Robert Smith Barry
It gives me great pleasure to offer this to Danny 42C and all of you as I pickup on Danny's #8028. I hope I do not stray too far from the thread, but all who flew in WW2 and me later in my Chipmunk owe our lives to RSB, (no hyphens in his name) although we may not know it.
He revolutionised flying training, which before his time had concentrated on avoiding the manoeuvres, such as spinning, stall turns etc which were the cause of many accidents. Instead he taught how to do these things so you could get out of trouble. Before I knew this was his approach, when I was teaching in industry, I taught people how to tackle the most difficult problems with simple methodologies, so they had less fear of the unknown. I was too late RSB beat me to it.
The point of all this is to let you know there is a superb biography of RSB which is sometimes available via the South American watercourse or Abebooks called Pioneer Pilot: The Great Smith Barry who taught the world how to fly by F D Tredrey pub.Peter Davies Ltd London 1976. If you want to read about an exceptional pilot in a cracking book written with the assistance of his friends, second wife and former pupils, packed with anecdotes of his flying exploits, this is the one. He also seemed to have a history of deliberately burning his problems, (paperwork, office and an experimental SPAD), fell out with Trenchard, invented the Gosport tube (did you use one Danny?) and reduced pilot deaths by tens of percent. Thank you Bobbie.