Australians in the Battle of Britain. 10 August 1940

Stuart Walch was back in the air at 5.30 a.m. leading Blue Section on a convoy patrol. He circled and circled above the vessels as they headed westward, until Red Section came to relieve Blue. As had happened so often in the past, he saw nothing. It was his 54th operation since joining 238 Squadron as a flight commander on 15 May.

As Ashton Down, Ken Holland had to sit through a lecture on the Browning mechanism. Later that day, a ‘Spitfire and Blenheim collided. Both up in flames. Three dead—horrible show. Bit shaken.’

Ken was not the only one shaken by witnessing a training accident. During their cadet training with the RAAF, Pat Hughes and Des Sheen witnessed the death on 16 April 1936 of 19-year-old Norman Chaplin as he tried to parachute from a plummeting Moth. Pat bluntly recorded the incident: ‘Bloody awful. First death. Boys are taking it pretty badly.’

During his Oxford University Air Squadron summer camp at Lympne, Peter Moore watched two aircraft crash and disintegrate on 21 July 1939. Pilot Officer David Lewis RAFVR had been carrying out a short solo map-reading flight when a Gypsy Moth from the Kent Flying School struck his Hind. Both aircraft appeared to disintegrate and crash, killing Lewis, Keith Kendle Brown, the club’s chief flying instructor, and his pupil, Alan Pragnell. George Nelson-Edwards spoke for all when he recorded that ‘for one evening death was near us all, perhaps a timely reminder that the younger generation was not at liberty to fly planes indiscriminately around the sky without a single thought for anyone or anything.’

Peter experienced his own near miss on 9 November 1939. During a training session at 10 Flying Training School, Tern Hill, a Hind coming into land hit a down-draft over a hedge and dropped suddenly. The pilot made a steep side slip to the left. Peter, who had made a successful landing in an Anson, had taxied into a downwind position about 30 yards from the airfield’s perimeter fence so he could take-off again. He realised the Hind was going to collide with his Anson. He opened the throttles to move forward slightly. But he was not fast enough. The Hind collided head-on with Peter’s aircraft. It was a mess. In addition to enough damage to write-off the Anson, the Hart’s port wing crumpled the Anson’s nose into the cockpit, where Peter was sitting in the left-hand seat. He was lucky to survive.

Peter Moore’s crumpled Anson.

Training accidents were a fact of life and, no matter how rattling, had to be accepted and got past. A young man could not think of his own mortality if he wanted to be a successful fighter pilot.