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Noble Frankland, former Bomber Command navigator who revived the Imperial War Museum but ran into controversy with his official history of the air offensive against Germany.
In May 1960 the Imperial War Museum, a dusty institution cramped under the leaking dome of the former Bethlem psychiatric hospital in south London, was seeking a new director. The advertisement in the Times was noted by a man reading his paper with unusual attention that morning, having left at home the documents he had intended to study on the train.
Noble Frankland was a decorated RAF veteran and a military historian about to publish a monumental history of the second world war strategic air offensive against Germany. He had no museum experience at all, and had been profoundly unimpressed by his own research visits to the IWM, but with a young family to support he decided to go for his first permanent, pensionable job. Frankland, who has died aged 97, won over the 15-person interview panel bristling with grandees including Admiral of the Fleet Sir Algernon Willis, and believed many candidates with museum experience had been put off by what he described as the museum's "dismal state of decay". Over his 22 years as director Frankland transformed this backwater into an internationally renowned research and education resource, and a major tourist attraction. Within six years the Queen opened an extension that dramatically improved the facilities and displays, with for the first time a cinema, to show the huge film collection. Frankland went on to add HMS Belfast, the largest cruiser ever built for the Royal Navy, saved from being scrapped to tell the story of sea warfare, moored on the Thames near Tower Bridge. On an old airfield in Cambridgeshire, where Frankland first got permission to use a few hangars to store some of the museum's more gigantic objects, he created Duxford, a world-famous air museum. Together the sites, now expanded to include the Churchill War Rooms in Whitehall and the IWM North in Salford, attract more than 3 million visitors annually. Frankland had found the museum a sad place, with a decaying and barely catalogued collection including a vast photographic archive, tended by a few dozen demoralised staff: the workforce rose to more than 300 over his tenure. In his entertaining and peppery book History at War: The Campaigns of an Historian (1998) – which Frankland insisted was not a memoir, but merely used personal experience to illustrate the difficulties of recording and interpreting authentic history – he recalled one typical display: "A large case of shell fuses each of which looked very much the same as the others. The subtle differences between these only moderately interesting public exhibits were explained in lengthy handwritten captions." The outgoing director, LR Bradley, had been there since the museum was founded in 1917, devoted, but avoiding outsiders and colleagues as much as possible. He was actually living in a tiny room off his office, and rarely left the building. He had strung a washing line across the boardroom, and was once saved by a staff member who got the laundry down just before the board members arrived. Bradley told Frankland that he had recommended the post of director be downgraded, and that he believed the museum, founded to mark the sacrifice and costly victories of the first world war, had lost its purpose with the advent of the second world war and the torrent of new material into its already overcrowded storage. Under Frankland's aegis, and since, the museum's mission has expanded to cover all the conflicts in which Britain or the Commonwealth has been involved since 1914. He used the collections in his role as a historical adviser to two major television series, the BBC's The Great War (1964), which enraged him by not fully distinguishing between genuine archive film and reconstructed battle scenes; and ITV's epic and award-winning 26-episode The World at War, produced by Jeremy Isaacs, at £900,000 in 1973-74 the most expensive factual series ever made. Frankland was known in his family as Bunny, a name he chose for himself as a small boy. His first name, Anthony, was never used, and according to his daughter, he detested the exotic Noble so much that at the museum he insisted on being addressed simply as Dr Frankland; to make clear he was not just pulling rank, he retained the increasingly old-fashioned honorific usage for all staff. He was the grandson of distinguished scientists, the chemist Percy Faraday Frankland (whose father was the chemist Edward Frankland) and the microbiologist Grace Toynbee. Noble's father, Edward, was a somewhat dilettante gentleman farmer in Ravenstonedale, Westmorland, largely supported by his wife, Maud (nee Metcalfe Gibson), the daughter of a wealthy engineer, while in his ample spare time he wrote a string of mainly unpublished novels. Staff for the isolated farm was a problem. Frankland recalled a butler who once threatened to murder the two rowdy small boys – rather than sack him, Edward rigged a coal scuttle over their bedroom door to raise the alarm for Noble and his brother, Raven. Noble won scholarships to Sedbergh school and then to Trinity College, Oxford, where his history studies were interrupted by RAF service in 1941. He was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross after serving as navigator for 34 operations with Bomber Command, at a time when the lives of many crews were measured in days. He told his daughter the labour exchange sent him to his next post, at the Air Historical Branch of the Air Ministry. There, with the help of his first wife, Diana (nee Tavernor), who during wartime had worked at Bletchley Park and translated captured German documents, he began work on what became the four-volume The Strategic Air Offensive Against Germany, co-authored with Sir Charles Webster and published in 1961 – by which time Frankland had served a stint as official military historian at the Cabinet Office. It covered campaigns still provoking moral debate, including the bombing of cities such as Dresden and the resulting civilian casualties.
