At some pint roughly ten years ago I ended up with a load of magazine files from those info collecter pack things they had....They did them on dinosaurs, romans and all those sorts of things. Anyway the set I had was all about baisically war planes. One of them was about the Hopwith Camel Which if I'm right were used during WW1 by Britain. I couldn't help but notice that the plane pictured on the front was named Swillington! I was just wondering if anyone know's if there's a story behind that and if there's a link between the Village of the same name and that particular plane. I know it's not really "proper" history and has little to do with most of the stuff in this site, but I'm just dead interested as to how a fighter plane could be named after a backwater village in Yorkshire that most people have never heard of!
I can't say much about the Sopwith Camel but during WWII villages raised funds for aircraft and I know there was a Spitfire called Aberford, paid for by money raised by the village. Maybe your Camel falls in to a similar sort of thing?.
Yeah that's pretty much what I was thinking. It's amazing to think how united everyone must have been during the wars. It'd be interesting to see what would happen these days, although hopefully I'll never be unfortunate enough to find out!
I hear what you are saying with regard to 'these days' but when an outside threat is against everyone then everyone likely gets behind their defences. Seems to have been the only resort under the circumstances I guess.
When all is well with our personal little worlds then we can gripe and grumble about 'next door' or the 'government' (or lack of it!!), but wartime must have directed peoples minds onto survival of self and of circumstance. As you so rightly say - I hope I don't ever experience it either.
