231226 LAC George "Ginge" Clegg Royal Air Force Attached to PRU wing, Benson from:Cheadle Hulme, Cheshire I had become hooked on flying as a cadet in the Manchester University Air Squadron in 1942. I enlisted in the RAFVR while aged 17 and was on deferred service until I attained 18. One of my early moves was to RAF Benson, the Photo Recce Unit (PRU) HQ, commanded by Air Commodore John N Boothman, who had won the Schneider trophy for Britain before the war. I was always trying to commence flying, but this was an operational unit with Spitfires and Mosquitos, so the opportunities were few. After just missing a test flight in a Mosquito during which the pilot and observer were killed, my next opportunity was a trip in a Lockheed Hudson with the C.O., AC Boothman. I guess my eagerness persuaded him to take me. It turned out to be a recce off the Dutch coast to locate shore batteries. These were mapped by the 2nd pilot and located by drawing fire. We were perhaps a mile off shore. The CO would do a steep turn (about 50 feet above the waves) to throw of the predicted next shot from the batteries. It was all very exciting. After about 30 minutes and having covered 100 miles of coast, without being hit, we returned to base. My next near meeting with John Boothman, now an AVM, was at Manston, Kent the wartime FIDO station. While landing a Spitfire across the runway, the Fido pipe caused the nose to go down enough for the prop to hit the ground. The props on Spits were wooden, covered by a black coating, and shattered easily so that no damage to the engine occurred. After flying finished that evening I walked out to the site of my inadvertent accident. To my surprise I found the remains of two shattered props. I learned that AVM Boothman was the the pilot of the other Spitfire, having landed later than I.
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