Books

At present I am reading Portrait Of A Legend Spitfire by Leo McKinstry. My holiday reading is going to be First Light by Geoffrey Wellum the autobiography of a boy that leaves school at 17 to become a fighter pilot in the RAF during WWII.

Soviet aces

Name	Victories
Ivan Kozhedub	62
Alexandr Pokryshkin	59
Nikolay Gulaev	57
Grigoriy Rechkalov	56
Kirill Yevstigneev	53
Dmitriy Glinka	50
Arseniy Vorozheykin	46
Nikolay Skomorokhov	46
Alexandr Koldunov	46
Nikolay Krasnov	44
Georgiy Kostylyov	43
Sergey Morgunov	43
Vitaliy Popkov	41

Polish aces

Name	Victories
Stanislaw Skalski	22
Witold Urbanowicz	18
Eugeniusz Horbaczewski+	16
Boleslaw Gladych	14
Jan Zumbach	12
Marian Pisarek+	11

British and Commonwealth aces

Name	Victories
Marmaduke Pattle+ (South Africa)	51
James Johnson	38
Brendan Finucane+	32
Adolphus Malan (South Africa)	32
George Beurling (Canada)	31
William Vale	31
Clive Caldwell (Australia)	29
John Braham	29
Robert Tuck	29
James Lacey	28
Neville Duke	28
Collin Gray (New Zealand)	28
Eric Lock+	26
Billy Drake	25
Geoffrey Allard+	24
Jacobus LeRoux+ (South Africa)	23
Douglas Bader	23
Donald Kingaby	23
Robert Boy	23
Michael Crossley	22
Vincent Woodward (Canada)	22
William Crawford-Compton (New Zealand)	22
Alan Deere (New Zealand)	22
Raymond Hesselyn (New Zealand)	22
Evan Mackie (New Zealand)	22

Teamwork is essential; it gives the enemy someone else to shoot at.

Mk XVIII

Good news, Great to see TFC have cracked the Mk XVIII problem. Fab news indeed . Anna

Weather

Well the weather has been so nasty over the last week I have not ventured out. This weekend if the weather plays kind and not dirty I plan to visit a few airports and maybe take a trip to Farnborough Air Science museum.

Heroes

Some Of My Heroes Not All Aviation Related.
Wellington
Douglas Bader
Guy Gibson
Winston Churchill
Ray Hanna
Mark Hanna
Our British Service Men And Women
Bomber Harris
Manfred Von Richthofen
All My Past And Present Friends That Have And Continue To Be Loyal !

Air Display Pilots

Listed are a few of my favourite display pilots.
The late Ray Hanna
The late Mark Hanna
Alister Kay
Lee Proudfoot
The late Hoof Proudfoot
Paul Bonhomme
Nigel Lamb
Stu Goldspink
Charlie Brown
Cliff Spink
Pete Kinsey
Steve Hinton
John Romain

FRANK

I would like to wish Frank good luck with his bid to be in the German aerobatics team.
Frank is a former German Tornado pilot, he has been retired from the German air force for a good few years. Frank has a cracking sense of humour for a German very tongue in cheek. I give him lots of stick about air supremacy and as you would expect he strikes back rather quick. These days he works as a flying instructor when he is not beating the skies of Germany up in his Extra 300.
Stay safe mate.

Air Shows

Air Shows I have attended so far this year.
Duxford
Abbingdon
Middle Wallop
Old Warden

Air Shows I am hoping to attend
Duxford 15/08/08
Shoreham 30/08/08
Duxford 06/09/08

Fly-Ins

Popham 10/08/08
Compton Abbas 18/08/08

Sites I Visit

http://www.thedc6.com/

http://friends-of-tfc.blogspot.com/

http://www.airshowbuzz.com/

Airports and bases that a near to my location.
Blackbushe
Farnborough
Odiham
Lasham
White Waltham
Popham
Fairoaks
Heathrow

The Spit Pilots

The love of their life,
Far more than the wife,
Was passionate,wild and adorin'
Her deep-throated purrin',
Sweet sound of Rolls-Merlin,
Made pilots lose int'rest in whorin'.

Her blazing guns spittin'
In the skies over Britain,
In the dark days of nineteen and forty,
Left many Hun pilots
Still pushing up violets,
Where they ended their one-way sorties.

Their gallant ranks thinning
Each day's grim beginning
To challenge the treat, ever bolder.
And so many were lost,
How to reckon the cost
In brave lads, who'll never grow older?

With blood, sweat and tears,
Thru the war's dismal years,
They gave hope,and defied subjugation.
And a world built anew,
Must forget not those few,
In the Spitfire lore of our nation.

George Thatcher (c) 2001

Prayer

FLYER'S PRAYER

When this life I'm in is done,
And at the gates I stand,
My hope is that I answer all
His questions on command.

I doubt He'll ask me of my fame,
Or all the things I knew, Instead,
He'll ask of rainbows sent
On rainy days I flew.

The hours logged, the status reached,
The ratings will not matter.
He'll ask me if I saw the rays
And how He made them scatter.

Or what about the droplets clear,
I spread across your screen?
And did you see the twinkling eyes.
If student pilots keen?

The way your heart jumped in your chest,
That special solo day-
Did you take time to thank the one
Who fell along the way?

