Personality profile
No questions asked, we just did it by Robin J Brooks
Seventy two years ago the skies above Kent and Sussex were filled with the vapour trails of a conflict taking place high above. Against a numerically superior enemy, what Winston Churchill called ‘the Few’ and the chief of Fighter Command, Hugh Dowding, called ‘his chicks’, young men were fighting to protect
Englands green and pleasant land. What we lacked in aircraft numbers we
benefited from a quality of airmanship both on the ground and in the air. These young men of the time are now elderly and are recognised as heroes
of their time. One such man lives quietly in the village of Bearsted and was recently awarded an Honorary Freedom of the Borough of Maidstone. His name is Flight Lieutenant James ‘Jimmy’ Corbin DFC.
Now aged 95, he was one of a number of pilots who in 1942 each contributed a chapter to a book titled ‘Ten Fighter Boys’ which has since become a classic history of the Battle of Britain. In 2007 Jimmy wrote his own sequel titled ‘Last of the Ten Fighter Boys’ which indeed he is as sadly the other contributors have all passed away.
A former pupil of Maidstone Technical School, he
became a school teacher when he obtained his teaching diploma in July 1938. With the threat of war coming ever closer Jimmy applied and was accepted into the Royal Air Force Volunteer Reserve. With the rank of Sergeant, he learnt to fly at Rochester Airport with No. 23 Elementary and Reserve Flying Training School before moving on
Opposite: William James (Jimmy) Corbin DFC on the occasion of his admission to the Freedom of the Borough of Maidstone, (and below), Sgt Jimmy Corbin in his Spitfire.
4 Mid Kent Living
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