Bernie Gunn ‘Tales of the Air’
Bernie Gunn’s ‘Tales of the Air’ recounts Gunn’s memories from flight training in Dunedin and his understanding of aircraft at that time. The documents were gifted to the Upper Clutha History Society in 1995.
Minor edits have been made to spelling and grammar. All place names have been left as they were written, meaning macrons have not been included and Albert Town appears as it was originally written - Alberttown
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However much reading one might have done as a child of Albert Ball, McCudden, Billy Bishop, and others, aeroplanes did not come our way until long after the Great War. In about 1928 we visited friends down below the Luggate Bridge and the grownups kept looking in the sky as it was rumoured a real aeroplane was going to fly from Dunedin to Hawea. Finally a buzzing was heard and a small aircraft flew over very high in the sky, about the size of a sparrow hawk, but it made the others very excited.
Finaly the great Kingsford Smith came to Cromwell in the Southern Cross and took people for joy rides at five pounds a time. One of our friends, I think perhaps Joan Scaife, went up but did seem very impressed having not climbed above the mountains.
In 1939, Ian Ross, the eldest son of Lady Ross, flew over in what may have been a Tiger Moth, though my memory is of a single engine biplane but with less clean lines, perhaps a Wapiti or Wildebeeste. They circled the house at about fifty feet waving to us all and we waved back madly. It seemed incredible that a man could travel at that speed, as he was out of sight over Wanaka in a few minutes.
As the war progressed, Derek joined the RNZAF and our weekly thrill consisted of running the mile to our letter box at the bridge and recognising his handwriting on a letter. His letters of adventures from Woodburn, the Delta, Wigram and Harewood and his tales of Tiger Moths, Harvards and other machines were supplemented by the odd posed photograph of a proud airman standing on a wing or in front of a propellor.
At the age of fifteen or sixteen, I joined the Air Training Corps but being in the country it was mainly a correspondence course, but I was sent weekly brown envelopes on "Theory of Flight", "Aircraft Engines", "Navigation" and who could have guessed how useful some them have been. Navigation is much the same on the ground or in the air and navigating across the Antarctic with a bubble sextant or across the Pacific with my Plath, or taking a Cessna on a cross country, one still uses the basic course-track vectors that were first encountered in the ATC. Even if one uses a GPS, the basics remain the same.
At long last after all their awful medicals and a trip to Cromwell to sit an ATC exam which I passed, it became "Report to RNZAF, Dunedin", and all the lads of Course 66 lined up and were dished up kitbags of not-too closely fitting clothing, Number One Blues, Battledress and Boots, Sheepskin, Airmen for the use of as they were invariably listed. Helmets were specially fitted, goggles regular issue and I think overalls for flying in, worn over our regular uniform. Perhaps, most important because of the cold drizzly weather, was a heavy greatcoat. Why the JFT (Junior Flying Training) schools on the Delta near Blenheim with its much better climate and flying weather were not retained, or even a new aerodrome, say near Omarama, was not built is difficult to understand. Course 66 was the first to be made up entirely of Air Training Corps graduates, so we probably had the youngest average age of any intake in the course of the war, a fact resented by some as we heard sniffy remarks about "just a bunch of school kids!" from time to time.
We were marched down the street to the station and en-trained for Taieri Airstation. The train stopped on the line and hundreds of airmen dropped off clutching kitbags and bawling sergeants lined us up and we were marched off, "By the left, quick march." No one explained that "by the left" meant in time with the man on the left and, under the impression it meant begin with the left foot, for some time I was baffled as to why "By the right, quick march!" seemed to leave me out of step.
We were billeted in "Boom Town" which indeed looked like Gold Rush days, with rows of huts, two men to a hut. At least they had electric light and a floor, and being "Gentlemen of the Airforce" and not Army, we had sheets. The muddy road to Boom Town was lined with hundreds of incredibly fit-looking young men in rumpled uniforms who chanted "You'll be Sorry!" and appeared to find our uncouth and unmilitary style hilariously funny. A few months later we rolled in the gutter at the mawkish appearance of the next draft.
"Halt! Squad will turn-to-the-right-in-columns-of-three-right-TURRN!" Most of the others had done drill in the ATC and could turn fairly smartly and slowly I caught on.
"Gunn, B and Gardner, J.G., Hut 36!" bawled a Sergeant and soon I was shaking hands with a dark young man who was to share the hut for the next six months. Whether you liked or could tolerate your hut-mate was a matter of extreme indifference to the Air Force, fortunately neither of us were exactly loquacious and we got on well enough. The sound of a siren and the sound of crashing boots, Airmen for the use of, warned us that dinner was on, and we snatched up plates, one, and a knife, fork and spoon and dashed for the cookhouse. It was the inevitable "Never mind what it is, get it inter yer!" if one asked what might be on the menu.
There was an odd greenish drink in jugs.
"I wouldn't advise drinking that, old chap!" said an older APUT (Airman Pilot Under Training) with an intelligent face and a broad smile, "That stuff is guaranteed to destroy your sexual life for ever!"
Not having the faintest idea what he meant, I could only stammer and push it away. It was widely believed to be laced with all kinds of hormones to control the reproductive urges of the ranks of cannon fodder, but if so it was remarkably ineffective if one could believe the gossip of some of our wilder members.
In some fashion I fell into a group of street-wise city sophisticates lead by a Wellington Street urchin (or so he must have been once) called Dum Mace, a tall comical character with inexhaustible funny stories, usually highly obscene, and a leaning towards drinking and women of any kind whatever. "Weka" Keowan from Southland was of rather similar inclinations, but Gardner, J.G., Gardner, G.M.,Hedley, R.B. and Malmo, G.R also part of the group were of less extreme disposition. I think we were in the same Flight as all our names were either G's or M's or H's.
One day someone said, "What's the name of that big splodge, you know, "Gunn!"” and Mace in great glee named me "Splodge" from then on, having never had a nickname I never even resented it.
I have never had such a close group of associates before or since, we looked after each other, they overlooked my ignorance, and guarded me from evil. Once we went on leave to Dunedin and we went to a roller skating rink and I was picked up by a couple of what my mother would have immediately labelled as "Fast young women". Mace and Co. were horrified and took me to one side,
"Look, Splodge!" they said, "It's OK if we pick up little whores like that because we can handle them, but you've never met that kind before, have you?"
"Well, they seem quite nice girls, especially the dark one, Shirley!" I said defensively.
"Ha!" said Mace. "I've seen her type before, you go easy until I ask round some the boys!" and a few enquires showed that she had picked up any number of airmen and was a gold-digging good-time girl.
"Good for one thing only." was Mace's verdict. Another serious young man with a good background came up.
"I hear you got picked up by Shirley!" said he. "I just have to tell you, she tried to pick me up a week or two back, but I hear from some chaps in Course 65 that she's just an oversexed little troll and quite a few of them have had her."
It was bitterly disappointing, not to say horrifying as I had never encountered girls who had "been had" before and no female had ever given me vivacious smiles and even a passionate kissgoodbye before either, and I resigned myself to a celibate life.
