- 10 minutes ago
Category
😹
FunTranscript
00:00In this episode, in front of me is a patch, a badge...
00:05Well, I know a lot about it because it's mine and he's nicked it.
00:09An extremely special watch.
00:11Looks expensive, I can tell you that.
00:14If you could find an original A2 jacket with a Hell's Angels on it,
00:19it would be priceless.
00:25Hello and welcome to Battle Treasures.
00:27I'm Jason Fox and joining me is an Englishman whose home is his battlefield.
00:33The Colossus of Collectors, Bruce Compton.
00:36Thank you, Jason. Much appreciated.
00:38Now, Uncle Ed, what have you got for us today?
00:42So, you two, being soldiers, we've done a lot of army, military stories
00:48and I thought it was the turn of the Air Forces.
00:52Freddie, would you like to get the first artefact, please?
00:55I have to say, with this one, you'll see why we have cheated a little.
01:00Cheated?
01:01Yeah.
01:02You don't seem like that song of a person, Ed.
01:05Okay.
01:07So, in front of me is a patch, a badge, got written on it, Caterpillar Club.
01:14And there is an aircraft and two parachutists either side of the words Caterpillar Club.
01:21Well, I know a lot about it because it's mine and he's nicked it, right?
01:26Oh, is that why you said it's a cheat?
01:28It's a cheat.
01:28It's out of my collection.
01:30It's a Caterpillar Club badge.
01:32Genuinely, we were going around looking for different examples of Caterpillar Club,
01:36but such a good one, that one, because it's so unique.
01:40Yeah.
01:40So, I decided to use that.
01:41Now, the Caterpillar Club is an exclusive club that you can only become a member of
01:47if you've jumped out of a stricken aircraft with a parachute and survived.
01:54Now, during the Second World War, thousands of people joined, but you had to be falling out of a disabled
02:02plane and survived.
02:04And it still exists today, the Caterpillar Club.
02:06Still exists today.
02:07Other parachute companies have now joined onto it, but it was originally started by the Irving Back Caterpillar Club.
02:13Now, the reason it's called a Caterpillar Club is because the Caterpillar produces silk.
02:19Silk produces parachutes, and that's where the original Caterpillar Forum come for to join this club.
02:27Because a lot of people, they kind of commissioned their own badges.
02:31So, there's not an actual official Caterpillar Club?
02:35Yes.
02:35Yeah, there is.
02:36So, it was formed in 1922 by Leslie Irving, who used to make the Irving Parachutes.
02:44So, they were the first free-fall parachutes.
02:47And people used to write in to Irving, who parachuted out, and they would send snippets of their parachute going,
02:56thank you so much for saving my life.
02:58So, that's how the club first started.
03:01During the war, an RAF Sergeant bailed out of a blazing Lancaster without a parachute, fell thousands of feet, hit
03:12some pine trees, fell into the snow, survived, got put in a POW camp.
03:17After the war, applied to become a member, and they knocked him back because he didn't have a parachute on.
03:22Rightly so.
03:23But who dishes out these club badges nowadays?
03:29The Caterpillar Club.
03:30Oh, so it is.
03:30It's an official club.
03:31You can apply to them.
03:33But the restrictions on joining are really, really, you've got to have absolute proof.
03:38Who runs it?
03:39It's a group of people that still got, behind them, three parachute companies now.
03:45The Irving Parachute organization, the GS, and another.
03:49So, between the three of them, they still run this club.
03:52You get a lovely tie, they have annual meetings, but to join, you've got a nearly survived death.
03:59It's got a pretty exclusive membership as well.
04:02Yeah.
04:02You've got a president, you've got George H.W. Bush, he was a member of the Caterpillar Club.
04:07You've got Jimmy Stewart, the movie star.
04:10Obviously, Douglas Bader, the RAF pilot with no legs.
04:14Jimmy Doolittle.
04:15Yeah.
04:16So, hang on a minute, why is old H.W. Bush in there?
04:19He ejected.
04:20Did he really?
04:21Yeah.
04:21I never knew that.
04:22Oh, I feel like I should have known that.
