Talking to a lady in the club today. She asked me how things are going at uni then suggested I try and get a job at Brough (BAE). Then to my supprise told me she and her husband had both worked on the Beverly line. She told me a little about it but realy was not interested. She was even less interested when I told her about the Beverly at Fort Paull.
This got me thinking about other people I have met.
I was at Breighton a few years ago talking to a Gentleman about the aircraft based there. Turned out he was the CO of Breighton when it was a Thor missile base. Not only that he had flown just about every RAF aircraft you could think of, Including Typhoons over ocuppied Europe. A real privelage I fear i did not take full advantage off.
When I was about ten I was at Hornsea pottery (when it was Hornsea pottery and not another Free Port shopping village) I was reading a book in the shop there when a Gentleman put his finger on the page I was reading and said I flew those in the RAF. A former Liberator pilot took the time to answer the questions of a ten year old boy and added to my growing interest in aviation.
Now I know a lot of you are involved in aircraft operations, museums, research, journalism ect. but have any of you met people like this just out of the blue.
Ben
By: Scouse - 27th August 2009 at 09:33
There was the old chap who used to drink in my local some years ago. Rather shabby and down at heel, but always wore an RAF tie. Got talking to him one evening, charming old gent who’d fallen a bit on hard times and served in the RNAS and then the RAF in the First World War, and then re-enlisted into the RAF in the second. He had plenty of tales to tell, as did one of the stewards at the Philharmonic Hall in Liverpool right up to the 1990s, who’d marched into Jerusalem with General Allenby.
It was hardly a chance encounter, but there was an old family friend who had been a photographer in Liverpool before the First war, and then served in the RFC/RAF in both wars. He had met people like Claude Grahame-White and Samuel Franklyn Cody – Cody he remembered particularly for his powerful hands, and Grahame-White for his retinue of admiring girls.
My father’s older sister remembered seeing Cody flying his kites in Birkenhead Park, which would have been in 1902. She joined the RAF in April 1918 only days after it was founded, although just to confuse matters old photographs show her wearing RFC shoulder flashes. Total tennis nut who lived long enough to see Tim Henman play, but that’s another story.
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August 27, 2009 at 2:17 am