Spitfire: A Very British Love Story

by John Nichol

To cut down the number of Spitfires nose-diving into the mud, Farish ordered airmen to climb onto the tail during taxiing. In the course of one scramble, a pilot forgot about his tail-man as he opened the throttle at the bottom of the airstrip. ‘The poor bloke must have been too frightened to fall off as the Spitfire gathered speed and the next thing they were airborne,’ Farish wrote on 20 January 1943. ‘Imagine the pilot’s consternation when he, unable to trim the aircraft, looked in the mirror and saw an airman waving in the breeze around his rudder! He managed to stagger round the circuit on full power while the terrified man hung on like grim death. ‘On touching down, the airman was thrown clear and broke his leg. That was all . . .