A FIGHTER IN MY SIGHTS - SIGNED BY TOM NEIL

Since the age of 13, Tom Neil always had "A Fighter in my Sights". In those exciting pre-war years, first it was the pugnacious Bristol Bulldog, then the slim, rapier-like Hawker Fury, and later still, Gloster's cowled and exciting Gauntlet and Gladiator. Finally, came the new ear's Hurricane and Spitfire. Then, with the outbreak of war, his 'sight' became a more tangible thing of metal and glass, the centre pink dot of which he endlessly sought to place - often without success! - on Germany's minnow-like ME109, with its yellow nose and sinister black crosses. Now, alas, almost all have faded into the past so that only the music of their engines, the tug of their slipstreams in his hair, the whiff of their exhaust smoke, and the pugnant aromas of their cockpits aand painted wings, remain nostalgic memories.