Fighter pilot, 14
SIR – Geoffrey Bishop (Letters, February 3) may be the only civilian alive who flew on an RAF patrol during the war, but I believe I can go one better. My father commanded Brize Norton between 1943 and 1944, and took me up twice in an Avro Anson for reconnaissance flights.
There was a Spitfire maintenance unit at Brize Norton, where planes came before returning to front-line service. I was allowed to sit in the cockpit and fire their guns when they were being zeroed on the range.
I was also taught to operate two fascinating devices. The first was a link trainer – a mock-up aircraft designed to teach night flying and blind flying. The second was a hunt trainer, which had a mobile rear gun turret taken from a Lancaster and was designed to teach aerial gunnery. Moving images of German aircraft were projected on to a domed ceiling to be fired at.
I was 14, and my father thought I ought to have some idea of aerial warfare in case I had to fight one day.
Timothy Horn
King’s Lynn, Norfolk SIR – In 1943, at the age of six, I went to sea with my father, with a flotilla of Dover minesweepers.
I had been staying with him on board HMS Conidaw. We were sailing from Dover to Ramsgate when we passed HMS Warspite and escorts going down the Channel. I discovered seasickness and the joys of sailing.
Canon Martin Boxall
Penryn, Cornwall SIR – I was the mascot of RAF Carew Cheriton. In 1943, aged four, I was taken for a short flight along the coast of Pembrokeshire in an Anson.
I sat on the pilot’s lap, and at one point during the flight had my hands on the joystick. On landing, I was awarded my “wings” by the station commander. These were then sewn in place by the station tailor.
It was claimed that an Anson from RAF Carew Cheriton engaged a surfaced U-boat in the Bristol Channel at 3pm on the day war was declared. Was this the first offensive action?
John H T Griffiths
Tenby, Pembrokeshire SIR – From 1940 to 1944 my father was an engineer at a small BBC transmitter near Peterborough Park. Although he worked shifts he still had to join the Home Guard, and thus, as a child, I had a Lee Enfield rifle and sword bayonet to play with.
At a Home Guard social, in around 1943, a non-commissioned officer invited me to aim a Bren gun. He loaded it and told me to fire at some nearby houses. I did so.
It was, of course, a blank round.
Charles Dodsworth
Oxford