For those of us who live outside the UK and won’t see the programme, please post here afterwards who the culprit really was. My money is on the butler…

Interesting. The only pilots I have heard of being shot at were Bob Spurdle (who told me about the event in person, having bailed out after a high speed divefrom an Me109 broke his Spitfire’s wings off, the German tried to shoot him in the harness as he floated down.

The other I read of was Ginger Lacey, who was shot by a Home Guard who assumed he was a German! He was peppered with shot but survived.

I am not familiar with either Mr Saunders or Mr Sarkar’s work at all, and not all that up on this Bader case, but I’d never expect anything I read that is meant to present history as being 100% new – if it is, it’s fiction.

There’s only a certain amount of facts that can be researched, found and presented in any case in history, and who’s to say that both researchers did not independently explore the same questions, view the same records, talk to the same people and uncover the same answers? Simple, isn’t it?

As I say I know nothing of either author so am not saying this was exactly the case, this is just plain common sense. Just like one researcher can look at a topic in different ways too and draw different conclusions from others. That too is fine till they start spouting the original research is wrong, as it may not be – there are always different truths among the facts of history.

And I’d expect a researcher to examine previous analysese too and either incorporate or dismiss the findings of those that came before. Wouldn’t you?

David I can now confirm my origianl suspicion as I have just this minute finally found the photo of the Thomas Frederick Duck nose art. That Wellington artwork is indeed Thomas Frederick Duck from No. 75 Squadron, though it seems later the artwork was adapted (obviously after it was removed from the Wellington and stuck onto the Lancaster). As it is now in the RNZAF Museum the eggshell has a large RNZAF pilot’s brevet overpainted and the name Thomas Frederick Duck. As it was in the photo you have, he was only Thomas Duck, worn of 75 Sqn Wellington T for Tommy. I don’t have the serial number to hand but it may be in Alan W. Mitchell’s book “New Zealanders in the Air War” (1944) as he did a chapter on the crew of the two TFD aircraft that carried this noseart.

From someone who lives in a coutnry with no flyable Spitfires, all I can say do is quote our great national hero Fred Dagg, and say “You don’t know how lucky you are mate, you just don’t know how fortunate you are in the circumstances.”

I hope everyone has an enjoyable and safe show, and remember the veterans, not just the aeroplanes.