Commander John Sayer O.B.E. of White St. in Easterton returned to the Fleet Air Arm Museum at RNAS Yeovilton to see the Swordfish they have been restoring.
Proudly wearing his Fleet Air Arm tie, Commander Sayer was shown round by John Beattie, also a retired Naval Flying Officer. Looking at the open cockpit, he told us youngsters how pilots and their observers returned from sorties literally frozen stiff, and had to be winched out of their seats.
He himself had flown missions laying mines in Cherbourg Harbour, and torpedoing German merchant shipping off the Dutch coast.
Once he had to crash land in a field just by the Suffolk coast having run out of fuel; and on another occasion his plane misjudged the deck landing and ended up in the sea. When lifted back on board, and taken to the Sick Bay, the treatment proscribed was a medicinal glass of whiskey!
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