I Love to Fly a Whitley Three

DESCRIPTION: "I love to fly a Whitley Three In daylight over Germany. I'd have the M.E.s after me, It's foolish but it's fun." "There's bags of M.E. One-One-Ohs, And M.E. One-Oh-Nines." "I love to fly a Whitley FIve." "I love to fly a Whitley Ten, I dunno where...."
AUTHOR: unknown
EARLIEST DATE: 1967 (Ward-Jackson/Lucas-AirmansSongBook); supposedly written 1941
KEYWORDS: technology pilot battle
FOUND IN:
REFERENCES (1 citation):
Ward-Jackson/Lucas-AirmansSongBook, p 164, "I Love to Fly a Whitley Three" (1 text, tune referenced)
CROSS-REFERENCES:
cf. "Ops in a Whitley" (subject of the Whitley bomber)
cf. "It's Foolish But It's Fun" (tune)
cf. "The Balloonatic's Song" (tune)
NOTES [248 words]: The source tune, "It's Foolish But It's Fun," is listed as being by Gus Kahn, Ernst Marischka, Robert Stolz; it was made popular by a 1940 recording by Deanna Durbin, apparently in the movie "Spring Parade." It begins,
I love to climb an apple tree
Though apples green are bad for me
And I'll be sick as I can be
It's foolish but it's fun.
I observe that, with a little work on the second line, this can also be sung to "The Happy Wanderer."
For background on the Whitley bomber, see the note to "Ops in a Whitley." According to Kenneth Munson, Aircraft of World War II, second edition, Doubleday, 1972, p. 25, there were only 80 Whitley Mark III's manufactured; the main production version was the Whitley Mark V, referred to in the third verse of this song; 1,476 of those were manufactured, starting in 1939. But that was the end of the line; the Whitley was a feeble enough plane that no further effort was expended on it. There was no Whitley Mark VI, let alone a Mark X. Clearly the author of the song was making jokes about the British tendency to keep tinkering with existing bad planes rather than trying to come up with something better.
The "M.E. One-One-O" is the Messerschmitt 110 heavy fighter, and the "M.E. One-O-Nine" is the Messerschmitt 109 fighter. The ME 109 was Germany's primary fighter at the time the Whitley was flying, and could easily destroy a Whitley. The ME 110 was not as good as a daytime fighter, although it eventually proved a capable night fighter. - RBW
Last updated in version 6.8
File: WJL164

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