Their conclusion that the bombing was initially both inaccurate and ineffective led to some bitter attacks, particularly in the Beaverbrook press. Sir Arthur "Bomber" Harris, head of Bomber Command during the war, described Frankland as "a somewhat rabid individual". Years after the book's publication, access to cabinet and air ministry papers revealed to Frankland the battles that had raged above his head over what should be included and how it should be handled. "There were fierce and threatening attacks from some of the great figures of the second world war," he wrote. His other published work included the biographies Crown of Tragedy (1960) about Tsar Nicholas II; Prince Henry, Duke of Gloucester (1980), about the former president of the IWM trustees; and Witness of a Century (1993), about Queen Victoria's third son, Prince Arthur, who became governor general of Canada.
Frankland was appointed CBE in 1976, and CB in 1983; in 2016 he was made a Chevalier de la Légion d'honneur.
He is survived by his children, Linda and Roger, from his 1944 marriage to Diana, who died in 1981; and by three stepchildren, William, Cathy and Serena, from his 1982 marriage to Sally (nee Davies), who died in 2015.
Anthony Noble Frankland, museum director, born 4 July 1922; died 31 October 2019
source "The Guardian"
In May 1960 the Imperial War Museum, a dusty institution cramped under the leaking dome of the former Bethlem psychiatric hospital in south London, was seeking a new director. The advertisement in the Times was noted by a man reading his paper with unusual attention that morning, having left at home the documents he had intended to study on the train.
Noble Frankland was a decorated RAF veteran and a military historian about to publish a monumental history of the second world war strategic air offensive against Germany. He had no museum experience at all, and had been profoundly unimpressed by his own research visits to the IWM, but with a young family to support he decided to go for his first permanent, pensionable job. Frankland, who has died aged 97, won over the 15-person interview panel bristling with grandees including Admiral of the Fleet Sir Algernon Willis, and believed many candidates with museum experience had been put off by what he described as the museum's "dismal state of decay". Over his 22 years as director Frankland transformed this backwater into an internationally renowned research and education resource, and a major tourist attraction. Within six years the Queen opened an extension that dramatically improved the facilities and displays, with for the first time a cinema, to show the huge film collection. Frankland went on to add HMS Belfast, the largest cruiser ever built for the Royal Navy, saved from being scrapped to tell the story of sea warfare, moored on the Thames near Tower Bridge. On an old airfield in Cambridgeshire, where Frankland first got permission to use a few hangars to store some of the museum's more gigantic objects, he created Duxford, a world-famous air museum. Together the sites, now expanded to include the Churchill War Rooms in Whitehall and the IWM North in Salford, attract more than 3 million visitors annually. Frankland had found the museum a sad place, with a decaying and barely catalogued collection including a vast photographic archive, tended by a few dozen demoralised staff: the workforce rose to more than 300 over his tenure. In his entertaining and peppery book History at War: The Campaigns of an Historian (1998) – which Frankland insisted was not a memoir, but merely used personal experience to illustrate the difficulties of recording and interpreting authentic history – he recalled one typical display: "A large case of shell fuses each of which looked very much the same as the others. The subtle differences between these only moderately interesting public exhibits were explained in lengthy handwritten captions." The outgoing director, LR Bradley, had been there since the museum was founded in 1917, devoted, but avoiding outsiders and colleagues as much as possible. He was actually living in a tiny room off his office, and rarely left the building. He had strung a washing line across the boardroom, and was once saved by a staff member who got the laundry down just before the board members arrived. Bradley told Frankland that he had recommended the post of director be downgraded, and that he believed the museum, founded to mark the sacrifice and costly victories of the first world war, had lost its purpose with the advent of the second world war and the torrent of new material into its already overcrowded storage. Under Frankland's aegis, and since, the museum's mission has expanded to cover all the conflicts in which Britain or the Commonwealth has been involved since 1914. He used the collections in his role as a historical adviser to two major television series, the BBC's The Great War (1964), which enraged him by not fully distinguishing between genuine archive film and reconstructed battle scenes; and ITV's epic and award-winning 26-episode The World at War, produced by Jeremy Isaacs, at £900,000 in 1973-74 the most expensive factual series ever made. Frankland was known in his family as Bunny, a name he chose for himself as a small