Remember how the runway lights
Looked one night long ago
When you were lost and found your way,
And how-you still dont know?

How fast, how far, how much, how high?
He'll ask me not these things
But did I take the time to watch
The Moonbeams wash my wings?

And did you see the patchwork fields
And moutains I did mould;
The mirrored lakes and velvet hills,
Of these did I behold?

The wind he flung along my wings,
On final almost stalled.
And did I know I it was His name,
That I so fearfully called?

And when the goals are reached at last,
When all the flyings done,
I'll answer Him with no regret-
Indeed, I had some fun.

So when these things are asked of me,
And I can reach no higher,
My prayer this day - His hand extends
To welcome home a Flyer.

— Patrick J. Phillips

Aeroplane

THE AEROPLANE

I sweep the skies with fire and steel
My highway is the cloud
I swoop, I soar, aloft I wheel
My engine laughing loud
I fight with gleaming blades the wind
That dares dispute my path
I leave the howling storm behind
I ride upon it's wrath.

I laugh to see your tiny world
Your toys of ships, your cars
I rove an endless road unfurled
Where the mile stones are the stars
And far below, men wait and peer
For what my coming brings
I fill their quaking hearts with fear
For death...is in my wings.

— Gordon Boshell, written after watching Battle of Britain dogfights from the streets of London.

IMPRESSIONS OF A PILOT

Flight is freedom in its purest form,
To dance with the clouds which follow a storm;

To roll and glide, to wheel and spin,
To feel the joy that swells within;

To leave the earth with its troubles and fly,
And know the warmth of a clear spring sky;

Then back to earth at the end of a day,
Released from the tensions which melted away.

Should my end come while I am in flight,
Whether brightest day or darkest night;

Spare me your pity and shrug off the pain,
Secure in the knowledge that I'd do it again;

For each of us is created to die,
And within me I know,
I was born to fly.

— Gary Claud Stokor

Because I Fly

Because I fly
I laugh more than other men
I look up an see more than they,
I know how the clouds feel,
What it's like to have the blue in my lap,
to look down on birds,
to feel freedom in a thing called the stick...

who but I can slice between God's billowed legs,
and feel then laugh and crash with His step
Who else has seen the unclimbed peaks?
The rainbow's secret?
The real reason birds sing?
Because I Fly,
I envy no man on earth.

Poem

(A Poem Written During WWI)

"How do you write Poetry?
And why is it so important...?"
asked the General.
I said:
Poetry is a story Sir,
Poetry is a design
And a plan...sir!

The General then said,
"Pilot or poet, explain
Why you had all those
Writings in your cockpit,
A poem written all over
The walls, that long,
Long poem, you wrote during
Flight, last night, under
Fire and alone!"

A plane, a one-seater-
That's all it was sir,
Flying perfectly straight
Perfectly level, sedate,
Over the German trenches
Into no-mans land, I went
(in a daze writing poetry)
With an open throttle-!
That's poetry sir, in combat!...
The engine is my mind, words
Are the fuel ignites the engine
We're both the same, Sir:
The poet and the pilot's head
Both in that same pen, the one I
Used to write all over the walls,
And ceiling, like unfired bullets,
but words, like the Machine gun,
attached onto my plane, standing
Back and down, behind, I went
Over enemy lines "Come on!
Come on!" the ground
Enemy said, called, yelled...!
Down fast I came, my
Words also, were rolling,
Turning, in my head, through
My pen, onto the walls,
As they dared... all
Over my cockpit, while
Flying down, down, in
Empty air...No breaks in there,
I told myself, sir... (no need
For brakes, in poetry)

Now on the ground taxi-ing
No goggles on, inside
The cockpit, something
Snapped...! My head jerked
Like a fired pistol: now
On the ground everything's
A muzzle; I give the salute
The scramble starts, to
The plane, me, the pilot
Spitting hard, spitting out
Words, onto the interior
Cockpit frame; trying to
Write the last stanza, word
Trying to accomplish
Something; someone
Says, "What's wrong with
You?" "Nothing," I say-
Then he notices all the writings
On the cockpit walls, like on
A dirty tablecloth: I wrote this
Poem, in the middle of a battle,
I said, someone owes something
It's all blood-strained red;
"Let It be!" I said, Sir, but the
Officer kept on reading, the
Walls, ceiling of the cockpit,
And said, "This reads like
A new 21st Century, Iliad."
And I said, "That's how you
Write poetry,...Sir!"

7-10-2008 (No: 2412)

Spitfire

Like the Spitfire it was immensely strong: a pilot had no need to fear the danger of pulling the wings off, no matter how desperate the situation became.
Douglas Bader

High Flight

High Flight
Oh! I have slipped the surly bonds of Earth
And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings,
Sunward I've climbed, and joined the tumbling mirth
Of sun-split clouds - and done a hundred things
You have not dreamed of - wheeled and soared and swung
High in the sunlit silence. Hov'ring there,
I've chased the shouting wind along, and flung
My eager craft through footless halls of air.
Up, up the long, delirious burning blue
I've topped the wind-swept heights with easy grace
Where never lark, or even eagle flew.
And, while silent, lifting mind I've trod
The high untrespassed sanctity of space,
Put out my hand, and touched the face of God.