04:24Yeah.
04:24Yeah, he did.
04:26What I will just quickly say, there is another club called the Goldfish Club, which if you survived
04:32parachuting out, surviving that, and then survived in a dinghy, you can join the Goldfish Club.
04:37So, there's all these weird clubs.
04:38How many days do you have to be in the dinghy?
04:40Well, you've just got to survive it, to be quite honest.
04:42Yeah.
04:43Imagine being stuck in a dinghy with Bruce.
04:45Yeah.
04:45Yeah, lovely.
04:46I mean, you'd come out a font of knowledge.
04:50Totally.
04:52So, Jason, have you ever done a parachute jump?
04:55Well, I've done a lot of parachute jumps in my time.
04:59I've had a few sketchy ones.
05:00There was one, we were doing what is called Hayhoe.
05:04So, it's a high altitude, high opening, and you spend a lot of time under canopy.
05:09You'd be up at the altitude that you jump, so you can be from 15 up to 20, 25 grand,
05:1625,000 feet.
05:17That's amazing.
05:18You jump out, and your initial leg, because it's all planned properly, your initial leg is downwind.
05:23And up there, underneath canopy, full drive, that means you're going full speed ahead.
05:29Yeah.
05:30You can be clocking 120 miles an hour.
05:32No way.
05:32So, you'll cover ground.
05:33And you've got, like, breathing apparatus.
05:34Yeah, you've got breathing apparatus.
05:35You've got a board mounted on your front with a map, GPS.
05:39Yeah.
05:39So, you'll have your main...
05:41Your parachute should open.
05:42Oh, God.
05:43You sort of...
05:44You do your test and adjust, make sure it all works, and then you look down, you're like,
05:47oh, right, I need to...
05:48You know your first bearings.
05:49You're like, oh, right, I'm doing first bearing of 120 degrees, and I'm going for a period of time.
05:56And then there'll be another change of direction, then another change of direction,
05:58as you come into your landing pad.
05:59But on this occasion, we were...
06:02I think it was something like 15, 16,000 foot jump.
06:05And with the BT-80 shoe, because it's a big...
06:07It's a big beast.
06:08It's there to support you and your kit at altitude.
06:11It is a slower open.
06:13So, most, I think that...
06:15Most are about, like...
06:16Is it a three count?
06:17Yeah.
06:18Three count.
06:19Some squares are a five count.
06:21This bad boy is an eight count.
06:22So, I'm there.
06:23I've jumped.
06:23I'm doing the eight count, 1,000, 2,000, which is long anyway.
06:27I don't like it.
06:28Yeah, it's like really long.
06:29It's a long count.
06:30And then I've looked up, and there's nothing there.
06:33By that stage, it should have fully formed.
06:34It's popped up.
06:35I grab the toggles and start trying to get control of the parachute.
06:39And it's like a bag of dirty washing, just flapping in the wind, and I can feel myself going.
06:44And I don't know what it was, but I think it was the adrenaline where I just kept counting.
06:48I'm like 10,000, 12,000, and so on and so forth.
06:51And it got to 25, and I'm thinking...
06:53So, you're falling for like 25 seconds now.
06:56The initial drill on a parachute that's not fully formed is you get the steering toggles, the risers, and you
07:02just start pumping it.
07:03So, it allows air to pop the cells, and it opens up.
07:07Oh, I see.
07:08So, I've started...
07:09I can remember just doing this.
07:10As I'm still counting, and it must...
07:12If anyone was able to see me, which was obviously they weren't, it must have looked like I was trying
07:15to fly.
07:15I was like literally looking up, and I...
07:19The drill that I should...
07:20The drill that should have been carried out is if you don't get a parachute under it in eight seconds.
07:26Yeah.
07:26You cut that away.
07:28Yeah.
07:28You get rid of what would essentially be the good parachute.
07:31You go into another stage of free fall, then you pull your reserve.
07:35So, I'm like counting, flapping, and in the end, eventually it just popped out.
07:39By the time the chute had fully formed, I'm below the first layer of cloud.
07:43Jesus.
