大象传媒

My father was a pilot trainer in the Second World War. He later went on to train other pilot trainers. He only told us two stories about his escapades.

The first one was when he was doing a bit of flying on his own over the Salisbury Plains and looked out of the cockpit to notice a German fighter plane bearing down on him and about to attack. He was a clever pilot and quickly realised that his only was of escape was to hide from the fighter, .. luckily there were some clouds in the summer sky and he found a big enough one to hide in! He circled round and round in the cloud until the German plane gave up and left.

The second story was when he was on a training flight with his pupil, who was sitting behind him in the other cockpit. A few minutes into the flight, my father heard his trainee, - who was in control of the Tiger Moth at that particular moment, - laughing in a very strange way. The laughter turned into a high pitched cackle and the pilot started to ramble incoherently. Acting on instinct, my father decided to land immediately and had the pilot admitted to hospital. It was only later that he discovered that the pilot had been declared insane, and certainly in no fit state to take control of a plane. A lucky escape....

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