E72 - Guests: Flight Lieutenant Colin Bell DFC, WW2 Mosquito Pilot

Over the time I've been hosting this podcast, I've been very privileged to have a wide range of wonderful guests; however, this week's guest is an extremely special one even by those high standards.

Flight Lieutenant Colin Bell DFC, is a World War 2 Mosquito bomber pilot who is rapidly approaching his 104th birthday!  He is one of only very few World War 2 veterans still alive today and is still incredibly fit and active for a man of his great age.

During this conversation, Colin discusses his flying training and wartime experiences in great detail.  We also talk about his life post war and his perspectives on defence and security today, through the lens of current conflicts and geopolitical tensions facing the world as it now is.  Colin's ability to look at these modern challenges through the context of his own personal experience is immensely valuable and absolutely fascinating.

This conversation with Colin was one of the great privileges of my life and I will never forget it.  Men of his generation and calibre are sadly fewer and fewer in number and it really was an absolute joy to have the chance to listen and learn from his experiences.  I really hope you enjoy the discussion as much as I did.

You can find Colin here:

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/bellstuart21
X: https://x.com/ColinBellsrt
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/colin.bell.dfc/

Given the unique nature of this opportunity, I invited my friend and the host of the Plane Tales podcast, Nick Anderson, to join me in the interview.  Plane Tales is a standalone podcast but is also a featured segment on the excellent Airline Pilot Guy Show podcast. Nick will be releasing extracts of this full interview with some additional commentary and photographs in a 3 part podcast, which you can find on all the main podcast platforms and also via these links:

https://airlinepilotguy.com/
http://airlinepilotguy.com/planetales/