Family links to the Battle of Britain?

[TheSwede]

My father´s wife´s ex father in law was a Spitfire pilot during the BoB.

I know its not quite family but my step mother is still very close to her ex husbands parents so I´ll mention it anyway. As a Swede its very unlikely to have any connections to the fighting war but its something.

[Gribbers]

My Grandad joined the RAF as a result of the German bombing of London during the BoB (the family home in SE London was destroyed by incendary bombs as well as a 500lb bomb landing in the garden that didn't explode!!), he ended up serving as a Lancaster bomber pilot throughout the war both in Europe and the Far East...

He remained in the RAF until the 1960's.

[BobTuck]

My grandad served in the RAF, and he trained Battle of Britain pilots to fly using the (ground-based) Link trainer (the contemporary version of a flight sim!)

He also had some considerable personal flying time on the Tiger Moth and the Avro Anson (both aircraft modelled in CoD).

For more information about the Link trainer, see below:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Link_Trainer

http://www.aviationmuseum.net/link_trainers.htm

(it seems even the Luftwaffe had experience of Link trainers!!)

http://www.flickr.com/photos/cessna1...er/1186929478/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/mickb6265/3573289919/

http://www.raf.mod.uk/bob1940/f5403031.html

[Siko]

I recently organised a visit to my work for a group of old RAF WW2 pilots - a truly amazing bunch. They all had the most incredible stories and spending a night chatting to them was manna from heaven, interesting that some of them still hated the Germans like it was yesterday. Anyway, one of the guys had a slightly funny face and I couldn't quite work out why - he eventually let on that he had crashed a tiger moth in training and as he said, been ejected out of the cockpit when it crumpled, catching his face on the way out!

I thought he was 'expanding' the truth slightly but then he showed me the photos from his wallet - his whole face had slid down his head an inch or two and he spent months afterwards looking like the creature out of 'Hellraiser' (I think?) with all the spikes out of his head holding his face on. ending up as a test pilot flying Lightnings.