65 years on.........

The answer is that some can and some can't.

But, 65 years after the event, it provides a wonderful topic of lunch-time conversation for three RAF veterans who first met as young men at RAF Cardington in Bedfordshire when they enlisted.

The year was 1942. Following initial training which involved the inevitable "square-bashing," all three were posted to RAF Locking in Somerset to train as Flight Mechanics.

On completion of their 28-week course, all three qualified as Airmen 1st Class.

But this resulted in all three being sent on a Fitter conversion course - but each to a different school.

Malcolm White, having been accepted for aircrew duty as a Flight Engineer, went to RAF Innsworth in Gloucestershire.

Ted Baxter went to RAF Halton in Bedfordshire.

Sandy Harding went to RAF Cosford.

Ted was later posted to North Africa where he worked in Bizerta on Wellingtons in a former airship hanger so riddled with machine gun holes that it let in the rain.

Sandy was posted to India. He ended his post-war career in local government as chief executive of Rother District Council.

He was chairman and secretary of Bexhill branch of the Royal Air Forces Association and the spirited editor of the branch magazine The Albatross before moving with his wife to Gloucester.

Malcolm White drew the short straw.

He was shot down on his first operation...

Last Friday when the threesome, plus their wives Joan, Bobbie and Molly, met up at Bexhill RAFA Club for a reunion lunch during which the banter dodged between Malcolm's ill-luck and the fact while Ted was unable to crawl through the 13-inch access hole to check the wing-nuts inside the wings of Vickers Wellington bombers the young Sandy was physically ideally-suited for the task...

After six and a half decades, Malcolm is still philosophical about the hand war-time fate dealt him.

Malcolm was sent to RAF Wickenby in Lincolnshire. When another Flight Engineer broke a leg in a motor accident, Malcolm was assigned to a crew in his place.

The mission to bomb Dusseldorf was doomed from the start. Soon after take-off the aircraft developed a fault in the oxygen supply. Then the engines began overheating. The skipper had to throttle back, causing them to fall behind the main bomber stream and struggling to reach the designated 20,000 ft height.

Malcolm recalls: "It was bright moonlight by that time and we got picked up by searchlight or two.

"The pilot went into a corkscrew then a Ju 88 came into attack, but the gunners saw him, firing back and we seemed to lose him."

The nightfighter latched onto Malcolm's aircraft again as it pulled away after making its bombing run.

The aircraft was riddled with cannon fire.

"The pilot was corkscrewing as best he could, but the fighter raked us from end to end and the whole of the back of the aircraft was on fire as well as the port wing.

"I could hear the thump of the explosions. The gunners were shouting instructions to the pilot, but then ended up screaming. Their turrets were alight and they were trapped..."

Malcolm baled out and came down in a field, minus one flying boot, and was captured. He was interrogated by the Gestapo and felt the wrath of German civilians for whom - forgetting the Luftwaffe's trail of destruction - downed Allied aircrew were "terror fliers."

Last Friday Malcolm recalled ruefully: "We had done a test on G-George the day before. I had failed it then because it was over-heating....."

Five colleagues died as the Lancaster blew apart.

"I didn't 'bale out' - I was blown out.

"All I got was a bruise on my forehead where the parachute opened."