roving (#95),
The late Ray Hanna parked a Spitfire at Leeming one day in midsummer of the late-sixties in readiness for a display at Teesside that afternoon. Seeing me gazing on it from afar in unconcealed, hopeless envy, he guessed I had flown them before (I had, 20 Sqn, Valley, 1950-51) having trained on them in '42.
He invited me to sit in the cockpit again (all the AFS studes had been warned, on pain of death, to look but not to touch the thing). I gladly accepted: it was just like old times, it even smelt the same. After a few minutes of glorious nostalgia, I climbed out and gratefully thanked a real gentleman.
I was the ATC Watch boss that afternoon, and was able to reciprocate. We kept our direct line to Teesside ATC open after he took off, and gave him radar surveillance (he was not all that familiar with the geography of N. Yorkshire). In that way we were able to time his run-in to the display to the split second. Thanking us, he went on his way.
Of course, all this was after he'd left the Service, in which he'd been one of the better known leaders of the Red Arrows.
Danny.