How I Met a Hurricane

When I tried to come up with a theme

for this month’s Tail End Charlie article, I

came up with some ideas, but none really did the trick. Some came across as too

serious, some were more work than could

be allotted to it and outside of the scope

of this feature, and some a little too preachy, and that is something I do not want to

seem as being. Also, when my colleagues

and myself were trying to finalize the concept of this section of the newsletter, we

decided that it should be relatively simple,

in terms of the theme, and even, preferably, on the pleasant side, interesting to

the reader, and that it will be up to whichever author is at bat to come up with

the subject without any influence from the

others. It doesn’t have to be a deep subject that tries to deal with definite world

issues, but rather about something positive

and avoiding, as Oddball would put it, those ‘negative waves’.

And so I weighed, and generally rejected, various themes, and started feeling

increasingly helpless. Until, that is, the

theme came to me almost literally from

heaven (despite being about 90% shrouded

in clouds…). Yesterday evening, during a

training flight to Rakovnik from Chomutov

via Sazena, a dark silhouette of an aircraft

appeared ahead of ‘my’ small C-172. It

Jan Zdiarský

crossed our flight path from left to right,

was below us and several hundred meters

ahead, and as it traversed our line of flight,

appeared at our two o’clock position, and

relatively quickly disappeared in the direction of Prague. I quickly came to the conclusion that this must’ve been a Hurricane! The colour came across as a somewhat

dark grey with a light coloured roundel on

the fuselage, a low wing monoplane with

the unmistakable silhouette of a radiator

below the fuselage. I was ecstatic. There’s a sight you don’t see every day! From

the moment it became known a few weeks

back that there would be a Czech owned

Hurricane Mk.IV, painted in the markings

of a Czechoslovak ace and flown by Czech

pilots, I couldn’t help but be filled with a

certain sense of happiness and pride. And

I am sure that I am not alone in this. This

is ‘OUR’ Hurricane, despite the fact that

it belongs to somebody, that someone is

charged with its care and to make certain

that all flight requirements and needs are

satisfied. The ‘OURS’ is patriotic in nature, not a legal claim. It’s a feeling that reflects the fact that the history that such

a restored aircraft represents is accepted

by us as our own. For some, this aircraft

may evoke feelings of admiration that something like this can be kept flying after

such a long time. But if you are able to

see the link to the battles that allied pilots went through, this type of encounter

is incredibly indelible. It’s something that

you couldn’t even imagine just a few years

ago. It is similar with some other historical aircraft that are flying here with the

almost-Czech Spitfire, for the better part

of a year operated by the firm Classic Trainers, the blue-nosed Mustang, Harvards,

Stearman’s, Beechcraft, Electra,Tiger Moths… incredible expenditure of resources

that are completely worth it that gives us

such pleasure and a feeling that something

truly special is happening. And this is just

that pleasure that I wanted to share here,

now, and I am sure that many of you will

be gently nodding your heads. Really, my

goal was no more complicated than that. If

you were expecting something more substantial, than accept my apology. But I am

certain that many of our people were able

to find similar feelings within themselves.

PS. Just to make sure, I asked Radim Vojta, one of the pilots, if it might have been

him flying the Hurricane that day, but he

assured me that it definitely was not. Jirka Horak then wrote me that on that day,

the Hurricane was flown by Petr Paces, the

third of the pilots.

That evening, as I was recording the event

in my log, in the comments section I drew

a little silhouette of a Hurricane, inspired

by the radar operator of a No.311 Squadron

Liberator, Adam Sipek, who drew a little

submarine in his logbook, which I have in

my collection. Whenever I look at the little silhouette of the Hurricane, I will recall

the way I saw it for real in the cloudy sky

over Sazena that day.

July 25th, 2021

Photo: Michal Krechowski

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INFO Eduard - August 2021