I like Mustangs 😀 😀 😀 Mark 😀

I GUESS that the pilot who fell out of his cockpit was flying either the Martinsyde S1 or the G.100 “Elephant” and his guns had jammed. But that is only a guess 😀 😀 😀

Martinsyde S1, Pilot Louis A Strange, Date 10th May 15, Lewis gun magazine Jammed as he tried to change it while engaging a German aircraft, he stood up in the cockpit to free it, Aircraft then stalled 😮 , went inverted and he fell out. 😮 He managed to hold on to the Drum and it stopped him from falling to his death 😎 , He then managed to get back into the cockpit and recover the plane before it hit the ground. 😀

Not being a big Spitfire man, I found it an interesting read.

I have no idea……….LOL. Give me a couple of years and I may be able to give you an answer 😀 😀 😀 Mark 😀

Clue Time….

Clue to the VC winner question. Most likely the Baron’s hardest Kill.

Clue to the other. His first name was like one of his weapons, and he had some Strange ways of mounting it on his aircraft.

Google time GO!!!!!!!

Who Likes Mustangs?

The actual event was staged???????

Sauron

Yes and No, the USMC guy’s actually stormed the top of the Mountain and rasied the a small 54×28 inches flag that they had with with them on poles left by the Japs. This was photographed by S/Sgt Lou Lowery a combat cameraman, as shown below.

The whole point of the exercise was to boost US Moral and break that of the Jap’s, unfortunately, the first flag was too small to be very visible from the landing beaches. Hence a 8-foot-long battle ensign was taken from an LST and got to the top of the mountain, and it was the raising of that one was photographed by Joe Rosenthal a few hours after the rasing of the first one.

The actual rasing of the second flag was not staged for the camera’s (there was an operational reason for doing it), but it was the not the first flag to be rasied. As started however, Rosenthal captured the shot at the best spilt second of time as the below movie stills show (taken by Bill Genaust).

I think the total time for those three clips was about 3 seconds, and the pole weight was about 100 Lbs.

Remember, the UK had a Secretary of State for Defence who thought you loaded mortar shells pointy end down…..you don’t need to be a ballistics genius to work out the pointy end of a projectile is the end that is fired out of the gun/launcher :rolleyes:

That would be Buffoon, I suppose? 😉

It does not look like a bunch of Civilians of any description in the world to me, valid target.

The actual event that was photographed was staged for the cameras, both in stills and in movies and the history of that photo was covered by a TV Series on BBC a few years back. However, Joe’s timing of the photo was spot on perfect, as when compared with the same frame from the Movie footage taken from near the same angle as the still shot, the frames before and after lack the impact of the image that its now iconic.

RIP Joe

I think he always wondered if he’d just been a little quicker of reflex whether he couldn’t have been the only pilot ever to shoot down a V2.

Unless anybody can correct me, this is my knowledge of the incident your talking about (just dug out my 1988 copy of The Secret War Vol 2 Terror Weapons / IF Video, the series been originally aired in the mid 1970’s)

This is transcript of how I found out that Raymond was a Spitfire Pilot (Of course, being a 10 year old at the time who was interested in all things technical and aviation, I’d watched Tomorrow’s World and the Farnborough Air Show Programs religiously and knew who he was).

Scene starts with footage of Mustangs and Thunderbolts attacking ground target, like trains and lorrys, with an explanation of the Anti V-2 measures by the allied airforces by William Woollard, one of Baxter’s co-presenters from Tomorrows World.

Footage then shows an HF winged Spitfire pealing away and diving with the start of Raymond’s contribution to the programme with him next to a Spitfire filmed in the RAFM Hendon before the BofB hall was built.

The Late Raymond Baxter OBE from The Secret War – Terror Weapons

The Principal job of Number 602 Squadron with our Spitfire 16’s was to make life as difficult as possible for the V-2 operators.

We were withdrawn from Antwerp to Coltishall in Norfolk, and our parish was the whole of the coastal strip of Holland from the Hook to Den Helder.

We dive bombed and skip bombed and strafed, railways, roads, bridges, anything that moved, and we also attacked suspected launching sites that were reported to us by the Dutch resistance workers, and on one occasion I remember, my log book tells me it was February the 14th, I led such an attack. we dive bombed, we carried a thousand pounds of bombs on our Spit 16’s, a wood just north of the Hauge.

And I think I must have been feeling particularly aggressive, because again I see from my log book, that after delivering the attack, we turned back in to engage the anti aircraft gunners that had been shooting at us. So as we returned to this target that we had just attacked, there came up, from the centre of this wood, right before our eyes, the unmistakable shape of a V-2 that had just been launched. Now, of course no one had ever seen one until that time, or certainty none of my little lot. I couldn’t do much about it because I was having a rather unpleasant argument with these gentlemen on the ground, but my number four, a little Scotsman called ‘Cupid’ Love, who was away out and low to my right, actually fired at this V-2 in flight, as it went up straight thought the ring of his gun sight. I think this must have been the most optimistic shot of the entire war.

I think its perhaps as well that he didn’t blow it up, otherwise it would have been very embarrassing for the rest of us and I also think that this is most certainly the first and probably the only occasion in which an airborne rocket missile was actually engaged by a conventional aircraft.

‘Cupid’ Love was in fact Flt Sgt Tommy Love, who’s other claim to fame was the misfortune to be arrested by a policeman in Glasgow Central Station when on leave, for the offence of impersonating a RAF Pilot.

I’ve checked the F541 on this day for 602 Sqn and Baxter was flying SM388 (Which he flew for most of that month). Aircraft Code was LO-X according to his Log book page that was in his last book. I have noted something about the story, however being limited to only 2 pieces of primary source material and a Video, plus the reason for this thread. I’m not going put it into the public domain.