When a leave train chuffed into Dunedin some of the gang would go to the nearest pub. I used to join them, have one drink and depart, and was quite happy to go to a movie on my own, go for a walk on the seashore or whatever. The Saturday-night dances at the Town Hall would have been good entertainment, but I did not dance at that stage never having met anyone prepared to teach me. Sometimes I saw a quiet school-girl who was a friend of Georgette Keeps called Sylvia and we might go to the pictures, or I might go to the library.
We almost all stayed at the YMCAin mass beds in the Gymnasium on Saturday nights, very cheap, but the place seemed to be run by very decrepit old men. Sometimes we played basket-ball there and met other seamen or Pongoes (Army types} who depressingly often had the same old two interests in life, the booze and prostitutes, professional or amateur. There were however some upper-class young men of University background, who immediately vanished to the houses of family or friends. My class of associate did not have family or friends except I was luckier than most as I might visit Mr E, or Dr Carswell.
None of the gang held my odd inclinations against me. "You see," they would explain to others, "Splodge is different he is. He don't like whores and he don't think much of the booze, do you Splodge?"
Some outsider once made a crack about my unusual prudish inclinations, and Mace (who was a good six feet), rounded on him, "He's one of our lads, you - - - -, do you want me to stuff your oversize feet down your bloody neck?"
It was the nearest approach to a true Christian society I have ever encountered, we were very uncritical of each other's peccadilloes, which in any case were mainly mild. Immaculate honesty could be taken for granted, and no one could possibly tell a lie. If one of the lads drank too much, and they were only eighteen (I was still seventeen} the rest of us commiserated and gave a helping hand.
When the leave train left at 11p.m. for camp I would make the rounds of the pubs between the Octagon and the Exchange and often find an APUT who had taken a glass too many, certainly too many to make the train unaided and often I have walked Lower High Street with a body draped over a shoulder to the tunes of faint moans and mutters of "Oh, God! I'm crook!""Here's good Ol' Splodge!" would be the cry from faces emerging from train windows, "Who y' got this time, Splodge? Christ, it's Malmo, G.D., you're bloody lucky, Georgie, Robbie would eat you if you miss the train!"
Robbie, or Warrant Officer Robinson, was the Station Disciplinary Officer and with minor help from a few sergeants terrorised about a thousand airmen. One older airman took me to one side after having overheard a comment about how Robbie had better watch his language, (which when he was roused tended to be colourful)."Don't ever think you can take Robbie on," he warned. "A couple of our fellows heaved a firehose into his hut one night and turned it full on! He didn't say a word, just made a few enquiries and then one day invited them down behind the huts. 'Right!' he says, 'They tell me you two like to play with fire hoses. Take your jackets off!' Cor, you shoulda seen them! Then three of the boys jumped him one dark night and he laid the three of them in a row! No, you'd be a fool to take Robbie on!"
Within a week, a bellow of "That Man!" and a culprit incorrectly dressed, slouching, not marching, or caught with a hand in a pocket, would leap three feet in the air and come down rigid and quivering. "Sah!" he would squeak.
Robbie was built like a brick outhouse and had short crewcut red hair and really knew how to dominate a few airman. His salutes to some mild mannered officer left his right arm quivering like a steel blade, a demonstrated "Halt!" almost drove boots into the ground, his voice carried a clear mile, his mildest punishment was likely to be, "You, you 'orrible little apology for a Mummie's Darling, you're coming for a run round the aerodrome tomorrow morning at 5 a.m. aren't you, just to keep me company, aren't you? WELL?"
"Yes, Sah!" the rigid miscreant would gasp, and after a 3 1/2 mile run at 5 a.m. Robbie would return not even breathing hard, while the punishment squad would collapse into a convulsive heap, if the ambulance wasn't sent out to bring them in, Robbie set a cracking pace.
We were mere Leading Aircraftsmen. a couple of steps above the "Erk!" I imagine so named as one able to carry, pull and haul, and say, "Erk" when spoken to. Officers almost never spoke to Erks, and rarely to us, orders were relayed down through the sergeants who were addressed as, "Yes, Sarn't". Old time ex war-time officers still have this rigid distinction of the world being divided into Officers and Gentlemen, and Erks with a few tolerable sergeants who act as go betweens and sometimes I think they are right.
Many years after we were at Harewood preparing to go the Antarctic and were struggling to load gear into an American Globemaster, when our Chief pilot, Squadron Leader Claydon came by. He was quite distressed.
"Good God, chaps, you don't have to do work like that. Sergeant, get half a dozen Erks in here and get this stuff loaded, what the devil do you think you’re doing? Let's go over to the Mess, chaps!"
"Sir!" said the sergeant and a team of Betas miraculously appeared.
One day Georgie Malmo came up to us looking pale.
"Christ chaps, I think I've got it, what the hell will I do? God, she was only sixteen too, but she's been around a bit!"
"What's up, now?" said Bob Hedley, a country boy from Opotiki, who had just come up.
"Georgie's got the pox!" said Mace with satisfaction, much as though he had just announced, "Georgie's been awarded the DFC!"
"It's all right Georgie, just go along to sick bay. They'll do a little amputation and in a few weeks you'll hardly miss it!""What a load of bull, they don't amputate any more, they just put a clamp thing on and it drops off in a week or two, just like a lamb's balls, honest Georgie!"
The whole topic was good for an uproarious hour even though it proved to be a false alarm but poor Georgie was from then on known as 'Malmo, V.D." One day the Flight Commander was calling the Roll, "Mace, J.T? Malmo, V.D.? .." and the whole platoon broke up in roars of laughter and men falling on the ground. Even Robbie bawling, "By God, I'll have the guts of the next man to laugh, I'll bloody teach you to turn the King's Parade Ground into a circus, I'll bloody well have every man here on charge, I'll---" only slowly had effect.
The only people who treated us as human beings were the sergeants and corporals of the Phys Ed group who introduced us to the gymnasium and some of our lads got quite proficient on parallel bars and I could even do a few stunts on the rings myself. Best by far at basketball was a little Maori called Wi who could duck between your legs. I was as usual very bad at basketball not least because no one had ever explained the rules and out·whites-clad instructors used to blow a whistle and shout "progress" at irrational times. We were transported about the country in a big covered Mack truck driven by a WAAF and we sang songs at the top of our voice usually lead by Mace which meant they were usually of the beer-swilling or totally obscene kind but no officer or even PT Instructor thought to encourage singing, any arts, or any cultural interest, New Zealand being a country virtually devoid of culture. Play football and get drunk are the only expected activities, yet the occasional "Lilli Marlene" brought out the fact there were some fine voices amongst us.
There were quite a number of WAAFS on station, mainly in Clerical, but they also never spoke to us being as Mace said with some sarcasm, "Officers for the use of!" We were not old enough to realise that no female in her right mind would waste time speaking to some junior airman earning about two pounds a week, unless he was unusually entertaining, and Mace of our group was the only one to qualify in this respect.
We spent time on the rifle range with the usual World War One rifle usually P-14's, but we occasionally fired a Maxim or a Bren. Of course there [were] no ear muffs. Best of all was skeet shooting with automatic shotguns, one could hardly have missed a clay pigeon with a rifle and I usually scored top though many others could not hit a barn unless they were inside it. Not being brought up gun in hand from the age of five I think they shut their eyes and pulled the trigger.
