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Ripline
18th Jan 2012, 09:55
How lucky we all are to have these amazingly vivid stories of a past age to wonder at! Many thanks, Padhist, for these.

I see that today is also a special one for cliffnemo, so Happy Birthday to you, Sir!

Ripline

Chugalug2
18th Jan 2012, 10:41
How privileged we are to have this very special thread to read. Talking of very special, a Happy Birthday to you indeed, cliffnemo, as the one who kicked it all off! Thank you, and every other compatriot of yours, who have added so much to our understanding and knowledge of what was involved from A to Z in "Gaining an R.A.F. Pilots Brevet in WWII". It is of course the detail, the little things, the "Oh, by the way ..." stuff that is the very essence of this historically important testimony.
Finally another very special thanks to you Padhist for such a prodigious and enthralling output. Do others find so much is familiar, and yet other so different, to our own more mundane experience of later life in the RAF? The arbitrariness of sudden and often unwelcome administrative action must strike such a chord with those serving at the moment I fear. We can all look back and contemplate the "if only's" of our careers, but I suspect that the possibilities were nowhere near as stark and unforgiving as in the tales recounted here. Thank you Gentlemen, to each and every one of you.

angels
18th Jan 2012, 10:59
Yep, I noticed Clifferno's birthday at the bottom as well. Happy birthday mate.

Padhist -

Cliff had done the same and found a job flying some smugglers in and out of Switzerland. They were caught, and he had a worrying time for a while. All turned out OK in the end and he had managed to increase his flying hours which was important.

So Cliff would log his hours ferrying smugglers in and out of Switzerland! Was he in a Lysander??!!

Pom Pax
18th Jan 2012, 11:58
Wrong Cliff!!!!!!!
Padhurst's mate not Our Cliff.

angels
18th Jan 2012, 13:04
Pom Pax - I know! Tis pure coincidence that Padhist's mate was called Cliff.

I wasn't getting confused. :p

cliffnemo
18th Jan 2012, 15:35
Wonderful stuff, Paddy (if I may), although your latest marvellous post seems to suggest that the time has come to expand the thread title from Gaining An R.A.F Pilots Brevet In WW11!

Out of interest, at what point were you awarded FAA wings?

With best wishes and looking forward to more .....
Jack


Amen to that, and ''Press on reward less Paddy' The thread has got a new lease of life.

MANY THANKS for all the kind birthday wishes they are much appreciated and ''made my day'' Cor 89.

Padhist
18th Jan 2012, 16:04
angels
What a mix up! My mate Cliff was working for a couple of smugglers flying ,I think a Cessna. They took Sterling to Switzerland and came back with watches. At that time it was illegal to export sterling £

Padhist
18th Jan 2012, 16:30
Chapter 20
Royal Aeronautical Establishment Bedford (RAE) Test Pilot

When I learned that I was to test fly the Vulcan on automatics I had some misgivings because at that time I could not conceive of a situation where automatics could do a job that a pilot could not, and my whole line of thinking was..... How was I going to manage the situation when this new fangled device let me down? I thought automatic landing was something of a trick requiring a lot of setting up and performed occasionally to impress some VIP's. I was very surprised therefore when Alfie,anold mate of mine, said on our arrival at Bedford "Would you like to see an automatic landing" Well of course... Yes. And most impressed I was when the Varsity touched down all by itself apart from a few little touches on various switches by Alfie. I had no idea how advanced automatic landing had become. Alfie said "Do you think you have ever flown in fog". Well most pilots think that they can handle an aircraft in any conditions and having landed in low visibility, claim it was thick fog. Alfie said "Wait until you see what we land in”. How right he was!

RAE Bedford for me was a new experience, totally different from the RAF. I was allocated a Married Quarter at Sharnbrook a little village about three miles from the airfield and was able to bring Madeleine and the children with me. There were only sixteen officers on the station, all in married Quarters, almost as many Naval Officers as RAF. The senior rank was Wg Cdr Flying (Mc Creith) but the overall management of the establishment was in civilian hands. There were two sites, the airfield and the wind tunnel site. Both were state of the art and highly secure. The three main flying groups were Aero Flight, Naval Air and Blind Landing Experimental Unit. I was now in the hands of civilian 'Boffins' who controlled all the flight tests... The head of BLEU was a John Charnley, now Sir John. What a splendid character he was, I never saw him without a smile, great sense of humour and quite brilliant. For the first week or so I lived in the mess until our married quarter was available and every morning at breakfast I sat opposite an old chap who was incredibly shy, it was difficult to get a word out of him...One day I asked the mess waiter ...”Who is the old boy”?..”The Boss” he replied!”The Boss of what” I asked? He said. “That is Mr. Hufton the Boss of everything. The whole establishment”.

What a feast of aeroplanes! Vulcan, Varsity, Comet, Javelin, Devon, Meteor, Canberra, resident in the stable, but I also got to fly, Douglas DC 7, Constellation, Hunter and one trip in a Whirlwind helicopter... very unsanitary that!!! As usual I became the Instrument Rating Examiner and this gave me free access to the Meteor. I could use this as I wanted. I must say it was most interesting to realise that we could be flying the Vulcan in the morning change from that to the Devon and then pop into the Meteor for some aerobatics in the afternoon. I was at a function at Chelveston the nearby American base and talking to a navigator who said he had never done aerobatics. I said he should give me a ring and I would fix it... Well he did and after we had carried out the flying he said...”You know, I thought you were being big headed when you offered me this flight and I rang to call your bluff." He said he was absolutely amazed after a short chat in the crew room I said “Let’s go then” signed the authorisation book and we were off. He then told me of the problems involved had I wanted to get a flight with the American Squadron. It would have had to go through the Pentagon for permission!!!

The serious work of BLEU was of course the development of the Automatic Landing System this had begun as an Air Ministry Operational Requirement for the V.Force. It had been recognised that in the event of a Nuclear Alert the first targets would be our Nuclear Bombers. It was therefore necessary to develop a system which would enable the bombers to disperse around the country to defined RAF airfields in any weather conditions. This meant in effect an Automatic Blind Landing System... In the event, the system became so good that an interest was aroused for a system to be installed in Civil Aircraft. This interest was to become the more dominant as the trials improved. Because of the very high demands for the safety of civilian passengers the system evolved around a Smiths Triplicated Automatic Pilot used with ground based Instrument Landing Aids. ( ILS )...In our case we operated a single channel system. ( RAF personnel are expendable) however the integrity of the equipment was such that we never had a problem and were totally confident in its performance.

During the early days of my stay it was decided to lift the secrecy blanket which had hitherto shrouded our work and we were to have an open day for the technical press, giving flight demonstrations of Auto-Land. As usual Murphy's Law came into play and on the day, we had 25 knot crosswind. Not only was this the maximum crosswind permissible for the aircraft we were flying....But Auto landing systems are not designed to function in strong winds of any kind. It was John Charnley who pointed out the problems saying that having called the big press demonstration if we now called it off because of weather the whole system would die the death. In the event we all decided to carry on and the day was a great success. The very strong crosswind in fact helped to show how effective the automatic drift kick-off on landing was. I recall one American correspondent saying "I have been all round the world to see automatic landing systems but this is the first time it has been demonstrated with such confidence, in fact demonstrated at all". He found that there was usually some excuse put forward as to why it could not be shown.

I had some very interesting visits from Bedford to carry out flight tests with other organisations. One was a visit to Holland where we flew a Constellation in a very sophisticated set of night flying trials. The aircraft was fitted with a very elaborate metal visor which only allowed forward view from 200ft and below. We flew the approach from 1500ft down to 200 on instruments and then had to comment on various ground approach light aids. It was quite a demanding test because the weather was heavy rain and blustery winds. We were even linked up to a heart monitor to test our 'tickers' on the approach runs! I also made visits to Villacoubley and to Beauvais in France Also a very pleasant trip to Gibraltar with no work involved. Just a 'swan', or officially Continuation training.

