Read the Flypast piece with interest, and thanks for the latest update. Showing the plug where the telephone was plugged into the Meatbox’ **** reminded me of chilly dark hours spent, with the hood slid back several inches letting in a nice draft, listening to some plonker waffling away occasionally while all we wanted to hear was “scramble”.

Now a follow on to the FW190 episode. I was only 10 so memory is not wonderful, but this also occurred on a Sunday just after or just before.

We lived in a bungalow facing directly to the hillside from where we had seen the 190, my mother, my uncle and us three boys were sat round the table having breakfast directly in front of the large window. Suddenly there were a rapid series of loud explosions and the noise of aircraft zooming over the roof. When the confusion smoke and dust had died down we discovered the place had been hit by three cannon shells. Construction was cavity brickwork and each shell had penetrated the outer layer and pitted the inner one, leaving a hole about a foot across in the outer. One had struck just below the window, one beside it and the third the chimney stack, so we had been lucky.

My middle brother and myself were straight out in the garden scouring for anything interesting without too much luck, so after a while my mother allowed the youngest, just three years old, to join us. He came rushing back indoors after a few minutes very excited “I have found a bigger bit of shrapnel than the old boys” he told my mother and showed her a complete live Jerry 20mm cannon shell. This she prevailed upon us to present to an unhappy village policeman.

Happy days.

Far too PC, why can’t I at least start a word with an EFF

Having lived in the same village in darkest east Kent throughout the war we witnessed all sorts of aerial activity and i would readily admit that my memories do tend to adjust time. I always boast that we had a grandstand view of the BoB, but being only 8 at the time some things made a much deeper impression than others. I am lucky in that I have Mary Smiths “Harvest of Messerschmitts” to reinforce some memories.

Thanks for the Remembrance Day poppy, I expect you know 152 lost a crew to a collision in Oct ’54.

He may be one of those who returned to Czechoslavakia after the war and was a senior officer in the new Czech air force. They had to hastily get out when the Russians took over and rejoined the RAF. As I understand it they could not become commissioned officers because their names would appear on the London Gazette and the Russians would arrest their families.

The position of many Poles was a little bit similar, some had families still in what had been Poland, but which was now part of Ukraine.

A very complex situation as Poland had taken about a 50 mile step westward, with the Russians taking a slice of the east, and Poland taking back part of Germany which Hitler had annexed.

President Putin is taking advantage of this situation now, some of these countries were constructed after WW1 in the same manner as the Ottoman Middle East was parcelled out amongst the Bedouin potentates who had aided the Allies. This has caused the current problems.

Many thanks Rob for keeping the memory of 152 alive.