We were encouraged to take out rifles for the week end and once Bob Hedley and I took rifles and a packet of ammo and went off up Ross creek a few miles from Taieri. Right on the path there were a couple of porkers and as Bob who was slightly ahead seemed a bit slow, I dropped the two of them. Hedley also dropped to my surprise, he seemed to be to one side and not in the line of fire, and the only thought that crossed my mind, "Now how in hell did I hit him?" He gave a groan and sat up shaking his head. Unfortunately my muzzle was six inches from his left ear and the blast knocked him over. I wonder how your hearing is these days, Bob?
We took the pork back to the cookshop, and when I next saw Mr E he was quite put out as he had been out with friends armed with pig-dogs the same weekend and had seen none. "And you just walk up Ross Creek and get two!" he said in disgust.
I managed to forget to hand back in the odd packet of ammo which helped finance my deer-shooting after the war in a small way.
We had classes in esoteric subjects like engines, and the Sergeant Mech beginning said, "I suppose you all know how a petrol engine works?" and there was a stony silence from the twenty men present.
"Christ!" he observed, "How many of you have seen under the bonnet of a car?" and this time about a third of the class raised arms, and I was not one of them. Had he said "How many of you can ride a bicycle?" there would have been quite a few abstentions.
"Right!" said the despairing sergeant, "Let's begin at the beginning. An engine is the lump of iron at the front of an aircraft which turns the propeller to make the bloody thing move. It turns a shaft by rotating a thing called a crankshaft, if you look in your manuals ..."
It was all pretty basic.One day I will acquire an abandoned Gipsy Major Ill engine, polish it up and mount it in the living room as a memorial to my first introduction to technology.
The parachute section showed us how to fold a parachute and then we were issued with one each, which were carefully stored in racks with our name on, none of this using another man's 'chute and as the string, canvas and wire Tigers were not exactly built like tanks, there were occasions when I patted the rip-cord handle in some comfort. In actual fact the Tiger was a lot more robust than it looks.
Then came the familiarisation flight, parachute on, one climbed into the rear seat of a DH-82 Tiger Moth, which differed only in minor degree from the Avro 304 used as a trainer in the First War. It had an appealing smell of aero-dope, oil, leather and wood while modern planes smell of fading plastic and stale cigarette smoke. After a lot of "Switches Off" and an Erk pulling the propeller backwards, it was "CONTACT", another pull and she roared into life. A wave of the hand sideways and some poor Erk draped himself in the full blast of the propwash over the tail while the run up at Full Throttle was done. Then a wave sideways which meant "Chocks Away!" and we bumped off across the grass.
Near the approach fence we sat for a few minutes until there was a gaps in the dozens of Tigers landing and taking off, a hearty roar from our own Gipsy Major, the speed picked up, tail up, and suddenly the bumping ceased and we swayed into the peaceful air. Somehow an aeroplane always seems out of place on the ground. The view of the green fields and houses was breathtaking, tiny people and cars moved like ants and away off to the west snow and high hills of my own country came into view. Fifty years later I still have the same sensations when we climb in the somewhat less draughty Tomahawk steadily above earth and above the cloud.
A voice came echoing eerily down a speaking tube, "When you do a turn, you bank with the elevators, apply rudder and keep the nose moving steadily round the horizon!" and we did an alarming bank and swung left. Suddenly the racket faded considerably as we levelled out and we sped over houses and the Mosgiel Woolen mills, turned along the Central Otago Railway line, turned onto final and were soon bumping over the grass.
Mace, Gardner J.G. and others were standing on the Apron, flying boots on, parachutes over shoulders, grinning like idiots.
"How did it go, Splodge? Bloody marvellous isn't it?" and I could only put on a sophisticated air and say, "Quite fun, actually!"
Soon we were leaving the top button of our Number One jackets undone which signified "Fighter Type" and speaking in dreadful affected Oxford accents which seemed mandatory for fighter types.
"Oh, good show!" if something went well, "Bad show!" if it didn't and though we never used radio, it was "Roger!" if one gave assent to some action. We forgot there was war on, we were totally absorbed in drawing parachutes, cockpit drills, doing perfect turns, getting the thing back on the ground without too many bumps, PT, Mess Duties, the Chow Line, Nav lectures, stripping Browning machine guns which we used to practice doing in the dark, and for some of the group, raptures over the actions of some unsavoury little tart they had picked up last weekend.
Some of the lads were unbelievably tender-hearted, and would pick up some ordinary little thing in a milk bar, who regarded them as the long awaited answer to a maiden's prayer and promptly loaded all their problems of separated parents and neglect at home onto their eighteen year-old shoulders and clung to them like limpets. Sometimes a group session in answer to an appeal of "What the hell do I do, chaps?" went on half the night because the fact is none of us even the street wise Mace had any experience of quite nice but simple little girls.
"You just have to tell her, you'll be off overseas in a few months and you probably won't be back!"
"I tried that, she says she hasn't seen her father in years, her mother is tied up with someone else, I'm the only person that has ever liked her and if I give her the push she'll kill herself!"
"Bet she won't, a girl told me that once, now she's married with a couple of sprogs!"
"Yes, but what if she does? Didn't you read about ...." and of course, none us really had an answer.
There was little doubt, the female element had to be avoided like the Plague, Yellow Fever and Leprosy combined.
Rather oddly, though, had the war continued, we would have gone off and as a third of the participants in the Battle of Britain were casualties, we might have been subject to similar statistics, but this seemed to be of absolutely no interest to the people of Dunedin. No facilities or entertainment was ever put on the thousand or so airmen at the station with the exception of the meagre efforts of the YMCA, in fact we were studiously avoided. Publicans and prostitutes did their best to strip the pitiful amount of pay we were given from us, to the rest of the population we might have been panes of glass. It never crossed our minds to ask why we should be so anxious to throw our lives away to protect a society which obviously had not the slightest interest in us. I once asked some girl out to the "Pictures".
"Why should I have anything to do with you!" she said tartly, "You are just going to go off and get yourself killed like all the others!" She seemed to regard this possibility as a personal affront.
Home on leave, men came up and said "Going to do your bit, are you!" but somewhat to my surprise, girls I had known all my life were less than impressed with my well-pressed uniform and APUT flashes. I once put an arm round a girl I had known since a baby, but she promptly kicked my shins and I don't believe I ever spoke to her again. Of course, to be seen in company with a serviceman did not do a girl's reputation much good, due to the attentions we received from the hooker variety.
We had a tiny manual given to us in the ATC on how to fly the Tiger Moth and I wish I still had it as it was full of what would now be regarded as very bad flying practices. As I recall, when we began formal flying, our Instructors who were mostly middle-aged senior Squadron Leaders and even Wing Commanders merely grunted, "Well, let's get cracking!" and heaved themselves into the front seat. The Tiger is easy to lift off the ground once one has learnt to control the wild swing to the right as she speeds up. A little forward pressure on the stick to bring the tail up, wait a few seconds, then a bit of back-pressure and she lifts off with a bit of wing waggle until one learns how much aileron to use.