Life at RAE was very pleasant and relaxed, with none of the usual RAF constraints. The self discipline among all concerned gave an impression of casualness but when one considers that during my three years there, despite taking part in some very tricky experimental flying, I cannot recall an accident. It must be noted that we were not aware of the experimental work carried out in the other units but they were probably more hazardous than our own. I suppose the high lights during my period were, Flying chase in the Meteor to Jack Henderson on his first flight in the Narrow Delta prototype aircraft, developed to test the low speed handling characteristics of the future Concord...This test was a great success and clearly Jack was happy with the aircraft from the moment of take-off.... Seeing the first vertical take-offs and landings carried out by Tom Brooke-Smith in his prototype dinky toy!!!..This had four vertically oriented jet engines for vertical control and one for forward flight, on a demonstration flight at Farnborough the grass had been recently mowed, so when the lift engines were started up the cut grass was thrown up and over the aircraft, blocking up the engine filters, causing the engines to cut. How embarrassing..... Flying with the great Calvert the father of Calvert Lighting and many other aids to modern flying......My own claim to fame. Having London Airport all to myself the night of December 5th, 1962 demonstrating automatic landings in thick freezing fog. No civil traffic could operate in the conditions that pertained that night. In fact the contingency plan for this night had allowed for a number of senior persons from London to come aboard to see the demonstration but the fog was so thick that no cars or public transport vehicles were running. In fact had I not had the splendid back up of the Ground Radar which was able to see my exact position on the runway and give me guidance to taxi back to the take off position after touch down? I would not have been able to manoeuvre the aircraft in what was the most dense fog I had ever encountered. Details of this flight are contained in my old flight test records. I think it must have been this flight that put me in the running for the AFC. This was a nice farewell

Padhist
18th Jan 2012, 16:42
Service History C.D. Grogan. AFC Flt.Lt. RAF Retd.
Event Date
Date of Attestation 1801002 6 January 1942 Euston Rd London
Date of call up 13 July 1942 To Lords cricket ground
Promotion to LAC 26 December 1942 ITW Paignton
Promotion to Sgt Pilot 5 December 1943 Miami Oklahoma
Transfer to FAA FX669242 December 1944 Lee on Solent
De-mobbed from FAA 11 May 1946 RNAS Eglinton N.Ireland
Rejoined RAF 23 February 1949 RAF Cardington
Commissioned 5 March 1953 RAF Millom
Promotion to F/O 5 March 1954 Singapore
Promotion exam sat June 1955 RAF Butterworth
Promotion to Flt.Lt 3 September 1956 RAF Upwood 50 SQDN
Retired December 1962 RAE Bedford



24-02-43...26-03-43 Booker Grading School Tiger Moths
26-05-43...06-12-43 Miami 3BFTS PT.19.......... Harvard’s
31-03-44...01-05-44 Derby 16 EFTS Tiger Moths
14-07-44...04-08-44 Desford 7 Pre AFU Tiger Moths
07-11-44...05-12-44 Tealing 9 AFU Harvard’s
04-02-45...10-02-45 Hinstock NAIFS Oxfords
23-02-45...25-03-45 Crimond RNAS Barracuda
01-04-45...26-04-45 Easthaven RNAS Barracuda
17-05-45...07-07-45 Ronaldsway RNAS Barracuda
30-08-45...11-05-46 Eglinton RNAS Martinet
01-02-48...23-02-49 Stanmore RAFVR Tiger Moths
23-02-49...02-03-49 Cardington Re-entry to RAF Non Flying
02-03-49...21-04-49 Spitalgate OCTU Failed!! Non Flying
27-04-49...20-05-49 Finningley 1 PRFU Harvard /Spitfire
10-06-49...20-07-49 Wolverhampton 45 Reserve Non Flying
0-07-49...31-01-50 Little Rissington Harvard/Athena/Prentice/Meteor
Flying Instructor course Mosquito/Lancaster / 01-02-50...01-05-50 Ternhill 6 FTS Prentice
01-05-50...03-12-52 Syerston 22 FTS Prentice/Harvard
03-12-52...03-03-53 Millom OCTU Passed??? Non Flying
03-04-53...07-04-53 Transit to Singapore Hastings ( Passenger)
08-04-53...31-08-54 Seleter Singapore FETS Mosquito/Hornet/ Meteor
( Far East Training Squadron ) Mosquito/Hornet/Auster/Harvard
01-09-54...31-03-55 Butterworth Vampire
01-04-55...01-11-55 45/33 Sqdn Mosquito/Hornet/Meteor/Vampire
17-01-56...13-03-56 Worksop 211 FTS Meteor
14-03-56...01-04-56 Lindholme Varsity
17-04-56...13-08-56 Bassingbourne Canberra
14-08-56...23-09-58 Upwood 50 Squadron Canberra


16-01-57...27-02-57 Detached Cypress
16-07-57...14-08-57 " Malta
03-01-58...30-01-58 " Malta
11-06-56...27-06-58 " Malta
24-09-58...02-03-59 Waddington 230 OCU (10 course) Vulcan/Canberra
02-03-59...23-02-63 Bedford RAE Vulcan/Varsity/Canberra/Devon
Comet/Meteor/DC.7/Javelin
Hunter/Constellation/
Instructor Category B1... 20-07-49...Average
A2... 25-04-51...Above Average
A1.... 15-11-51...Exceptional
Command Instrument Rating Examiner...Singapore
Approved Examiner for Flying Instructors Certificate of Competency...Civil...Singapore
Air Force Cross......From Queen Mother.....19 November 1963

fredjhh
18th Jan 2012, 18:05
A Very Happy Birthday
to "young " Cliff
from FredJHH

What a wonderful Service History from Padhist. Keep the thread going.

Padhist
19th Jan 2012, 12:12
My swan song in the service was
The Night London Airport Was Mine.

However I am sure this has been posted some time before so before I clutter up more of this thread. Let me say that it can be found GOOGLE
Just enter Flt. Lt C. Grogan

Should anyone have difficulties I will gladly post it again here.

Best wishes to you all. Of course I will continue reading

Oh yes. In October I managed an hours 'Poling' and it is like riding a bike!

Paddy Grogan

Danny42C
27th Jan 2012, 02:42
This is my first Post: be gentle with me!

I've followed this Thread with delight and admiration since joining the ranks of the Geriatric Surfers five months ago. My daughter is instructing me -(how are the mighty fallen, it seems only yesterday that I was taking the stabilisers off her bike!). I'm not very good at this yet.

My pen name gives a clue, I can hear the groans: "Not another of these Arnold Scheme/B.F.T.S. characters". 'Fraid so. But seeing that another contributor might be welcome (and seeing the suggestion that the thread might be expanded from "Gaining your brevet in WWII" (made by Cliff, the "onlie begetter", and others, I've decided to put my oar in (if Mr Moderator will have me).

This is what I can put on the table:

26,000 words on training to OTU.
54,000 words on wartime India and dive bomber operations in Burma.
28,000 words on postwar RAF service.

Don't worry, it's not ready yet. I have to finish editing, then get it transferred from floppy disk onto a CD-Rom (it was produced on my faithful old "Starwriter"), then hope that some kind soul can tell me how to "park"
the lot somewhere where PPruners can reach it, (but nobody else).

Meanwhile, I suggest I feed in bite-sized chunks into this Thread, from time to time. What do you think?

I was born within sound of the "Bootle Bull". Cliff will tell you what that means. There must have been something in the air of Liverpool. I believe he hails from there, as did Reg (Requiescat in Pace). And Reg must have been at Blackpool Grammar School when I was at St. Joseph's College. I was in the First XV. I wonder...

I like Cliff's idea of a little old 'bon mot' to round it off.



You'll be all right on a big Station.

ricardian
27th Jan 2012, 08:10
Sounds like a good idea to me

ancientaviator62
27th Jan 2012, 08:11
Danny42C,
bring it on ! I for one can never read enough about other's past experiences.

kookabat
27th Jan 2012, 11:11
Hello Danny,

Yes please!!!

Adam

TommyOv
27th Jan 2012, 11:20
Danny,

Absolutely! This thread is already the best on the forum; having another contributor will only make it better.

Cheers,

Tom

Jobza Guddun
27th Jan 2012, 19:37
Danny, please do post your history, this has been one of the most enthralling threads around. Many thanks to Cliff for starting it all that time ago! :ok:

cliffnemo
28th Jan 2012, 12:30
Welcome aboard Danny. Any information you add will be appreciated by young relatives of W.W 2 airmen of all trades, Historians , authors, and modern day aviators. I know because they have emailed me and my virtual friends and told us so. You will get a good reception from an excellent bunch of chaps (and girls of course) and our moderators.

PRESS ON REWARD-LESS and good luck CLIFF..

P.S Danny I have sent you a P.M (it should appear above right) headed Welcome Danny, your notifications 1 (I hope)

Danny42C
29th Jan 2012, 19:13
Thank you, Cliff, and all the other posters, for your kind words of welcome and encouragement - I only hope I can live up to it !

And thanks for your PM, Cliff, I've managed to get to it at last, but I feel as if I've been in Hampton Court maze , and I don't know how I got out. I haven't the faintest idea how to send one. Yes, it's true that we're both on borrowed time; I'll try and get my first tranche in as soon as I can. Project Propeller sounds a fine idea (and you look fine on the pic) but I don't get out much now, I'm afraid.

Tara, Wack! - it's many a year since I heard that! The Liver building was the proper colour then - black as the pot, and the birds green with verdigris.
The Royal Daffodil and the Royal Iris were the queens of the Mersey!

Tip to all with interest in WWII RAF training: facsimiles of "Tee Emm" (Training Magazine) are available - Google.


More soon. Danny42C



That was yesterday! - It's all been changed!

boguing
29th Jan 2012, 19:53
Danny, Cliff said "Any information you add will be appreciated by young relatives of W.W 2 airmen of all trades".

I will add that their not so young offspring will also enjoy it equally.

Danny42C
30th Jan 2012, 01:05
Then came the War. First was the Phoney War, and we sang "We'll hang out the washing on the Siegfried Line (fat chance!). Then came the Blitzkrieg and Dunkirk. The song died on our lips. The long unreal summer of 1940 began with the formation of the Local Defence Volunteers, later the Home Guard, and ended with the miracle of the Battle of Britain, and Churchill's immortal tribute to the "Few".

