It all began when a group of No 439's young Tigers came upon a picture story in the National Geographic magazine about the tiger collection of the Marharajah of Rewa, in Northern India.

The story told of His Highness' success in breeding very rare, pure white albino tigers. Two things seemed evident to the young pilots; the Marharajah of Rewa knew a great deal about the big cats; and secondly, far from being the be-whiskered, forbidding oriental potentate one might expect, His Highness looked as though he might very well turn out to be a sort of "tiger" himself if given half the chance.

On the strength of this, a delegation of the young pilots confronted their squadron commander, W/C Bell with the proposal.....