Jim Farrow’s war as a navigator had got off to quite a start. Before he’d even qualified, he’d dragged an injured pilot out of his seat and landed the aircraft by himself.

When he was transferred to a Hampden squadron, someone told him that if the same thing happened again, he didn’t stand a chance of getting the pilot away from the controls – for the Hampden cockpit was only three feet across. “Flying coffins,” they called them.

Then one day it happened…