Prince Harry and Meghan Markle have left no stone unturned by bringing the spotlight on themselves and the Royal Family. The couple and the Royal Family have been going back and forth since they stepped back from royal duties in 2020. Since then, Harry and Meghan have gone on to reveal their harsh experiences with the Royal Family in the media. Their fractured relationship has come to the light again in December 2022 when the Duke and Duchess of Sussex released their first Netflix project ‘Harry & Meghan’. It was a bombshell docuseries revealing the many unknown facets of the Royal Family.
The two-part docu-series received mixed reactions from the audience, but it created a wider fissure between the royals and Harry and Meghan. After that, the most awaited Royal memoir ‘Spare’ by Prince Harry is released on January 10th, 2023. Unfortunately, the book got leaked in Spain leading to many excerpts from the book being available to the public. Back in June 2022, Prince Harry released the synopsis which read that the memoir is going to be “a definitive account of the experiences, adventures, losses, and life lessons that have helped shape him”. But, in this tell-all memoir, one incident during his military stint did not sit well with an officer.
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Prince Harry Revealed About The ‘Suicide’ Airplane Training In ‘Spare’
When the memoir got leaked before its release, an excerpt from ‘Spare’ got leaked. Prince Harry claimed that he killed more than 24 Taliban soldiers while he was recruited as a helicopter pilot in the British Army. This was one of the many stories from his days serving the British Army. When the memoir got released, there were many similar stories of valor, experiences at the training, and the continuous media intrusion even when he was serving the country. But, one of the incidents of his near-death experience caught people’s attention.
When Harry got recruited at RAF Barkston Heath, he had an instructor named Sergeant Major Booley. In the initial introduction, he praised Mr. Booley for his calm demeanor. Harry expected him to be “a hard case” because he fought in the Balkans and Iraq. He said, “I kept expecting Booley to lose patience, to begin shouting at me, but he never did. In fact, after one session, he invited me for a motorbike ride in the country. ‘Let’s go and clear our heads, Lieutenant Wales’ “.
But, he even went on to narrate an incident during his first flight training with Firefly. He wrote, “On one of our first flights together, with no warning, Booley threw the aircraft into a stall. I felt the left wing dip, a sickening feeling of disorder, of entropy, and then, after several seconds that felt like decades, he recovered the aircraft and leveled the wings. I stared at him. What in the absolute—? Was this an aborted suicide attempt?”
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Ex-Sergeant Major Michael Booley Was “Staggered” By This Story
Prince Harry further wrote about the flight training. When Harry asked him about the “suicide attempt”, he replied with a gentle “no”. He wrote, “This was the next stage in my training. Countless things can go wrong in the air, he explained, and he needed to show me what to do—but also how to do it. Stay. Cool”. But, Michael Booley went again and took the flight to the ground, but in mid-air, he asked Harry to take control.
But, this account “shocked” Mr. Booley. He told The Mirror that it was no surprise to the trainees whatever happens in the cockpit. He said, “Whilst the book compliments me, the recollection of the sorties and lessons is inaccurate, I’m afraid. It’s important to highlight that nothing in the cockpit comes as a surprise. Every sortie is thoroughly briefed beforehand, every single aspect”.
Michael continued, “The sortie is flown exactly as per that brief. The only time there are surprises is later in the syllabus, not as stated in the book, when emergencies are introduced. Engine failures are practised before the first solo obviously, in case the student suffers one”.
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