For twenty years boys had read W.E. John's "Biggles" books, and dreamed of becoming their hero. These decades were the years of record-breaking long distance flights and five bob (five minute!) "hops" at Air Circuses. Very few
had ever flown, and most would never fly in their entire lives (You'll never get ME up in one of those things!).

Just to have a pilot's licence made you a hero in popular esteem (much as are astronauts today). My father often quoted a quip from the first War: "Join the Army and see the World - Join the Air Force and see the Next!". But flying instruction, at £3 an hour (£3 was a good weekly wage for a man)was far out of our reach. Learning to fly had been an impossible dream - until now.

So, with Churchill's words ringing in their ears, just about every red-blooded young man in Britain (and the Empire), with School Certificate and in the age group (17 and a half to 23) flocked to volunteer as RAF aircrew. I was one of them. All wanted to be pilots, of course. There would be many hurdles ahead: it was reckoned that only 2% of all original applicants got to wear the coveted double wing. People were almost down on their knees to get into the RAF, it could afford to be fussy. Most of the rejections were in the first phase.

Just before Christmas 1940, I was called to Padgate (near Manchester) to appear before the Selection Board. They must have been having a lean day, for they accepted me. I scraped through the Medical Board, much to my mother's surprise, for I had a "Weak Chest". This nondescript ailment was then common; the smoke and dust of the cities having packed our lungs with soot. I took the Oath, and enlisted as an Aircraftman, Second Class (AC2 or "erk") - the lowest form of life in the RAF - "u/t" (under training) as a Pilot or Observer (at their option). To seal the bargain, they gave me the "King's Shilling" (a day's pay), (actually it was a "florin" - two bob - inflation had already set in!)

I was in, a full member of the Royal Air Force Volunteer Reserve.



Get fell in !

nmarshal
30th Jan 2012, 07:51
All WW2 aircrew may like to know that details of the 2012 event are now up on the website - Project Propeller (http://www.projectpropeller.co.uk)

As always, please register early to beat the rush............ :-)

For those who have not heard of it, Project Propeller is an annual reunion for 150+ WW2 aircrew, to which they are flown from all over the UK in light aircraft by current volunteer pilots. Full details of how to take part are on the website.

Nigel Marshall

Chugalug2
30th Jan 2012, 09:21
Danny, congratulations on a great start! Oh, and a belated welcome from me to this, the most exclusive ante-room of PPRuNe Towers. I can sense a communal settling of backsides into commodious and luxuriant armchairs and couches as you stand with one hand resting on the the mantelpiece in order the better to tell us your tale. Am I alone in finding these very first posts some of the most fascinating in what will be as ever an informative journey through time? We all remember our own confusing first days of joining up. How much more they must have been then with such huge numbers involved. Always the fear of failing at the very first hurdle as one by one others drop by the wayside. The varied and obscure locations, seaside resorts and RAF stations that many of us have never heard of let alone forgotten....
Sorry to have interrupted your flow old chap. I'm quite comfy now thanks, so I'll just sit back and enjoy, whisky in hand. Cheers!

ancientaviator62
30th Jan 2012, 09:26
Danny,
chugalug has expressed so eloquently what all of us feel about these memoirs.

Danny42C
30th Jan 2012, 17:39
The Class of 42A presumably followed the last all-American class of 41L (?)
Now the U.S. Air Corps followed the well known practice of "Hazing".
This amounted to officially sanctioned bullying, whereby the "Upper" (Senior) class of a military (and other) colleges treated their "Lower" class as Flashman treated his "fags" - or as a baby treats a nappy.

I have found only two passing references to this in the Thread: No. 1181 (P.60) from the sadly missed Reg, and No. 1919 (P.96) from Sandisondaughter. Now this later one is dated a year or so back; we are all drinking in the Last Chance saloon now, and I am conscious of walking on eggshells while asking this question: Can Sandisonfather help me with this?

This is the tale I was told, at Carlstrom Field (Florida): Our first British class of 42A met this treatment from 41L - or whatever. There was no particular animus against the British, they would have treated their own chaps just the same. Needless to say, a freeborn Briton would not put up with this; they set upon their tormentors in a body, prevailed and flung them and all their possessions into the camp swimming pool.

Now the authorities couid hardly send the whole lot back to Canada - it would provoke a diplomatic incident - so the situation was accepted, "hazing" was suspended, and 42A followed 41L through all three Schools in peace (I don't know about harmony).

Can anyone please shed any more light on this (which presumably must have gone on at other USAAC bases ?) Thanks in anticipation.

Danny42C

Danny42C
31st Jan 2012, 00:46
Thank you, ancientaviator and Chugalug, for your kind words. They are much appreciated .

First, a typo error in the first part of my story: the upper age limit for acceptance was of course 23yrs, not 33 as stated. It has been corrected. I must be more careful.

That night in Padgate, midway between Manchester and Liverpool, we heard and watched the air raids on both cities (the Blitz was at its height). Next day I went home like a dog with two tails. My Dad, an old regular soldier, was well pleased. "With your education, son, you'll be a Sergeant in no time". Sadly, he wouldn't live to see the day.

They'd got their man to sign on the dotted line and take the Oath. Now the RAF had to decide what to do with him. Flying schools were full up for months ahead. They gave me a choice: come in right away for ground duties as an "erk" (ACH/GD - Ground Duties - i.e. dogsbody) until your flying course comes up. Or go home and wait; we'll call you when we're ready for you. This was really a waiting list. It suited me much better. They gave me a little silvery RAFVR lapel badge (to ward off white feathers?). It would have made a fine keepsake, but the frugal RAF wanted it back when I came in, and I hadn't the sense to say i'd "lost" it.

Many boys had to take the other option, notably Dominion volunteers who'd given up their jobs in far-flung corners of the Empire to do their bit for the Mother Country - in which they'd landed penniless after paying their passage back to Britain. Needless to say, Station Warrant Officers rejoiced at this influx of temporary labour and screwed every last ounce of work out of them. But it wasn't a waste of their time, for these few months of experience taught them all the basic survival skills needed in the RAF, and in this respect they were well ahead of us "Deferred Service" people when our time came.

Which was the following May for me. I remember a long, crowded train journey from Liverpool down to Torquay. Somewhere in the Midlands we passed an airfield close to the line. Tiger Moths wre buzzing round it, obviously it was a RAF Elementary Flying School. It was exciting to think that I'd be there - or somewhere like it - before I was much older (for fortunately the RAF had chosen the "pilot" option for me).

"Per Ardua ad Astra" - Ardua first! Everybody knows what Service Reception Centres were like: they've been lampooned on film and TV often enough. We were bawled at, marched about all over the place from dawn to lights-out, kitted out (some of it fitted) and inoculated against everything known to medical science.

Nine years at the tender mercy of the Irish Christian Brothers had left me pretty well inured to hardship, but even I blinked a bit at our sleeping arrangements. Straw palliasses on the bare boards of a stripped-out Babbacombe boarding house ! What most of my intake - never been away from mummy in their lives - thought, I can't imagine. Their wails met the old sardonic RAF response: "Serves you right, shouldn't have joined if you can't take a joke !

More later. Danny.





Get some in !

Petet
1st Feb 2012, 21:43
Hi

We have been following this thread and it has been absolutely brilliant at helping us to understand and document some of the training experienced by our grandfather who was KIA over Bonn on 4th February 1945 with 35 PFF.

We are particularly interested in finding out as much as we can about his training in 1943 / 1944 at 2RC (Cardington) 1ACRC (Regents Park) 3ITW (Torquay) and 4 SoTT (ST Athan) before posting to 41 Base and then on to 35 PFF.

In particular we are keen to establish the kit he was issued with at the various phases of his training, the documents issued, the exact course syllabuses at each location ..... so please ... keep those memories coming .... they are an essential part of our research.

Any help would be much appreciated

TommyOv
2nd Feb 2012, 11:15
Danny,

Fantastic. Can't wait to hear more.

Do you have any inkling as to how the RAF decided that you were to be trained as a pilot instead of any other aircrew branch? Was it based on scores from aptitude testing, or qualifications: i.e. those with a penchant for mathematics became navigators, and others became pilots? With so many young pilot hopefuls it must have been quite an exercise to sort them into branches.

Looking forward to your next installment!

Tom

andyl999
2nd Feb 2012, 11:16
Danny, I will check in Reg's memoirs to see where he went to school, I guess as Reg was not Catholic then it wasn't St James :0)

So far as Hazing goes I have spoken to many cadets and their experience seems to be very varied.

Reg just accepted it and just wanted to learn to fly and get through the course.

There was another cadet in 42A called Bob C**** he was not in the least bothered by it

I spoke to a Spitfire pilot who was on BFTS 4 Mesa Hank C****** and he told me that the American cadets tried it on but he was with an older sergeant who had already seen a lot of action in the war (and not a 18 yr old cadet) and he would not have anything to do with it.

The story was that an American cadet had told this sergeant to tread on the American’s disposed cigarette, the sergeant bent down to do it ,then just rose up and hit the cadets jaw, they apparently did not have a problem with hazing after then.

Hank also said that most UK cadets just wanted to get their wings and get back and fight they found hazing trivial with respect to the job they needed to do. I think it was also disliked that the hazing system encouraged cadets to “snitch” on other cadets, most UK based cadets hated that.

