A Spitfire Pilot. Part 20.
Royalty visits Biggin Hill - April 1942
King George VI paid us a visit one day when normally we wouldn’t have flown; it was nice and bright but there was a terrific wind and it was an awful job taxiing. In fact you couldn’t taxi without an “erk” on either wingtip holding the aircraft down. Anyway we all paraded on the perimeter track and because of the wind we had to wear flying helmets which made life a little difficult if you were trying to talk to anybody. Brian Kingcome would come along the row and he’d shout something at the King saying “This is Pilot Officer Bloggs” and the King would say something and ask the pilot something, who didn’t know what he’d said, but he’d shout something back. Well when it came to my turn, I imagine the King asked me how many I’d shot down so I shouted “One” at him, thanked him and that was that, but quite honestly, what he’d said, I hadn’t the slightest idea.
As I said the weather would normally have been too bad for us to take off, but because KGVI was there, we had to show willing so we took off, eventually did a sweep across France, nothing happened and we all came back, but we had an awful job landing. All of the groundcrew were parked down one end of the runway and we each had to make a wheel landing, which wasn’t very good and then the groundcrew would grab a wing and get us back to the dispersal.
There were several pressmen and photographers with the King that day and apart from taking photos which appeared in The Telegraph, the pressmen came and had a chat with members of the squadron and when they found out that George was “Sailor” Malan’s brother, they wanted to make a big write-up, but George wasn’t having any, he just disappeared, he couldn’t stand anything like that.
When the photos were printed in the paper, lo and behold, there I was, right in the front, shaking hands with the King and it wasn’t long after that that we had a visit from King Haakon of Norway and when we knew he was coming, some of the lads came up to me and said,
“Get your hand ready, Robbie, the man’s coming!”
Anyway, we lined up and were introduced again and lo and behold, again, when the cameras took photos, there am I, shaking hands with King Haakon.
NB, Both of these pictures have pride of place in my dining room - JF.