The Diaries of Russell James Sparrow 1908 to 1991
typical type who always wore his kilt and tam-o-shanter and was full of his own importance. They visited his quarters in the early hours, picked up his bed in which he was sound asleep, carried it to the ‘sacred square’ ( the parade ground), and left him there, poor old boy! After church on Christmas morning we all went to the Officers Mess for drinks, after which officers and N.C.O.’s served dinner in the Airmen’s dining hall, all in the good Christmas spirit. We had our meal in the evening followed by another ‘do’.
Life as an Instructor Instructing potential Air Gunners was a job of many facets and risks galore, having to fly with pilots, a lot of them Poles and Czechs, who at times did some pretty stupid things e.g. flying in from the sea at zero feet and then pulling back on the stick just in time to ‘climb’ up the cliffs, or flying through an avenue of trees in a wood and lifting the wings of the a/c to clear the tops of the taller ones. Several lives were lost in my time, including pilots of drogue towing aircraft and their operators. Six were killed in one crash near the spot where the Duke of Kent met his end. I remember vividly one occasion when returning to base from an exercise. The weather had clamped down, we were flying through heavy snow and Johnny Hope, the pilot and I (we sat side by side) were straining our eyes and trusting we were all alone up there when suddenly we were confronted – it looked near enough to touch!- with a Sunderland flying boat. I have seen some white faces in my time but none whiter than Johnny’s as he yanked back on the stick and literally crawled over the other aircraft. The weather was too bad for us to return to our own base and we were directed to the other side of the Firth, to Dalcross, where we waited for the weather to clear before returning home.
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