Originally Posted by
oldchina
"Major Latham Valentine Stewart Blacker, a former fighter pilot and war hero"
Are you kidding ?
Exaggeration, perhaps, but the Wikipedia article says he was mentioned in dispatches several times before WW I (for service in Afghanistan, so it presumably was not for keeping his accounts neat), and got shot down and wounded three times during WW I. Doesn't say what he was flying, though. "Hero" might be a bit of a puff, but braver than me, anyway.