“I’d been taken on a half-hour orientation flight and after about 10 minutes, the Rambo-style instructor yelled into the voice tube: ‘You’re not going to go white on me, Cook?’ I yelled back, ‘No, sir, I’m fine,’ but I think I was a liar.

“The first time I went up, he flew around for about 15 minutes, said ‘I’ve had enough of this, we’re going down,’ and he flew straight down to the Esk River, flew along the river, and out the other end as fast as he could. “My instructor was an ex-member of a South Australian citizens’ Light Horse Regiment, and his method of instruction was a little different. “I wasn’t impressed with the Tiger Moth, as it looked too flimsy and too small,” he said. He remembers closely inspecting one of the planes that was being overhauled at the time. 7 Initial Flying School in Launceston, Tasmania. He was selected for pilot training and learned to fly in Tiger Moths at No. He had an aptitude for Morse Code and the Army thought the Air Force would be a good fit for him. It was the army that suggested Owen transfer to the Royal Australian Air Force at the end of 1942. He joined the Australian Imperial Force in May 1941, serving with the 52nd Infantry Battalion in the Ordnance Workshops at Dandenong and Puckapunyal. He was finally released from his position when he was 20 years old. It was a reserved occupation, so Owen was not allowed to enlist for active service at first. When the Second World War broke out, Owen was working as an electrical engineer with the State Electricity Commission in Victoria. Both were wounded several times during the fighting in France. His father, Oswald Thomas Cook, had served on the Western Front during the First World War and his uncle, James Alonzo Cook, served on Gallipoli. Owen Cook was born in St Kilda, Melbourne, on 27 March 1921. “They are just a lovely aircraft, and everybody who flew them liked them.” They’re very docile, and you don’t have any problems you could set them on a course, and they’d stay there all day in a circle until you moved something. “I loved to fly, and I had a good time flying,” he said. Now 100, he looks back at his time as a Lancaster pilot during the war as one of the most significant times in his life. “It was a lot for a young man from Melbourne in 1945.” A chance to travel across Canada through the Rockies by train, to see San Francisco, New York and Niagara Falls … to travel from London to Edinburgh on the Flying Scotsman … to be able to see so much of the UK on my leave and after the war, and land in France as part of the POW repatriation flights. “The love of flying some remarkable aircraft. “To be part of such an extraordinary event in world history that will never be repeated in the same form. “I can't believe now that I was a part of it,” he said. Owen Cook was 22 years old when he was flying Lancaster bombers over Europe during the Second World War.

Owen cook mbti