Two in a Hurricane

[Giglamps]

Tangmere 19 June 1940. 17 Sqdn's B Flight lands in from Guernsey with at least one female passenger, a dark-haired girl who is spirited away in the dispersal van. Anyone know if the girl was ever identified?

[Will Hung]

Might have been the legendary Roly Beamont. He had a bit of form for this kind of thing !

[chevvron]

Only Roly Beamont I ever met was definitely a fella, so who was the girl?

[ZeBedie]

Did the pilot wear his parachute? Did she have a parachute? Imaginge trying to explain away a crashed Hurricane with a civy female at the controls.

[Giglamps]

A) Not Beamont. Wrong squadron. But I do seem to remember reading somewhere that he'd flown a Hurricane with a passenger.
B) No parachutes. As I understand it, you had to sit in your passenger's lap in order to fly the aircraft.
C) The girl turned up at an RAF cocktail party a year or so later. She may have been Kathleen Webster, later a WAAF at, perhaps, RAF Jurby..

[Will Hung]

I was being a bit 'tongue-in-cheek' ! Should have said the PIC might have been Roly Beamont. The incident for which he was CM'd was well after the above date.

[treadigraph]

Tony Bartley gave a fellow orficer (Humphrey Somebody?) a lift to a party in his lap in a Spitfire. The other orficer later did the same for somebody else and killed them both...

[Haraka]

I don't think that it was that uncommon a practice, at least with Hurricanes. Haraka senior got ferried like that on at least a couple of occasions, only noting that it was a bit draughty as the hood had to be left back.