In response to our posts regarding the re-arranging of history -The HMS Bismark(sic)!! as example – of last Wednesday and Thursday our dispatchee offered this:
This from my dad’s anecdotes:
Amongst what the Germans had taken over when they invaded the Netherlands was the Pander factory.
Pander built ships and aircraft. A prototype of a very manoeuvrable twin fuselage fighter plane had been built, and a demonstration of its capabilities had been arranged for a group of German military big-wigs. The demonstration was held at Schiphol and my dad attended it. The Dutch test-pilot was showing off some magnificent aerial acrobatics when suddenly he took a low dive and disappeared skimming the roofs of Haarlem, destination England, never to be seen again. A dismayed German said “Der ist weg, der kommt nicht wieder!” “He’s gone, he isn’t coming back!” and dad feigning anger replied “Nein, das Schwein ist verschwunden!”
“No, the bastard has buggered off!”
Footnote:
Pander started of as a furniture factory. A Pander plane had taken part in a 1930’s air race and been destroyed. Henk Pander, the son of the founder, had been a member of the N.S.B. even before the war started and had reopened the factory with the aim of assisting the Nazis. He was arrested after the war and tried as a traitor.
Being the story teller that he was, Dad may have gilded the lily or not remembered correctly.
This I wrote in the introduction:
APRIL’07- Delving into the past has made me think about the nature of memories. A friend once told me that “your memories are your own; no one can take them off you”. This is true for as long as you are alive and have your mental faculties. As I add to this yarn, dad is both alive and retains all of his marbles.
“… muerte no llega con la vejéz, sino con el olvido…” (Su Despedida:Gabriel Gárcia Márquez)
“…death doesn’t arrive with old age, but with forgetting…” ( GGM’s ‘Letter of Farewell’ )
APRIL’07- We have all seen it: -siblings, or couples, tell of some common experience- you get continuous interjections: “No, it wasn’t like that!” “You made that up!” etc. Everyone experiences or remembers according to themselves. Memories fade or get embellished or distorted. How we ‘think’ is ever changing and affected by new experiences; thus our memories are continuously ‘re-interpreted’ or modified. To some extent we are the sum of our experiences. A truly wonderful thing…the human brain.
Sometimes, when I press dad about some detail: “did that happen before such and such or after?” “ how old were you when that happened?” he gets a pained expression on his face: “…Frenk!..dat was al zo lang geleden…” “…Frank!…that was so very long ago!…” That’s when I back off. This is meant to be fun…I have to remind myself: it’s not a task.
Strictly speaking, therefore, these stories are not necessarily what happened, but how dad remembers and tells them, and how I pass them on. Does it matter? …I don’t think so. I only hope you enjoy reading this as much as I’ve enjoyed writing it. If not… pity (je suis desolé to have wasted your time).
And this footnote:
G.M.Edelman in ‘The Remembered Present: A Biological Theory of Consciousness’(1989) wrote: “Every act of perception, is to some degree an act of creation, and every act of memory is to some degree an act of imagination” (To some degree, it could be said, I wrote the same above)
Now back in 2007 my Googling did not turn up anything about the prototype twin fuselage plane. Did Dad make it up? (everything else fits the story).
I do know that Dad’s telling of the bombing raid on Haarlem had a batch of Lancasters flying overhead. They weren’t Lancasters, they were Lockheed Venturas
http://virtueletochten.noord-hollandsarchief.nl/?pc_id=20&pp_id=101
Perhaps Cockburn and Poole can throw some light on the Pander plane?
Frank
This is all we have found, although as I write our diligent research staff promise to have extraordinary revelations for Monday, including never before seen pictures of the Pander Mk IV Experimental Aircraft.