My step father knew Tony well when he was living in rural Herefordshire in the West of England in the 1960s and early 70s. Tony had a light aircraft and his own airstrip and my step father's family owned an aircraft company some 25 miles away and looked after the plane for him. My step father flew with Tony a number of times and said that he was one of the most modest pilots that he knew at the time.
Tony flew as wingman to the fighter ace 'Jonnie' Johnson and appears a number of times in Jonnie's book. He was apparently the first British pilot to shoot down a German M3 262 jet fighter, and the first person to shoot down a jet in combat. When drawn into conversation about it on a wet no-flying day, Tony dismissed it by saying that it was an accident. They had been scrambled to oppose enemy planes spotted coming in over the coast. To quote Tony 'we were in and out of cloud and I saw a flash of a German plane obscured partly by cloud. I fired and it went down. I found out later that it was the 262'.