Walter603
Hallo Danny, Back again to answer part of your questions. It would have been quite impossible for a Navigator to reach pilot's cockpit and sit on or over the pilot. One glance at an occupied cockpit would show you why. He sat up straight in his armour-plated seat, head near the escape hatch. No way past him or over him from behind, no space to get around him. Another point I would clarify; the Beau never would fly straight and level. 2-hour flights from the N.African desert over the Med on Rover patrols, and 2 hours return, flying close to the waves (less than 50 feet to keep below enemy RDF), were very tiring because of the a/c tendency to "hunt", with constant correction on the control column. Dihedral tail planes on Marks 6 and 10 cured much of the fault, but it was always present.
Son John made a small mistake when describing my Stalag IVB (4VB in English). "Luft" indicated a purely Air Force prison camp, as in Luft 3. A Stalag accommodated all sorts of military prisoners and many foreign civilians, e.g. Russian peasants. 4B contained somewhere around 10,000 to 15,000 total.
I was determined to get out of the place, and about May 1944 I and a befriended Bomber Command Noavigator (George Lloyd) swapped identities with 2 soldiers due to be sent out on a working party. So we exchanged ID bracelets dpuring the day, occupied their beds for one night, and formed up the next day to march off out of camp. Fortunately the Goons (Germans) didn't check our photos that were available in the camp HQ. So began several months of working on the German railways as maintenance gangs.
I became Fusilier James Leslie of the Irish Fusiliers and George became Gunner Sydney Oliver.
This is quite a long story, contained in 52 pages of PoW memoirs, so I won't test the PPrune system any further. Pester me if you want to hear more!
Walter.