COMBAT AND COMPETITION.pdf - Lakes Gliding Club

COMBAT AND COMPETITION
were chatting in the clubhouse at Lasham, he told me that he had just
given a talk to a local group of aviation enthusiasts:
"But you know David there's always that story I can never tell in
public."
"What story was that Geoff?"
When he told me, I pondered whether it should be recorded here.
So out of context in the world of today. Yet not untypical of the crude
humour that helped to preserve one's sanity as a wartime fighter pilot.
"We had a wild Australian on the squadron." - Geoff said - "One
day, in the middle of a scrap with a bunch of 109s, his voice came
loud and clear through the hubbub on the radio - 'He'll sh*t well
tonight! He's got two a*******s!' On the combat film, afterwards, it
was there for all to see - exploding cannon shells stitching the bottom
of his opponent's fuselage, until the whole thing erupted in flames."
I always think of Wally and Geoff Morris as the doyen of Lasham
tug pilots - and would never dare to choose between them - even
though I knew Wally much the better of the two. But that was about
to change. For three years, as Chairman of the Championships
organising committee at Lasham, I was to see a deal more of Geoff and
Spike, his wife, who was in charge of Control.
During my first year we were breaking new ground. An Open Class
Nationals, and a Regionals, to be run concurrently on the same site,
and the first involvement of a very upmarket aircraft industry sponsor.
It was fun to be setting up a budget and working closely with Marconi
Avionics. For this was essentially the Elliott Flight Automation of
bygone days under a new name, now a £ multi million company after
years of quite remarkable progress, and the directors were old friends.
Peter Hearne was my main point of contact and the fact that we
had been involved together professionally, on many occasions in the
past, helped to create a good working relationship from the word go.
At the official opening it was my pleasant task to start the
proceedings by introducing Peter, already well known at Lasham, in
his guise as a director of Marconi Avionics. It was remarkable how he
had followed me into British Oxygen and then Elliotts - and, when I
left Elliotts, how he had taken over much of my overseas marketing
work.
Now a Director and General Manager of Marconi Avionics, and a
past president of the Royal Aeronautical Society, Peter had recently
been awarded the John Curtis Sword. Two of the three previous
recipients had been in the very front rank of aviation endeavour - Air
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