07:44The rest of the...
07:45We're on comp, so we can talk.
07:46I'm like, lads, I ain't got a Scooby where I am.
07:49Has anyone seen me?
07:50And they're like, nah, just go.
07:51We'll meet you on the DZ.
07:53So, off I went.
07:54I was on my own.
07:54It was quite nice, actually.
07:56It was peaceful.
07:56So, you must have got there like ahead of all the others if they had drifted around.
08:00Well, my worry was I wasn't going to have enough altitude to gain the ground, but we'd sort of like
08:06overcompensated with altitude.
08:08But, yeah, eventually I think the lowest level of cloud on that jump was, I think it was like 500
08:13feet.
08:14So, even at like a thousand, couldn't see the DZ and you're thinking, I hope I'm in the right place.
08:18The GPS is telling me and then you pop out under 500 feet like that.
08:21Thank God for that.
08:22No good comes from parachuting, I'm telling you.
08:28So, moving on.
08:30How much is this worth and how much can some of them fetch?
08:35Okay.
08:35So, that particular badge, I purchased at auction and I gave £320 for it.
08:41You can buy the lapel badges and the little blazer badges.
08:45You can buy them for anything about £180 to £200.
08:50But if you go up for the gold ones, they come to more money.
08:53So, you can go up to £300, £400 for those.
08:56Now, what's interesting, if you buy them with a copy of the membership certificate and the provenance, that puts the
09:05price up.
09:05So, my expert said £1,000 plus.
09:09No.
09:10But in all fairness, he did say with provenance.
09:16I didn't know that you didn't have the provenance.
09:18No, I've got no provenance with it.
09:19But with provenance, they can go for a lot of money.
09:22It's a good looking badge.
09:23Yeah, it really is.
09:24Other than your collection, where else are you going to be able to see one of these?
09:27Again, RAF Hendon, RAF Cosford, East Kirby Museum up in Lincolnshire.
09:35They've got a beautiful display of everything to do with the RAF and things like the Caterpillar Club badge and
09:42also the Goldfish Bowl Club.
09:44What's next on the agenda, Ed?
09:46So, I promise you I haven't cheated with any of the other artefacts.
09:50Okay.
09:50We've got a couple of crackers.
09:52Coming up, Jason gets his hands on a very, very expensive jacket.
09:59Original ones are fetching top, top money.
10:03An awesome bit of kit.
10:16Welcome back to part two of this episode of Battle Treasures and Ed, what's in store?
10:22Freddie, would you like to get out the watch?
10:27Looks expensive, I can tell you that.
10:30This is obviously not a watch.
10:32It's a box with Bremont written on it.
10:36Inside though, there is an extremely special watch.
10:41This is an MB series Bremont.
10:45This one's actually an MB-1 and these are offered to pilots who have ejected using a Martin Baker ejector
10:52seat.
10:53And they're pretty rare for obvious reasons.
10:56You can't buy these specific ones off the shelf.
11:00And the way that they're identified is on the back it's got MB-1 engraved and then it will have
11:05the number, the serial number of the watch.
11:07And it will have a red, a red case there that you can see.
11:13Yeah, so the number actually that's engraved is the number of the Tie Club.
11:19So if you eject, just like the Caterpillar Club we talked about, if you eject you become a member of
11:27the Martin Baker Tie Club.
11:29And actually Freddie, so Martin Baker have been really generous and they're giving you a gift here of the Tie
11:35Club to add to your collection.
11:37Oh, we don't get to keep the watch.
11:39You don't get to keep the watch, I'm afraid.
11:41It's a bit like the Caterpillar Club.
11:42Yeah, that's alright, that'll do with me.
11:43So if you open it up, you'll see inside what you get.
11:47You can see there's a little badge.
11:52Yeah, it's in the badge, you've got a badge.
11:55And then you open up, there's a tie and a patch and a certificate.
11:59That's very generous of them, I must say.
12:01Yeah, well it's great.
12:02It's an amazing story actually.
12:04So they've saved, Martin Baker seats have saved over 7,789 lives.