There was of course always a fear of being “washed out” due to disciplinary reasons so that also may have played a role?

I look forward to reading your experiences!

Regards Andy

26er
2nd Feb 2012, 13:34
I remember one of my instructors in 1950 who had gone through the US training describing "hazing" and having to eat a "square meal" which consisted of sitting at attention, and presumably with the fork in one's right hand, loading it from the plate, stretching it away from himself, making a right angle turn, raising it to mouth level. bringing it back to his mouth and ingesting, lowering it back down to the plate, so when viewed from the side the fork would have described a square. All this supervised by the senior course. He told me this had originally come from West Point. I wonder if they still play these silly games?

andyl999
2nd Feb 2012, 14:00
Your right, Reg mentioned this as well, makes sense when you realise that The Arnold Scheme was US Army run, so was West Point.

As far as I know the Arnold Scheme was distinctly different to the BFTS's in the respect that in the Arnold Scheme they had mainly civilian American trainers whilst the BFTS's followed a more RAF curriculum.

If there are any Ex Arnold or BFTS Cadets please comment?

green granite
2nd Feb 2012, 15:33
Padhist this thread may interest you if you've not already seen it especially the links in post #119:

http://www.pprune.org/flight-testing/342964-rae-thurleigh.html

Chugalug2
2nd Feb 2012, 16:10
26er:
I wonder if they still play these silly games?
Colorado (the USAF Academy) used to in the early 60's. Our entry visited them (along with West Point) in our senior year. I remember sitting at lunch in their dining hall with a mixture of their seniors and rookies. The latter had to go through the same bizarre routine, to the extent that if they wished to smother their meal in the obligatory Ketchup they had to voice a refrain along the lines of, " Sir, would our guest or any other gentleman care for the Tomato Ketchup, Sir!" Only when no-one responded in the affirmative could he then continue with, " Sir, could you please pass the Tomato Ketchup, Sir!". Then at last could he create the culinary delight that he had set about some time previously. All this done sitting and eating to attention as you describe.
Mind you some aspects of UK Public School tradition still survived at Cranwell, most notably "Crowing". This endearing routine consisted of the Senior Entry sneaking into the South Brick Lines (where we wretches of the Junior Entry resided). They had to sneak in, as Crowing was by then (1959/60) already forbidden. Whatever had been practised in its heyday, by now it was reduced to we juniors being obliged to voice off some doggerel about "Two black crows, sitting on a fence...") while being perched, squatting, on some high point (locker tops etc) to better enact the tale. I remember at the time thinking it was more harrowing for them than for us, as they had to post lookouts and at the slightest alarm would beat a hasty retreat. Inevitably they did not beat it fast enough one night, official retribution followed, and another hallowed tradition bit the dust!

Danny42C
2nd Feb 2012, 21:55
Thanks for the interest, chaps.


First, well met, TommyOv! (#2266)
I can't remember any Aptitude Test - think the choice was just Pot Luck.

Likewise Andy1999 (#2267)
Reg said in one of his Posts that he was at Blackpool Grammar School. At the same time I must have been at St. Joseph's College (was there a St. James ?) I remember we played Arnold House, and on one glorious occasion, got a fixture with Rossall School (only their Second XV, their First would have murdered us, their Second just thrashed us!) Surely we would have played Blackpool Grammar? Reg and I might well have been on opposite sides in the scrum.

"Hank", a US Cadet, was at 4BFTS? As I understood it, the South East Training Centre of the USAAC trained only US cadets up to early 1941 (41F). Then the Arnold Scheme was introduced at some of their schools; RAF cadets took over from the US students and at the changeover point the "hazing" became a problem just for the 41F/42A interface. From then until Pearl Harbor only RAF cadets were trained (in a rather open "secret") as "civilians".
in these few US Schools.

We could not wear anything which would mark us out as British military personnel; that would blow open the US status as a neutral. Somewhere way back in this thread there are some very good photographs of RAF cadets of this time, "walking the ramp" - punishment drill. Look at them. They are wearing "Caps, Field Service" - "Forage Caps", (there was another four-letter name, stemming from their appearance, but even in these libertarian days the Moderator would permanently excommunicate me if I were to use it. for it breaches the last taboo).

Look at these caps. There are no white flashes in front, I can see no brass RAF badges on the sides, the front buttons don't seem shiny. They've been "civilianised". The lads just have flying overalls on, the same as I had. What did I have on my head? I can't remember. I'd dumped the beret they gave me in Blackpool.

Pearl Harbor changed everything. There was no further need for the Arnold Scheme; the US Schools turned back into all US Cadet instruction; the British Flying Training Schools were set up to take over the RAF Cadets (they weren't really "Cadets" any more, just LACs; the white flashes came back, with the buttons and badges, and they wore US issue light summer khaki shirts and slacks. And now they had RAF officers and NCOs to "make honest men of them". Why would any US cadets go to a BFTS now that they'd got all their own schools back? It doesn't make sense. If they did, would someone please explain it to me?


Chugalug2, Greetings! (#2271)
"Hazing" was still alive in the Sixties? - Incredible! And even in my time, we fondly thought that the 42A "rebellion" at Carlstrom had slain the dragon for all the Arnold Schools. Not so, it seems.


Time for my cocoa now. I've had my pills. Goodnight, all.


Danny

Danny42C
3rd Feb 2012, 14:03
Welcome aboard, Petet (#2265) - I'm new in these parts, too. People have been very kind to me, let's get your ball rolling.

Your grandad will have started in a Reception Centre like mine (the one - Babbacombe - I'm describing in my current Posts). What did I get to turn me into some semblance of an airman? A nervous, baffled ex-civilian has been marched into the Clothing Stores.

He shuffles slowly down the line. The Equpiment Assistant sizes him up at a single glance, turns to the shelves behind, and dumps on the counter:

One airman's S.D. (Service Dress) uniform - blue serge, scratchy.
If it fits, he must be deformed. If the fit is too bad, the E.A. will grudgingly swap it for a better one, until a more or less reasonable result is achieved.

One airman's Greatcoat - fitting as before. (Note that there is no raincoat, you use your groundsheet; that is hardly elegant, but it keeps the rain out.

Note that there is no "Battledress". This is May 1941, they came in later.

My uniform was "part-worn": I often wondered what had become of the first wearer!

One "Cap, Service Dress" (flat 'at) with brass badge. One "Cap, Field Service" (forage cap, or fore-and-aft cap), with brass badge and two buttons to polish.

One pair blue woolen gloves

One First Field Dressing (I'll say no more about this for the moment).

* Two (three) blue shirts (collarless). ? blue soft collars. You had to buy your own collar studs; if these were mother-of-pearl things you'd got last birthday from a doting Aunt, they'd be lost - or pinched - within the week. But if they were 3d Woolies, they'd last for years. It's always the way.

* Underwear: Two (three) cotton vests - these doubled as P.T. vests. Same number underpants, cotton, baggy. These had tapes sewn in front so that the leather "tangs" of your non-elastic braces ran through them to fasten onto the metal buttons on your trousers, in that way your underpants stayed in position. No zips, at least not for the likes of us.

One pair Black shoes (or was it boots?). *Two (or three) pairs of black socks. One blue P.T. shorts, one pair Plimsolls.

Bits and pieces: Shoe brushes, Button Stick (ask any soldier), "Hussif" (ask any Grandmother). I think you had to buy your own razor and toiletries - also boot and brass polish!

* The usual in those days was: one on, one in the laundry, and one in the drawer. But I have doubts if the RAF was as generous as that!

All this lot was piled in an enormous heap on the counter; the bemused recipient had to sign for everything (probably in triplicate), and stagger away with his load. Oh, and not forgetting a kitbag to put it all in. You bought
a kitbag lock and a padlock for it ASAP.

That's about enough to be going on with. Eager eyes will spot what I've missed, and fill in the gaps. In my other line of Posts, I'll shortly tell what they gave me - and I never needed - for flying kit for Europe.


Hope this has been some use to you.



Danny.

glojo
3rd Feb 2012, 14:18
Your grandad will have started in a Reception Centre like mine (the one - Babbacombe - I'm describing in my current Posts).

Hi Danny,
Just a thought regarding your time in Torquay. Do you know how to use Google Earth and if so you can look at the building where you were trained. If you cannot use that program then pm me with details and I will willingly try to get a picture for you. The same offer applies to any of you gentlemen that trained down here in Torquay. We can either use Google Earth together or I will get the snaps :)

Thank you all for what you have all done

John

Danny42C
3rd Feb 2012, 17:49
glojo #2274

Thank you, John, for your kind suggestion. Yes, I have used Google Earth a little. But the snag now is that I could never identify our Boarding House again. I don't remember any address, all I can remember is a big double-fronted detached house overlooking the sea. There must be hundreds of such places down there: it had nothing to distinguish itself.

But thanks all the same. Best wishes,

Danny.

Molemot
3rd Feb 2012, 18:46
Danny....great stuff!! Looking forward to the rest of your tale. The description of kit issue is pretty close to what I experienced at Henlow in 1971....among other things, I was issued with string vests dated 1942!!

