Australians in the Battle of Britain. 3 August 1940

Ken Holland left Little Rissington and ‘tooled along to Aston’. When he arrived, he reported to the Orderly Room and was very pleased to have been given time off until Monday. He headed straight to Gloucester to meet up with his guardian. Ken ‘dragged him out to Sandford Park and had quite a good swim but for the crowd’.

John Crossman was also on the move that day, but he almost didn’t make it to Sutton Bridge. He was going down a hill at about 65 miles per hour when he heard a ‘helluva clatter’. He discovered that his new (second hand) car had been running without oil for some time and was now paying the consequences. He crawled along at 20 miles per hour and took him hours to get there. There he met Bill Towers-Perkins, with whom he had trained at RAF Cranwell. Whereas John had been sent to 32 Squadron on completion of his Cranwell training, Bill been sent to 238 Squadron. Perhaps they were both able to draw a modicum of comfort knowing they weren’t the only ones to be sent from a busy squadron to dedicated conversion training to Hurricanes.

Meanwhile, 238 Squadron were on the move again. The weather was dull, the horizon hazy, visibility was poor and it was a hot day but flying suits were donned and the 16 aircraft that had returned from Warmwell the day before, we heading back there again. Later that day, Stuart Walch was in the air again, leading Blue Section on a patrol to Swanage to look out for a ship. Yet again, nothing of note was sighted.