Sid returned to the scene of the accident the next day, and posed for the unit photographer. The photo was a classic. It reminded me of the scene of a lion hunter posing, rifle in hand, and with one foot placed triumphantly on the dead beast. In this case Sid had one foot on the wreckage of the Lincoln, his pipe in hand, and service cap jauntily tilted on his head. The caption was "All my own work ! ".
The aforementioned Harry Purvis ferried a Beaufort to Batchelor in the NT. On the field many yank aircraft were parked, B17s and such. The Beaufort's brakes failed on landing. Swerving hard to avoid a B17 the Beaufort ran into a drain tearing the right main gear out. There's a posed photo somewhere in the archives similar to the Sid Gooding one with his Linc., a beaming Harry with his shirt half open, right hand on his heart, captioned 'Alone I did it!'
Many who flew with Harry in the sixties with Connellans, Herons mainly, used to say his usual drawled comment after landing was 'Got away with it again'.
In Harry's book 'Outback Airmen' , (Rigby's the publisher changed Harry's original title, 'Quit Stalling', pissing him right off), there's a bit about Harry checking Brian 'Blackjack' Walker out on a Beaufort at Sale. Blackjack after a couple of dual circuits went off to do a bit on his own. Harry, who was the CFI, went back to his office. Twenty minutes later, sitting at his desk, he heard a siren. The fire tender was tearing across the strip to a crashed Beaufort, burning merrily. Harry hopped in his jeep and raced to the scene, off the airfield in a clump of trees. He stood there surveying the blaze which was too intense for the fire-rees to go close.
Just as he was thinking the worse someone or something shoved him from behind. He turned to see a partially scorched Blackjack , mock scowl on his face, who said to Harry in his grimmest voice.. . "Thought I was dead, ya bastard?" That night in the mess Blackjack wrote out a cheque for two thousand pounds. He wrote it to 'RAAF Sale Officer's Mess Benevolent Fund'.
signing it BLACKJACK, (his mark).
That cheque Harry pasted in his wartime diary. Underneath he wrote -
BLACKJACK PAYS FOR THE BEAUFORT HE BURNT.
(I have a facsimile of that 100 page diary. Should anyone like to read it with a view to publication, PM me. It opens in February 1941 at Nhill where Harry was posted to instruct on Hudsons. The first entry says - 'Nhill. Bloody Nhill. Hot as the hobs of hell.")
p.s. Harry Purvis not only flew as co-pilot to Smithy in the Southern Cross barnstorming through several mainland states in 1932-33, he later flew the Old Bus in the 1946 movie 'Smithy', (in which PG Taylor and Billy Hughes played themselves). Harry was in fact the last person to fly that most historic of any Australian aeroplane, bar none , preserved today at Brisbane Airport.
Last edited by Fantome; 1st Jul 2012 at 23:58.