The Whelan account is partially supported by the Lewis accounts. I have checked Never Look Back, All My Yesterday’s and Sagittarius Surviving.

These confirm that Lewis learned to fly for the second time at Reading, soloing a Magister in less than two hours. It does not name his instructor.

However the timeline does not match the detail in Whelan’s account. Lewis signed up to fly again in 1941. After Reading, he went to Upavon for an instructor course and then taught ab initio at Booker for a year before being posted overseas to Transport Command in December 1942. He was newly married when he received his posting.

He was overseas when he converted to Spitfires, soloing after four hours dual on a Harvard.

As Lewis wrote Sagittarius Surviving by reference to his letters home to his wife, and may also have been able to refer to his log books, I am inclined to believe that his timeline is accurate. Which means he is unlikely to have been visiting F G Miles in Reading in February 1943 and he certainly would not have been John Justin’s student pilot at this time.

It is, however, quite possible that Justin taught him at Reading in 1941 and/or that they worked together as instructors at Booker in 1942.

I wonder if Lewis’s log books survive as they would solve the matter.

Echo India