Reply to Kookabat, Chugalug and Taphappy.
Adam,
Thanks for your kind offer. I'll be very interested in anything you can find out, but don't devote too much time or effort to it - I think we have the story pretty well sorted out now. I'm quite happy with the VV we've got - whatever it is!
Danny.
****
Chugalug,
I wouldn't guarantee a VV trying to head-butt a stout English oak, but IIRC, this was a sort of banana-tree and very soft. We were the only Flight bombed-up at the time; all the others scrambed off all right bar two or three u/s (on 110 and 45) and they may have lost a tyre or two (the anti-personnel bombs could do no more than scar the concrete, the bits "fanned out" close to the ground, which I suppose was the intention).
Not only the tracks, but the whole runway was white concrete. It stuck out from the surrounding green hills like a sore thumb. You could see it (from height) twenty miles away! Who needs a navigator? Nobody really bothered with airfield camouflage; most of our strips were just scraped out of the paddy-fields and the bashas looked natural against the local background. Khumbirgram was a one-off.
As for the Bomber Command Memorial Service; I have taped it and am looking forward to seeing it. HEAR THIS, ALL OF YOU, THESE PEOPLE (LIKE REG, CLIFF - AND MANY OTHER POSTERS) WERE HEROES ! I, for one, will never forget them,
Danny,
*****
Taphappy,
Congratulations on your "first solo"; (virtual) beer all round tonight! I am very interested in what you say about the introduction of aptitude tests later on in the war; in the early years it seemed as if the only three choices which the (1940) initial selection boards had to make were: "pilot - navigator - send the next chap in, please! " I certainly never had any kind of aptitude test. There was a general belief that a "scrubbed" pilot would automatically be retrained as a potential Navigator. Until after ITW we were "u/t Pilot/Air Observer" (that way, the ITW wouldn't go to waste if we were "chopped" as pilots).
The pilot Grading Schools were obviously a good idea; there is a minority of good chaps who will never make pilots (in a military war time frame); it is no kindness to send them to an EFTS and have to find it out there (as was our experience in the "Arnold" Primary Schools). There must have been an enormous, expensive wastage in travel and administation man-hours, even through nearly all were retrained.
The endless, driils, PT, parades, classrooms are a memory we all share - it was, and will be ever thus.
What's well begun is half done. "Good show", Taphappy, - keep it up!
With thanks all round to all three,
Goodnight,
Danny (not Harry, I'm afraid, Tap!)
Last edited by Danny42C; 20th Jul 2015 at 18:19.
Reason: Spacing and tidy up.