[Dave Lefurgey]

To Wise62:
I'm familiar with the story. Fred Winterbotham talks about it in his books and so does Cotton in his own autobiography, 'Aviator Extraordinary'. I'm highly suspicious of some of the story. I don't doubt that some sort of incident happened as described, but I'm very doubtful about the part of Cotton selling seats on the aircraft. That is something a common thief or con man would do, and Cotton was anything but common. I believe my uncle was with Cotton at the time. Cotton had patents on his inventions, like the teardrop window and the Sidcot flying suit, but refused to take royalties for them since he said he didn't feel that would be right with the war on. Why would he not take money for his patented inventions, yet sell seats on his aircraft? Doesn't sound right to me. The gentleman involved in supposedly offering money to Cotton was Marcel Boussac (later founded Dupont, I think) and was a friend of Cotton's. In fact, Cotton had flown to Boussac's chateau around this time to see if Boussac had gotten out of France okay. Boussac was also a contact of Cotton's within the French gov't while he was running the PDU in France.
I'm highly suspicious of the story of Cotton considering taking money for seats on the aircraft. Remember, there were elements within the Royal Air Force that hated Cotton because of his unconventional style, success with the PDU as he embarrassed them on many occassions. They said it couldn't be done and Cotton did it. There was a group that trumped up false espionage charges against Cotton and it took the personal intervention of Churchill to stop it, but even Churchill couldn't stop everything. After Cotton left the PDU he was involved in other activities with the Ministry of Aircraft Production and obtained an aircraft and modified it. Some unknown person in an RAF pilot's uniform went to the hanger and pulled the landing gear lever while the aircraft was on the ground and caused severe damage. The aircraft was repaired and placed at a different airfield. Then exactly the same thing happened a second time. Later in the war, Cotton tried to leave England and discovered that the RAF Air Ministry had put a ban on him and he wasn't allowed to leave the country. Churchill phoned and told the Air Ministry they had exactly 15 minutes to remove the ban. They did. With these kind of things happening and the extreme bureaucratic revenge being attempted on Cotton, it doesn't stretch the imagination to think that whoever was after Cotton also planted false stories and lies about him. Other lies had been planted, but were disproved. Maybe the story of him accepting money for aircraft rides out of France was another one of those lies.
I can see Cotton perhaps giving a ride to a business friend and using that in future business deals, but to take a handful of cash for a seat doesn't seem anything like his style.
Fred Winterbotham, who was Cotton's commanding officer during the SIS pre-war spy flights was very angry at Cotton, too. When war started and the RAF took over their spy unit, Winterbotham was replaced by Cotton as the commander. A few weeks earlier Cotton had bypassed Winterbotham on another mission and Winterbotham was very angry about that. It wasn't until a while after the war that Winterbotham and Cotton would speak to each other and became friends again.
Thank you for the input. I will get hold of a copy of the book you mentioned by Anthony Cave Brown and see what it has to say.