Well that name definitely rings a bell! There’s a number of names from “Fighter Pilot” turn up in “Combat Report” though, funnily enough, not Richey’s. I think Bolitho’s role as an Intelligence Officer may have had a lot to do with generating propaganda, where his writing experience would be ideal, and he must have spent a lot of time moving in the same circles.

I sometimes get the impression I’ve read every book that ever named someone. For example, there’s a Group Captain Pope in David Niven’s “The Moons a Balloon” who had in WW1 been shot down flying in his pyjamas, and in “Dawn Patrol” Niven played an airman who had the same happen – later to meet Pope during WW2. Now I see in “Combat Report” a Group Captain Pope at Debden…

Adrian

Just bringing this one back to the surface again. I’ve obtained a copy of “Combat Report”, the Simpson biography, recently and to my delight it was once part of the library at the Officer’s Mess, RAF Enstone… well, I drove past Enstone yesterday on the way to do some Christmas shopping at Hook Norton!

Although there’s no further mention of the mysterious Fred, there’s some very interesting reminiscences of people like “Dickie” Lee and Richard Atcherley visiting his house at Hempstead (which still has a Prince of Wales fathers on the wall, labelled “1938 HB”), and in particular an eyewitness account from the garden of the bombing of RAF Debden in August 1940. As my father’s cousin and the village Home Guard captured two German airmen that day, that’s of considerable interest! Again, there’s no mention of Richard Bolitho, but as the book was first published in 1943 that might be an artefact of when it hit the press.

Thank you, nachtjagd and Twin Otter 23!

Adrian