Petet
3rd Feb 2012, 21:10
Thanks Danny for your insight into uniforms .... I have been trying to get hold of a copy of the poster / diagram that the RAF displayed on billet walls to show how the kit should be laid out on the bed .... but no luck yet ... but I am keeping my fingers crossed that someone will come up trumps..

I have been thinking about "battledress" or "war service dress" and I was thinking that as it could only be worn "on station" then it would not have been issued at ACRC or ITW because, in effect, recruits were always "off station" .... so I thought maybe they were issued when the recruit was posted for Technical Training .... would be interested in feedback on that.

If anyone has any original photographs of irons, hussifs, kit rolls etc that we could include in our documentation on this subject we would love to hear from you. (The document is a dedication to our grandfather who was KIA in 1945, which has grown so big that we are transferring it onto the internet so that it can be used for education and resource purposes [ie there is no commercial gain on our part]

Look forward to further posts .... thanks again

Danny42C
3rd Feb 2012, 21:13
This joke lasted two weeks, and is just a blur in my memory. I remember the importance of hanging on to your "Irons" (knife, fork. spoon and enamel mug), or you wouldn't eat, and knowing your "last three" (digits of your RAF number) without which you wouldn't officially exist and certainly wouldn't get paid. Every ex-serviceman remembers that number to his dying day. Every form (of many) you filled in asked you for the details of your Next of Kin. It was plain what they thought of your life expectantcy.

I remember a day spent in scrubbing the aforesaid bare boards, and looking down at my "kneeler". It was a soggy pad of old newspaper. On top I spotted an RAF recruiting advert: "THERE IS A SPITFIRE WAITING FOR YOU!" I sighed and picked up my scrubbing brush. One day I would get there, but it was a long way off.

All good things come to an end, the two weeks flew by and I was back on the train again. Just a short trip across to Cornwall this time, with a full kitbag slung round my neck, to No. 8 Initial Training Wing at Newquay for six weeks. Of all the RAF Courses I have been on in more than thirty years, this stands out as the best organised and most worth while of the lot.

Not a single moment of our time went to waste. They taught us "Theory of Flight", how and why an aircraft flies and why it sometimes doesn't (at the end, I nearly understood Bernoulli's Theorem). We were grounded in Navigation and Signals (Morse, up to six words a minute on the Buzzer and four on the Aldis lamp). We studied Meteorology and Armaments (in our case the Vickers Gas-operated Gun, an obsolete drum-fed weapon, as all the Brownings were needed in service). Air Force Law and "Administration and Organisation" gave us an insight into how the nuts and bolts of the RAF worked. Mundane mattters were not neglected: I recall one lecture on "The Principles of Construction of a Deep Trench Latrine".

"Aircraft Recognition" was a "must", of course, and fresh air exercise was not overlooked. We had an hour's P.T. down on the sands every day (then deserted, now crowded with surfers). To get there meant a 100-step descent down the cliff face, and we had to "double up" (run) back up to the top. At first we had to stop several times, scarlet in the face and gasping for breath, but at the end we could all run up non-stop and still breathe normally at the top. I was never so fit in all my life.

There was a half-hour's foot drill every day. I can still see - and hear! -Drill Corporal Shepherd (the "Good Shepherd", we called him) - "I wants to 'ear yer boots workin' " In the Service all his life, his proudest boast was of having been "put on a charge", in the early twenties, by Flight Lieutenant the Duke of York (it wasn't every "old sweat" who could say that he'd been "put on a fizzer" by the King !)

More later - Cheers to all - Danny



Disputes will not be entertained after leaving the Pay Table

Petet
4th Feb 2012, 08:57
Do you have a definitive list of the exams you had to pass before "moving on" from ITW?.

Also, if anyone has a definitive list of the subjects taught at 4 SoTT that would also help with our research.

Finally, and this is a real challenge ... does anyone happen to have an original RAF Railway Warranty circa 1943 / 1944 .... a tall order I know .... but ..... fingers crossed!

In fact ... any original documenation from that era would be extremely useful.

Padhist
4th Feb 2012, 09:38
Green Granite

Many thanks. This is a most interesting post for me. I will give it more study before I donate to it. Paddy

Padhist
4th Feb 2012, 13:21
Thurleigh
On the 5th December 1962 I carried out 4 landings in thick fog at London Airport ( see GOOGLE- Flt Lt. C. Grogan)
The following day Mr Prescott a senior BLEU Scientist telephoned me to say that he wished me to be ready to go with him to Cambridge that afternoon to do a broadcast for the BBC.
I must say I was pleased he was driving because it was quite foggy and my ground navigation was rather suspect. On route he said " I hope this is going to work out OK. I have been briefed to find this garage on Jesus Street and ask for the keys of the studio." Well I thought this is going to be more hazardous than landing in fog.
However in the event. We found the garage, and with my fingers crossed, I asked for the 'Keys to the studio'. Without batting an eye lid. I was handed a bunch of keys.and advised that if we turned the corner and parked the car we would see a GREEN door, All will be explained inside!
Beyond the door through a rather tatty corridor, was a modern office door, which we entered. Inside was a modern studio, a desk, on which was a large, old style micriphone and a telephone, also under see through plastic picture frame, was a notice which read,
If there is noise coming from the room next door...Bang on the wall...If the noise persists, ring this number.
After a while the telephone rang and Mr Prescott was advised to go over to radio broadcast. We were now both able to join in and we were told we were being taped. Remember Mr Prescott was an expert at this and I was quite green so during extensive questioning I was constantly challenged to simplify my answers for a non flying public.
OK. Ordeal over, we were now on route home. Mr Prescott said."That broadcast is going out just before the 6 O'clock news. Let's pop into this Pub and see if we can listen to it!" Inside he asked the landlord if we could. Well we were told the only radio was in their front room.They had never done this before, he would call us when the programme was on. We were duly called and looked at vey suspiciously by his wife and Mother. But when the broadcast began, it was miraculous, they recognised our voices and their eyes glowed. They were in the midst of celebreties
I was truly amazed to hear my side of the story It sounded quite professional, such was the expertise of the programmer. It certainly was not down to me. As we left the old lady said to Mr Prescott..." Our television has stopped working! Is there anything you can do".

Dan Gerous
4th Feb 2012, 15:09
Haven't been in this thread for a while, and just spent a couple of hours catching up. Brilliant stuff, please keep your stories coming. :ok:

Danny42C
4th Feb 2012, 18:28
Petet #2274

Glad to have been of service! Can't be precise, but I imagine the ITW exams would have covered all the classroom subjects. For example: a) "What is the function of the Rear Sear Retainer Keeper ?" - (sounds like the "Sagger Maker's Bottom Knocker", of the much loved b) "What's my Line?").

Replies: a) No idea! b) Ask your Dad.


No knowledge of SoTTs, I'm afraid.


Rail Warrants of 1943? You must be joking! They would all have been handed in at the time to the Booking Clerks at Stations. He'd take them in and give you your ticket in exchange. Where are they now? Ou sont les nieges d'Antan ? (sorry, can't do accents).


I'm afraid you'll have a hard job finding much documentation of those times.


Best of luck!


Danny

Petet
4th Feb 2012, 21:19
Research wouldn't be fun if finding things was too easy! ... I am sure there is a railway warrant out there somewhere ....


Anyway, more stories on ITW please ...... I believe that the subjects taught were:

RAF history, structure and law;
hygiene (including “infectious diseases”);
theory of flight;
basic navigation (using maps, charts and astronomy);
aircraft recognition;
armaments;
meteorology;
mathematics;
morse code (using keys and light).
Does that sound right? Are there any key subjects missing?

lasernigel
5th Feb 2012, 00:15
Danny42C, thanks for starting to share your adventures with us, it gives an insight to those courageous young lads who gave their all for our country. My Dad's cousin "Uncle Fred", went through the same training I suspect. Unfortunately he was shot down over Burma in a Hurricane IIC in '42, on his third mission. They didn't find his body until '56, and he is buried in Rangoon military cemetry.

At the same time I must have been at St. Joseph's College (was there a St. James ?) I remember we played Arnold House, and on one glorious occasion, got a fixture with Rossall School (only their Second XV, their First would have murdered us, their Second just thrashed us!) Surely we would have played Blackpool Grammar? Reg and I might well have been on opposite sides in the scrum.


Twas known affectionally as "Holy Joes", there wasn't a St. James. I was a Claremont lad and my Father and Uncle Fred both went to Palatine school.

ricardian
5th Feb 2012, 09:14
I was a Claremont lad and my Father and Uncle Fred both went to Palatine school.
Our house, built in 1914, has been called Claremont since 1931 and I often wonder why

Danny42C
5th Feb 2012, 18:39
My #2273 refers.

Checking my Kit List - find I've left an open goal - What about the "White Flash" ?

As I recall, it was a small piece of some light felt-like stuff which fitted in the fold in front of your forage cap. It was issued to all aircrew trainees and they wore it throughout their training. It really signified "potential officer": it was akin to the Sandhurst white capband or a Midshipman's white patches.

We all wore it with immense pride, even though we knew that, at the end of our training, only some 20% of pilots and navigators (and a much smaller percentage of the other aircrew trades) would receive Commissions. The remainder would be promoted from LAC to Sergeant.

