No,277 Squadron - A little levity

[HughAHalliday]

From the Harkinge Flight diary, 28 May 1943. “A practice rescue was carried out in the Estuary. A dinghy was dropped by Sergeant Moir from a Lysander and P/O Hartwell and WO Waddington in a Stranraer found the dinghy and landed beside it. WO Waddington instead of hauling the dinghy into the back hatch decided to clamber into it and go for a sail whereupon P/O Hartwell left him to his fate and took off without him (They are the best of friends). The incident became very amusing when WO Waddington, getting very wet was waving to the Walrus, was seen by a Naval launch which proceeded to the spot to effect a rescue, but much to their disgust our friend refused to be rescued by anything else but the Walrus, which by this time had decided that WO Waddington had had enough, landed and hauled him aboard. When the heat of his language had dried him again they took off and returned to base. (We must add that these two are still the best of friends).”

[CZ_RAF]

What a strange but interesting story:)
BTW seems to me there is mismatch of the aircraft type being Stranraer at the start and Walrus at the end.

Pavel

[Jagan]

I looked up the ORB https://discovery.nationalarchives.g...mageViewerLink Page 15/16 mentions the same story - and rightly reports it as a Walrus both times.

(Deleted an earlier wrong comment from Page 10)