boy. His first name, Anthony, was never used, and according to his daughter, he detested the exotic Noble so much that at the museum he insisted on being addressed simply as Dr Frankland; to make clear he was not just pulling rank, he retained the increasingly old-fashioned honorific usage for all staff. He was the grandson of distinguished scientists, the chemist Percy Faraday Frankland (whose father was the chemist Edward Frankland) and the microbiologist Grace Toynbee. Noble's father, Edward, was a somewhat dilettante gentleman farmer in Ravenstonedale, Westmorland, largely supported by his wife, Maud (nee Metcalfe Gibson), the daughter of a wealthy engineer, while in his ample spare time he wrote a string of mainly unpublished novels. Staff for the isolated farm was a problem. Frankland recalled a butler who once threatened to murder the two rowdy small boys – rather than sack him, Edward rigged a coal scuttle over their bedroom door to raise the alarm for Noble and his brother, Raven. Noble won scholarships to Sedbergh school and then to Trinity College, Oxford, where his history studies were interrupted by RAF service in 1941. He was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross after serving as navigator for 34 operations with Bomber Command, at a time when the lives of many crews were measured in days. He told his daughter the labour exchange sent him to his next post, at the Air Historical Branch of the Air Ministry. There, with the help of his first wife, Diana (nee Tavernor), who during wartime had worked at Bletchley Park and translated captured German documents, he began work on what became the four-volume The Strategic Air Offensive Against Germany, co-authored with Sir Charles Webster and published in 1961 – by which time Frankland had served a stint as official military historian at the Cabinet Office. It covered campaigns still provoking moral debate, including the bombing of cities such as Dresden and the resulting civilian casualties.
Their conclusion that the bombing was initially both inaccurate and ineffective led to some bitter attacks, particularly in the Beaverbrook press. Sir Arthur "Bomber" Harris, head of Bomber Command during the war, described Frankland as "a somewhat rabid individual". Years after the book's publication, access to cabinet and air ministry papers revealed to Frankland the battles that had raged above his head over what should be included and how it should be handled. "There were fierce and threatening attacks from some of the great figures of the second world war," he wrote. His other published work included the biographies Crown of Tragedy (1960) about Tsar Nicholas II; Prince Henry, Duke of Gloucester (1980), about the former president of the IWM trustees; and Witness of a Century (1993), about Queen Victoria's third son, Prince Arthur, who became governor general of Canada.
Frankland was appointed CBE in 1976, and CB in 1983; in 2016 he was made a Chevalier de la Légion d'honneur.
He is survived by his children, Linda and Roger, from his 1944 marriage to Diana, who died in 1981; and by three stepchildren, William, Cathy and Serena, from his 1982 marriage to Sally (nee Davies), who died in 2015.
Anthony Noble Frankland, museum director, born 4 July 1922; died 31 October 2019
source "The Guardian"
Flight Lieutenant Bill Paton, who has died aged 101, was a Canadian navigator who used his baseball skills to distract German guards in Stalag Luft III while soil was dispersed during the digging of the tunnels used during the 'Great Escape'.
Paton arrived in the Luftwaffe-controlled camp at Sagan, 100 miles south-east of Berlin, after his Wellington bomber had been shot down on the night of April 16, 1943. He joined other PoWs in the north compound, where work had recently started on digging three escape tunnels.
Paton soon found himself involved in helping to disperse the excavated sandy soil carried in pouches made from blankets and suspended down the trouser legs of the "penguins" - so-called because of their ungainly gait when walking with full pouches. During the dispersal of the sand it was vital to distract the attention of the German guards, so sporting activities were arranged. In addition, the shuffling of the players' feet ensured that the sand was scattered into the ground. Paton played baseball, and formed a team from his fellow Canadians. He organised tournaments, sometimes against the PoWs in the south compound, which housed Americans. After the escape of 76 prisoners on the night of March 24, 1944, 50 of those recaptured were shot by the Gestapo, among them a number of Paton's friends. William Edgar Paton was born in Toronto on July 27, 1918 and educated at Riverside High School, after which he started work with Canada Life Insurance. In 1941 he joined the RCAF and trained as a navigator in Canada before joining an Atlantic convoy to sail to Britain. In July 1942 he was commissioned and attended a course at the Central Navigation School before converting to the Wellington bomber. In December he joined the recently formed No 431 (Iroquois) Squadron RCAF based at Burn airfield near Selby in the West Riding. During the 'Battle of the Ruhr', Paton and his crew flew six bombing operations against industrial complexes.
