It’s Tuesday again so I was delighted to welcome the smiling face of Frances Clamp. Today’s BYGONES feature harked back to the dark days of the second world war, and specifically to the Battle of Britain and specifically to of one of “the few” – Squadron Leader Desmond Fopp, who was actually Australian by birth although his mother was English whilst his father was a first-generation Australian of Prussian extraction.
But we’ll return to that later as during the first hour of the show we looked at a couple of oddball stories. The first of these concerned a man of Polish origin who had lived in the US illegally for 30 years until he suffered a stroke and fell into a coma. It seems that whilst unconscious he was deported back to Poland where he came to in a hospital. One wonders which of the airfare or treatment would have been cheaper and who paid.
Staying Stateside we heard about the unfortunate driver of a SUV containing a number of buckets of
paint, and his dog, involved in a crash. The result was to say the least, colourful – not easily glossed over!
But back to Frances and the story of Squadron Leader Fopp. He had joined up shortly after the outbreak of war and had been involved in providing air support for the evacuation of the BEF at Dunkirk and was subsequently heavily involved in the Battle of Britain. On the 3rd September 1940 his section of 4 Hurricanes was scrambled to intercept a force of 200 enemy aircraft approaching East London. He led his pilots into a head-on attack to disperse the bombers and after his ammunition was exhausted, he was attacked by three of the escorting German fighters and his aircraft was set on fire. He was badly burned during his attempts to bale out, landing in a field near Brentwood, spending several months in hospital recovering from his injuries.
In spite of his injuries Sq Ldr Fopp returned to operational flying within a year. Listen again here to what Frances told me: – [audio:https://www.phoenixfm.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/Bygones-2nd-July.mp3|titles=Bygones 2nd July]
Right I’ll see you again soon. Meantime have a good week.
Scott
