Tweeting the Few

Military historian Paul Reed will be tweeting the names of the pilots of The Few who were shot down during the Battle of Britain, from July 10th - October 31st. For more information visit Paul's site at www.ww2battlefields.com/bob_twitter.htm.

Just a few days ago I posted a short tribute to a Scottish pilot of the Few, Sergeant Pilot Iain Hutchinson, who I had the pleasure of meeting on several occasions, and who sadly passed away in 2007 (see The Few - RAF podcasts). I've actually just discovered another great write up on Iain's life at
http://forums.canadiancontent.net/news/61996-hero-pilot-battle-britain-dies.html, but the thing that has me mentioning him again is that yesterday I noticed in our local W. H. Smith's a new book on sale written by Max Arthur, entitled "Last of the Few: The Battle of Britain in the Words of the Pilots Who Won It" (available at www.amazon.co.uk/gp/bestsellers/books/771718?ie=UTF8&pg=2). The book includes interviews with several pilots I've had the pleasure of meeting and speaking to in the past, including Iain Hutchinson, Al Deere, Ludwik Martel, and last but not least Bob Doe.

I first met Bob when working for BBC Bristol on War Walks series 2, a series presented by Professor Richard Holmes in 1997. We did a programme on The Blitz, but as a part of this spent a day filming at Duxford with Bob, to get the story of the Battle of Britain as part of the lead up. Unfortunately the entire sequence ended up on the cutting room floor, as the decision was taken in the edit to concentrate on the story of the bombing campaign, but it was because of this that I later suggested the idea of a programme on the Few to STV producer Ross Wilson for a Channel Four documentary a couple of years later - the upshot of that was that I had the pleasure of meeting Bob all over again (and this time he remained in the programme!)! Sadly, from Max Arthur's book, I've discovered that Bob in fact has just passed away in February of this year.

Never in the field of human conflict did we owe so much to so Few...

Chris

www.ScotlandsGreatestStory.co.uk
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Researching Scottish Family History (New book)