Aerial toilet rolls

Gray · 169328. Tue Apr 24, 2007 8:00 am

Q: Why would WW2 Spitfire and Hurricane pilots take a roll of lavatory paper up with them on their practice flights?
F: (A few things spring to mind...)
A: To practise their tight turns.

Accoring to my granfather, who once did a lot of this sort of thing, you'd take your kite up to 10,000 feet or so, then lob the roll out of the jolly old window. Then, as it unfurled into a huge vertical streamer in the sky, you'd come around and cut it up into short lengths with your bally wingtips.

Of course, as lavatory paper was in short supply, the bigwigs took rather a dim view of this sort of tomfoolery. This lead to some fairly tricky explanations when rookie pilots came down with burned toilet roll draped all over the prop.

crissdee · 755767. Thu Oct 28, 2010 10:30 am

I wouldn't have thought that the prop of a Spitfire or Hurricane would have lefet a lot of TP for the bigwigs to see.