The instructors were not just bad in retrospect, they were appallingly bad. Their technique mainly consisted of telling one nothing, merely screaming abuse at every wing waggle. The worst was S. Ldr Davidson, known as "Do-the-Bun Davidson" who seldom graduated a trainee pilot. I only flew with him once but he shouted abuse at quite respectable turns, at the altitude if it was out by a foot and at everything in sight. By the time I came in to land I was totally demoralised and luck chose to have some clot on the ground turn across into exactly the spot we were about to land, obviously without bothering to look up to see who was coming in. Now I could either deviate right as the grass at Taieri was about a quarter mile or more wide, go round again, or jack on a bit of motor and land further up the runway. I knew that whichever I did would bring screams from the front, so I helplessly thought, "Let him do something about it!" and waited. He did.
Screaming, "Didn't you see it? Didn't you see it?" he wrenched the controls out of my hand rolled the Tiger into the vertical pointing down with the left hand. In a fury he made a short circuit, smashed the plane down to the ground, taxied at about 30 miles an hour back to the apron and flung off stilt fuming.
It did not seem to occur to him that he never bothered to explain what the correct procedure should have been. Actually, I don't believe the exercise known as "Going Round Again" was ever mentioned, these days if I have an instructor aboard, a quiet "Go round" has the throttle rammed into the Firewall within milliseconds, flaps up, gear up, nose on the horizon etc etc.
The reason they were so bad of course is that to be sent to a Training Station was The Pits, regarded as only slightly better than being grounded or cashiered. They were all ex-Battle of Britain men, and one day some horrible, soulless little civil-servant said, “Look, you are too old, been on too many tours got the twitches, been wounded, we don't have a squadron for you, go to a Training Wing!”, and they were given a $5 DFC medal and sent home, leaving their glamourous Spitfire Mark XIV, or Corsair in the hands of some junior twit who was not developing grey hair.
It is a characteristic of governments and civil servants that they never say "Thank you for your four years (or twenty years) of toil, the 20 planes you shot down, the persistence you showed in going on patrol day after day even when you were the last of your original squadron alive and had been twice wounded.” Instead they just send a piece of paper saying, "You are hereby transferred to Training Wing No XX, effective as from the 21st Inst..."
The King sometimes said, "Thank you!" as he pinned on a medal, but I have never heard of anyone else who did. Ambitious Junior Officers were only too glad to see the last of their much-medalled seniors. The thanks Sir Keith Park got for winning the Battle of Britain was to be transferred to a Training Wing. Later they sent him to Malta where by organising Battle of Britain tactics he won the Battle of Malta, whereupon it was suggested he retire! However, when Gp. Capt. Sir Trafford Leigh Mallory was killed in a crash on his way to take over command of the RAF in Burma, Park was sent in his place and for a time was C in C, Far East. Then he was told to retire again! However, it is quite difficult to find an Airforce going begging if you have one extra Air Vice Marshall!
One of the least impressive pieces of public relations I have ever seen occurred at a concert put on on Station. Some quite senior officer came on stage and told "funny" stories. One went like this:
"There was this officer who had been in the Middle East and he picked up a bug which gave him intermittent very high temperatures, especially in the early morning. So he went to the MO, who said, ‘Well, the main thing is to get the temperature back down. Why don't you drop your pyjamas and sit on the windowsill, it's quite chilly these mornings, and that should do it.’ Next morning the sufferer was sitting on the window sill when the CO came past, saluted and said, ‘Good Morning, Robbie!’”
There was some laughter of a rather strained type as Robbie was not exactly a person one laughed at, not if one wished to stay in one piece. He was sitting not far away and I threw a quick scandalised look but he permitted himself only a brief sardonic smile. Robbie of course spent his life beating a sense of duty, responsibility and respect for officers into thousands of unwilling Erks and as a result was cordially hated by most, at best he got a grudging respect. This so-called officer was aware of this and knew an easy way to get a cheap laugh. I don't think Charles Upham would have told a story like that about one of his sergeants, neither would Leonard Cheshire. When Douglas Bader found some of his "Erks" were being punished for being sloppy about blackout by being made to sleep in a hangar, Bader said, "Right, if the bloody Erks have to sleep on the floor in a hangar, so will every officer in my squadron including myself!" and Group Capt. Biesiegel backed down.
Later, when we were being entertained by the RNZAF before going to the Antarctic an "officer" thought to entertain us by telling "Marilyn Monroe" stories. My own response was to give him my most chilly look and walk away, as did most of the boys. In my book an officer is a gentleman and gentlemen don't tell dirty jokes, but regrettably we no longer have a "gentleman" class in our egalitarian society.
On another flying occasion, I came in to land and executed a perfect "Wheeler". That is, I landed with the Tiger's tail still up instead of down on a three pointer. With no brakes, with its' tail up a Tiger will run on for quite a distance, but if you pull the stick back too soon and it still has flying speed up it will hop off the ground and then fall back again in a series of awful bounces or hops. After a few seconds the Instructor got impatient and with a mighty blow knocked the stick out of my hands, and the tail came down with a thump. Back at the apron he strode off muttering about "Bloody Clots". Again it did not occur to him to say, "If you do a wheeler, glance at the ASI and when it drops below stalling speed, (about 40mph) it is OK to bring the stick back!"
One of the Instructors was a young 20-year-old who had topped the previous course and was kept back for a period to instruct. I was having trouble with landings, (hardly to be wondered at, as the total instruction I had had on landings consisted of "Do it like this!").
He took me out on the grass. "You're having trouble estimating height of the ground on final aren't you," said he. "Look, squat down and then stand up, see how the perspective of the far side of the drome changes?" and so it did most markedly.
If I remember correctly, all his pupils passed their 7hr tests well, my grades were a bit mediocre. After about ten hours, some of the boys were sent solo, including Mace. Now that I know more about flying I think this was insanity. In ten hours one might have always flown the same circuit, might never have encountered a cross wind, or a rain shower, had never done an EFATO (Engine Failure After Take-off) drill, never encountered another plane on a collision course. The casualty rate during training in those days was about ten times that of the present.
Once we were purring along happily and I saw my instructor squinting up sun shading his eyes between his hands. He suddenly knocked the stick forward and another Tiger flashed overhead, its wheels bare feet above our mainplane, coming straight out of the sun. Once as I came into land I got a series of pyrotechnics from the tower and looked above and behind to find a Dakota twin transport letting down on top of us. We went round again in quite a hurry, but lack of radio did carry some penalty when there must at times have been about 20-30 Tigers in the air at once.
One day, as we stood on the apron, a trainee came in, undershooting markedly. He got lower and lower and to our consternation, was obviously not going to make the field. There was a loud crash as the Tiger hit the ground, then a shattering roar and it leaped a fence, a railway line, a set of cut-down telephone poles and lines, a road and another fence and landed or rather fell on the grass!
"We can scratch that Tiger!" we all agreed, but it turned out to be undamaged. It turned out the pilot trainee had his hand on the wired-back mixture control, not the throttle which was just above and looked down to see what the matter was, he found the throttle at the moment he struck ground. It said a great deal for the robust undercart of the Tiger.
