Dave Homewoodcan you tell me what the hell a ( large proprotio) IS. 😀 Fhil. 🙂
Yep, a mistake! Sorry.
This was a one-off typo, not a constant mis-use. I am glad to see there are a few others here who feel the same about the misuse of the English language.
And Ben. is right, if we English-speakers get it constantly wrong, what hope have learners got when they read it constantly?
On the English language and it’s misuse, I love this quote:
“You must always correct Foreigners, otherwise they’ll never learn.”
Henry Livingstone Duckworth, Car Along The Pass (which was a Galton and Simpson comedy play from 1977 starring Arthur Lowe as said Duckworth).
Dave HomewoodThat would be cool, thanks.
Dave HomewoodHi Jerry,
Yes, it is that same photo. Thanks for pointing out the serial anomaly.
It is interesting to note that Airfix’s 1/72nd scale Whirlwind carried this scheme complete with the presentation name ‘Comrades in Arms’. I have original old Airfix kits of that plane in my cupboard.
Dave HomewoodAm I right in recalling that RNZAF Base Whenuapai was used as a set too?
The Freighter was ex-Safe Air, wasn’t it?
PS – wow, that’s a lovely model of the Safe Air Freighter on the link, thanks for sharing. 🙂
Dave HomewoodMk I Hurricane, R4118, the only Hurricane with Battle of Britain combat history still flying
For the record, Hurricane P3351 also flew operationally during the Battle of Britain. The book on the aircraft by Ian Brodie says on the 12th of July 1940 Red Section of No. 73 Sqn, including P3351, flew their first op since returning from France, on an escort mission. The leader of Red Section, P/O Smith, engaged in a dogfight with a Spitfire before they left Leaconsfield and ‘easily outmanouvred the latter’. After that P3351 seems to have only been on circuits and bumps, before it had a crash when undershooting the runway on the 21st of July. So, it didn’t have ‘combat history’ as such, but was indeed active for a short time and has operational history in the Battle of Britain.
Dave HomewoodCongratulations Melvyn, jolly well done indeed.
Dave HomewoodGentlemen, I may have made a mistake on this one. Going by the tape, the crash was after Gordon was at Waterbeach and had gone onto his next posting to No. 15 Sqn because he states they took off from Bourne, which is where he was based. He was at Bourne from 12 Dec 1942 to 11 Jan 1943. So I now think this is not the same crash as you kindly detailed.
Another thing is he says one of the crewmembers was a chap called Ross who was an Aussie, who baled out. That doesn’t seem to correllate with the Aussie on the crash detailed above because the Aussie in that was injured. See below.
The crash, if he took off from Bourne, had to be during the dates 12 Dec 1942 to 1 Jan 1943 because he then went into hospital and when he returned to 15 Squadron they were now at Mildenhall.
Here is the transcript of what Gordon told me, as we sat talking and he looked through the log book:
“There was one, silly one. We had to bale out. That was from Bourne too. Somewhere around here [searching log book]”
I asked “Was it over Britain?”
“Yeah, over Britain. We were just testing new Gee equipment. Navigational equipment. And we went up north over Scotland way, and around the back down the Irish Sea. We were coming back across Wales, and everything went bloody wrong. We had a runaway prop, where the thing wouldn’t feather, it was going up to about 5000 revs, then down to about 100 revs, REEEEEE errrr [mimicking noise of the engine]. I wsih the aircraft was feathering! I could vaguely keep it going at about 180 miles per hour downhill. But soon as you started to ease at it, a bit of flap and a bit this this and a bit of that and tried everything, and it wouldnt hold. And I went from about 900 foot down to about 4000 foot in about 2 minutes. So I said to the crew, “Get out”
It was nighttime, black as hell, you couldn’t see anything. So I got them all out, and I finally went out in the end. And I landed in a ploughed field, one side of a hill, and the aircraft landed the other side. I landed with my feet slightly apart, and hit the only bloody rock that was in the ploughed field! And I had the biggest bruise on my bum that you’ve ever seen. [laughing] And I sent a wire to my mother and my wife saying that “I’ve been injured on operations – I’ve got a bruised bum.” Ouch, it was sore!
