The Battle of Britain

[Danny42C]

insty66 (#60),

I owe General Arnold a lot. As the Commanding General of the US South East Air Training Air Centre, he was the instigator of the 1941 "Arnold Scheme", under which some 7,000 plus RAF LAC u/t pilots were given training in his own military schools (I was one). The RAF got 4,000 plus pilots back (I was one - luckily, as the other 3,000 odd were "washed out[40% wastage] for reasons which are argued about to this day). 500 plus were "creamed off" as QFIs, and kept back in the States to instruct on the six British Flying Training Schools which the US set up for us in the southern States concurrently with the "Arnold" ones. For the first six months of their existence, both Schools were in flagrant breach of America's "neutrality" policy - but Hitler could do little about it, as he had his hands full with Russia at the time.

I did not know about "Hap's" generous "obiter dicta" you quote; there was another after he saw Cologne just after VE Day: "It was horrible - there was nothing, absolutely nothing, left" (as I tentatively recall the wording). I still treasure my USAAC wings to this day. (The whole Arnold story is on Wikipedia, well worth a read).

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Treble one (#62),

Bit puzzled about this:

..."Prior to the formation of the (now ) BBMF, it was decided in the early 50's that some additional Spitfire pilots were needed for said BoB day flypasts. The wartime pilots were becoming a bit thin on the ground"...

Not as thin as all that: in Sept '51, 20 Sqn disbanded (were we the last Sqn to operate the Spit ?), putting on the market a whole squadron of experienced wartime spitfire pilots with 2-300 more hours postwar on the XVIs (inc little me). I was ground-toured as Adj of an Aux Fighter Control Unit. Nobody asked me if I wanted to take part in any BoB flypast, don't remember anything in A.M.O.s then or later. In late '54 the CMB permanently grounded me, anyway - was the hue 'n cry for Spit drivers after that ?

I can only affirm that, neither on my (1942) OTU at Hawarden, nor anywhere else did I ever see (or hear of) a Spitfire ground-looping. At OTU, seeing its little splayed-out wheels, and having come off AT6As or its alter ego the Harvard (which would ground-loop at the drop of a hat), we feared the worst. But it didn't happen. Perhaps the "splay" had something to do with it. All I can say is the 1* must've been ham-footted to a degree to provoke it to do something so far out of character.

Which was the stuff of dreams ! There can't be anything nicer to fly than a Spit. If there are aircraft in Heaven, they will be Spits. Les, I raise my "Complan" to you in salute - will be seeing you there before all that long, anyway - (always supposing both of us con our way past St. Peter).

Predictably, the Meeja have forgotten all about what happened here 77 years ago. I remember writing in a Post, way back: "We [the RAF] saved Britain from its greatest peril in a thousand years". I hasten to add that I took no part in it myself, (did not get to a Spit cockpit until two years later). I believe some 3,000 pilots took part (ie were on the fighter strengths of 11 or 12 Groups during the battle). Of these, 600 odd were killed in the battle: of the remaining 2,400 a further 800 odd were killed later in the war, making a total of 1,400, or 47% - much the same as the Bomber Command fatality rates later.

BBC in a froth of hysteria about the "bomb" (glorified firework) at Parson's Green tube station which created such mayhem there this morning. Very sorry for those wounded, of course, but sorry, friends, take it from me, if a "bomb" "explodes", you know. They've been on about it for five hours solid so far. Not a cheep about the BoB anniversary (or anything else for that matter). Did any other Channel remember - or the papers ?

"The Nation that forgets its history is condemned to repeat it".

Danny.