On the night of April 16, Mannheim was the target: during that raid Bomber Command suffered its highest losses so far. Among the casualties were Paton's crew.
Four managed to bale out, but the rear gunner was killed. On the ground Paton faced an angry mob, but he was soon captured and sent to Stalag Luft III.
After the 'Great Escape', life at Sagan resumed a more orderly pattern, until the winter of 1945. On January 27 the PoWs were given a few hours' notice that the camp was to be evacuated - Soviet troops were some 20 miles to the east. Paton and his colleagues gathered as much material and food as they could carry on an improvised sledge. Just before midnight the column of 2,000 men departed. The winter was exceedingly harsh. Initially they walked steadily for 10 hours.
The column marched on for a further 30 hours, in temperatures well below freezing, resting in whatever shelter they could find. They continued to Spremberg, where they eventually boarded railway goods wagons. There was not enough room for everyone to lie down and the sanitary arrangements were non-existent. After three days, the PoWs arrived at a camp 20 miles north of Bremen, where they remained until April. Paton and his colleagues finally arrived at Lubeck, and on May 1, soldiers of the British 11th Division liberated them.
His wife Marie survives him with two sons and a daughter.
Bill Paton died October 25, 2019.
source: Easy Branches
Paton arrived in the Luftwaffe-controlled camp at Sagan, 100 miles south-east of Berlin, after his Wellington bomber had been shot down on the night of April 16, 1943. He joined other PoWs in the north compound, where work had recently started on digging three escape tunnels.
Paton soon found himself involved in helping to disperse the excavated sandy soil carried in pouches made from blankets and suspended down the trouser legs of the "penguins" - so-called because of their ungainly gait when walking with full pouches. During the dispersal of the sand it was vital to distract the attention of the German guards, so sporting activities were arranged. In addition, the shuffling of the players' feet ensured that the sand was scattered into the ground. Paton played baseball, and formed a team from his fellow Canadians. He organised tournaments, sometimes against the PoWs in the south compound, which housed Americans. After the escape of 76 prisoners on the night of March 24, 1944, 50 of those recaptured were shot by the Gestapo, among them a number of Paton's friends. William Edgar Paton was born in Toronto on July 27, 1918 and educated at Riverside High School, after which he started work with Canada Life Insurance. In 1941 he joined the RCAF and trained as a navigator in Canada before joining an Atlantic convoy to sail to Britain. In July 1942 he was commissioned and attended a course at the Central Navigation School before converting to the Wellington bomber. In December he joined the recently formed No 431 (Iroquois) Squadron RCAF based at Burn airfield near Selby in the West Riding. During the 'Battle of the Ruhr', Paton and his crew flew six bombing operations against industrial complexes.
On the night of April 16, Mannheim was the target: during that raid Bomber Command suffered its highest losses so far. Among the casualties were Paton's crew.
Four managed to bale out, but the rear gunner was killed. On the ground Paton faced an angry mob, but he was soon captured and sent to Stalag Luft III.
After the 'Great Escape', life at Sagan resumed a more orderly pattern, until the winter of 1945. On January 27 the PoWs were given a few hours' notice that the camp was to be evacuated - Soviet troops were some 20 miles to the east. Paton and his colleagues gathered as much material and food as they could carry on an improvised sledge. Just before midnight the column of 2,000 men departed. The winter was exceedingly harsh. Initially they walked steadily for 10 hours.
The column marched on for a further 30 hours, in temperatures well below freezing, resting in whatever shelter they could find. They continued to Spremberg, where they eventually boarded railway goods wagons. There was not enough room for everyone to lie down and the sanitary arrangements were non-existent. After three days, the PoWs arrived at a camp 20 miles north of Bremen, where they remained until April. Paton and his colleagues finally arrived at Lubeck, and on May 1, soldiers of the British 11th Division liberated them.
His wife Marie survives him with two sons and a daughter.
