In Brian Kingcomes excellent ‘A Willingness to Die’ Brian mentions 92 squadrons new CO, Squadron Leader ‘Judy’ Sanders, who accidently set himself alight after using petrol from a nearby bowser to clean some oil stains off of his uniform, he absent mindedly lit up a cigarette…….and up he went, sustaining burns to his arm.

Thanks, bump – looks right as the book said, IIRC, that it was a replacement CO

Interesting that there’s an ‘official’ version of that, on http://www.rafweb.org/Biographies/Sanders_PJ.htm

According to this version he’d already been posted away to a staff job (8th October 1940), and it was his batman’s fault! This site has it as occuring on the 23rd. Somehow, I’d go with the Kingcome version. Another source, Bishop’s ‘Fighter Boys’, has this as occurring on October 15th, ‘after returning… from a sortie’

NewGuy – I presume you’ve seen this? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JxMJ2mX9UWo

It’s not working for me – “Firefox can’t find the server at avialogs.com” 😡

Very nice! The initial mossie shots would have fooled me, too. Have you thought about contacting some of these CGI guys to see whether they’ll do ‘pilot’ (forgive the pun) versions of your flying sequences as written so far, perhaps to use an advert for your idea – or even just to help you/others ‘visualise’ things?

In the spare room, furtively. Don’t tell the missus. I tried weaning her with a couple of bolts bought home for cleaning, and that was ‘oh, that’s interesting’ When I tried an engine frame it was ‘put that in the back yard – or yourself. Or preferably both’.

I guess I went up in size too rapidly. I should have done it in stages, over several months.

Here’s more on it: http://www.dtic.mil/cgi-bin/GetTRDoc?AD=ADA800776&Location=U2&doc=GetTRDoc.pdf – looks like the flight test figures are in the national archives, but are not on line.