Clips from my own private interview with him:
- You talked a lot about luck. What is your most frightening war experience or was it one of those you already told to us?
Everything is always over so quickly. It is not like Bomber Command, where you sat there for hours. Air fighting is over and done with literally in seconds. I mean, you are immediatly frightened as I said, when we were jumped from the sun by 109s. The instant reaction is fright but in five seconds or less it is gone. I suppose the worst accident was when I was shot down. That took five or ten minutes before I got the airplane down. Not knowing what might happen - the airplane could have burst into flames or anything could have happened, really. But that's looking back on it. I don't know what I felt at the time - I was more interested on getting the thing down on the ground.
- You talked a lot about Hurricane and almost skipped Spitfire in your speech. It looks like the Hurricane has very strong meaning to you?
Yes. I learned to fly and fight with the Hurricane. And I did 40-50 hours in the Hurricanes through the worst of the war. So I have more affection to the Hurricane. The Spitfire was later on, it was a better airplane but I learned how to fight a war with the Hurricane. They were both wonderful airplanes in a different way.
- If you could choose to one, which it would be?
It is a difficult question. They were used in different roles. The Spitfire was certainly a more efficient airplane in the fighting role. But it wasn't used as a ground attack aircraft, while the Hurricane was the more adaptable aircraft. They used them for example as tank busters later in the war. Spitfire got better and better, flew faster and higher and so on, but it was never used in the same role as the Hurricane was.
- You was in Normandy in 1944. What did you do there?
I was on a ground job. I was taking a lot of war correspondents around the airfields. Up to now all the press in England had concentrated on the army. All the war correspondents had been attached to the army. But RAF also had their say on the invasion. So RAF had all the national papers, the BBC had people attached to the Royal Air Force. And we had 2-3 experienced people taking them around, introduce them to people, make sure they had people talking to them. Pilots would talk to them if there was another pilot around, that was the attitude. So I would introduce them and be around.