Talking about undercarts, there was the story of the fellow who surreptitiously did a bit of low flying down at the Lake Waihola Low Flying Area. On his return, the CFI came up to him, "Been low flying I see!"
"What, me Sir? Why, no Sir!"
"Indeed!" said the CFI, "Then perhaps you can explain how a dead duck comes to be wrapped around your undercart?"
Our parachutes were quite a comfort at times as we began to do aerobatics after only 7-8 hours. First, stalls, then the dreaded spins which caused so much death and consternation in the first world war, but from which the Tiger recovered quite easily. Ease the stick forward, kick on violent opposite rudder, ease into a dive, open up and climb away. A gentle loop is also quite easy as the view of the horizon is good, unlike the Cessna 152 Aerobat where for part of the loop one can only watch a wing tip.
On one occasion an Instructor was demonstrating a loop or Roll-off-the-top. "Are your straps tight?"
"Oh, yessir, definitely, Sir!"
"Then do a loop!"
When we got inverted it became obvious my straps were far too slack and my shoulders slipped out of them. I struggled to spread arms to stay in, fly the plane with a very stretched finger and pat the rip-cord handle just in case. Then, about the time I could have held on no longer, positive G's came back.
One trainee was once supposed to be doing the same, when the wire across the back of the seat holding the straps, broke and he fell out. The instructor getting no reply to "Flatten out Man, Flatten Out!" looked in his mirror to see an empty cockpit, and over the side to see a parachute floating down!
Our Charlie Oboe was Wing Commander Kofoed who had done a tour in The Islands and before that I believe was in Bomber Command. One unusual day we lay about a rifle range, (unusual in that the sun was shining) and there came a sound over overstressed engines and a yellow Oxcart (i.e., the Airspeed Oxford twin engine trainer bomber) with great effort and much noise managed a loop in the air above.
"Thought you weren't allowed to aerobat Oxcarts, Sarn't!" commented one of the group.
"When you are CO of one of his Majesty's air stations," came the crushing reply, "You can aerobat any bloody aircraft you want, until then suppose you shut your bloody great cake-hole and listen to what I am telling you about a Bren gun!"
There was another story about Oxcarts. A bomber pilot was off in one doing solo and it occurred to his juvenile mind to also assay a loop in this very non-aerobatic machine. He managed to get inverted and there it hung with not enough airflow over the tail surfaces to get it right over. Finally the pilot did the only sensible thing and undid his straps and scramble aft towards the door to bail out.
His weight towards the tail did the trick and the Oxcart rolled right-way up again and he was able to regain his seat and flew home vowing, "I'll never tell anyone about this!"
New day the Chief Erk came to him. "Excuse me, Sir but you have some of us puzzled. Could you come with me a moment?" and he led the way to the door of the Oxford.
"Now Sir! We would be very interested if you could explain those!" and he pointed to a row of footprints showing clearly in the dust of the cabin roof!
Winter did not make for warm flying in the open Tiger Moth, especially as one was supposed to fly with a head out the side because the view ahead was restricted by the long nose. Snow came to the great joy of some of North Islanders who had never seen it, and they broke ranks as we marched along trying to catch it as it fell, to the rage of the sergeants. We were not supposed to wear our sheepskin flying boots except when flying as they were soft and would quickly wear out, but it was so chilly on the toes we would pull out battledress trousers down over them and hide deep in the ranks.
The Tiger Moth also had to be taxied in a series of S-bends in case there was something ahead hidden by the engine. When the snow froze, the Tiger would slide sideways when you tried to swing. In the air, the sub-zero wind froze the face in spite of several layers of silk scarf, and I would periodically duck behind the windscreen and do a quick massage, before a, "Keep a good lookout, you ---!" came echoing down the voice tube.
About once a week we had a special inspection and a gaggle of officers came round our huts, tugging at the neatly folded and wrapped blankets to see if they could be made fall apart and running a finger under beds, on lamp shades and above doors to detect some overlooked dust. There was a set pattern the all gear had to be laid out in, and heaven help him who displayed spare socks above gloves on the bed. I was visiting an old family friend when on leave and was explaining all of these rites.
"They even come round and run a finger over lampshades, like this!" I said, reaching up and doing it to one handy. A shower of dust fell down and a very respectable middle aged lady positively blushed with embarrassment.
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Having not done much piloting in the last half century, the mind has been turning towards ultralights and home-builts and much scanning of plans and search for the ideal flying machine has resulted.
Heavier-than-air craft have now been built for some ninety years and it is an absorbing study of scientific development with a delicate mix of mechanical pragmatism and refined theory converging toward the ultimate in flying machines.
If we study the development of the single or two place light aircraft, ultra-lights and home-builts the body of acquired knowledge is or should be impressive. The perfect light aircraft with a top speed of 200 knots, taking off at 35 on a cricket pitch, fully aerobatic and not guzzling more than a gallon or two per hour is or should be just round the corner. Research shows that the guiding rules and laws of aviation engineering seem to be quite well established, if a little general, e.g..
For example, it is now quite certain that the ideal aircraft should have a seat for the occupant, almost all do. It may be of fibre glass, tin or other metal, or canvas but the need is clearly established, lying prone on a wing being given away some time ago as being hard on the neck and nose. Then an ideal aircraft will in most cases have a wing or wings, i.e., surfaces to interact with the air to give lift. Wings may be 6 inches wide up to about 16ft in some delta designs, and usually not more than 36ft long, and only occasionally less than 8ft, though I once saw a P104 Starfighter that had wings about 2 ft long. There may be one to several wings, if one the design is termed a monoplane, two a biplane, three a triplane, one and a half a sesquiplane and so one, the historical maximum being an octoplane with eight. They may be stacked one on top of the other, or staggered with the upper behind or in front of the lower. Wings are usually oblong-ish in plan, but may be triangular, elliptical, tapered, oval, circular or ring-like. The only invariable rule seems to be that wings should be on both sides of an aircraft, at least no plan of a light aircraft seen as yet has all wings on one side. Monoplanes may be "low", "mid", "high" or "Parasol" or somewhere between. Wing loadings may be as low as 6Ib/sqft or if one wants to be economical with the rag, about 16- 24Ib/sqft. The Tomahawk has 13.2 lb compared to 10.4 lb for the 152 which explains why the rotten little Piper heads home for mother Earth on a gliding turn.
Wings may be constructed of a single layer of cloth usually with battens, or be an apparent sheet of plywood, sometimes curved, sometimes flat. Wings built after 1917 are often very deep, with as much as 9in camber, this is said to give more lift, but Lincoln Beachey's "Little Looper" could climb at 1250 fpm on wings of single fabric in 1913 and the Sopwith Pup could do the same thing with wings that were quite flat. Modern scientifically designed aircraft with large motors may climb at as much as 500 fpm which may explain why Langley's scientifically designed "Aerodrome" fell into the Potomac! Wings may be built of wood and canvas, or some mixture of Al tube, polyfoam, plywood, plastic, fibreglass, carbon fibre, cardboard, canvas or nylon. Wings are useful for hanging various kinds of ordnance on and in the Antarctic we used to suspend dog-sledges therefrom. The dogs occupied seats inside, I sat on a ration box back aft. Fido (our large lead dog) sat between the pilots, licked Wing Co Cranfield's ear (Bill was merely PO at the time so Fido meant no impertinence) and pawed at things on the dash. I am not sure who flew the Beaver on that particular occasion but Fido certainly contributed to some wild aerobatics, the windscreen being iced solid by the panting of a dozen huskies!
