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By: - 1st February 2009 at 02:20 Permalink - Edited 1st January 1970 at 01:00
For war time George Buzz Buerling, Hap Kennedy, Charlie Fox.
Post war of course Jerry Billing
Cheers Dave C
PS Nice site, can never have enough Spitfire sites.
By: - 1st February 2009 at 06:01 Permalink - Edited 1st January 1970 at 01:00
The Spit XII pilots of the Tangmere Wing, October 43. Ray Harries in the center was WingCo at the time.
I can go on and on about these guys :)
By: - 1st February 2009 at 09:26 Permalink - Edited 1st January 1970 at 01:00
For war time George Buzz Buerling
Gets my vote too.
For peacetime - Ray and Mark doing synchro aeros, a sight I will never, ever forget.
Moggy
By: - 1st February 2009 at 09:42 Permalink - Edited 1st January 1970 at 01:00
Hap Kennedy, Charlie Fox.
[ignorant mode on]
Who? :confused:
[ignorant mode off]
By: - 1st February 2009 at 10:26 Permalink - Edited 1st January 1970 at 01:00
PS Nice site, can never have enough Spitfire sites.
Thanks!
Alex Henshaw would be my choice.
Johnnie Johnson too of course..
Ray Hanna post war.
By: - 1st February 2009 at 14:17 Permalink - Edited 1st January 1970 at 01:00
For war time George Buzz Buerling, Hap Kennedy, Charlie Fox.Post war of course Jerry Billing
Cheers Dave C
PS Nice site, can never have enough Spitfire sites.
Is Hap still alive ? I have a number of letters and a copy of his book.
By: - 1st February 2009 at 14:37 Permalink - Edited 1st January 1970 at 01:00
Colin 'Hoppy' Hodgkinson, in my estimation
By: - 1st February 2009 at 16:40 Permalink - Edited 1st January 1970 at 01:00
Don Kingaby gets my vote - known by the press as the '109 specialist' and the only RAF pilot to be awarded three DFMs
Peter
By: - 1st February 2009 at 17:18 Permalink - Edited 1st January 1970 at 01:00
Bob Stanford-Tuck.
I loved that story about his beat up/display at Biggin Hill not long before he was shot down.
Another vote for Johnnie Johnson and Don Kingaby (along with many of his 92 Squadron mates)
Post war, who else but Ray Hanna and Mark Hanna.
By: - 1st February 2009 at 17:26 Permalink - Edited 1st January 1970 at 01:00
Wartime: 'Johnnie' Johnson, for sure.
Post-war: Mark and Ray Hanna, without a doubt, but probably Carolyn Grace as well.
By: - 1st February 2009 at 18:30 Permalink - Edited 1st January 1970 at 01:00
I would also choose the following
Wartime.
Alex Henshaw - Its hard to think of a Spitfire and not think of Alex Henshaw.
Johnnie Johnson - Just a hero of mine.
Post War
Ray Hanna- When he flew it was man and machine as one, Stunning and never forgotten.
Mark Hanna- Had all the skills his Dad ray had both just knew how to show the Spitfire at its best, Much missed.
John Romain- Have seen John flying Spitfires for a number of years now and in this time he has developed his routine more and more, He fly's a Spitfire so smoothly And for me he is now the closest in his displays to Ray and Marks.
By: - 1st February 2009 at 18:58 Permalink - Edited 1st January 1970 at 01:00
Just wondering what pilots you chaps consider as stand out Spitfire pilots of ww2 and also post-war?There's thousands of them, but obviously some of them made their marks more than others. Any chance of piling up a list? All down to each persons opinion obviously!
Not an ace but an outstanding person, Sgt Rudolf Ptacek. No 222 sqd
The link is part one of his story, see the rest of the forum for the other 10parts of the story.
http://www.forumforfree.com/viewtopic.php?t=551&mforum=northwestway
By: - 1st February 2009 at 19:05 Permalink - Edited 1st January 1970 at 01:00
Charley Fox DFC and Bar RCAF nickname "Train Buster" 153 enemy vehicles destroyed or damaged including Rommels staff car.
http://charleyfox.ca/index.html
Hap Kennedy is still kicking, talked with him this past summer.
Cheers dave C
By: - 1st February 2009 at 21:15 Permalink - Edited 1st January 1970 at 01:00
Operational pilot Johnny Johnson
Test pilot Alex Henshaw
Modern day pilot Paul 'Major' Day.
By: - 2nd February 2009 at 00:15 Permalink - Edited 1st January 1970 at 01:00
Post war: Ray Hanna & Neil Williams.
By: - 2nd February 2009 at 10:00 Permalink - Edited 1st January 1970 at 01:00
Alex Henshaw and Jeffrey Quill (thanks to personal contact over many years).
Of late I've become a great admirer of the late Bill Klersy's exploits, I'd love to see PL344 repainted with his squadron codes one day (it carries his kill markings again thanks to Roobarb) :)
By: - 2nd February 2009 at 11:37 Permalink - Edited 1st January 1970 at 01:00
Alex Henshaw, Jeffrey Quill
Ken
By: - 2nd February 2009 at 13:30 Permalink - Edited 1st January 1970 at 01:00
Personally would have to be Canada's finest squadron leader LVC Lloyd Chadburn DSO&bar.DFC, also nobody has noted a "legless pilot" Douglas Bader , but there are many fine pilots.
By: - 2nd February 2009 at 14:36 Permalink - Edited 1st January 1970 at 01:00
Sdr Ldr Glaser
Sdr Ldr Glaser DFC was a personal friend sadly departed from this world. He had over 3000Hrs operationally on Spitfires and flew in the Battle of Britain right through to 1945 in Australia. This has to be close to a record for operational hours. I have loaded two pictures one of him in1940 and another in 1945.
