 1940" is pertinent, there is no evidence given in the article that during the qualifying sortie (for status as one of The Few) Sgt Ballard actually "... fought the Luftwaffe ..." as
implied in the headline. Not that failing to locate and engage with the Luftwaffe should disqualify Sgt Ballard from being considered as one of The Few, he's earned title, but the 8th October 1940 sortie could easily have been a patrol that didn't encounter any enemy aircraft. The Daily Mail is clearly staffed with journalists who struggle to string coherent headlines together. The appalling syntax and absence of punctuation is stark!
The RAF's flying training system in the build up to, and during, WW2, was far more sophisticated and knowledgable than just sending pilots into combat with barely enough hours to go solo on
any aircraft, never mind operate them as weapons platforms. Nine flying hours on Spitfires is the much more likely scenario. I am left worndering if Sgt Ballard, being RAFVR (see further below), had more than one logbook - a relatively small, slim volume recording his flying training, and a second, operational RAF unit logbook issued to him when he joined 610 Sqn.
So, to reiterate, Sgt Ballard would not have been flying Spitfires, operationally or otherwise, with only 9 hours
total flying time. Forgive me for straying somewhat from the thread's purpose, but much of that Daily Mail article is just hoop!
PS: The National Archives at Kew has a record that Sgt J E W Ballard went missing, believed killed, on 27th August 1941, having been shot down in aerial combat over northern France. On that date he was flying a Spitfire, serial W3503, of 610 Squadron.
Other sources give Sgt Ballard's service number as 745731, and that he was a member of the RAFVR. W3503 was a Spitfire Mk Vb, and also carried unit code DQ-Q.