When checking through the pages of our old website, in search of images of Pathfinders wearing their PFF badges post-war, I found one of Charles Owen, an outstanding pilot and captain with 97 Squadron in the Pathfinders, 1943-1944. (Note: For an artistic representation of an RAF officer wearing his PFF badge in the 1960s, see A War Artist and the Pathfinders.)

The photograph, which is actually a still from a film, shows Owen wearing his Pathfinder eagle in September 1958, when he was commanding a Victor squadron, 10 Squadron at RAF Cottesmore.

The source is a British Movietone archive film: The Victor Operational. The interviewer is Johnnie Johnson (James Edgar Johnson), a very famous and successful wartime fighter pilot who remained in the RAF after the war and would end up as an Air Vice Marshal. He is thought to have been the Station Commander of RAF Cottesmore at the time of the interview.

At one point in the interview, Johnson asks Owen about the Lancaster and Owen replies:

The Lanc was a wonderful airplane, but it was very cold, very noisy, and it was really quite hard work. Nowadays … we can really go to war in comfort.

JENNIE MACK GRAY