The proper aircraft should have some sort of body structure. It may consist of a single spar running lengthwise, or be a network or lattice of bamboo, wire, wood or metal. The body may be made of tubing welded, bolted or pop-rivetted together and left bare or covered in fabric, paper, plastic, tin etc. The occupant may sit in the full breeze, be partly sheltered or totally enclosed.
An engine is not required, in fact as aircraft have flown distances of over 1000 miles without engines, compared to an average maximum of 300nm with, one wonders why they are ever included. However, engines are quite common in the best aircraft, the horse-power being almost irrelevant, as it may range from 2.5 to about 300hp. Usually there are a number of cylinders in the engines ranging from one to 32 or so. Per motor that is. Radial engines are distinctly odd having 3, 5, 7, 9 etc. cylinders while in-line, opposed, V, and H-block motors are more even. Aircraft engines require cooling, either using the passing air which God provided free, or else ethylene glycol which for sufficient reason, He certainly did not.
There is no close correlation between horsepower and speed, as different designs may do as much as 10 kts/hp, down to as little as 0.15. Often almost identical designs may have the same top speed with engines differing by a factor of two in power. The mean of about 200 plans gives an average engine power of 93.2 hp. However, ninety years of experiment shows that the very fastest aircraft seldom have very low-powered engines. The extremes seem to be in the mid-range as the 1938 Clifton DW1 had a top speed of 112mph with 32hp while the Walrus flying boat did 135mph on 775hp so that selected data may show an inverse correlation of power and speed.
Engines may be given pride of place in front for those that like them, or be mounted above, from which position they have been known to fall and sever the legs of the pilot, in back in the boot, and for those that would really rather be without but feel the social pressure, "Oh, yes, there is an engine at the back there somewhere!", away back with the prop behind the rudder. Currently pushers are regarded as being more stylish than tractors, a probable efficiency loss of about 20% being a small price to pay!
If more than one engine is favoured they may be put out on the wings, or in the pushmi-pullyu configuration. A well-designed aircraft will be seldom seen with more than twelve engines, instead when more urge is needed to get some odd-shaped box airborne it is common these days to use a couple of turbo-fans. Scientific analysis has shown that the bumble bee cannot fly, but give it a turbo fan and I betcha something would give.
A proper aircraft should have some sort of control surfaces. As the Wright brothers found out, without control, the occupant gets hurt. Wing twisting works quite well as Pegoud was able to loop the Bleriot monoplane and fly it upside down by wing warping. Moveable bits of wing called ailerons are also quite common, being hinged sections covered in fabric, metal, cardboard, FG etc etc. They were invented by Glenn Curtiss in his frantic efforts to get round the patent held on wing warping held by Will and Orv. Beachey's Curtiss "Headless" of 1913 had a couple of rag-covered frames mounted between the main planes and sticking out a couple of feet beyond the wing tips which worked fine. People like Linc Beachey and "Looper" Smith could do up to 9 consecutive loops without losing height which says something. Must try that in the Tomahawk sometime.
Flaps slow the plane down and have a good deal of mystique about them, but are quite optional. They may be used as a place of retreat for distraught or emotionally disturbed passengers, e.g., "The CO got into a flap when I buzzed through No2 Hangar!"
Aircraft are steered by the feet, this being the way Glenn Curtiss and also I believe, Louis Bleriot did it and who are we to change a good custom. The rudder is a vertical flat bit usually mounted aft ever since Beachey knocked his front one off on a fence and found his Curtiss flew as well with only the one behind. It may have a stabiliser in front of it but this is optional. It is an absorbing study to reflect on what the jumbo jet might look like if Beachey had knocked off his REAR rudder. Certainly the "Curtiss Headless" would have been named the "Curtiss Tailless!"
Going up and down is controlled either as in Trikes, by jiggling the throttle or else by rotating flat bits called elevators mounted either aft or in front which again may or may not have stabilisers included. Some have trim tabs to keep the aircraft more or less continuing in the same direction, but some use a system of tightening rubber bands or using servocontrols. There is a strong body of feeling against stable aircraft, if all aircraft were stable where is the need for skill? In 1927 the RAF rejected the Hawker Tomtit in favour of the Tiger Moth as a trainer because the Tiger was more difficult to fly. Consequently, the Piper Tomahawk and other aircraft would roll upside-down in a climbing lefthand turn were it not for a bit of smart work on the part of the pilot. Even the stable and comfortable Beaver for which I will for ever feel affection ( ours used to bring in our monthly grub for man and dog) does the same.
Modern aircraft have a thing called a Vne which one should never fly above. It is usually somewhat lower than the Vno of most World War I aircraft.
Landing an aircraft is now as it was in 1905, a matter of slowing down until the machine ceases to fly and falls out of the sky. The trick is to ensure that the fall should be of shortish duration.
The controls of all the best aircraft are simple and usually consist of a piece of pipe standing vertically (known as the "stick") or a sort of handle that is pulled out of the dashboard, to which wires are attached that run out to the various control surfaces. There are often several buttons on the top of the stick which may allow the pilot to be overheard by the Control Tower while cursing a student, listen to FM, or fire machine guns.
The machine is speeded up by a "throttle" which is a lever mounted on the left or the right, in the middle or on the floor, or else a knob on the dash, which in contradiction to every throttle and choke ever devised, speeds the engine up by being pushed IN.
In order to keep the pilot amused there are a large number of things that have to be pushed, pulled, or flicked up or down on the dash, if one is present. One hears pilots frantically muttering while still on the ground, "Let's see, Vents closed, power on, switches on, DI uncaged, radio on 118.1 let's see am I making first contact, no, 120.1 it is, squawk 7500, primer off, carby-heat on or is it off, fuel pump on, bilge pump on, hatches closed, hell it's hot I'll leave mine open, trim for whatever, throttle friction, fuel tanks empty, compass points north, landing light on, no, off, we're taking off, strobe on, nav lights on, bloody silly in daytime, warning lights on, flaps up, gear up, oh Christ! Down, oh, bloody hell!"
A proper aircraft will begin flying if placed on a more or less level surface several thousand feet long and pushed or pulled by the motor via the propeller at ever-increasing speeds even the old 'Oxcart' getting off eventually. While doing this an airplane will either career madly to the left or right depending on the country of origin. Machines made in Russia or socialist Britain usually prefer the Left, those from America the Right, or is it the other way round? As kite builders well know, almost any geometric shape will get airborne if the wind is strong enough, if the wind fails it descends or "stalls". Some aircraft are claimed never to stall only sort of squish, others may do so at speeds of 35, 40, 50, 60, 70, or 80 knots. A very noisy thing was seen the other day at Ardmore screaming down the runway at about 140 knots and when last seen was showing little inclination to leave Terra Firma. It evidently did as it was definitely seen a few seconds later doing about 300kts on the downwind for which it will not get a Citation. A Comanche came apart the same day attempting to do the same thing, rumour has it that there was a certain degree of lack of cooperation between engines.
