Mention of Lytham St Annes in an earlier post reminds me of my father’s story of being singled out for some Luftwaffe attention. He was in the Home Guard patrolling the Lytham seafront when a German aircraft, which he mistook for a Blenheim, approached at low level, possibly returning from a raid on Liverpool. My father waved at the pilot and was rewarded by a stick of incendiaries being dropped round his post. Somewhere in the loft is the burnt out case of one of the bombs. This annoyed him so much he joined up full time and he had chance to get his own back in the Ardennes later in the war.
A Heinkel 111 crashed in roughly the same area of the Ribble estuary and members of my father’s Home Guard unit were “assisting” the crew members, who survived the crash, back in to the water with their allotted pitchforks. The crew were saved by my maiden aunt, who was matron at the nearby hospital, pointing out it was not really playing the game. The navigator was so grateful that he sent my aunt his stamp collection after the war was over and it sits on my shelf as I write.

Enough folk have heard about my flying that I have difficulty in filling the other seat in the Airtourer never mind another two in a Tri-Pacer. It is strange though how many 4-seaters arrive at fly-ins with just one or two on board so it isn’t just me.

Moggy, if you fancy taking some friends with you, (you do have friends don’t you?) there could be a Flying Milkstool, sorry Tri-Pacer, up for sale at Top Farm in the near future.

Thanks Easy Tiger. I know what you mean about the CAA. It’s difficult enough with a reasonably well known GA type but it must keep them up at nights with a “one-off” like the Seafire.

Just out of interest why have they waited until the paint job was done before test-flying it? Is it to do with the final weight and balance checks (paint being quite heavy stuff)? If it was mine I’d have been itching to get airborne, paint or no paint.

Has anyone seen “British and Commonwealth Airlines (?)” in the early Putnam series. I remember borrowing it from the MacMillan library in Nairobi as holiday reading for a trip to Mombasa in the mid-70s and have never seen it since. Did “Aircraft for fun” ever get published in the new-shape series? I’ve seen most of the others and bought a few but never the one I really wanted

So who nicked “your” Chipmunk today Janie? It was one of only 3 movements at Duxford, the others being the T-33, a 172 and the King Air. And they just got away before a snow shower came through