I WOULD like to clarify a point made in the letter by GL Rendell (Oxford Mail, April 20).

I can’t recall all the detail of the Gentlemen of the sky (Oxford Mail, April 6), GL Rendell, refers to in his letter, which, in the main, he has got right.

Where he is wrong, though, is in his assumption that the pilot of the Lancaster sat in a bucket seat on a seat pack.

All the crew members in Lancasters had chest packs which were stowed during flight unless required.

Had it been the case that the pilot had to wear a seat pack, it would have made it nearly impossible for him to have negotiated the wing root cross member to reach his position.

In fact, he had a very comfortable seat with an armour-plated back rest, the only crew member protected by armour.

I have sat in the famous S-Sugar Lancaster pilot’s seat at the Hendon RAF Museum, with an equally famous Lancaster bomber pilot, the late Mr Tudor Jones, of Bicester, who sat in the engineer’s right hand position.

The pilots seen running to their aircraft in the newsreel films, with seat packs banging the backs of their legs, were all fighter pilots, Spitfire or Hurricane, who sat in uncomfortable bucket seats, on the packs.

Their method of getting out, if shot down, was to invert the aircraft, if possible.

Incidentally, when I was a free fall parachutist, at the time the film The Battle of Britain was being made, I was asked to consider doing just that, out of a modified Spitfire, for a fee of £500 – a chance I ‘jumped’ at.

Unfortunately it required all Second World War clothing and at least lookalike gear.

I had none. Mine was all French.

TONY O’GORMAN, Main Street, Hethe