A brick flies quite well if inclined at an angle of about 20deg to the airstream and propelled at about 70+ knots. At less than 70 knots a number of aircraft including a Percival Proctor, a Harvard and a Tomahawk, show distinct affiliation with a brick.
In conclusion, a century of progressive development has bequeathed to us the knowledge that as Beachey (or was it Arch Hoxey? Or Walt Brookins?) said, a kitchen table will fly given enough power to push it along. This means that our modes of construction can be very flexible indeed.
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One can't help noticing as the years pass, that pilots, like policemen get younger every year until they seem mere school children. I never did a great deal of flying as a pilot myself, when the end of the war came, too soon for some of us eager-beaver 17-year olds, the RNZAF bumped us out of flying school with remarkably little ceremony or thanks. I tried to keep it up in aero clubs but a University student doesn't have that kind of money. However, in one way and another I logged a lot of air miles, as for example in the Antarctic in 1955 with Admiral Byrd, flying on tri-met photographic missions in Navy DC-6's as "Observer". This meant sitting out in a blister on the side of the fuselage while at intervals the Chief Pilot Cmdr Hank Jorda would call over the intercom, “Hey Bernie Boy, where the hell are we?" or, "See that whacking great glacier below, does it have a name?" and I would reply "Nope, how about we call it the Jorda Glacier???" and there would come a snigger from the cockpit. We must hold the record for the first sightings of 10,000ft mountain ranges and 100 mile x 20 mile glaciers never before seen.
We later dog sledded around them and climbed about 50-odd peaks up to 13,000ft elevation lugging a weighty transit, nowadays they zip out after morning tea by Huey and reoccupy our stations that took 4 months to reach in 1957.
We named quite a lot of glaciers and mountains over a period of 10 years, but the office boys and draftsmen back home mostly renamed them for politicians and similar important people. One range we discovered reads like a Cabinet meeting. In those days the number of people who had actually flown over either Arctic or Antarctic numbered a few dozen and we had most of them with us, Admiral Byrd himself, Cmdr Trigger Hawkes of Operation Highjump and others. Even people like Jack Bursey and Eddie Goodale were there but back in the '30s Eddie was a dog man as I was later and I don't think he flew much.
I noticed things had changed when I recently wangled a trip back down in the guise of "Reporter". We flew down in hours in a Starlifter instead of rolling our guts out for weeks on some alleged icebreaker and instead of trotting along behind 9 huskies we got lifted (after boring waits for flight time) either in navy twin turbine Hueys or RNZAF single turbine jobs. A vast difference to 1955 when one could never be sure that the old S-6's were going to lift off the flight deck. The bases had become hotels with masses of stainless steel shelving and luau-skirted girls electro-polishing floors and who gave one filthy looks if one still work mukluks inside, in other words the stuffing had completely gone out of the place. Some American politicos were visiting and I heard Senator Dole ask in absent-minded fashion "Do you have room service here!"
On the w ay home we flew in a screaming RNZAF Hercules stuffed full of US and NZ civilians, navy types and leather-jacketed Russians who had been on an official inspection and whose response to a cheerful, "How’s she gain' matey? Gunna be a beaut day eh?" was invariably, "Da".
Halfway home a young man in overalls about 18 years in age clambered over legs and gear offering fruit juice and coffee, “Sir, would you care for a drink?" to which each Russian replied "Da!"
I thought "Now that's nice, polite young chap, a change after the rabble and hooligans that seem to infest the world these days!"
A bit later I clambered aft to stretch the legs and bumped into him and blow me, he had wings sewn on his blue RAF overalls.
"Hello!" I said, surprised, "Are you one of the aircrew?"
"Oh, no!" said he, equally surprised at my ignorance, "I'm the Captain!" It turned out he was actually 22 years old though he didn't look it to me.
The only time I ever flew in the left-hand seat of a big transport was not a great success either. It was in an almost identical Herc when I went on a visit to the Pole many years before, with a cargo of about 80 fuel drums. I was up on the flight deck yarning to the navigator and trying to take some pix of the upper Beardmore Glacier when the Chief P. said, "Would you like my seat, you get a better view, I'm going aft. Just don't touch that red button it will switch off the auto-pilot."
I promised faithfully as the co-pilot was dozing with his feet on the dash, but like a clown, I didn't strap in. Only minutes later a hellish clatter broke out to port somewhere, some engines speeded up, some stopped and we did a wing over and went straight on in, rather alarming in a massive machine that normally is as steady as a rock.
As the only person in a position to do something heroic I failed miserably as my main concerns were (a) not to go out through the windshield, and (b) not to pin the control column to the instrument panel which could hardly help things, and my only thought was, "I must have touched that bloody red button!"
Fortunately the co-pilot woke up in quite a hurry and was strapped in, and gently eased her out of the dive calling out, "Which one? Which one?" to which the Engineer replied, "Number two, port inner!" The pilot feathered number two and shut it down and we carried on at 235 knots and not even a fuel drum broke loose though the loadmaster and crew must have been rattled about a bit. It turned out the generator shaft sheared so we lost all power, but it only necessary to switch over to the generator on No. 3 to get power back. We landed our load at the Pole at 10,000ft asl and I dashed off to get a picture of the flagpole itself. The plane took off OK on three engines but aided by the absence of myself who got overlooked and left on the ground, or rather snow, but that is another story.
In 1944 at Junior Flying Training School all our instructors were very senior ex- RAF types, but as instructors they were not just terrible, they were appalling, and even then I rather wondered why they seems to yell so much abuse at poor APUTs who had not only never flown but in most cases, never driven a car, or even ridden a bicycle. In my case an airplane was the first mechanised object I ever took control of and I could fly a plane at least six years before I learnt to drive a car, and it seemed stupid that cars had a throttle lever on the floor and you steered with your hands and for quite a while I trod on the clutch pedal when turning left.
It was not until long after I began to realise why our instructors were so bad, my own was a full Squadron Leader and did not swear much though his only conversation when we met on the apron would be "Well, let’s get cracking!". One instructor was a Wing Co ( = Navy Commander). All of them were ex-battle of Britain with thousands of hours up and they regarded flying training school as the Pits. How many times had they threatened some junior PO, "By God, Hanson, if you pull a stunt like that again,-- try a takeoff in coarse pitch,-- land with your undercart up, -- fly upside down under Severn Bridge --etc etc, I'm sending you to THE FLYING TRAINING WING!" There was only one worse threat, "YOU'RE GROUNDED!"
These men had flown the glamourous Spitfire, or the Hurricane, our Charlie Oboe was ex 65 Squadron and Lancasters, and here they had DH-82 TIGER MOTHS, a fabric biplane first built in 1927. All the 100,000 odd airmen that trained on Tiger Moths have vast affection for the old string bags, but to come back to them after a Spitfire was more than ego could bear. Even Harvard’s or the Kittyhawk’s then used as an advanced trainer were bearable but a drafty old Tiger Moth?
