I took up one of our aircraft to demonstrate to my pilots just what could be done with it. In the back seat I had as a passenger Tom Purdey, my Adjutant, and thinking that thirteen might be the right number, psychologically, for such a display, I performed thirteen consecutive loops. Everything about my demonstration went off very well until I landed, and then I found that I had not warned Purdey about what I was going to do, and than he had not been strapped in. Throughout the whole of the thirteen loops he had been hanging on to the fixtures in the interior of the cockpit, and grim death had been staring him in the face. He could all too easily have fallen out, and I was very angry with myself for such thoughtlessness on my part, although Purdey, after his first fright, took it all in good spirit. My pilots, I need hardly say, were delighted with what they thought was an enormous joke.
Major Sholto Douglas, 43 Squadron, RFC Sopwith 1 1/2 Strutter
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