Sharing Our History 2

The second article in this series has been made possible by Mr Giles Brown, who volunteered the two pictures from the late 1930s.

Pupil pilots under initial training at Sywell, winter of 1937/38.  Youngest on the course was the "shy and introspective" 18-year-old Tony Lovell, 5th from left, who joined 41 Sqdn (Furies) in September 1938.  The aircraft is civilian Tiger Moth GA-EBY.

Catterick, Tony Lovell sitting in the cockpit of Terry Webster's Spitfire after Webster came in wheels-up.  (Webster's widow told me years ago that "a buzzer sounded when the undercarriage wasn't down, so the little monkeys switched it off...").  I do remember seeing somewhere - or being told - that three of the aircraft they collected from Eastleigh in 1939 came into Catterick without benefit of undercarriage, so the photo may date from then.  It certainly looks like an early model of Spitfire.

The articles in this series have been made possible through content shared by our members. If you wish to broadcast a picture/article or short story to our membership via this blog then please send it to the secretary email address (41sqn.association.secretary@gmail.com) and I will post it here.
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