Daily Mirror (Northern Ireland)
If Douglas Bader can fly a Spitfire with no legs I told myself then so can I
Keen to take to the air, Colin “Hoppy” Hodgkinson was just 19 when he began to learn to fly in a Tiger Moth biplane. With just 14 hours’ flying experience, the 19 year-old flight lieutenant was at 500ft when his aircraft was struck by another and plummeted to the ground. His flying trainer was killed in the accident at RAF Gravesend on May 12, 1939, and Colin was so seriously injured it was thought he would never fly again. But after having both legs amputated, instead of giving up he took inspiration from the famous legless hero Douglas Bader – and together they were the only British double amputee pilots to fly during the Second World War. He even conquered his fears over ditching in the English Channel by filling his tin legs with ping-pong balls – so he would float. Bader, who scored 22 aerial victories despite having lost both legs, remains a household name. But Flt Lt Hodgkinson’s exploits have been largely forgotten – until now. Immediately after the war, he penned an extraordinary autobiography, which has been republished by historian Mark Hillier as new book Best Foot Forward, 60 years after it was first written. After the crash Hodgkinson, from Wells, Somerset, woke in hospital to find his right leg had been amputated above the knee. In the book he recalled: “My eyes opened to light. Instantaneously with the light came the pain. It was in my right leg. It was a fire, steady and roaring, in whose flame my nerve ends writhed and shrivelled and were made whole to writhe and shrivel once more.” His cousin Ralf Gibson was at his bedside: “He sidled nearer, rubbing his hands, and looked warily into my eyes. ‘It’s off,’ he said without any preliminaries. ‘They’ve taken it off.’ “‘What’s off?’ I asked. ‘The leg,’ he said. ‘They’ve taken it off.” His left foot and ankle were also so badly damaged he faced a life on crutches. Hodgkinson would have been forgiven for accepting a medical discharge from the RAF. But on Christmas Eve, 1939, he read a newspaper story about Bader’s return to flying following a similar injury. Hodgkinson wrote: “I pulled myself up on the pillow. I collected the paper and read the paragraph again. ‘Bader’, it said, ‘not only flew but danced, played golf and swam. He was married. He drove a car’. “I didn’t mind about the dancing, the swimming and the golf. The essential point was that Bader was in the war.” Flt Lt Hodgkinson immediately decided to dispense with his shattered left leg – telling doctors: “Chop the damned thing off.” He wrote: “To prove to myself that I could still be a man among men I had to get into the war, and in a fighting role. The only flying role possible for me, as for Bader, was as a pilot in an operational squadron. My case was vastly different from Bader’s. He had done some hundreds of hours in various operational types of aircraft, I had done precisely fourteen and a half in a Tiger Moth. He knew men in the service who could help him, I knew nobody. “None of these disadvantages, even had I been aware of them all, would have mattered to me at the time. If Bader could fly, I told myself, so could Hodgkinson.” Historian Mark Hillier says: “Colin called himself a ‘poor man’s Bader’, but he was so much more than that – he was a very special man. Colin didn’t seek the limelight so he hasn’t received the limelight he deserves. He
is a hero everyone should know about.” Within months of his double amputation Hodgkinson had become so proficient at walking with artificial limbs that he was allowed back into the air.
He signed up with the Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve and went on numerous sorties, including as a rear gunner on a bomber. In September 1942 he successfully transferred to the RAF. His description of his first flight since the accident which claimed his legs showed he had not lost his nerve, writing: “I approached Tiger Moth No DE197 like an ex-alcoholic
HEROIC Colin’s book He conquered his fears of ditching at sea by filling his tin legs with ping-pong balls... so he would float MARK HILLIER HISTORIAN
taking his first whisky after a successful cure. “‘Now, you b ***** d,’ I muttered, ‘we’ll see who’s going to be the master round here’.” Like Bader, Hodgkinson’s Spitfire was not modified in any way so he steered by swinging his hips to operate the rudders. His first aerial victory came in April 1943 while he was carrying out a combat patrol over the southeast coast of England. He spotted four Focke-wulf Fw 190s bombing Brighton and engaged them despite being outnumbered. Hodgkinson disabled one plane, which crashed into the sea near to the pier. Later that year, his Spitfire squadron was involved in a furious dogfight with more than 50 Fw 190s over France. He shot a Luftwaffe plane off the tail of his Wing Commander – his second aerial “kill”. In November 1943, during a reconnaissance mission over France, Hodgkinson’s oxygen supply failed, causing him to crash-land in a field. He was dragged from his burning Spitfire by two farm workers before being captured by German soldiers. He was taken to Stalag Luft III – the Great Escape POW camp – for the next 10 months but was then repatriated as he was deemed “no further use to his country” by the Nazis. Despite this Hodgkinson returned to the air before the end of the war with a ferry unit at Bristol’s Filton airfield. The hero pilot was released from service in 1946 but carried on flying as a hobby. He trained as a jet pilot and flew Vampires with 501 and 604 squadrons of the Royal Auxiliary Air Force until the early 1950s. Twice-married Hodgkinson spent his final years in France and died aged 76 in 1996. Mr Hillier added: “Colin was not a natural flying ace but he felt he had to master it because it had cost him his legs. “He was extremely brave having to overcome not just his disability, but his anxiety about flying.”
Everybody should know about this hero who never got the limelight he deserves MARK HILLIER HISTORIAN