Smudge (#7195),
Have just finished it on daughter's Kindle. A great read - follows closely his account on this Thread, but of course his Posts of the Hi-jack drama have for obvious reasons been taken down.
He was an Arnold (USAAC) School student in the first RAF entry (July'42), Class 42A, so he met the "hazing" experience (from the preceding American Class of "Kay-Dets) head on. Said it was the finest flying training in the world.
I came in two months later as Class 42C in September, and as 42B were RAF, "hazing" was a thing of the past. As to being the finest flying training, although with three types and 200 hours (60 more than the Empire Air Training Schools), when we returned to UK for AFS and OTU, no difference in ability seemed to have been found: all of us were reckoned to be of much the same standard, wherever we'd been trained.
Warmtoast (#7201),
There was an unexpected choice bit of comedy many years ago. On commercial TV advts, a (nameless) Shampoo firm had for its single model a girl who dutifully extolled their jollop and praised it to high heaven.
Having (presumably) snagged her millionaire, she gave up the job, and was found by some TV roving reporter. "Oh", she chuckled, "Actually, I just use any old stuff on my hair that I can find !"
Somehow I don't think she's on any model agency's books now.
Hempy (#7200),
Certainly they bombed, but don't think they would have fired many shots in anger (the front [0.300] guns were useless, the rears [provided they'd swopped the 0.300s for 0.303s] might have been fired by the back seat man at some opportunity target on pull-out. But the general idea at that point was to get down among the treetops ASAP, and then get the Hell out of it !
ValMORNA (#7202),
We'd have gladly given up our Mossie nets in an exchange for a mossie-free environment!
Cheers to all, Danny.