Another matter:
I have read various figures quoted as pay rates. I am quite certain what I was paid (all rates per day): AC2 : 2/-, LAC : 5/6, Sergeant-Pilot : 13/6. All subject to deductions like "Sports subscriptions" (what on earth were they ?), Barrack Damages and Voluntary Allotments
to a family member.

Petet
5th Feb 2012, 19:01
The pay section on the Service Record we have for CA Butler only states 12/- at the time of death.

At no stage does it show him being promoted to LAC (which is strange) ... he goes from AC2 to Sergeant when he completes his technical training at 4SOTT.

He doesn't seem to have got any increase in pay for joining the Pathfinders (should be 1/- increase), nor does he get his one rank promotion for joining Pathfinders, nor does he get his Pathfinder Certificate even though he flew 31 sorties with them before his death.

He seems to have been hard done by ... obviously not "teachers pet"!

Going back to kit ....

As I am not able to find a diagram of how the kit had to be laid out on the bed .... are you able to document the layout???!!! .... that will get the grey cells ticking over!

Also, was there a name for the kit roll used for storing irons, toothbrush, buttonstick etc .... and was there only one kit roll (plus the hussif) ?

Danny42C
6th Feb 2012, 00:12
I said foot drill, the RAF couldn't spare us rifles, they'd only just managed to find some for the Home Guard. Otherwise the arms drill I'd learned as a ten-year old with my first airgun, from my Dad (an old Sergeant), might have come in handy. In fact, the only other arms drill I ever learned came later in my training in the States: US Army drill with the WW1 Springfield rifle. I never touched our (ex WW1 and Boer War) SMLE.

The Good Shepherd drove the iron of his instruction deep into our souls, and I recall one amusing result. He'd hammered into us the protocol for Making a formal request to an Officer in Orderly Room. This meant marching in, coming to attention before the desk, saluting, stating your request, (and waiting for the reply), saluting again, one pace back, about turn and smartly march out. This procedure was practised rhythmically in one-pause-two time until we could do it in our sleep. Of course no actual requests were made during these "dummy runs".

One chap had to do this for real. I think he wanted an extra Pass. You might guess what happened. Nervous, he started out well enough, and then habit seized him. Going through the whole rigmarole without uttering a word, he marched out, leaving the Adjutant gasping! The Orderly Room Corporal raced after him and dragged him back, red with embarrassment. This time he managed to stammer out his request. The Adj, choking with suppresssed laughter, gave him his "48"! *

Our Headquarters, where we had our classrooms and Mess, was the Trebarwith Hotel, one of scores of such seaside places requisitioned "for the duration" round the coast. Across the road was the Trebarwith Annexe, where three of us shared a room. Still on bare boards, things were a bit more comfortable here. We had the standard iron framed wire mesh beds on which we put down our three "biscuits" - small hard mattresses about 30 inches square. Every morning you stripped your bed, piled all three at the head, then folded sheet, pillow and blankets above them in a pre-ordained pattern which had to be copied exactly. Every night you made your bed down again.

There was no furniture, you lived out of your kitbag. Nor was there a mirror in the room, and we three put up ten (old) pence each for the 2/6 to buy a small one (remember that 2/- was a day's pay). When we left, we drew lots for this mirror, and I won. I carried it all round the world for years. Somewhere it must have been lost or broken, but I can see it now, with our three sets of initials on the back. One was a Ron Sweetlove, I heard that he was killed later in the War, but never found out how or when.

During our time at Newquay we were issued with full flying kit. This consisted of a zipped brown rayon "teddy bear" inner overall, and a green canvas outer with a fake fur collar ("Sidcot suit"). We got three pairs of gloves, silk inner, then wool, and leather gauntlets on top.. Flying boots were Morland "Glastonburys". Helmet, goggles and oxygen/radio mask completed the issue. All this was supposed to keep you warm for hours in an unheated, draughty bomber at 20,000 ft on a winter's night over Germany. Whether it did or not I can't say, but it certainly made us sweat when we had to model it in a Cornish summer. I never needed to wear any of it (except the mask, helmet and goggles), but somehow managed to hold on to the boots, which were a Godsend in the snow back home in the cold winters just after the War.

Note *

Written permission to be absent from camp for 48 hours. Military police (on every main railway station) and civil police could stop you and check. Woe betide you if you hadn't got it! You must be a deserter - or at least "Absent without leave" from your Unit, and would be "clapped in irons" on the spot!


Enough for tonight. More later.

Danny.



Buttons polished by lamplight should be inspected by moonlight ! (WW1)

kookabat
6th Feb 2012, 03:35
Great stuff Danny - I do like the little anecdotes like the orderly room one. Little bits of colour that you can't get from official records.
Looking forward to the next bit!

Adam

airborne_artist
6th Feb 2012, 08:12
One was a Ron Sweetlove, I heard that he was killed later in the War, but never found out how or when.
Probably killed in a raid over Duisberg. The cemetery he is buried in is less than ten miles from Duisberg.

RAF History page for April 1943 (http://www.raf.mod.uk/bombercommand/apr43.html)

CWGC record (http://www.cwgc.org/search-for-war-dead/casualty/2032935/SWEETLOVE,%20RONALD%20SPENCER)

Padhist
6th Feb 2012, 15:18
Danny 42.c
At ITW Paignton we, of course had to study armaments, and I recall this wag of an weapons instructor lecturing on a rifle. The first lesson was on the 'REAR SEAR' the next 'REAR SEAR SPRING. The next 'The REAR SEAR SPRING RETAINER' The next 'The REAR SEAR SPRING RETAINER KEEPER'
It was useless information but I remember it as well today as I did then!
It was a bit of light entertainment.
Paddy

Icare9
6th Feb 2012, 17:14
6 of the crew are in Rheinberg, don't know if the 7th successfully baled out or if he was RCAF etc.....
CHAPPELL SFW 625153 100 SQDN 08/04/1943 ROYAL AIR FORCE
GRIMSHAW CJ 649407 100 SQDN 08/04/1943 ROYAL AIR FORCE
JENKINSON H 1025847 100 SQDN 08/04/1943 RAFVR
KNOWLES MH 1575223 100 SQDN 08/04/1943 RAFVR
MONTIGUE RJB 1331520 100 SQDN 08/04/1943 RAFVR
SWEETLOVE RS 1029829 100 SQDN 08/04/1943 RAFVR

Looks to have been one of the 6 Lancs lost that night

EDIT: Ouch! Looks as if 100 Squadron lost their C.O. on this aircraft...

McKINNON, JOHN ARNOTT. Rank: Squadron Leader
Service No: J/4965. Date of Death: 08/04/1943. Age: 27.
Regiment/Service: Royal Canadian Air Force. 100 (R.A.F.) Sqdn
Grave Reference: Coll. grave 2. E. 9-19.Cemetery: RHEINBERG WAR CEMETERY
Additional Information: Son of John Donald and Ruth Rebecca McKinnon, of Red Deer, Alberta, Canada.

fredjhh
6th Feb 2012, 17:38
GLOJO: I was billetted in the TOORAK HOTEL. From Google Earth I can see the Hotel has been altered, but I can see the room I was in for six weeks, just above the front entrance.
DANNY42C:
We must have been in the Babbacombe/Torquay area at the same time and your experiences are similar to mine. I went down to ACRC in Babbacombe on 3rd May, 1941 -but I missed the Arnold Scheme and trained entirely in England. My story starts at about page 75.
Differences in Pay qoted as Sergeant 12/- or 13/6.
Pilots, Navs and (later) Bomb Aimers were paid 13/6. Other aircrew were paid 12/- as Sergeants. It should have been equal for all.
DEDUCTIONS. e.g Barrack damages.
How about this.
As a Prisoner of War we were deducted "Hair Cutting Allowance." I have a copy of my Pay Statement sent to me in Germany. BUT the Germans
sheared us to the bone on arrival at Stalag IV-b.
Best wishes.
Fredjhh

Danny42C
6th Feb 2012, 18:26
glojo (your #2274) Greetings.

Blundering about in this instrument of Satan (my laptop, not the Thread!), I've just come across your PM of 3 Feb 2012 (1958 hrs). Please excuse this slow reply, and the fact that I have to do it "en clair", as I know no other way.

Your researches on my behalf are warmly acknowledged, but frankly a) I was there only two weeks, b) it was seventy years ago, and c) I was very glad to see the back of the place at the time, and am quite content with a shadowy memory of a kind of "Fawlty Towers" - and would feel no pain at all if I never saw it again!

After that curmudgeonly reply to your kind offer of assistance,

With many thanks - Cheers,

Danny.

Danny42C
6th Feb 2012, 19:10
AIRBORNE_ARTIST (#2291) and all the others - Cheers!
Thank you all: They shall not grow old as we who are left grow old.

PADHIST (#2292)
I forgot the SPRING - No marks for that question on the paper!

ICARE9 (#2293) Yes, his initials on the back of the mirror were R.S.S.
There was the Third Man, but I'm ashamed to say I''ve forgotten the initials.

FREDJHH (#2294) "Haircut Allowance". Now that's a crafty one! How come the RAF missed that trick?