The lack of psychological insight in any bureaucracy is always amazing, but the total thanks ever given to these survivors of thousands of hours of battle was to be given a $5 brass medal and be told, "you're too old -- got the twitches -- still got a piece of cannon shell in you -- we don't have a squadron for you -- go to training school!" They tried to ground Alan Deere after 35 shot down and 20 probable’s, they tried to ground Guy Gibson of "Dam Busters". I think it was Bomber Harris who said, "The poor sod came to me with tears in his eyes, so I gave in and he went to a Mosquito Intruder Squadron."
Well, we all know what happened to Wing Co Guy Gibson,VC, whom Leonard Cheshire called "The greatest bomber pilot the war produced!" Cheshire himself got back into 217 squadron by convincing the medics he would have a mental breakdown if he didn't.
We used to shamelessly eavesdrop on conversations between Instructors as they rarely condescended to speak to us. "Did you hear 309 has been re-equipped with Tempests? Christ, what an aeroplane! Doesn’t it make you sick?" and, "Did you see young Charlie Brown is CO of Northholt? God! I remember him turning up as a wet-nosed PO when I was at Tangmere, broke a bloody kite in his first week! Wouldn't it make you sick?" and so on. Everything made them sick, especially us lowly Erks who would soon be doing the job only they could do.
The medics had and have a mania about age. Capt. Alan Ladd had been flying for years but when he joined the RNZAF in '39 he was turned down for flying because at 28 he had some premature grey hair. Six months later he wangled it, and did three tours in the Pacific on TBF's. He formed his own airline "Gulf Air" after the war with a dozen Grumman airboats, and by the age of 65 had, I am told, over 70,000 hours on his log and they grounded him again, too old. He began swimming across Lake Taupe[1], a not inconsiderable pond, to prove he was fit enough, but medics know best!
For most of six years of war Colin Gray went flying on average every second day he was on Ops. On average he bounced some Huns every second flight. On average he shot one down every second engagement. At the end his score was something like 32 confirmed, 25 probable’s, 30 damaged. The medics consistently tried to ground him, but he loudly claimed the osteomyelitis operation scars on a leg were "just an old football injury". They sent him out to Africa as an administrator.
"Good heavens," he said on his first day, "You just got Spit Mark 5's and no one who has flown them? You need me in the air." He shot down an Me109 on his first flight in Tunisia and the paper work went to hell. He had more rings round his sleeve than anyone else on that station and that always helps.
Johnnie Houlton who shot down the first Me109 on "D" day and also shot down the last plane in the war over Germany, recently went back for the "D" day celebrations. His own Spit had been preserved in a museum with his own special number and was to take part and guess what, he wanted to fly it. When last heard of cries of "You're too old!" were drowning all else.
However some of the old hands still get away with it. I was passing the Wanaka Warbirds Assn airstrip at Luggate recently and there was some young fool giving the strip a beat-up in a shining Corsair P49. While the Corsair might not have the image of the Mark 14 Spit (one of which was which was sitting on the tarmac being patted by some elderly obviously ex-RAF types), it is a grand old plane with lots of urge up the front end and we stopped to watch. He did a loop, flattened off 50ft above the deck, flicked into a snap roll as he passed the hangars at about 420 mph, shot up to 3000ft did a roll off the top and sideslipped in to land. "Damn young fool will have his licence taken off him!" I was muttering, "Hope he knows enough to lock his tail wheel!"
The Corsair rolled to a stop, the hood slid back and the pilot clambered out quite slowly and pulled off his helmet. He had a mass of grey hair and was 70 if he was a day. He looked around with blank eyes and a smile and walked rather stiffly with a limp over to the Ops Hut. I don't think he saw the brown hills, I think he was seeing coconut trees, just back from a great raid on Rabaul.
May he long relive his youth!
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Some time back Ruth made a classic remark which these days could be applied to the unwilling passengers of pilots with a less than adequate sense of navigation when she said, "Whither thou goest, there go I also!"
A few millennia after Ruth at a conference in Santiago, Chile, a group of us hired a Beech Aerocommander to take a look at the Chilean Andes and volcanoes. It was an enjoyable flight, with 18,000ft Aconcagua showing behind on our left, and a succession of volcanic groups, one, Azul, puffing out a cloud of black smoke every few minutes, many were active, and one, Descabezado, as its name indicates, beheaded and worn down to a group of rock spines. We landed at Villarica, a resort like Kinloch near Queenstown, the strip being on a river bed with beech forest showing scars of burning up the mountainsides. After dinner at a resort hotel and a drive up Volcan Villarica, a cone about twice the height of Egmont, we flew on south, round Volcan Osorno and landed at Puerto Mont, to drop off two of the passengers. It was a grass strip with no buildings and we refuelled from drums as dark approached.
The starboard motor started OK but from the port one came only the whirr of a non-engaged bend ix. The pilot was a taciturn type and spoke very little and did not seems to know much about motors. He suggested we sleep in the aeroplane and tomorrow mechanic come, fix. It was getting freezing cold and the prospect did not overjoy one. I gave the Bendix housing a few jolts with a hammer to no effect and then said, "OK, I'll swing 'er over!"
The pilot yawned and said, "No possibla!" to which I said something rude, having swung over many a Tiger Moth and quite a few Cessna float planes in the Canadian bush. Right, switches off, push up the three bladed metal prop, and "chump!" A Beech has, I think, a pair of flat six Lycoming’s and the compression was something fierce. Also, metal airscrews get serrated edges from picking up sand on take-off and I cut my fingers badly. I called up to the pilot to throw me his gloves, switches off, lean on the compression to partly bleed it off, switches on, chump! And away she went.
By this time it was dark and we headed north with no one apparently navigating. My Chilean friend said, "He is follow the Santiago radio beacon, very dangerous, many planes crash, winds drift them into the Andes. You remember the Paraguay football team who crashed in the Andes and ate their girlfriends? They thought they were over Santiago, but wind had drifted them a hundred miles east!"
My other two companions did not have the appearance of being an enticing form of nourishment, so I said, "OK, toss me the aeronav chart and I'll navigate." There was no such thing aboard. My Chilean friend by some fickle fortune was able to produce a road map and by some further twist of fate I found in my briefcase a protractor and plastic ruler.
We had about 600 nm to go and the Beech does about 180 knots. We identified the lights of a small town a mile or so to port which should have been six miles to starboard and a vector triangle suggested we had an 18kt westerly, though it had been calm on the ground. 18 knots for three more hours meant we would be well off course and over or in the high Andes, so I suggested to the pilot he change course to something like 355°T instead of the 015° he was steering, to which he said, "No! Follow Beacon" (which transmits a constant signal from any point of the compass). My friend swore at him in Spanish for some minutes waving our road map under his nose and pointing out our defective track and he reluctantly headed a bit more towards the Pacific. Coming over the lights of Temuco in a gap in the murk confirmed we were dead on course, to which the pilot grunted and after landing, refuelling and more prop swinging we flew direct to Santiago airport still allowing for the wind (which had now increased to over 20 knots) without further problems.
The only moral if there is one, is an extension to the one Baden-Powell was fond of, "Be Prepared for the Worst!" and remember that even a road map can be handy and the most elementary navigation better than none.
