In a couple of Mel Rolfe’s excellent ‘Hell’ books about Bomber Command there are two accounts which mention the pigeons and their tendency to shed all their feathers if you threw them out in the slipstream and lay eggs in flight. It also says it was highly unlikely that a crewmember in an aircraft in distress could find the time to write a message and strap the capsule to the pigeon’s leg.

One aircrew member tried to go back into a ditched Hampden to rescue them but was fortunately stopped by his crewmates. A Halifax pilot called Fred Heathfield luckily managed to survive a crash landing in a shot up Halifax in the Balen-Neet forest in Belgium in 1943, he dropped the message capsule in the dark so he tore a piece of paper out of a pocket Bible or similar, tied it too the pigeon’s leg, and it made it back to base.

I have a copy of this on the wall in my old bedroom at my parents, it’s used for storage mostly now so hasn’t been thrown! Also have one of the BBMF Lancaster in flight marked as AJ-G and Shackleton WR960 probably on it’s final flight before preservation with a Nimrod in the background. They were bought either at the Kent Show or Great Warbirds at West Malling.

Interesting two sites by the way pistonrob, thanks.

Fantastic, congratulations to the team!

I saw RR299 flying at Duxford Flying Legends in ’96 not long before she was lost, so really pleased. Hopefully Tony Agar’s project at YAM will be complete one day soon, at least we will have a taxying example.

Shocking Reading, in James H-P’s book he mentions it was an average of 1000 hours of maintenance for every hour flown in the Lightning. It’s almost no surprise that it happened.

At least the taxi only examples here appear to be in safe, responsible hands.

It was mentioned extensively on the Radio 2 news at 6 and 7a.m. this morning just about to the minute when the BBC World Service broadcast it originally. Not sure as I was working but I think a bit of an interview with Martin Withers was included.

Thanks for sharing your experiences with us Ian. So often an account of these situations ends with ‘finding the cause of etc.’ The recovery is rarely told.

Best wishes for your continued recovery.

The late Peter Brothers wrote the foreword to the BBMF yearbook about 4-5 years ago and I think he mentioned flying PA474 after the war when in his words ‘with the war over, I felt it safe to join Bomber Command’.

The Rear Gunner did bail out of the Wellington after turning the turret to full right, tragically he maybe pulled the ripcord too soon and the parachute snagged on the aircraft and didn’t open properly. Robin Holmes book ‘One Of Our Aircraft’ is an excellent read with a full account of the early Bomber Command raids that N2980 flew on with many first-hand accounts from the survivors from both sides who were still with us then, and the discovery and recovery from Loch Ness.
Had a copy of the BBC2 programme ‘One Of Our Aircraft Is No Longer Missing’ about the recovery and history of the Wellington back then, sadly it was on a Betamax cassette!:o