Monty Gordo
26th Jul 2009, 20:02
This relates to a conversation I had when I worked in Fleet Street over 40 years ago. I was young and fresh in town from the Welsh borders and one of my colleagues was nearing retirement.
He told me he was a pilot officer during the war and and was stationed at RAF Shobdon, Herefordshire, a wartime airfield near to where I was born. It was a glider pilot training airfield proving trained glider pilots for the D-Day landings
His story goes like this: Relaxing in deckchairs with other pilots outside one of the huts on a bright summer afternoon a plane arrives from the left and flies straight down the runway, banks and disappears from whence it came.
None of the pilots were really that interested until one, quite startled, remarked that the plane did not have any propellers. All were dumbfounded. Interesting as the conversation was I don;t recall him offering a suitable explanation as to what the plane was.
This is a true account of the conversation I had with this ex-pilot and I have thought about a lot since.
Given that this was in 1943/4 and Shobdon 'as the crow flies' is only 25 or so miles from Gloucester, could these pilots have seen one of the first Gloster jets, E28/E29, on an early proving flight? I have often wondered.
This conversation is something I have kept for over 40 years and have never discussed with anyone. But if there is some truth in it I would like to know.
He told me he was a pilot officer during the war and and was stationed at RAF Shobdon, Herefordshire, a wartime airfield near to where I was born. It was a glider pilot training airfield proving trained glider pilots for the D-Day landings
His story goes like this: Relaxing in deckchairs with other pilots outside one of the huts on a bright summer afternoon a plane arrives from the left and flies straight down the runway, banks and disappears from whence it came.
None of the pilots were really that interested until one, quite startled, remarked that the plane did not have any propellers. All were dumbfounded. Interesting as the conversation was I don;t recall him offering a suitable explanation as to what the plane was.
This is a true account of the conversation I had with this ex-pilot and I have thought about a lot since.
Given that this was in 1943/4 and Shobdon 'as the crow flies' is only 25 or so miles from Gloucester, could these pilots have seen one of the first Gloster jets, E28/E29, on an early proving flight? I have often wondered.
This conversation is something I have kept for over 40 years and have never discussed with anyone. But if there is some truth in it I would like to know.