Skywriters

摘要

I read with interest the December 2021 edition of the magazine, as I do each copy that lands on my doormat, but this one struck a personal chord.Both my parents served in the RAF during World War Two, my mother as a WAAF squadron officer, latterly at Brize Norton working on the packaging of Hurricane and Spitfire tropical kits. My father, Desmond McCleland, was a fighter pilot on No 222 Squadron and ended up flying Tempest Vs powered by the Napier Sabre engine. When reading my father's logbook, I noted he had recorded the day Charles Deck was posted as missing, 12 April 1945. There were many such notes in it. On 24 April 1945, he wrote that he had claimed a Junkers Ju 52 destroyed and a Messerschmitt Bf 109 damaged. He also recorded that he was hit by flak, and the accompanying picture shows him sitting on the starboard wing of his Tempest V to show the scale of the damage. His aircraft that day was NV670/ZD-X.