12:11Being ejected out of one of the Martin Baker ejector seats must have been a traumatic experience.
12:17I've got a picture of an ejection.
12:21Look at that.
12:22So those two jets, I mean, that's got to hurt, right?
12:26It looks cool though.
12:28But that's an incredible watch.
12:29It's a beautiful watch, honestly, it's a lovely watch.
12:32And well deserved for anybody that's gone through the trauma of having a eject out of an aircraft like that.
12:38I've got nothing but respect for them.
12:39I might know a little bit about the old Bremont watch, but I don't know how much this costs.
12:44Yeah, good point.
12:45Could you hazard a guess?
12:49I reckon that's got to be, to buy one, I'm going to say six and a half grand.
12:56Have you been cheating and looking at my notes?
13:00How much?
13:01That's exactly right.
13:01Six and a half grand.
13:02If you've got the provenance and you've managed to find, you know, I'm not aware of anyone that's ever sold
13:10their ejector seat watch.
13:12But if they did and ever came onto the public market, then that's what the expert says.
13:17He agreed with you.
13:18Six and a half grand.
13:19But it's a beautiful item.
13:21I've got to be honest with you.
13:21Well done, Ed.
13:22That's very, very nice.
13:24But I'm reluctant to, you know, put it back in the box here.
13:27Let's go for the next one.
13:29The jacket.
13:30The jacket.
13:31The jacket.
13:32Yeah.
13:33Nice.
13:34Right.
13:34What we've got here is a leather jacket.
13:38And I've just noticed that there is something written on the back of it.
13:44I think it says El Flacco.
13:49I don't know anything about that.
13:51Well, let me just tell you, this is what's called an A2 flying jacket.
13:55So it was a standard issue for American airmen before and during the Second World War.
14:00So the name on the back actually denotes the name of the plane.
14:05Then all of the crews would have their leather jackets painted with the same emblem.
14:11So El Flacco would have been on the plane.
14:14El Flacco would have been on the jackets.
14:17Now, it's not that elaborate.
14:18Some of them had really unbelievably painted jackets.
14:22This is quite straightforward, but it represents what was on the side of the plane.
14:27Probably one of the most famous, as you'll know, are the Hells Angels.
14:32The Hells Angels were a bomber crew from the Second World War.
14:35And the whole idea of the Hells Angels logo was painted on the back of one of these jackets.
14:41If you can find an original A2 jacket with the Hells Angels on,
14:46it would be priceless.
14:48It would just be ridiculous.
14:49Now, these jackets are highly desirable.
14:52You can buy new ones.
14:54There are numerous companies that buy them, but they're a beautiful piece
14:57that really represent the tightness of a crew during the Second World War.
15:02And if I just turn that over, okay.
15:07Okay.
15:08This jacket, I know a bit about El Flacco.
15:12El Flacco and the aircraft was a B-24 bomber based at Old Buckingham during the Second World War.
15:21And it's got a very unhappy history, unfortunately.
15:27It was an aircraft that had been considered really, really lucky.
15:32It carried out 77 missions.
15:35Now, that was a hell of a lot.
15:37And don't forget, they were bombing during the daylight.
15:39So, to carry out 77 missions was incredible.
15:43What happened was, on the 78th mission, it had a completely new crew.
15:48And it took off to a raid in Germany.
15:51And unfortunately, with a full bomb load, an 88mm shell went through the centre of the plane
15:58and it exploded and broke in two.
16:01And all 10 members of the crew were killed.
16:04Now, this jacket belonged to another member of the crew that had carried out his 25 missions in El Flacco
16:14before he stood down.
16:16After 25 missions, he stood down.
16:18So, this was a member of the crew that flew in El Flacco prior to the crew that unfortunately blew
16:26up.
16:26Yeah, so the crew that rotated out, they had a very close call because they'd done one more mission.
16:31The Flacco went and exploded all the bombs in the Bombay.
16:36And nobody survived.
16:38A very sad story.
16:40Interesting, the actual base it was based on.
16:42Old Buckingham is not too far away.
16:44Fantastic museum over there, run by a guy called Jim Clary.
