Originally Posted by
ORAC
So, student who crashed on take-off from Oakhampton in a Vampire FB5 after engine failure and was subsequently let go for medical or other reasons. As opposed to:
"“I do remember him telling me a horrific story about his days as an RAF jet pilot well before his days in tv…I believe he was stationed in Germany and on war practice manoeuvres when his jet plane developed a problem and he had to bail out. The jet crashed but he landed by parachute in a farmers field in the middle of nowhere. He landed badly and broke both his legs and he told me that, unnoticed, he had to crawl as best he could some way across the field to a farmhouse where he got help from a concerned but kindly farmer and his family. Fortunately there were no other casualties.”
Still, it would have made a good screenplay.....
Well, the story of him crashing his jet into a field is perfectly true. And I think him breaking his legs was true as well - Brakedwell did say he only saved them by putting them on the instrument panels, so he could have potentially lost them entirely. The only thing which was wrong was that it happened in Cambridgeshire rather than Germany.