This is an interesting one. I have seemingly walked straight into a similar situation in my research into people in my town who were in the RNZAF during the war.

One of the first chaps I interviewed was a pilot in No’s 30 and 31 Sqn RNZAF, flying TBF-1C Avengers at Gisborne, NZ, and then up in the Pacific, or so he says. He told me some wonderful and elaborate stories, all very plausible. And I had not told him that previously I had already done a lot of research into the RNZAF Avenger squadrons when I was in the RNZAF myself. Almost everything he said registered as genuine, and I had no reason to suspect a thing.

Until… when chatting with other veterans and they asked whom I’d already interviewed, his name began to almost regularly get a response along the lines of “Oh him. He talks a lot of bullsh*t”.

I thought these chaps were referring to the fact that he talks a lot. A whole lot, down the Returned Services Association clubrooms. He was a regular there and always spinning tales about this and that, getting on people’s nerves sometimes.

But an old lady then told me her late husband who’d been in the Pacific had told her he was convinced that there were big holes in the stories he told. Her husband had thought this old guy was a liar.

And finally I interviewed another Cambridge chap called Roy who’d been a mechanic on 30 Sqn, and then 30 Servicing Unit which serviced 31 Sqn’s aircraft in the forward area when the aircrews were rotated home. These two units were extremely close knit – 30 Sqn and SU is I believe the only RNZAF Sqn that still has regular annual reunions. So they all knew each other well. And he said that this ‘pilot’ was never on 30 Sqn, and he was convinced not just because he didn’t rememebr him but because he’d been suspicious and asked others in the Sqn, including the CO. None of them had heard of him! Roy told me he’s drunk with the old guy many times over the years, listened to stories that never happened at all, and yet he’s never bothered to mention that he himself was actually on 30 Sqn and can prove beyond doubt that he’s a big fat liar.

So in the end, I am left to decide whether to use his stoires or not. Or investigate further to see what he really did. It’s a little embarrassing for me because if I use everyone else’s stories and not his, he may ask why.

One thing that’s good is most of the people I’ve dealt with either have photos or documents to back up their stories, or may even have already been written about before. But with this one chap, he didn’t have a log book – very unusual for a pilot so proud of his career. And he only had one photo of an Avenger – nothing else – and I could see at a glance it was clearly taken in the late 1950’s just before they retired, long after his service terminated as he moved to Cambridge in 1946.

I hope this hasn’t been too boring.
Dave

Interesting, thanks guys. Sorry about my spurious earlier posting about the rank of Colour Sergeant not being in the Army any more, I was going by what I’d read on websites rather than real experience like many of you chaps.

Haha, Daz destroys a Buchon with his Isaacs Spitfire! lol

I believe that NCO pilots were also allocated personal aircraft. Bryan Youn talks about his own Spitfire in his book ‘Beckoning Skies’. He was a Sgt Pilot.

As an aside – He was allocated a brand new Spitfire when his Squadron was moving from Italy across to India, and when he flew it that distance the aircraft developed so many problems that when he got there he took it to a maintenance unit to scrap it – it was going to be reduced to spares. It must have been assembled on a Friday afternoon. So he had to be allocated another one in order to rejoin the squadron. I wonder how many brand new aircraft were such dogs they only flew for a tiny amount before being dissassembled and either rebuilt or used as parts.

The thing is pilots may have had their allocated or ‘preferred’ aircraft in the squadron but they never really had exclusive rights to it, and often if it underwent maintenance they’d fly someone elses, and vice versa someone else might fly their aircraft if they needed a spare one.