Bill Paton died October 25, 2019.
source: Easy Branches
fubar57
General
Crimea_River
Marshal
Blue skies.
michaelmaltby
Colonel
Crimea_River
Marshal
From Gary Bridger on FB:
Glyn Powell QSM 1934 - 2019.
It is with a heavy heart and enormous sadness to announce that my dearest friend Glyn Powell passed away yesterday 26th November. Glyn passed peacefully in a rest home surrounded by his immediate family. Glyn had been unwell for some time but his sudden passing still comes as a huge shock.
It was Glyn's enormous vision, courage and determination that enabled him to build from scratch, all the necessary tooling to rebuild the wooden DH Mosquito airframe, something thought impossible by everyone except Glyn. The complex fuselage moulds alone took Glyn five years to build and they are an engineering masterpiece in their own right. As a result of Glyn's vision, there are now three NZ restored Mosquitos flying in the USA with two more on their way. Glyn received The Queens Services Medal (QSM) for services to aeronautical heritage preservation in 2014.
Sadly, Glyn never saw his initial ambition of completing and flying his own Mosquito NZ2308. However NZ2308 is earmarked for the Mosquito Pathfinders Trust in the UK, and all going to plan, it will be completed at Avspecs at Ardmore and operated by the Pathfinders Trust out of Duxford UK. A fitting legacy to Glyn and his remarkable achievements.
Glyn's enormous self belief and never give up attitude is an inspiration to us all. He must rank as one of our most remarkable New Zealanders, who against all odds, achieved the impossible in his own shed on a shoe string budget. It has been a complete and utter privilege to have known him.
Glyn Powell QSM 1934 - 2019.
It is with a heavy heart and enormous sadness to announce that my dearest friend Glyn Powell passed away yesterday 26th November. Glyn passed peacefully in a rest home surrounded by his immediate family. Glyn had been unwell for some time but his sudden passing still comes as a huge shock.
It was Glyn's enormous vision, courage and determination that enabled him to build from scratch, all the necessary tooling to rebuild the wooden DH Mosquito airframe, something thought impossible by everyone except Glyn. The complex fuselage moulds alone took Glyn five years to build and they are an engineering masterpiece in their own right. As a result of Glyn's vision, there are now three NZ restored Mosquitos flying in the USA with two more on their way. Glyn received The Queens Services Medal (QSM) for services to aeronautical heritage preservation in 2014.
Sadly, Glyn never saw his initial ambition of completing and flying his own Mosquito NZ2308. However NZ2308 is earmarked for the Mosquito Pathfinders Trust in the UK, and all going to plan, it will be completed at Avspecs at Ardmore and operated by the Pathfinders Trust out of Duxford UK. A fitting legacy to Glyn and his remarkable achievements.
Glyn's enormous self belief and never give up attitude is an inspiration to us all. He must rank as one of our most remarkable New Zealanders, who against all odds, achieved the impossible in his own shed on a shoe string budget. It has been a complete and utter privilege to have known him.
Snautzer01
Honourably banned
- 43,674
- Mar 26, 2007
fubar57
General
Snautzer01
Honourably banned
- 43,674
- Mar 26, 2007
Adding. I do think this man is the god of building. Making a new machine is difficult enough. But recreating tools long forgotten .... on youre own my, my, my.. i do hope he can rest in peace and somebody will take up his vacant space.
buffnut453
Captain
Now there is a modern day hero. The patience, skill and engineering acumen it must have taken to achieve that goal is truly remarkable. An incredibly sad loss to all those of us who love historic aviation.
MiTasol
1st Lieutenant
Noble Frankland, former Bomber Command navigator who revived the Imperial War Museum but ran into controversy with his official history of the air offensive against Germany.
In his entertaining and peppery book History at War: The Campaigns of an Historian (1998) – which Frankland insisted was not a memoir, but merely used personal experience to illustrate the difficulties of recording and interpreting authentic history....
Anthony Noble Frankland, museum director, born 4 July 1922; died 31 October 2019
source "The Guardian"
Sounds like a most interesting book and surprisingly the cheapest version is on Kindle but I would prefer a paper version if I can find one at a reasonable price.
I will try my library but am not hopeful
MiTasol
1st Lieutenant
A great loss to the restoration world but hopefully he will inspire others to "do the impossible"
Flt Lt Maurice Mounsdon
One of the last surviving pilots who fought in the Battle of Britain during World War Two has died aged 101.
