I see a great many different designs of all kinds of ‘wings’ and other service badges sold as ‘sweetheart’ badges, given to dear-ones as keep-sakes by serving personnel, for sale particularly on eBay. Whilst interesting, I suspect that many of these are modern reproductions or even inventions and this is a specialist area where only the expert or experienced collector could provide authoritative comment. I speak from unfortunate experience when I bought a pair of RFC wings, the metal type I thought worn on the Service Dress tunic only to read later that the fixings or clips on the reverse identified it as a period item, but a post WW1 emblem found on memorial plaques or photograph frames, rather than an item worn on a uniform. I paid far too much for them. Caveat Emptor 🙂

Not saying that your item isn’t period or collectable, it looks very nice indeed, and hope you might get some more information about it.

Phil

4. From what has been learned from the testimony Copping was a “hothead” and seems to have
been instructed to bring the plane to LG100 and never to return in the squadron!
This is one reason then the hardness and great risks they run in those days may have led Copping
to a “voluntary fate”.

dko

This is a revelation! We have all wondered long about why Sgt Copping flew his last flight as he did, and we are disinclined to speculate openly here, but may I please ask the source of your ‘testimony’, who said that Sgt Copping was a ‘hothead’ and more particularly that he was instructed ‘never to return to the squadron’?

If he broke an aeroplane I can well imagine him getting an admonishment, of the ‘get lost and don’t come back’ variety. I am sure you do not mean that he was actually formally ordered to fly away and ‘never to return to the squadron’? That might have been said, but certainly not meant literally and he would surely have known that.

‘Harsh discipline’ and harsh words are surely familiar to all in military service and no reason for a suicidal aerial frolic in a fit of bad temper. Going AWOL for a few days and getting laid and drunk would perhaps be a social norm.

His ‘atypical behaviour’ suggests that Sgt Copping may indeed have been in poor health due to the ‘hardness and great risk’ you rightly mention. Are you suggesting that his companion, (the ‘gregarious’ one you mention, Stocky?) may have actually been detailed by his squadron as a chaperone with a brief to ‘keep an eye’ on him?

Phil

Copping’s P-40 is unique because there is a level of tragedy connected to it. Nobody knows his motivations for flying into the desert. Suicide? Combat fatigue? Confusion? There is something to be remembered by leaving this plane as a display to mark the tragedy of war.

Spot on mate. What I wanted to say, but didn’t have the vocabulary.

A lovely end to the story.

Well said, Alan. I can hear a cheer going up in the great crew-room-in-the-sky as F/Sgt Stephenson checks in. Respects and thanks to him, and condolences to his family.

Anyone collect wheels, Junkers 90 wheel for sale
http://www.ebay.de/itm/Junkers-Ju-90-Grosraum-Schnellverkehrsflugzeug-Orginal-Spornrad-mit-Bild-dazu-/331484137721?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_77&hash=item4d2dfe88f9

I think that’s a Polo/Caddy wheel.

It has something of a Miles about it – a Speed 6 perhaps?

Another hero. One of the parachutes I watched as an 8 year old as he bailed out from his Hurricane over Elham in 1940.

Phew, PeterVerney, I caught myself thinking “I wish I’d been there to see that” – then thought, probably wrong sentiments, on a number of counts.

But, you certainly witnessed events that still leave us all in such awe of those times and those who lived through them, and those who died.

Phil