If you were rich enough to have fivers before the war the you could be quite well off now.
B228d CATTERNS WHITE FIVE POUND 'FIVER' NOTE 'UNC' LEEDS BRANCH ISSUE RARITY !!! | eBay

Vengeance rides again !
 

Wander00,
Sadly, no. The "Buried Spitfires" even had me going at first - but it was such a lovely pipe-dream ! - while it lasted.

Fareastdriver,

Better check they're not one of Hitlers's duds before buying ! Believe Jewish skilled engravers were saved from the death camps to work on the project, and they turned out almost undetectable forgeriies.

HEADS UP, ALL

Two things (1) this Prince of Threads has hit the 9,000 almost unnoticed - roll on 10,000 !

(2) Seems a magazine with the rather clever title of "Fly Past", in its September issue, will have a seven (?) page article on the Vultee Vengeance in India. if interested, place orders with newsagent. (No, they're NOT paying me for this ! :*).

When it comes, will go through line by line and give it the full treatment on here...:ok:

Danny.

Mine due by mail any day, will read with interest

. . . . .. thought for just a moment . . . . now that's something

Since my copy of the September Flypast turned up a few days ago, I imagine it's in newsagents (those that keep it) already.

Have ordered digital copy from "pocketmags" and eagerly watching inbox.

Danny.

Danny, it's an interesting piece but I've a feeling this thread, which I'm slowly working through, might provide a more personal insight.

Tashengurt,

At first I thought that yours was rather a gnomic observation, but then realised that you are one of the lucky ones, having actually seen the "Fly Past" article.

Without seeing it, I would guess that their difficulty was that there are few Vengeance pilots left alive; a second (living) one has never yet appeared on this Thread; the best bet for the authors of the article (as I presume they know nothing of PPRUne), would have been to try BHARAT RAKSHAK for a lead into the IAF contributors on the VV. So they probably had to mine the ORBs of the Squadrons for information,and that would have little personal content.

Whereas here you have "the horse's mouth" and little else (of course, that is only as good as the horse !)

Danny.

Danny42c ... and what a horse's mouth you have turned out to be! :)

PS: along with many others, of course, but Danny is a fellow former ATCO, and thus gets precedence!

Re the earlier mention of Eagles and Pelicans...

Stanwell (#8981),
It's an instinctive thing. A puff of crosswind "weathercocks" you - moves yellow line off target, you screw round to bring it into 12 o'clock, then nose up a fraction to bring it on again.

Downside (for us), you pull-out every which way (for you've no time to keep track of direction on the ground), and only then sort yourself out to find rest of mob. Keeps flak-gunners on their toes, though !

Pelicans "crash" every time, so doesn't affect them.

Now about the wedge-tailed eagle.....

Danny.

Danny42c ... that 'random' pull-out heading must have been quite stimulating in hilly/mountainous terrain, when you have a limited perspective of where you're going to be pointing?!

On Danny's description by turning the aircraft longitudinally it follows that if there were any corrections the last part of the dive will be into wind. This means that the ground distance used up in the recovery to level flight is at it's minimum so avoidance of obstacles is optimised.
However, the ground speed is least so anti-aircraft offset is easier.

MPN11 (#9011),
Will accept that as a compliment ! True, I have the long Celtic skull and might very well be likened to an old horse. A nice old horse, of course, of the kind that young maidens love to nuzzle (for we all know the affinity between nubile females and their ponies).

Better take my tablets now !

Danny.

It's not the fall that hurts, but the bump at the bottom.
 

Most of my work was on the coastal plain of Arakan, even the "hill" targets (into which the Japs liked to dig the bunkers we bombed) would only be about 500 ft high.

Trips across the Arakan Yomas to the Chindwin area river villages (Jap stores staging dumps - or at least Intelligence said they were) would always have the river to aim for on pull-out.

In Assam, Manipur was mostly 2,500 ft amsl - but the hills run up much higher. Even so once you'd pressed the button (and no longer had a target to bother about), you had a perfectly clear view ahead (might be a bit "greyed-out" with 'G') and would screw the aircraft round away from any mountain in front . It was only for the first seconds of pull-out that you were disoriented.

................


Fareastdriver (#9014),
True, but drift changes with loss of height. Even so, in almost all cases only one correction was needed, and never more than two. In the dry season (when we needed a minimum 10,000 ft of clear air to work), you could rely on perfect weather and light and variable winds (might be a light onshore breeze in Arakan - didn't trouble us).

In all events, when you have pulled out to 45° or so, your first priority was to slacken the pull to get down to the relative safety of the treetops ASAP, and only then start to navigate ! (and only the leader had to do that, the rest just looked for the chaps ahead and tagged-on).

Only in Akyab (where they had Bofors-type - might've been ours, left behind in '42) could you see stuff coming at you and jinked as necessary (never hit anybody AFAIK).

Bit rough and ready, but worked well enough.

Cheers, both, Danny.

Danny,
(Seems over familiar but such is the Internet I guess)
Regarding Flypast, I must admit I read the article fully expecting some input from you.
With all the print space given up to better known types it seems a missed opportunity not to have your account. Still, I'm on page 31 of this thread. I may be a while yet!

Gaudeamus Igitur.............
 

I have good reason to believe that one of our old stalwarts on this Thread celebrates his Natal Day some time this month, and will clock up another one on the old "Anno Domine" meter.

I do not know (and do not need to know) the precise date, but simply invite all of good will to say with me:


Ad multos Annos !

Danny.

A bit early for me to raise a glass to Chugalug, but otherwise I second that!

Gentlemen, put down your glasses I beg of you! I am embarrassed not only by your kindness but because it is received under false pretences! Suffice it to say that I am of the sign Scorpio, sharing it with Prince Charles, a fact that Mrs C reminds me of when speaking derogatively of his second wife (don't ask!).

PPRuNe Central Control keeps careful track of my advancing years, displaying them to one and all on the info below my ID. It will click over with Swiss precision at the appointed date and send me an email to the effect should I have overlooked it. A thoughtful gesture indeed. ;-)

When I was in Borneo the local village of Sepulot in the middle of Sabah had a memorial to a Liberator crew that has crashed. The wreckage was still visible if you knew where to look. Unfortunately for them the Japanese had a presence and an airstrip near bye.
The memorial consisted of a 0.5 Colt machine gun mounted on a stone cairn which was the spot where the Japanese beheaded the survivors. This was kept in pristine condition, the barrel being regularly polished, by the local Murats.

When you were galloping around Burma did you know at the time what happened to aircrew that were captured or was it kept away from you?

xxhttps://upload.wikimedia.org/wikiped...dGSiffleet.jpg

Sergeant Siffleet's execution at Aitape, 1943

Fareastdriver (#9020),
It is touching to read of the folk memory of gratitude which these peoples cherish for the Allied aircrew who were trying to free them from Japanese brutalities in WWII.
No, it was well known that execution was probably to be our fate if we fell into Japanese hands. There was at the time, a famous photograph of a RAF Sgt-Pilot in Burma, patiently kneeling blindfolded, while a Japanese officer "addressed" his target with his sword, much as a golfer "addresses" the ball before the swing.

Above is a pic, filched from Wiki, of a similar incident in Borneo, but it is not the same one. The question was: how did these photographs, obviously taken by the Japanese, come into our possession during the war. They must have been planted as propaganda in some way.

Danny.