Fairey Battle of 63 Sqn on which Rupert completed his operational training at RAF Benson in Oxfordshire. Whenever he saw this photograph he recalled that the Battle was always flown with canopy open because it was so difficult to open it when airborne. Within a few weeks this feature would come close to costing him his life.
The memoirs of Sqn Ldr Rupert Parkhouse, recorded in 1995 – Part 8. The first post in this series is #9775 on page 489 of this thread.
LOOKING back, it's incredible that we were not tasked to support the Army in any way, we were going to fly at 250ft with four 250lb bombs with 11-second delay and so we had a lot of low level training. In a Battle with its excellent view over the nose this was a great pleasure as most of our sorties were west of Exeter over the Devon countryside. We really had the most marvellous flying in March and April of 1940.
The weather was generally good but we encountered occasional poor conditions when neither my navigator nor myself knew where we were. I was glad because this gave me an excuse to land at a foreign airfield. I remember landing at St Eval and meeting Wing Cdr Revington, whom I knew from Cranwell. He gave me a warm welcome, I got a weather report from Benson and we took off again.
Once I was flying under low cloud and uncertain of position, so I went over the railway station at Holsworthy low enough to read the nameboard. On another occasion when we didn't know where we were, and rather naughtily hoping to get another airfield in my log book, I landed at Westland's airfield in Yeovil, which was regarded as particularly difficult because it was sloping with quite a dip down to the hangars. If you landed on the uphill part of the mound you were all right because you lost speed on the gradient, even so we slithered to a stop on the far downhill side and I got another name in my book.
I got the weather from Benson and took off for home, not knowing that the controller at Yeovil had phoned our base where my very irate flight commander had told him to 'hold the little so-and-so there, we will come and fetch him'. My commander and another instructor landed at Yeovil about an hour after I had taken off and I heard later that he hadn't made a very good approach and had skidded to a halt about 10ft from the hedge, which did not improve his temper even before he discovered that Parkhouse had taken off again.
I was sitting in the anteroom when two formidable officers took me outside and gave me an almighty strip. I think that ended my phase of landing out mainly to fill up the back page of my log book. Looking back it was a bit irresponsible but it was the most tremendous fun.
NEXT POST: Unwilling to part company with his friend Brian, 19-year-old Rupert pleads with his adjutant for a posting to France.