PPRuNe Power!
A couple of nights ago a middle-aged chap was looking through his late father's WW2 log book and he reached Nov. 1944 and his dad had arrived at 229 Group Comms Flight Palam India. "What was that all about"? he thought, and promptly Googled it. The first Google page brought up various tidbits of interest, and included this thread's page 277 (my post 5539) "Of Beechcraft and Barracudas". He looked back in his dad's log and saw that the pilot who checked his father out, firstly on the Fairchild Argus, (radial engined version), was a F/S Burgess. "Blimey", he thought, could this fellow, I BB, be his son? So he promptly signed up to PPRuNe, which he was previously unaware of, and sent me a PM asking me if I was the son of F/S Burgess.
I am still in the UK monitoring "Wrenjob" my old mum, but I rang home and "herself" checked the Nov. page in my dad's log, and yes, this fellow's father's name was there. I am so chuffed I can't tell you!
It is not hard find records of your forebears if you connect with associations like 5BFTS who have great records and members. Likewise if your dad was in a famous squadron with a well recorded history, but to hear from someone who's dad flew with my dad in a small obscure Flight in the Sub-Continent is "effing" miraculous. Without PPRuNe and this, indispensibly important historical thread this connect would never have happened. We are now exchanging photos and log book info. They flew together several times over the next months until VJ Day changed everyone's world.
The "interweb" and this glorious thread have made this possible. My sincere thanks to the late members who kicked of these important memories here, and also, of course, to our current 90+(not out) writers, Danny, harrym, Ormeside28, and the Hummingfrog(s) who write (with considerable style)
their stories for those of us who were not there.
Thank you and goodnight
Ian BB
Last edited by Ian Burgess-Barber; 31st May 2014 at 20:58.
Reason: Missed letter in 5BFTS