My late father Group Capt W R Sadler, told me that he had been Sir John Steel's personal pilot in the 1930s, flying him around Britain in a Hawker Hart, in which the AOC in C had a desk and would work on his papers during the flights. Was this really possible in an open cockpit aircraft? Was this really my father's job in the RAF for a while?

My father also told me that daytime navigation was helped by being able to read the names of railway stations either on their roofs, or on larger nameboards at the end of platforms, and by knowing that the crossbars on telephone poles were always on the London side of the pole. Is this really true? And when did more advanced navigation techniques replace these methods?