“A funny thing about it, one of the crew members, an Aussie character, he was a real hard nut. Old Ross. And Ross was always short of cash, always borrowing money off me and so on. And he’d landed on the top of a house in a village, a mile away from the place where I landed. And he said that when he landed, he finally got down, slid off the house, and he decided to go and put his parachute on a post to let everybody know he was all right, you see. But, the parachute disappeared – and next thing Ross had all the money in the world, and all teh local girls had silk undies!! And I got my money back too that he’d borrowed from me! “
he says that he discovered shortly afterwards that Ross was nightblind. They were walking back to barracks after an op, and Ross walked into a pole. The night was starry and bright but he didn’t see it. He then walked into a second one, so Gordon told him to see a medic, He was nightblind, and was taken off ops. He went onto Air Sea Rescue boats.
So, can anyone put two and two together and find the details of this scenario then? His Stirling might still be on that hill…
On another raid, by the way, he said of twelve crews, ten had to turn back over the channel because most ofthe crews developed food poisoning and all six in his aircraft began to throw up! He said he just managaed to touch down, and he shut the aircraft down on the end ofthe runway. He couldn’t get any further. They were all pulled from the plane and carted to hospital in ambulances! I wonder how often this sort of thing happened. Interesting tale. The other two aircraft presumably made the target ok.
Dave HomewoodI think we can agree on most of that, I see your points fully and I think you know where I was coming from too. As I said in the first post, I wa also just having a rant to get it off my chest.
The same thing is happening here in NZ with the education system. They keep changing the High School curriculum and none of the teachers can keep up – meanwhile kids are slipping through by the generation. There’s a huge whohaa at the moment because last years exam papers had totally different questions from what most schools taught and a load of good students failed! I think they should stop experimenting and go back to the basics that they knew worked well. Back to the slate and cane method of my Nana’s times. Everyone learned to write well, spell well, read poetry, etc then. Even if you were slow or medically deficient, they drummed it into people. Perhaps that’s a bit rough, but certainly they should go back to basics and keep technology and learning seperate – today’s schools want computers and the internet to teach the kids. The local High School sold all the library’s books and installed PC’s!! Outrageous, they had a fine library when I went there. Mind you, the woman headmaste was recently fired very publicly and has been under investigation by five enquiries. She turned a good school into a business, importing high-fee paying Asian students (as they all do now!!) and couldn’t give a monkeys about our kids so they were fiddling the results and made it look lioke everyone passed! An impossibility but that is what she did. Any teacher who challenged it was abused and picked on, over 30 staff memebrs left before the enquiries began. Crazy eh! Apparently she has the same psychosis as Hitler did. She’s ruined the name of a once good school.
Dave HomewoodThanks guys, yes I guess it must be Charge d’affairs. Thank you.
Dave HomewoodThis has got me curious now, and I have just dug out the tapes to find the story. This may take a while, I recorded two full 100 minute audio tapes of his memories from when he was a school kid here in Cambridge right up till his postwar exploits as a Transport Command pilot. His memory is as sharp as a tack, and he has a great way of telling a story (after leaving the RAF he became a radio DJ here in NZ!)
So, when I find the piece of story, I’ll translate it here for the record.
Dave HomewoodI am certain this will be the same plane, and the records have got his name wrong.
Gordon Easter went on with his crew to No. 15 Sqn too, and then he contracted an illness for a bit and while in hospital his crew was taken out by another pilot and all ailed to return. He worked upa second crew, and just got them sweet, then the C.O. borrowed his crew for an op (Because he was required to do one a month and would just select a crew) and they were all killed. Gordon had to work up a third crew, and he did a few ops with them, totalling 8 including his OTU ops on Wellingtons and those on 15 Sqn Stirlings.