Thanks, everybody,

Danny

fredjhh
7th Feb 2012, 11:26
TommyOv 2266
I had three days at Cardington. The second morning was devoted to Maths tests and General Knowledge. In the afternoon we had all the medicals. The hearing test amused me. The MO produced a pocket watch, stood at the opposite end of the room, then moved slowly towards me saying, "Tell me when you can hear the ticking!" The next day was the interview with a Group Captain, a Wing Commander and a Squadron Leader. The table had about a dozen model aircraft and a map. The first question was to identify all the aircraft. Then, "Why do you want to join the RAF?" Details about my Education, Sports played, how the war was progressing and the names of government ministers, etc.,etc.
One question was, "Explain how you would calculate the height of the Airship Mast from outside this window without moving more than 100 feet. What would be the minimum equipment you would need?" The three conferred quietly then the G/C said, "We are recommending you for pilot training.
If you should fail to learn to fly, will you train as a navigator?" I said,
" Yes, Sir, " and he shook my hand and wished me good luck. Later I found they had recommended me for a commission.
DANNY 42c 2273
Your details of kit being issued at Receiving Wing is as I remembered it, but I think we had two pairs of boots. I seem to remember one pair lying, bottoms up, on the bed with all the other accoutrements One pair was exchanged for shoes at EFTS, then we eventually had just two pairs of shoes.
We also had two kit bags; one for flying clothing which was issued as soon as we moved to ITW. Battle dress was given to us at SFTS in October, 1941, together with a strip of leather which we had to sow over the right pocket, then inscribe our names. How it all comes back!
Fredjhh

Petet
7th Feb 2012, 13:06
Oh .... this thread is so helpful for our research .... thanks everyone for your contribution.

A couple more questions regarding kit:

Was the RAF watch part of the kit handed out with the flying kit? If not, when was this issued?

Also, was the "whistle" issued as part of "battledress / war service dress"?

I noticed that in a previous post, "cliffnemo" posted an image of part of a card showing the kit issued (with signatures / dates of receipt etc)

Were these cards used by the recruit every time kit was issued (ie at ACRC and ITW) .... if so, what RAF numbers did these have?.

fredjhh
7th Feb 2012, 17:25
No card for ordinary clothing.
Card for Flying Clothing. Form Number not known but I still have mine - somewhere. I got away with my flying helmet, goggles, and oxygen mask complete with ear-phones and mike.
Watches were only issued to Navigators. A friend, a navigator from the squadron, managed to retain his Longines when captured, and it kept very good time until a few years ago. The rest bought their own. The Germans usually confiscated all aircrew watches. If any managed to retain them, e.g. the Army, the Russians robbed them. It was usual to see a Russian wearing up to a dozen watches on both arms.
Whistles were issued with Battle dress and I still have mine from 1946 issue.
Fredjhh.

Danny42C
7th Feb 2012, 23:58
This is getting a bit complicated!

First, to petet (2274). I wasn't very helpful on the Railway Warrants (we old chaps get a bit testy at times, I'm afraid!). If it were my problem, I would ask Network Rail if they had any old archives, inherited fom British Rail, in turn inherited from the old pre-War Companies which ran the trains in 1943.

It's a very long shot indeed - the Warrants may have been scrapped after the Company (and remember there were several of them: LNER, LMS, GWR, SR, etc) got its money back from the Government. (There was a big Wartime drive for Waste Paper). Or they may have been destroyed in the Blitz.

But it's always worth a try. Stranger things have happened. Persistence may pay!


(My 2273) To fredjhh (2297 and others of his Posts)

I think you're quite right about the boots. Only thing is: I can't recall wearing them. But then I can't recall wearing shoes either, and I must have been wearing one or the other! As far as I remember, I went from ARC to ITW with one kitbag, got my second (for my flying kit) at ITW.

And you're right about the watches. Nobody in our short-range squadrons in India had them, not even the Navs, for we map-read everywhere (and the pilots had a clock on the panel (this was always the first thing to disappear after a crash!) The Navs on our long-haul Squadrons (Liberators, Sunderlands and Catalinas) might have got them, but I don't know.

And was there any truth in the tale that one of our trouser buttons was magnetised to act as a compass (on the end of a bit of thread) as an escape aid?

Lastly, from Fred to TommyOv (2297 to 2266): It seems that the rigour of the Selection process was a case of "Post Code Lottery". All I remember about my Board at Padgate was that the President was a Group Captain Insall - a VC from WW1; one Member asked me "Where is Madagascar - and Formosa? and when I gave the right answers, seemed to lose interest in the business; the other, finding that I had a driving licence, quizzed me on the types I had driven and seemed to be impressed with my assertion that the Austin 10 was faster than the 12. This was true - everything was faster than the Austin Heavy 12 - but the inference was that I had driven both of them flat-out, and I suppose that may have counted in my favour. As for any Aptitude tests - there weren't any. Once you had got through the Medical Board, I think they threw you in the deep end (as Pilot or Nav) to see how you got on. Obviously, things were different at Cardington (and other places).

As for the terrors of the Medical Board, Fred seems to have had a much more sophisticated ENT man than mine. Mine went off to a far corner and whispered into a cupped hand "Can you hear me?" while I listened with a finger in each
ear in turn - of course it really wasn't right in!

The real killer was "Holding up the Mercury" - a test of lung capacity and endurance. A rubber tube was connected to a small glass U-tube of mercury. The other end of the tube had a mouthpiece with a narrow slot in it (but the slot had a "bridge" midway so you couldn't jam it with your tongue). You took a full breath, took the mouthpiece and blew. You had to blow up the mercury to 40mm, then hold it there for sixty seconds, to pass the test for aircrew. It was not easy, and if you failed first time, you would be too puffed to succeed on the second.


Bedtime now,

Danny

cliffnemo
8th Feb 2012, 11:31
morse code (using keys and light).

Does that sound right? Are there any key subjects missing?

Yes , precision drill . Think we had one hour a day drill , and one hour a day P.T. at I.T.W Torquay. During the drill session we had to learn precision drill, which meant we had to go through the every move in the drill 'book' with only an initial command. This lasted fifteen minutes. and we were told it was very impressive to watch.
Clay pigeon shooting at Babacombe . Five mile cross country runs. 20 mile march from Bovey Tracy ? to Widecombe on the moor and back. Dinghy drill in Torquay harbour.

Danny42C
8th Feb 2012, 17:09
(#2301)

Cliff - Good Lord! - You poor devil! What sort of a Gulag had you got into? And when was all this? I was at Newquay from May - June 1941, and mine was a rest cure in comparison. There was none of the extra things you listed, although the clay-pigeon shooting and the dinghy drill would have been useful.

You were in the wrong place, mate!

Cheers, Danny.

Petet
10th Feb 2012, 08:38
Newark Air Museum has very kindly dug out a copy of the poster used to show recruits how to place their kit in their bed space for inspection; unfortunately it is a little later than the period we are researching as the bed has a mattress rather than the 3 biscuits.

There are 2 diagrams .... one with accoutrements and one without ..... so the question is ..... at ACRC / ITW, did they have different kinds of inspections or were they always with accoutrements or without.

fredjhh
10th Feb 2012, 14:02
ACRC at Babbacombe in 1941 all cadets were in civilian billets for the two weeks, so no kit lay out was taught. At 5 ITW in Torquay the lay out was shown on the first day, together with instruction on polishing boots.
fredjhh

Danny42C
10th Feb 2012, 17:40
I continue from #2289 (We are at ITW in Newquay - May 41)


We did guard duty every few nights, with pick-helves (handles) to defend our billets from German parachutists. We did the usual two-on, four-off guard routine. By day we refined our trouble-dodging skills whenever we managed to get out, learning to keep well out of the way of NCOs, Officers * (rare), and above all Warrant Officers - far more threatening - who would be bound to pick you up for something. ** How else would the spuds get peeled in the cookhouse? The trick was to look out for stripes, and especially for brass buttons on lower tunic pockets (only officers and warrant officers have these). You could spot them a mile away and dodge round a corner.

Old habits die hard. To the end of my service days - and that would be a long time, I could never walk across a parade square without feeling uneasy, even though they'd mostly been downgraded to car parks, and I'd been an officer for years. For in the old days this was one of the blackest of crimes (you must walk round a square when not actually on parade, and I could hear the ghost of some long gone Warrant Officer or Sergeant roaring "AIRMAN!!!")

The six weeks flew by, I passed the Course exams and was on my way again, now a Leading Aircraftman on 5/6 a day - riches beyond the dreams of avarice!

On the other side of the Atlantic, things had been stirring. Officially neutral, the Americans (in particular the American forces) wanted to help us as far as possible, guessing (correctly) that they would be dragged in sooner or later. "All aid short of War" promised Roosevelt. "All aid short of Help" we mocked ungratefully.

One of their better ideas came from General "Hap" Arnold, the C-in-C of the US Army Air Corps. *** He knew that, in order to expand an air force quickly, aircraft production is a secondary matter. Once you have got the assembly lines going, you can turn out aircraft like family cars. But no air force then or since has been able to train a man from scratch to operational pilot in less than a year. That is your bottleneck. By helping us in that respect, expanding his facilities to train pilots for us, he might be doing himself a good turn further down the line (and so it proved).

