This erudite discussion is highly commendable, gentlemen, but our flying hours seem rather low these days. Pray exit the corner, Danny, while I whet your appetites with just one of Sqn Ldr Rupert Parkhouse's remarkable stories which will be serialised when 10,000 words of recording transcripts are completed at the end of this month.
Tales of training at RAF Cranwell in 1939, memories and even photographs of POW life in Stalag Luft III, flying heavily loaded Sunderlands on the Berlin Airlift … his descriptions are utterly enthralling. In this excerpt he describes events on June 10 1940, when he arrived straight from training to replace the terrible losses of 12 Sqn, operating Fairey Battles at Souges in the Loire Valley in a vain bid to halt the German advance.
When I went down to the dispersal points on my first morning I was surprised when a rather wizened flight sergeant wearing WW1 medals and RFC wings asked me if I would air-test a Battle for him. Well, I was dying to get back in the air again so I walked to the machine with my parachute and was amazed when he came along with a flying helmet and jumped into the back.
I had never flown a Battle with bombs on before … I climbed to 5000ft and tried one or two manoeuvres including a half-hearted stall turn. Unfortunately I hadn't made any allowance for the extra 1000lb weight of the bombs and I was very surprised when the aircraft flicked over onto its back. I recovered quite quickly, took the aircraft back in to land, misjudged the approach and had to come in with an awful lot of engine on. What the poor flight sergeant in the back thought of all this I was to find out later. Anyway we landed with a thump, and we stopped before the line of aircraft at the other end of the field.
While I signed the authorisation book in the flight commander's tent I couldn't help overhearing the flight sergeant in the maintenance tent alongside. He was expostulating about 'That bloody Pilot Officer Parkhouse ... I'm never going to fly with that bugger again!' And frankly I didn't blame him, because the ammunition pan for the Vickers machine-gun had come off and hit him on the head.
Three days later, 19-year-old Rupert would be struggling to escape from the cockpit of his blazing Battle after being attacked by a dozen yellow-nosed Me109s from the dreaded JG26. And this only 14 months after leaving school.