Respect is due.
Danny
Like so many here, may I give my thanks to you for your vivid recollections of your experiences in the RAF. For me, as one of the “Baby Boomers” (the luckiest generation to have ever lived on the planet), it has been a revelation, and indeed, a privilege to engage with you on this wonderful thread. I must also give my thanks to the Mods. for allowing me, a post-WW2 person ,who has never served in the military, to intrude here.
All of the initial and wonderful accounts prior to yours on the thread have been compulsive reading, but, your stories “chimed” so harmoniously with what befell my own relations. RAF Pilot father, (like you, U.S. trained, and served in India). Mum and stepfather, (Fleet Air Arm, both, like you, working with unappreciated Dive Bombers). Your memories have also brought their wartime experiences back to life for me.
Now it is time for you to sit in a place of honour, in the most comfortable corner seat of this crewroom in cyberspace, and we trust that, from time to time, as the spirit moves you, a broadside will be forthcoming to remind us of your ready wit, and forthright non-PC-ness!
Ian BB