I met a pilot around six months ago and we became friends and
recalling parts of his life. He was a Canadian bomber pilot in WW2,
flying mostly 'Halifax' four-engine bombers and, for a brief time,
the 'Lancaster' bomber, both of which were night flying over Germany.
Yesterday, he brought to the club some detail of the bombers and also
his personal flying log book.
To "arrive" at the four-engined bomber status, he was training on
smaller planes. He went "solo" after eight hours on the Tiger Moth.
Later on, after the initial training, he was in the UK and many of the
planes he trained on mentioned the Link Trainer in his log book. He
said it was in wide use in the UK.
I said to him that it was derived from player piano operating equipment.
He said there was a 'triangle' on the "trainer" which kept bouncing
around on the screen and you had a hard time to stabilize it.
He also said that it is 69 years ago since his 21st birthday. I saw
a photo of with him and his six flight crew taken in 1944.
Steve Bentley - SB-music Rolls
Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada
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