COMBAT AND COMPETITION.pdf - Lakes Gliding Club

COMBAT AND COMPETITION
type of aircraft, or the method of launching and recovery.
Rolf could only tell me the that the Americans had spent weeks
and months, and thousands of pounds of high explosive trying to
destroy it. Now, so the rumour went, at the height of the cold war,
they were sorry that it no longer existed.
Then there was Hermann Kutscha. He was the distributor, based
near Heilbronn, for a Belgian Company which had recently joined the
Group.
We were introduced to each other at an exhibition in Frankfurt.
"You two will have plenty in common" - they said - "Flying
fighters on opposite sides in the last war."
Herr Kutscha was a slight, rather insignificant looking character,
hair on the long side exactly so, and one of those droopy Mexican type
moustaches. Trying to be with it. If he had been a woman you might
have registered mutton dressed lamb. At first sight I wasn't sure that
I liked him.
In sheer devilment as we shook hands, and before I could stop
myself, the words were out of my mouth:
"A good thing we never met in the air - or one of us might not be
here now!"
Later I got to know him rather well. Mainly because he wanted to
sell out to the Group, and still continue as Managing Director, and I
had to run a rule over his business.
In the air we had more in common than either of us had realised.
For Herr Kutscha, the relationship always remained like that on both
sides, had been an active glider pilot. But the real eye opener came
when he invited me back to his house for a drink. In due course he
produced the Book of German Aces, turned the pages to 'K', and their
was a younger version of my host staring me in the face. He had flown
Me 110s in the Battle of Britain and survived, then 109s on the
Western and Russian fronts, and chalked up almost 80 victories. When
I handed the book back to him, he grinned, as if to remind me of my
remark at the Frankfurt Show.
"So!" I said "You also think that I would have been the one to die!"
Manfred Deckart, manager of the Westphalian Central Cooperative
in Munster, was a different proposition. My hotel the night before had
been on the northern outskirts of the town. The surroundings looked
like an old airfield, and a map confirmed that it was one of the Rheine
group which had confronted us back in 1945.
It was a warm summer's evening and I tramped round the
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