Flight Lieutenant Maurice Mounsdon was one of only four remaining members of The Few - a group of 3,000 airmen who defended the skies above southern England from the Nazis in 1940. The head of the RAF, Air Chief Marshal Mike Wigston, said Mr Mounsdon's bravery should never be forgotten. The Battle of Britain led to the deaths of 544 RAF pilots and aircrew. Their bravery and sacrifice in withstanding the greater numbers of German pilots of the Luftwaffe and a possible invasion was recognised by then Prime Minister Winston Churchill. Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few," he told MPs. Churchill's "Few", as RAF crew, who included Polish, Canadian and New Zealand pilots among others, became known, have been celebrated ever since. Mr Mounsdon was described by his nephew, Adrian Mounsdon, as a "great man" who would be missed by his family, the Daily Mirror reported. ACM Wigston said he was "deeply saddened" by Mr Mounsdon's death, saying the veteran had "fought for and won our freedom". "His was a remarkable story, which will continue to inspire this and future generations of the Royal Air Force, his bravery and sacrifice should never be forgotten," he added. In 2015, Mr Mounsdon told the BBC he was serving with 56 Squadron out of North Weald when he was sent out to intercept some bombers on 31 August 1940. He managed to shoot at one of them, but then a German cannon shell hit the fuel tank of his Hawker Hurricane. "I was on fire. There was only one thing to do and that was to get out as fast as possible," he told the BBC. "I was badly burned, but I rolled the aircraft over and came down by parachute from 14,000ft." He said it was the first time he had used a parachute and he was "jolly lucky". Mr Mounsdon, who had terrible burns to his legs and hands, landed in a field in the village of High Easter, Essex, where he was found by local people. He spent a number of years in various hospitals, where he had skin grafts. While in hospital, he married his childhood sweetheart Mary. The couple moved to the Spanish island Menorca in the late 1970s and lived there until she died in 1993. For Mr Mousdon's 100th birthday in September last year the Red Arrows paid tribute to him with a flyover off the coast of Menorca.
The three surviving members of the Few are Flt Lt William Clark, 100, Wing Commander Paul Farnes, 101, and Flying Officer John Hemingway, 100.
source: BBC News.
One of the last surviving pilots who fought in the Battle of Britain during World War Two has died aged 101.
Flight Lieutenant Maurice Mounsdon was one of only four remaining members of The Few - a group of 3,000 airmen who defended the skies above southern England from the Nazis in 1940. The head of the RAF, Air Chief Marshal Mike Wigston, said Mr Mounsdon's bravery should never be forgotten. The Battle of Britain led to the deaths of 544 RAF pilots and aircrew. Their bravery and sacrifice in withstanding the greater numbers of German pilots of the Luftwaffe and a possible invasion was recognised by then Prime Minister Winston Churchill. Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few," he told MPs. Churchill's "Few", as RAF crew, who included Polish, Canadian and New Zealand pilots among others, became known, have been celebrated ever since. Mr Mounsdon was described by his nephew, Adrian Mounsdon, as a "great man" who would be missed by his family, the Daily Mirror reported. ACM Wigston said he was "deeply saddened" by Mr Mounsdon's death, saying the veteran had "fought for and won our freedom". "His was a remarkable story, which will continue to inspire this and future generations of the Royal Air Force, his bravery and sacrifice should never be forgotten," he added. In 2015, Mr Mounsdon told the BBC he was serving with 56 Squadron out of North Weald when he was sent out to intercept some bombers on 31 August 1940. He managed to shoot at one of them, but then a German cannon shell hit the fuel tank of his Hawker Hurricane. "I was on fire. There was only one thing to do and that was to get out as fast as possible," he told the BBC. "I was badly burned, but I rolled the aircraft over and came down by parachute from 14,000ft." He said it was the first time he had used a parachute and he was "jolly lucky". Mr Mounsdon, who had terrible burns to his legs and hands, landed in a field in the village of High Easter, Essex, where he was found by local people. He spent a number of years in various hospitals, where he had skin grafts. While in hospital, he married his childhood sweetheart Mary. The couple moved to the Spanish island Menorca in the late 1970s and lived there until she died in 1993. For Mr Mousdon's 100th birthday in September last year the Red Arrows paid tribute to him with a flyover off the coast of Menorca.
The three surviving members of the Few are Flt Lt William Clark, 100, Wing Commander Paul Farnes, 101, and Flying Officer John Hemingway, 100.
source: BBC News.