BAREBACK RIDING

Wairarapa Times-Age, 31 May 1940, Page 9

BAREBACK RIDING

INCIDENT ON FIGHTING PLANE. 15 MINUTES ON BOMBER'S TAIL. The R.A.F. rigger who accidentally was . taken for a bareback ride on a Spitfire fighter recently is not the first man in the British Air Ministry’s official records to have had this experience. He is the second. His predecessor was Tom Viggers, ex-Aircraftsman 168077, now a grocei’ of Kingston-on-Thames. In 1920 he rode for fifteen minutes on the tail of an aeroplane that was going to bomb warring tribesmen near Bagdad. "Mind you, it’s not so bad once you get into the air. It's the take-off that is so rough,” he said recently. Tonr was with a detached flight from No. 6 Squadron of Bagdad—“sent to a place called Hillah or something like that” — to deal with some tribesmen. “It was the rule then that every pilot should open his throttle full out once before taking off. I was leaning hard on the tail to hold it down while the pilot did this, when someone took the wheelblocks away and off went the aeroplane. I thought quickly, ‘Drop off and break your neck, or hold on?’ So I held on.”

Tom got one leg over the fuselage and clung to the tail bracing wire, facing backwards. “Although I shouted at the top of my voice, it was just a waste of time. We climbed to about 1500 feet and set off across the desert. “But after about ten minutes the pilot turned round. I was looking at him. and I’ll never forget his face. His mouth opened wide, and he looked twice as scared as I was. He turned for home and eventually made a careful landing. I got off, and after a whisky I felt fine.”