. . . On most Sundays we were free of duties, and my father would collect me, and some of the others, to go home for the day. already lasting friendships were forming in the groups, and I teamed up with Corran Ashworth - known as 'Ash' - a man of considerable charm and ability, and a very good pilot. His instructor was called ‘Butch’ Baines, because of his tendency to turn purple when he wound himself into a rage. Ash trudged away from a Moth one morning grinning widely, but with a pale and subdued instructor. The flying exercise had been spinning, and recovering from the spin. Ash had pulled the nose of the aircraft up until it was stalled, but was not applying rudder (to cause the spin) to the satisfaction of his instructor. ‘Boot it on – hard – like this’ yelled Butch lunging at a rudder pedal. With the Moth spinning earthward he then roared: “Right – recover and pull out.’ He was one of those annoying instructors who sometimes kept his hand and feet on the controls while the pupil was in action, and after several turns in the spin he started raving at Ash to pull out. Ash yelled back, ‘Get your bloody feet off the rudders.’
The panic set in. Butch had jammed the sole of his flying boot between the rudder bar and the side of the cockpit, and there was no way it could be withdrawn. In desperation he released his safety harness, wrenched his foot out of the flying boot, then tore the boot forward and clear of the rudder bar with his hands. Ash corrected the spin and only pulled out of the dive ‘scraping the daisies.’ After they landed Butch actually apologized to Ash.

from Johnnie Houlton's book 'Spitfire Strikes' pages 19 - 20

. . . Ash had just returned from North Africa, and came to stay for a week with me at Hornchurch before starting his official rest period, and had also been commissioned. Since we had gone our different ways a year and a half before, Ash had been flying strafing Hurricanes with four 20-mm guns, and ‘tank busters’ which were fitted with a 37-mm gun under each wing. The weight and drag of these artillery pieces pulled the performance of the Hurricane right down, and there were only a few rounds per gun, which had to be reloaded for each salvo by a remote control from the cockpit. When fired, the recoil of these heavy-calibre guns knocked 30 mph off the aircraft, but the results were often spectacular. Ash had been on a convoy patrol north of Algiers in one of these tank busters when a Ju-88 dropped out of cloud in front of him, to begin a bombing run on the ships. Sighting very carefully Ash fired his two-round broadside, and the Ju-88 disintegrated, probably the only time those guns were ever used in the air-to-air role.

from Johnnie Houlton's book 'Spitfire Strikes' page 147