Eric's first flight - a puzzle?
I'm new to the forum, so pardon me sticking my size 9s in out of the blue! I've been a voracious consumer of EB's memoirs since first reading Wings of the Weird & Wonderful some years ago, and I agree that it's a mystery that he's never received a Knighthood for his services.
I wonder if anybody could solve a small conundrum which has been puzzling me for some time?
It's this: Eric recalls that he first flew at the age of eight or ten, sitting on his Dad's lap in a Gauntlet. This would have been January 1930 at the latest. However, the SS19 Gauntlet first flew in 1933 and didn't enter RAF service until 1935.
So the aircraft in question may have been a Grebe, Gamecock, Siskin or possibly a Bulldog (which would have been brand new at the time) - OR Eric was in his mid to late teens when he took that flight (unlikely, considering his customary clarity of recall).
It seems to me that only his father's flight logs could answer this definitively - but does anybody have an answer to this?
Thanks, Spadge