WILEY
You must think I’m going round the bend – sending you the same reply twice! Playing around with the Forum this morning I realised that there was more than one page, 55 in fact.
When I first found this site I read about someone who had sailed on the Queen Mary when Winston Churchill was going to New York. I was also on the Queen and soon after leaving Gourock we learned that Winston was aboard. One day when we were eating in the Dining Hall we were amazed to see some hundred or more German prisoners of war marched in for breakfast! Several weeks later I started flying training at 3 BFTS, Miami, Oklahoma. After flying Fairchild PT 19s we progressed to Harvard AT6s.
Once we had done a solo in the Harvard a RAF Officer told us that there was a German prisoner of war camp in Kansa, some miles north of Miami. On no account were we to fly over the camp and drop empty Coca Cola bottles as they made a whistling noise like a bomb and some of the prisoners were suffering from shell shock. To ensure that we did not ‘accidentally stray’ over the camp we were given its exact map reference!!!
In our crew room there was a machine dispensing refrigerated bottled Coca Cola and next to the machine a large box to contain the empty bottles. Surprisingly there was never an empty bottle to be seen!!! Why the Americans wanted German POWs I can't imagine
Coming back to your question about landing a Seafire I was lucky. My landings were in good weather. I can't remember any turbulence or wind shear from the carrier I was always too busy watching the Batman. A week or two before joining 879 Squadron the guys had been practising deck landings in terrible gusty weather a few miles north of Ceylon. Three Seafires were written off and at least one pilot died.
Dave