To Jessie from Harry Redgrave

To Jessie from Harry Redgrave

A letter from Harry to his wife Jessie. Harry writes about his recent examination marks, an engine failure on a training flight and several trips to the cinema.

1940-02-26

Four handwritten sheets

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Redbrae
Prestwick
Mon. 26.2.40

Dear Jessie,
I’ve some news for you of my results. Only two of the subjects Met and Maps and Charts. For Met [sic] I got 26 out of 40 and for Maps and Charts 33, giving me a percentage up to now of 74%. If I can keep that up in the other papers all will be well. My marks for Met were rather dissapointing [sic] though that was done towards the end of the paper when time my [sic] was getting short and I was not able to put all I could in the answers.

We had rather an alarming experience this morning when just after taking off in the Fokker one of the engines cut

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out as we were taking off. The plane managed to get off the deck but could not climb and only managed to get about 500’ and we immediately prepared to land [deleted] of [/deleted] again. The pilot circled around and [smudged] glided [/smudged] down and for some reason could manage to bring the machine in and had to open up [deleted] ther [/deleted] the three good engines and climb away. After circling around again he had another try and this time succeeded in making a very bumpy landing. That ended our flying for today and we spent the morning checking up our log books and the afternoon plotting. The chief instructor gave us a few words in our exam plotting and it appeared that about

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three quarters of us forgot to apply deviation for the aircrafts head when taking bearings which provided some consolation for me.

The latest news about leave is that we shall get a few days for Easter and that our monthly week end [sic] has been postponed until March 16th. As I expect Easter will be longer than a weekend and you can begin to expect me home for Good Friday morning with probably until [deleted] Sunday night [/deleted] Monday night. Get yourself fit and well for the occasion my love.

On Saturday evening I went into Ayr and saw “Ruler of the Sea” an [deleted] d [/deleted] entertaining film of the first Atlantic crossing by steam. Will Fyffe played a very good part as the engineer and Douglas Fairbanks Junior and Margaret Lockwood put in quite a good show in a story which being about engines

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I found particularly interesting.

Last night I saw a show put on by the Ayrshire Film Society which contained a film by Germans [deleted] aib [/deleted] about Vienna. If its [sic] in Southend you should see it “Maskerade [sic] in Vienna” its [sic] called. With it was an Eskimo film which showed amazing seamanship as these Eskimos paddled around in there [sic] kayaks.

Well darling I cant [sic] find any more to say tonight and I am going to have an early night for a change. Goodnight my love and God bless you all. My fondest love to you and Pam.

Harry xxxx