Smujsmith,
The name of "Andy Gough" rings a bell. Wasn't it Sgt Gough, and was he ever at GK ? (may be off beam).
I never did any aerotows myself. IIRC, GK didn't have a tug of its own, but borrowed an Auster-sized thing (Heinkel ?) with pilot from a GAF unit somewhere. Although the rule used to be that tug-plus-glider had to have a minimum of 30 tows between them (ie a 5-tow glider pilot must have a 25-tow tug pilot or vice versa), something went wrong. I didn't see it myself, but it seems the glider went way too high, pulling the tail of the tug up and putting the aircraft into the ground. The GAF NCO pilot survived, but was very badly injured. It put rather a pall on the proceedings....D.
Blacksheep,
You never can tell when the dreaded mal d'avion may strike. I threw up once in (or, fortunately, over the side of, a Stearman) after stuffing myself with sweeties. And, one warm afternoon after a good lunch in Valley, I'd been doing repeated mock ground attacks on a gun position somewhere round Barmouth. This involved screwing the Spit around quite a bit to avoid wiping myself off on the nearby hills. When I started to turn green, I gave up before worse happened !....D.
Chugalug,
Thanks for the video - I'm going to enjoy this (and Wiki gives a fair account of "Operation Chastise", too) I agree wholeheartedly with your sentiments. There have been far too many of these nay-sayers and nit-pickers in these last few decades. With hindsight it is all too easy to dispute the wisdom of any particular policy or operation of war - when you know what happened (or didn't happen) afterwards in consequence.
There was no "silver bullet" that brought down the Third Reich (unlike the Hiroshima bomb, which arguably vindicated Harris's prediction: "People say that aerial bombing alone cannot win a war. I would say that it has not been tried yet, and we shall see").
Instead it finally succumbed to a multitude of blows, some heavy and some light, which cumulatively overwhelmed it. Everything is worth a try in war - for who knows, it may work !
I'm still sure I could see a shade change in the dam concrete when we saw it in bright sunlight in '61 (perhaps it was raining when you saw it, or in dull weather). Trick of the light, possibly ? Cheers,.... D.
Goodnight, all. Danny.