THIS month we’re celebrating the Christmas Season with The Coffin Crew! Yes, Arch Whitehouse’s hell-raising Handley Page bomber crew! Piloting the bus is the mad Englishman, Lieutenant Graham Townsend, with the equally mad Canadian Lieutenant Phil Armitage serving as reserve pilot and bombing officer with Private Andy McGregor, still wearing his Black Watch kilts, rounding out the front end crew in the forward gun turret. And don’t forget the silent fighting Irishman Sergeant Michael Ryan, usually dragging on his short clay pipe while working over the toggle board dropping the bombs with Alfred Tate and crazy Australian Andy Marks or Horsey Horlick manning the rear gun turret.

When it was all over, the members of the Coffin Crew realized that Corporal Andy McGregor had had good reason for his actions, and of the three things that happened any one might have provided the clue to his strange behavior. First, there was a letter postmarked Monymusk which Lieutenant Townsend remembered was a small town near Aberdeen. Secondly, Andy had shown unusual interest in an American regiment that was heading for the front line and the special interest Andy had taken in the arrival of a new officer, an American Air Corps captain. But the Coffin Crew did not remember these trifling events when Andy went “barmy”!

From the pages of the March 1937 number of the British Air Stories, it’s Arch Whitehouse’s Coffin Crew in “Tartan Flight!”

Into the Very Shadow of Death Flew the Coffin Crew, the Craziest Band of Warriors in the Independent Air Force, to Discover the Secret of that Sinister Mound of the Dead, Hill 60, and its Strange Effect upon Corporal Andy McGregor, Aerial Gunner!

• Download “Tartan Flight” (March 1937, Air Stories)

Be sure to drop by Friday for one last mad cap romp through hell skies with the Coffin Crew!