16:48You had some quite famous people over there.
16:50Jimmy Stewart flew from there.
16:52I'm interested, like, who names the aircraft El Flacco?
16:55Okay, the crew, so the first crew that took it.
16:58So, a brand new plane.
16:59Yeah, brand new plane arrived up there and started its first mission.
17:02So, the first crew that were put together were very, very much bonded together.
17:07We've got a picture of El Flacco.
17:09It's pretty cool.
17:11Look at that.
17:11That's the original plane.
17:13I think that was taken really close to its last ever mission.
17:18Because if you look, look at the decals on the side there, Bruce.
17:23Yeah.
17:24The number of missions that have been denoted by the bombs painted on the side.
17:28A couple of cool dudes there, aren't they?
17:30Yeah.
17:30I don't know whether they were the crew, the new crew.
17:35No, they weren't.
17:36I just came up.
17:37There's 54.
17:38So, it crashed on its 78th mission.
17:41Right, okay.
17:42So, this was one of the crews prior to it obviously being knocked out.
17:45So, that's a B-24 Liberator, which is different from the B-17s.
17:50This plane, in all fairness, people compare it.
17:54Obviously, you always compare it with the B-17.
17:56It was a much better, sturdier plane.
17:58It could take much more, much more damage than a B-17.
18:03It could carry a much heavier bomb load.
18:05It was a cracking aircraft.
18:07But again, going back to the A-2 jackets, everybody loves these.
18:12You can buy new ones.
18:14I know people that would decorate them for you however you want.
18:17But again, original ones are fetching top, top money now.
18:22Because all air crews, be it in the Far East, out in China, the Flying Tigers,
18:27everybody decorated the back.
18:31An awesome bit of kit.
18:33However, how much?
18:37Okay.
18:38These vary a lot because of the different type of what's on the back,
18:44what unit they come from, you know, B-17, B-24, fighter wings.
18:48Fighter wings go for a lot of money.
18:51Well, when you say fighter wings, they're like the Mustang pilots.
18:54The Mustangs, okay.
18:55The P-47s, those type of Thunderbolts, those type of things.
18:59Fighter wings, they tend to get a higher price.
19:02Why?
19:03Because they were smaller groups of them.
19:06Yeah.
19:06So those units command a higher price.
19:09And I personally value that with the history behind it.
19:16Actually, that makes a difference.
19:17I'd put that at £3,000.
19:21And our expert in the corner.
19:24Yeah.
19:25Well, actually, so the independent expert thought around about £2,500.
19:31Worth a bit of cash.
19:32Where can people go and see these?
19:34You can actually see this jacket at the 453 bomber group at Old Buckingham.
19:41Jim Clary is the curator over there.
19:43And he's dedicated his life to building an unbelievable museum over there,
19:48all by himself.
19:49And he's got artefacts in there that will just make you want to draw and start collecting.
19:55He's a wonderful guy, very knowledgeable.
19:58And anybody that knows any of the history about that base,
20:01he's the man that can't see them.
20:02Bruce, I've actually got a map here that shows just how many bomb groups around East Anglia.
20:08Oh, fantastic.
20:10Now, this actually depicts what people commonly know as Little America.
20:16This whole area was predominantly American Air Force bases.
20:21Bomber Command was set up in Lincolnshire.
20:24There were a few bases here, but that shows you, and that we refer to as Little America.
20:30So this is Bomber Territory.
20:32Yeah, very much so.
20:33Big time.
20:33Very, very much so.
20:34This has been such a great episode, actually.
20:36This is great.
20:37It's great to feature this because, again, it tells you about the contribution
20:43that those young American airmen did during the Second World War.
20:47So I'm very pleased that you've included that.
20:50Great.
20:50Yeah, decent up, lads.
20:51Thanks very much.
20:52And we'll see you again for the next episode of Battle Treasures.
20:56See you in a bit.
20:57Thank you very much.
20:58See you in a bit.
21:02You're welcome.
21:04Bye.
21:09Bye.
21:11Bye.
21:19Bye.
21:21Bye.
21:34Transcription by CastingWords
Comments