Text under taken from dailly telagraph
SQUADRON LEADER DAVE GLASER, who has died aged 80, was an RAF pilot mistakenly shot down off Plymouth, Devon, by a British warship during the Battle of Britain.
Struggling to free himself from his parachute, which had enveloped his head, Glaser had all but given up hope when the chute floated away and he was rescued. Aged 19, Glaser had joined No 65 Squadron at Hornchurch on July 13 1940, just three days after the date regarded as the beginning of the Battle of Britain, which raged overhead until October 31, when the RAF's supremacy ended the threat of German invasion.
Ernest Derek Glaser, always known as Dave, was born on April 20 1921. In the First World War his father had been a pilot in the Royal Flying Corps. After attending Lancing House and Bloxham schools young Dave was accepted, in April 1939, for flying training in the Royal Air Force Volunteer Reserve.
Glaser had been inspired to become a pilot some years earlier after meeting Jeffrey Quill who, in 1936, as a Supermarine test pilot, had flown R J Mitchell's Spitfire prototype and earliest production aircraft. Quill had been a frequent visitor to The Bugle, Glaser's father's pub on the Hamble in Hampshire.
In 1940, Quill was temporarily attached to No 65 Squadron for - as he put it - "a spot of practical" in order to recommend modifications in the light of combat experience. Glaser was delighted, on his arrival, to find himself flying No 2 to his boyhood hero.
Glaser soon had examples of combat himself. On August 12 he was preparing to take off from Manston when a formation of low-flying Dornier 17s attacked the airfield at low level, damaging hangars and cratering the flight-path. Glaser recalled: "Everybody just opened up their throttles and went hell for leather."
Awaiting the scramble bell during the Battle of Britain Glaser had occupied himself by fashioning a lucky talisman representing The Laughing Cavalier. Glaser reckoned that, together with a cavalier which he had had painted on his Spitfire (in an example of what was known as nose art), it helped to see him through the war.
In this period he was promoted flight lieutenant and was serving as a No 234 Squadron flight commander when he was shot down into the Channel off Plymouth in Devon. Vowing to be more circumspect in the vicinity of the Royal Navy, Glaser resumed operations with Group Captain (subsequently Air Chief Marshal Sir Harry) Broadhurst's Spitfire wing based at Hornchurch, Essex, but frequently operated from Manston, the Kent coastal airfield, and other south-east England No 11 Group airfields.
Following the Battle of Britain, in 1941 Glaser became an instructor at No 53 Operational Training Unit until August, when he joined No 234, a Spitfire squadron carrying out offensive sweeps over northern France. In 1943, Glaser was posted to Australia to form and command No 549, a Spitfire squadron stationed at Darwin in the Northern Territory.
In the New Year of 1945 he received command of No 548, a Spitfire squadron similarly charged with defending Darwin against Japanese air attack. After two years he returned home, was granted a permanent commission and posted to Linton-on-Ouse, Yorkshire. There he was flight commander of No 64, a half-strength Hornet fighter squadron.
Glaser was delighted in 1949 when he was selected to qualify as a test pilot, again following his hero Jeffrey Quill. Glaser attended No 8 Course at the Empire Test Pilots' School, then situated at Farnborough, Hants (and now based at Boscombe Down, Wiltshire).
In 1950, Glaser was employed as an RAF experimental test pilot at the Royal Aircraft Establishment, Farnborough, until 1953, when he joined Vickers Armstrong at Hurn, Bournemouth, Hants. Becoming chief production test pilot, Glaser was involved with the Varsity. This was a post-war replacement for the trainer version of the two-engine Wellington bomber. He also tested the world's first turbine-powered four-engine airliner, Sir George Edwards's Viscount - a plane then described as "a jump into the future".
But his chief contribution was his exhaustive production testing of the Valiant, the first of the RAF's four-jet bombers, which preceded the Vulcan and Victor in Britain's V-bomber nuclear force. Glaser was also involved with the BAC 1-11s, one of Britain's best selling airliners. When, in 1963, he first flew the jet, he handled it like a Spitfire and was apt to fly over Hurn airfield so low that onlookers were put in mind of a Flymo.
In 1979 Glaser was appointed flight operations manager and test pilot instructor of Rombac, an arrangement under which BAC 1-11s were built under licence in Romania, where his robust airmanship was much admired his pupils. Glaser retired in 1983 from British Aerospace - as Vickers, BAC and other merged aircraft manufacturers had become - and worked as an aviation consultant, while deriving much pleasure from sailing.
He was also invited to join a roadshow of British, American and German Second World War pilots, which toured American theatres under the billing A Gathering of Eagles. Glaser received the DFC in 1942 and Air Efficiency award in 1946. He was awarded Queen's Commendations for Valuable Service in the Air in 1953 for military, and in 1968 for civil, test flying.
Glaser married, first, in 1949, Coral Gillie, an Australian. They had a son and a daughter. He married, second, in 1965, Diana Stewart-Smith, and, third, in 1985, Rodica Ghita, a Romanian.
By: - 2nd February 2009 at 23:44 Permalink - Edited 1st January 1970 at 01:00
Mark Hazard well done, I forgot about the brilliant Neil Williams:o
Posts: 1,318
By: DCK - 31st January 2009 at 20:01
Just wondering what pilots you chaps consider as stand out Spitfire pilots of ww2 and also post-war?
There's thousands of them, but obviously some of them made their marks more than others. Any chance of piling up a list? All down to each persons opinion obviously!