Bertie the Bunyip wrote:
Dudley Henriques wrote in

Did he ever talk abuot his accident to you?

From what little I know about it, (the movie) he crashed a Bulldog doing
a hotdog low alt roll.



Bertie

Yes, we discussed it several times. He was always open and honest about
what happened. He was at Woodley on a cross country in the Bulldog and
got into it big time with some civvy pilots hanging out in the field
flight shack. Douglas had a bit of a rep as an aerobatic pilot and was
prone to demonstrating that on a moment's notice I'm afraid :-)
Anyway, Douglas told me the Bulldog was a mess to handle and was
restricted to over 1000 feet for acro. At first he declined when they
asked him for a roll over the field but they apparently ****ed him off
(his words on the matter :-)
Anyway, he took off and came around low and slow rolled it. He caught
his left tip and the rest is history.
I never heard DB make any excuses at all for what happened. In fact, his
word on it to me was "Dudley my boy, I simply bollocked it up" We never
did agree on the definition of "bollocked" :-) He said colonials would
never understand the King's English :-)
Douglas was never a man to shirk anything. He said he screwed it up and
I could tell from the way he said it that he meant EXACTLY what he said.
Hell...later on when he took over the Canadian Squadron, he grabbed a
fighter the first day he was there on the job as the new CO and put on a
show the old timers STILL talk about. They say the roll he did that day,
with his two tin legs on board, was about as low as the first one that
day in the Bulldog!
Unbelievable character, and one of the finest, most outspoken and
downright tenacious right on guys you could ever hope to meet on the planet.

--
Dudley Henriques