These four pilots cost £10,000 each to train. During that time they wrote off or otherwise damaged £160,000 worth of aeroplane. On operations they wrote off completely 3 Spitfire V’s between them at a total cost of £300,000. Their pay amounted to about another £22,000 during their service. They burned up about £25,000 worth of hi-grade petrol, and fired off at least £30,000 worth of expensive ammunition. They gave their C.O. and their Flight leader a nervous breakdown necessitating expensive medical treatment. Two of them were sent to an equally expensive Air-Crew Punishment Camp which had to be maintained at great expense for the likes of them. They stole at LEAST £10,000 worth of gear from the Royal Air Force during the five or six years that it managed to tolerate them. Between them they were solely responsible for no less than SEVEN illegitimate births, the cost of which devolved on the State which employed them. Between them they caused the break-up of three marriages, resulting in expensive divorce cases. Between them they contracted two cases of venereal disease necessitating expensive and time-wasting medical treatment. One of them wounded one of the others in an air-to air firing exercise. Two baled out over England, losing their aircraft which caused considerable damage when crashing, and both stole their parachutes on landing. One caused the Portsmouth gun barrage to fire off a great deal of expensive ammunition at him by getting lost and straying over the D-Day fleet. One shot up an RAF Rescue Boat under the impression that it was an E-Boat. One shot a hangar at Tangmere full of holes and turned a Flight-Sargeant Fitter’s hair white, by fiddling with his gun button which SHOULD have been set to SAFE. Each of these four required the services of 32 skilled men to keep them in the air, and these 128 men had to be paid, clothed and fed.
“Ah,” but you say. “But what did these heroes accomplish against the hordes of Nazi Germany when, smiling and gay they fearlessly (???) flew against the Hun”.
They shot down, or up, as the case may be, one F.W. 190, 3 gasometers (French), about 60 trains (all French), one church, about 200 lorries, one American Destroyer, at least one American Tank, a field latrine of doubtful nationality, and were only prevented from “having a bash” at the Eiffel Tower by the fear that their aircraft letters would be seen and reported.
In view of this enviable record therefore, we have no hesitation in laying the claim that these four pilots did the greatest service to the Third Reich and should have been awarded the Iron Cross First Class by a grateful Fuhrer and Fatherland.
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