The person ‘Spitfire pilot’ refers to as John Freeborn’s Commanding Officer, was his Flight Commander in this incident, who was Sailor Malan.Malan denied giving the order to attack, and instead of sticking up for the rest of his flight, appeared for the prosecution against them.Malan was called a lier by John’s defence and John was cleared.Not suprisingly, relations between John and Malan were never the same during their time together on 74 Sqn.

I met John Freeborn recently at Duxford.In his book he makes it quite clear what he thought of one of my all time heroes,Sailor Malan.But there’s always 2 sides to a story, and while I don’t doubt John’s re-call of events, its a shame Malan isn’t around to give his side.

My Corgi 1/32 Spit Ia (QV-K) is resigned to her box after several… mishaps which resulted in things coming off! 🙁

yeah, mine mysteriously fell off the stand onto a tiled floor one night.Fixed it though. and carefully bent the wings to give it some dihedral.

Corgi have blown it for me a long time ago with their shoddy research into markings and editions which are none too limited.How many people have bought a £90 model only to see it on sale for £50 a year later. For some cracking 1-72 models have a look at Dragon warbirds, only problem is they are too limited.

‘Knifesmith 109s at 12 o’clock…..doesn’t quite sound right does it.

In the latest Makro catalogue there is a Daewoo tape/ DVD recorder combi unit for £130 plus the VAT.If Its anything like the cars I wouldn’t bother though.
Theres also a Phillips DVD/Tape combi for £70 plus the VAT, but you can’t record DVDs on that one.

Larry, I see you are new to the Forum as I am.You will find as a new boy, that frustratingly most of the subjects you want to bring up have already been covered, and well covered at that.The Bf/Me debate has been done and its a case of going onto search and trawling through.You can have hours of fun though(try looking at Some Douglas Bader threads)

Regards, Prune

These would be by William Green, Published by Macdonald in the late 1950’s,early sixties,and come in 2 volumes each.They are about 10 x 8 and have about 120+ pages. Some smaller pocket sized versions were later produced in the late sixties and had just one or two countries aircraft in each.They should be quite easy to find and cheap, try Midland Counties publications, they have a massive stock of used books.