The fighter still remains

We’ve come a long way since those few paragraphs five weeks ago based on a 1950s minute book of the Swaledale Football League. A long story very short, it led to memories of Squadron Leader George Bennions DFC, a Spitfire pilot who lost an eye in the Battle of Britain but who in the 1950s was still a combative centre half for Colburn and Walkerville.

Now we hear from David Wilson, grandson of the fearless flyer in the aircraft with the tail code EB-J. Not only is EB-J still flying but – different plane, of course – but just this month, David has commissioned a profile of the Spitfire from aviation artist Benjamin Brown.

David, who lives in Catterick Village where Bennions Way still acknowledges his grandfather’s courage, recalls that in June 2004 – just months after ”Ben” Bennions’s death, aged 90 – the Defence Secretary announced that 41(F) squadron, with which his grandfather flew, was to be disbanded. Its Jaguar fleet was being retired; the family, says David, were utterly dismayed.

Two years later, however, a decision was made to re-form the squadron, with Tornado and Harrier aircraft. In 2010 it merged with anther squadron to become 41(F) Test and Evaluation Squadron now based with Typhoons at RAF Coningsby. EB-J flies with them.

“So far as I know, it was the first to get airborne,” says David.

The jet is currently on loan to 1(F) Squadron, taking part in a NATO exercise called Red Flag – interesting name that – based at Nellis, in Nevada. “It’s a bit like Top Gun. All the best pilots from NATO gather each year for it,” says David.

Thanks to modern technology, David and his family can still follow it around the world – “The official RAF Facebook page shows Typhoon EB-J taxiing out for a night sortie at Nellis with the bright lights of Las Vegas in the background. It’s a pretty impressive sight.”

*As an RAF pilot might confirm, it’s also a pretty small world. The Swaledale League minute book was loaned by Eddie Roberts who – we now learn – taught with Ben Bennions at Risedale School in Catterick Garrison.

More coincidental yet, Eddie’s son Bryn would himself take to the skies whilst still a pupil at Richmond School. Bryn had a driving licence but not a pilot’s. The school friend who became a regular passenger en route to Teesside Airport had a pilot’s licence but still couldn’t drive.

The Jack Spratt arrangement worked perfectly. The young flyer was, of course, David Wilson.

ends

David had first taken to the skies as an eight-year-old, flying from RAF Catterick in the Tiger Moth owned jointly by his grandfather and Ben’s pal Bill Meynell. “I remember being terrified, keeping my hands straight down the side of the cockpit unless I touched anything,” he recalls.

At 16 he was a qualified pilot, though not allowed to fly solo until his 17th birthday, July 14 1989. The plan was to pass his driving test on the morning of his birthday and to fly alone in the afternoon. He failed the first bit.

The story made the following morning’s Echo. “It’s rather nice,” says David, “that 25 years later it’s going to be in there again.”

ends

Talk of the Swaledale Football League also led to memories of the Swaledale Cricket League. We may not have heard the last of either.

Alf Hutchinson in Darlington remembers as a 13-year-old – sixty years ago – playing cricket for Forcett Park, long defunct, the field a pasture in the grounds of Forcett Hall with a 10-yard wide strip for the wicket.

Top Hatter

Ken Hawkes, a Co Durham lad who played for Luton Town in the 1969 FA Cup final, has died. He was 81 and things were a bit different back then.

The Wembley meeting with Nottingham Forest is reckoned the first football match at which fans pinched a song from popular culture – Forest supporters sang Robin Hood, from the new ITV series – and also the first at which the BBC used an on-screen score caption.

Unfortunately they enraged the Forest faithful by labelling them, “Notts Forest”, obliging commentator Kenneth Wolstenholme to apologise on air. It should have been “Nott’m Forest”, he said.

Ken Hawkes was born in Easington and spotted playing for Shotton Colliery by Dick Trembath, Luton’s North-East scout Dick Trembath.

A few years later, Trembath also took Ken’s brother Barry to Kenilworth Road, where he made just eight appearances before spells with Darlington, Hartlepools United and, finally, Horden CW.

Though Ken signed in 1951, it was six years before his first division debut– a spell inevitably interrupted by National Service. The Luton website suggests what recent columns also have supposed – “he seemed to spend most of his time playing football for various forces sides, as well as securing a regular release to play for the Town’s reserves.”

He broke through against West Brom in December 1957, remained at left back for the rest of that season and made a total of 102 appearances, remaining a familiar match day figure at Luton.

Frequently, it’s said, he’d recall the “lackadaisical” approach to the Cup final, including being woken in the small hours by fans wanting Wembley tickets.

If not quite a mad Hatter, he certainly wasn’t a very happy one. That he lived in a club house not 100 yards from the ground probably didn’t help.

Forest won 2-1 with early goals from Tommy Wilson and Roy Dwight, who broke his leg after 33 minutes – prompting the familiar accusation that the Wembley turf was too lush.

Town orchestrated a minute’s applause in Ken’s memory. Such the affection in which he was held, it’s said considerably to have overrun.

Ends

Sad also to learn of the death of former Sunderland striker Nick Sharkey, not least because it stirred memories of the night of Wednesday March 20 1963, when he hit five in a 7-1 thrashing of Norwich City.

It was the sort of event that you remember where you were when you heard of it: fifth form and double games next morning.

Only Charles Buchan and Bobby Gurney, Roker greats, had hit five in a match before. Very likely none has done it since.

Sharkey – “a pint-sized goal snatcher,” wrote the young Frank Johnson in the following day’s Echo – hit 62 in 117 Sunderland appearances, finally pitching up at Hartlepool.

Best of all for Sunderland’s players, the Norwich win meant that they were certain to be in the top two after 30 games and thus gain a £900 per man bonus. They still only finished third, though, a smidgeon behind Chelsea on goal average.

“The outfield – i.e about five yards from the wicket – was deep in grass, thistles and evidence of the cattle whose peaceful cud chewing we interrupted on match days.”

There were similar grounds, he remembers, at Ravensworth and Hutton Magna. “Nobody seemed to mind very much. They were very happy days.”