Page 165 - Demo

165instance, Greig tells of spectacularly, embarrassingly and very publicly, destroying a Moth in a poorly executed falling leaf at a flying display at Andover in 1926. Gp Capt Wilfrid Freeman was %u2018sympathetic, but pained at the side having been let down%u2019 whereas Air Cdre %u2018Topsy%u2019 Holt though it %u2018the funniest thing I have ever seen. If I can get you another Moth, will you go and do it again?%u2019 There are many amusing anecdotes like this, all totally believable and many of them attributable to Greig%u2019s fully justified reputation as a practical joker %u2013 which often involved pyrotechnics. This was the %u2018flying club%u2019 air force of the 1920s, of course, when, since it numbered only about 35,000 uniformed personnel, one tended to know quite a lot of those who were engaged in the same trade. Thus Greig career path tends to cross those of others and names like Robb, Sorley, the Atcherleys, Rice, Boothman, Bowen8Buscarlet, Collishaw and many others just keep cropping up. Most of them became very senior officers, but Greig is not name8dropping; they were simply his contemporaries. By 2015 the RAF is expected to be even smaller than it was in 1925, so perhaps we shall see the cycle repeated %u2013 although I doubt that the current generation of air marshals will be as indulgent towards the guy who lands a Typhoon wheels8up as Greig%u2019s CO was when he bent that Moth. I found this 2768page hardback a joy to read. Those really were %u2018the days%u2019. Recommended. %u00093%u000e%u0006%u0014B%u0015%%u0017%u0006 9%u0006 *%u0017%u0006 %u0009+%u00134-)%u0006 fl%u0006 #*%u0017/%u0006 %u0019%%u0015%u0016(%u0015/$)%u0006 %u0004%u0015%&%(9%u0016%u0006 %u00014+%u0017-%u0006 %u0016*%u0017%u0006#%u0013%+- by James Hamilton8Paterson. Faber & Faber, 2010. %u00a320.00 A glance around the auditorium at an RAFHS seminar will reveal an audience which, for the most part, was brought up and involved in the British aviation arena during the so8called %u2018glory years%u2019 of the industry and the military services and civil airlines that it supported. The end of the Second World War may have revealed a nation exhausted and deep in debt but it also found an aviation industry which was amongst the world%u2019s largest and with a research and development backbone, probably second to none. In the years which followed, most of those involved or interested in aviation will have seen the delights, doldrums and disasters which beset the industry and will have mourned its decline and the wasted