Derring-do
A friend of my father's came over for lunch on Saturday. He'd been a fighter pilot during the war and told us of when he'd been flying over St-Omer and felt someone hitting his tail. Assuming it to be an English pilot mistaking him for the enemy, he turned round to display the full markings on his wings. At that point a bullet came through the cockpit into the instrument panel near his head. Realising his error, he made a dash for home across the Channel but his engine had caught fire so he had to parachute out, dinghy and air cannister in hand. He managed to inflate the dinghy and was eventually picked up by the Navy. His uniform was soaking wet so he asked on of the chaps on board to put it on the stove. The man misunderstood him and put it in the stove so he lost his lucky uniform.
posted by Whispering Walls at 7:16 am
10 Comments:
If that was a 'lucky' uniform I get he was bloody glad that he wasn't wearing an 'unlucky' one that day !
Hmmm...fair point Anon!
My father produced the screws which kept the tail structures of Spitfires and Lancaster bombers together.Like everyone I knwo who fought in WW2, he had a "lucky" something. In his case it was a cigarette case.
He went on to produce the screws which kept the Comet tail sections together. Unfortunately, you might remember that Comet's had a propensity to fall out of the sky, and I remember great graveness in our household when it was reported one day that " the tail section was separated from the main fuselage. As a result, Air crash investigators are postulating that the tail fell off in flight."
However, it was pointed out that the entire tail section was in one piece, and that it had become detached once the plane crashed.
It was later proved that ( in fact) because the tail section was so robust, the inspection portal in the top of the plane was the cause of the disasters, as it was not strong enough to maintain the regidity of the rest of the plane.
Three cheers for the Old King Lear!
Off topic, Winchester, but what do you make off the rumbling jungle drums coming from Turkey ?
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2007/10/22/wturk222.xml
I find it all rather worrying, and the British media aren't really covering what could be a major crisis in a great amount of detail.
More worryingly the EU could find its so-called 'Western Border' being 'up-close and personal' with Iraq and Iran. Maybe if the EU is such a deterrent to war as its protagonists seem to suggest, we should go the whole hog and invite Iran and Iraq to join... It might make buying petrol cheaper if the whole transactions were done in Euros...
Is this really why the nation fought for freedom back in the Second World War ?
kinglear - I had an inkling from old school Physics lessons that problems on the Comet had something to do with metal fatigue ? Or am I confusing it with airliners produced in the early days of McDonnell Douglas ?
Don't like the Turkish situation, Anon. Can't believe the US held a vote on the 1917 Armenian situation at such a critical time
anon - well there's metal fatigue and metal fatigue. The proximate cause for the Comet was the inspection portal which was square, as opposed to rounded as all windows now are in planes. The bumping and general flexing of the plane meant the area around the panel " fatigued" more than the surrounding areas, causing a catastrophic collapse and shearing.
But you are right about McDonnell Douglas. Their boast was always "They're still testing 'em - we're flying 'em!" usually straight into the ground.
This is banging on a bit and off topic but there was an old ( very old) L1101 that used to be based at Manchester as the back-up for ALL charter flights overseas that might go tech.
She was a very venerable lady. She still have life jackets on board from Alaskan Airways - her original owner - along with FOUR other owners in her enormous miles-flown life.
She was eventually removed when an engine dropped off as she taxied back to the hangar after collecting 400 odd people stranded in the Canary Islands. Oops!
Interesting stuff King Lear, and I dare say we will be hearing a lot more about this other aviation related topic in the not too distant future. I caught the advert in the 'Eye' and the website was alluded to on the BBC...
http://www.aerotoxic.org/
Still, it is one way of reducing the number of people flying...
What a brave man and how sad to lose his "kucky" uniform like this!
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