I have just finished reading ‘The Last Torpedo Flyers’ by Arthur Aldridge, excellent book. Well worth looking out for, I found it heavily discounted in one of the clearance book shops, which seems a shame in some ways, as it is presumably the sign of slow mainstream sales? Perhaps he should have had a picture of a Spitfire on the cover, instead of a Beaufort? 😀
I am just about to start reading ‘Spying for Hitler, the Welsh Double-Cross’ by John Humphries.

What a great day all round 🙂

Unless they were all duds 10 hits from a 20mm cannon would have blown the wing off with such a tight grouping.
Your ‘ballistic experts’ need to give their head a shake!

… and the steadiness of the gun platform they were fired from must have been phenominal … almost as if it was standing on the ground 😀

Interestingly this account also states that this Puma received ‘around 600 hits’ from the rifles and machine-guns of the Royal Marines defending South Georgia.

… which may explain why they didn’t hope to recover it later?

The de-militarising of it, removing any offensive capability that might upset the wowsers in the removing of its turret and making it a navigation trainer. I wouldn’t mind so much if it was painted as a wartime OTU aircraft, their Wellingtons trained crews AND flew ops.

What I was wondering is where you picked up the idea that the motive behind the change was some sort of appeasement process rather than just a wish to exhibit the aircraft as a training machine per se.

An amazing story. RIP.

According to Wikipedia, 2 of the 4 Disney B-29s were destroyed at the time.

Thanks for that, yes I have. I’m just saddened that I can’t find any official records. I’ll keep looking. I just don’t want his name or memory to fade. A fine pilot with 30 confirmed kills and 3 shared has to have recognition.

Percy

I gather that the reason for the lack of records is that so much was lost during the evacuation of Greece in 1941, the same reason that Pattles record of victories is never officially recognised?