He was then offered a new job, a tour on Liberators in India. He wanted something new so took it. The RAF sent him to India, and when he arrived he was told he was meant to be sent to the USa, to pick up his B24!! So they scrapped that job too. He eneded up being made an MT officer for a year, before returning to NZ and serving in the Pacific on C47’s with No. 40 Sqn. He then became an Air Traffic Controller in NZ and Fiji, and after the war returned to the RAF where he did 20 years in Transport Command (on Yorks incl. Berlin Airlift, and Washingtons including dropping a nuclear bomb of at Christmas Island and watching it go off!!)
He is an incredible man, full of amazing stories. Sadly he won’t be round much more because he has emphasema which he blames on the Air Force because they actively encouraged aircrews to smoke for their nerves.
To this day he seems bitterly disappointed that he only did eight ops, and was cheated out of his crews and his B24 tour. I think perhaps he also feels very fortunate to be still here when those crews aren’t.
So, yes, that will almost certainly be him, you can adjust your records. I remember him saying now that some stayed with the plane. When I get the tapes transcribed I can let you see the full interviews I did (eventually).
Dave HomewoodHe is Gordon K. Easter, RNZAF. He’d have been pilot, or prhaps second pilot. He was at the Conversion Unit between October and December 1942. I haven’t further details just to hand, but if that is not enough to go on, I can find more I hope.
Dave HomewoodI agree with your sentiments Archieraf, but if you read my original post I made exceptions for those who don’t speak or write English as their first language. My rant is over the multitude of people who are from English speaking countries. Even the so-called “American English” doesn’t allow for such lax spelling differentials.
Sure, some may have learning difficulties. I accept that. But I don’t understand how it can be so widespread that these two words are swapped so often, and I wonder if it is one of those fundamental flaws in the language. I can’t see that such a large proprotio of people can have some medical condition. I can only think that it is due to lack of care and attention to detail in many cases.
I myself am a very slow reader and a slow writer. I do not have a learning difficulty, but I’m one of those people who reads slowly, and often has to read a few times to absorb all the information sometimes. Many of us are like that. I take care to try and get things right, so that the message is clear, whether I’m reading or writing. I find when I’m reading that any mistake glares out to me, and it distracts my reading of a message. That is why I get so anti about it – mistakes plague my mind and I have to usually start reading again to get round it, and work out what it was trying to say. That, I’m afraid, is just how I am. In the end I usually get it right.
Communication is important, and communciating well is paramount in life, today more than ever.
Still, the younger generations can’t spell a thing these days thanks to having their brains dulled by the new texting language, so I might as well not bother. Things can only get worse I guess.
Dave HomewoodNot strictly about aircraft but certainly about the loss of important aviation heritage – the idiot politicians and beauracrats behind the decision to close RNZAF Base Wigram, and then hand it over to the local Maori tribe who had no title to the land, only for them to systematically destroy its incredibly preserved infrastructure that was largely exactly as it had been in WWII, and build dog-box sized houses on the land to sell of at high profit. The airfield was New Zealand’s first dedicated aerodrome, and was the birthplace of the air force in New Zealand. It was the landing spot of the first Tasman crossing, it had many, many other claims to fame, and it operated very well as an RNZAF Base as well.
The story goes, and it was a very strong rumour that filtered down through the ranks, so there is probably truth in it, the decision had apparently been made to close RNZAF Woodbourne and everyone would have been happy with this, but the CAS was out of the country when the Government demanded the decision, and the deputy CAS apparently couldn’t rememebr what they’d decided and so tossed a coin, and Woodbourne stayed, Wigram closed. He should have been shot for that.
Dave HomewoodThe idiots who’ve taken wonderful WWII fighters and carved them up to make them into Reno racers, and then crashed them!! A total waste
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