- Reaction score
- 3
- Points
- 430
A library worker, a Spitfire pilot and a trip back in time
GATINEAU—Only once did age betray 97-year-old Ernie Allen.
Where once he could bound into the cramped cockpit of his Spitfire in a fluid motion in the rush to get airborne, on this day he needed help to clamber onto the wing and then into the seat.
“Legs didn’t want to bend,” he chuckled.
But once settled, the grin said it all. It had been 75 years since this Second World War veteran last sat in the cockpit of the storied Spitfire, yet it all came flooding back.
The view forward through the perspex canopy along the nose cowling, with exhaust stacks protruding from the Merlin engine and beyond that the big four-bladed prop. Gracefully tapered wings stretched out to each side.
In the cockpit, the controls fell easily to hand — the control stick in the right, throttle under the left, just as they did in countless missions so many decades ago.
“When you think that thing has stood up all those years,” said Allen. “It’s the best plane that was ever built. It’s the most secure airplane ... you could do anything with it.”
More of this well written piece of WWII history:
https://www.thestar.com/news/canada/2019/08/18/a-library-worker-a-spitfire-pilot-and-a-trip-back-in-time.html
GATINEAU—Only once did age betray 97-year-old Ernie Allen.
Where once he could bound into the cramped cockpit of his Spitfire in a fluid motion in the rush to get airborne, on this day he needed help to clamber onto the wing and then into the seat.
“Legs didn’t want to bend,” he chuckled.
But once settled, the grin said it all. It had been 75 years since this Second World War veteran last sat in the cockpit of the storied Spitfire, yet it all came flooding back.
The view forward through the perspex canopy along the nose cowling, with exhaust stacks protruding from the Merlin engine and beyond that the big four-bladed prop. Gracefully tapered wings stretched out to each side.
In the cockpit, the controls fell easily to hand — the control stick in the right, throttle under the left, just as they did in countless missions so many decades ago.
“When you think that thing has stood up all those years,” said Allen. “It’s the best plane that was ever built. It’s the most secure airplane ... you could do anything with it.”
More of this well written piece of WWII history:
https://www.thestar.com/news/canada/2019/08/18/a-library-worker-a-spitfire-pilot-and-a-trip-back-in-time.html