He set up the "Arnold Scheme". He opened up new Primary Flying Schools (civilian schools taken over by the army), he enlarged his own Basic and Advanced Schools, and offered the extra training places to us. Needless to say, we jumped at it.


Notes:

* These would be "wingless wonders", young schoolsmasters and other professionals, who' d been commissioned as Pilot Officers in the Education and Administration branches. Having only been "in for five minutes", they were as green as we were. As far as we aircrew trainees were concerned, anyone without wings or WW1 ribbons simply didn't count,

** They were able to do this by virtue of Section 40 of the Air Force Act,
which provides penalties for Conduct prejudicial to Good Order and Air Force Discipline. This can cover just about anything at all. (The classic case is that of the Guardsman who was charged with "Being Idle on a Bicycle" - he was freewheeling!) If the W/O said your buttons were dirty, they were dirty, even if you'd been up half the night polishing them - you still got your seven day's "jankers" from your Flight Commander.

*** There was no unified US Air Force until after WW2. As a matter of historical interest, the same was true of our (Army) Royal Flying Corps in WW1. The Royal Air Force was not formed until 1st April, 1918 - a date which has raised a few wry smiles over the years. We went into blue, and invented new names for our ranks. The Americans changed to blue, but kept their old Army ranks.

EDIT: Gen Arnold was not the C-in-C of the U.S.A.A.C., but the Commanding General of the South-East Area Air Corps (in which much of the Primary flying was concentrated then).





Enough for the moment. More later.

Danny.



Gentlemen, today is the 10th.

Danny42C
13th Feb 2012, 17:32
My tale opens another page.

Naturally we had to hide the blatant breach of US neutrality which this entailed. Obviously we couldn't wear uniform in the States, but had to pretend to be civilians, and wear civilian clothes to back up the story. (We'd only need to keep this up for a few months, but of course we did't know that at the time).

And so it was that LAC ******* J.D. (****877) went up to Blackpool, was billeted out in a tatty South Shore boarding house, and kitted out with white shirts and a Thirty Shilling Tailors chalk-striped suit. This natty ensemble was capped by a beret. Now there are heads which suit berets (spherical ones), and plenty more which don't. I looked like Holbein's Henry VIII. I never wore the thing and disposed of it as soon as possible. I painted code letters on my kitbags (ATTS/TRAILL), had embarkation leave, went up to Gourock (Clyde) and dumped my kit in a four-berth second class cabin in a liner whose name I forget. Of my four wartme sea voyages, this was the only time I had a cabin in a troopship - when I was in my lowest rank.!

////////////

(This means "work in progress". I put it in as an incomplete Post, because I am sick of this infernal machine of mine losing all my text while drafting a Reply. Put in as a Post, what I've done so far seems to be safe. If the next bit of draft vanishes into cyberspace again, this way I only lose the last bit. I can get what went before back as an Edit. I'll do this from now on). Danny.


We put to sea, dodged the U-boats, and a week later landed in Halifax; then straight on to one of the Canadian Pacific Railway's "Colonial" trains. These were very basic coaches formerly used to take immigrant families to their new homes out West. They were short on comfort, I remember that the berths were very solid wood indeed, and I don't think we had any mattresses. But the food was good and the scenery magnificant as we followed the St.Lawrence upstream into Canada. This was very French country with place names to match, like "Riviere du Loup".

Our destination was Toronto, then a holding centre for aircrew trainees going to the Canadian flying schools or (in our case) down to the States. Our trip was enlivened (if that is the right word) by a train crash (only a little one, I hasten to add). Our dozey driver, following closely behind a goods train, luckily only at walking pace, managed to run into the back of it. There was a severe jolt, enough to throw people off their feet, and quite a bang. There were a few bumps and bruises, but no real harm seemed to have been done, and we continued on our way to Toronto. That city has a permanent Canadian National Exposition Centre, where every summer a country-wide Agricultural show was (and still is) held.

They saw no reason why a war should interrupt this, and it was in full swing when we arrived. They had the buildings to accommodate us, so long as we didn't mind sharing with the prize livestock. Actually, it wasn't too bad, except that in late summer the smells were a bit ripe. There wasn't a great deal of " bull" in our Exposition quarters - just the odd roll call, kit inspection and Pay Parade, and one memorable occasion we had a "Short Arm Inspection". It was not then a service offence to acquire a STD (then "VD"), but it was to conceal the fact, and not report for treatment.

To deter concealment, parades were held when, on command, slacks were dropped, and the Medical Officer and his orderly came round to check. The MO, armed with a sort of large spatula, cast an expert eye on each set of "crown jewels" in turn as he worked down the line. On this occasion the process was in full swing, well away from public gaze in some out-of-the-way corner of the building. Not out-of-the-way enough! A dairymaid picked the wrong door, to be met with a sight not usually vouchsafed to young ladies. She squealed, dropped her (empty) pail and bolted; we, modesty outraged, did our best with cupped hands. It made a change from normal routine.

Parades and drills were organised for us in the Fort York Armoury (like a Territorial Drill Hall). This was down by the lakeside and the air much fresher. The juke-box top numbers of the day were "Amapola" and "Yes, my Darling Daughter", and those tunes always take me back to the Armoury. (My daughter was in Toronto a few years ago, it was still there).

I think we spent two or three weeks there, and then, thinly disguised as civilians, boarded a train for Florida. The generous pilot training which the Americans offered us must have been of enormous value to the RAF at that stage of the War. After Pearl Harbor, they provided even more, in the shape of British Flying Training Schools in the south-western States (there was no need for concealment then. we were Allies)


Bedtime now, more anon.

Danny42C




Get yer knees brown!

Fareastdriver
13th Feb 2012, 18:44
Danny. Should you have Microsoft Word or Works in your computer write it there. You can then correct it in comfort. When the time comes to post open up a reply page and copy/paste on to the post. That way you do not lose it if you have an internet connection break.
cliffnemo had a similar problem when he started.

Danny42C
13th Feb 2012, 20:37
Fareastdriver (your #2307)

I'm very grateful for your advice, but i've only got Notepad and Wordpad so far, and in any case the procedure is so far beyond my capability that I wouldn't know where to start. All my word processing is still done on my good old Canon "Starwriter" (which I can understand!); I've got all my memoirs (whichI call my "Jottings" - about 150,000 words) on Floppy Disks. The "Starwriter" works on a MS-DOS system. So it should be easy to transfer the disks onto Windows, right?. Wrong! It can be done, but only by professional experts. Even so, I'm not going to shell out for Word or Works until I know a lot more than I do now.

I, too, was a "fareastdriver", but long, long ago! But many thanks for your kind interest.

Danny42C

glojo
13th Feb 2012, 20:48
I have the very latest edition of Microsoft Office and if I can be of ANY assistance then please do not hesitate to contact me via pm. If you want to e-mail me just a short file of 'starwriter' I will see if I can convert it into a format that notepad or word pad can understand. :)

I am definitely NOT a computah wizard but I do have the time to make a mess of anything :ok:;)

Chugalug2
13th Feb 2012, 21:52
Danny, if it's of any consolation a long and erudite post of mine (on the Bomber Boys thread) got "PPRuNed" the other day. I should have known better, but it happens to us all and when you least expect it.
Just try out a sentence as Far East Driver described. Wordpad should be OK I think, it simply allows you to assemble the script without the PPRuNe time bomb gobbling it up.
When you are ready, hold the "Left click button" down and outline the script by moving over it. Then select the right click one and, from the menu that opens, select copy. The script is now held effectively in the mouse.
Go to PPRuNe, sign in, select reply and, when the post panel opens, left click to activate the flashing scriber, then right click, select paste, and by the wonders of Microsoft your sentence appears! Once you have the hang of it of course you can paste in an entire post!
Please know that every detail that you recount of this period of training in the USA will be of immense interest to us all. So often this would be glossed over as "n weeks spent at A, followed by a further m weeks at B". Cliff set the ball rolling, and others have followed, but each one of you brings new aspects to the story, varied experiences, a different outlook. It's rather like drinking fine wine, to be savoured slowly and with relish and certainly not to be gulped down!
Right, my glass has been recharged and I'm anticipating the pleasure that awaits us. The floor is, as always, yours Sir!

Danny42C
13th Feb 2012, 21:59
glojo (#2309)

Thanks a lot, John.

But I'm such an ignoramus at this game that I have to decline all offers of help from everybody at this stage. As an experiment, I've taped a small piece of card over the touchpad of my laptop (just one side, so I can fold it back!). As I have a touchscreen, I can compose just using that (and it feels like my "Starwriter" now). As the danger of my fat paw inadvertently brushing the touchpad is now removed, I may have found a temporary "fix". At least, it's not happened since! We'll see.

Goodnight, all,

Danny.

Danny42C
13th Feb 2012, 22:36
Chugalug.

Thanks for the kind words and the serious advice. But I'm past praying for! All of you, please leave me in my swinish state of Invincible Ignorance! - I can't be helped!

But I'm very grateful to you all for trying

Cheers,

Danny

Chugalug2
15th Feb 2012, 13:05
Danny, whatever works for you works for us! We're just grateful that your words end up on our screens. Just don't post in Q code though, I beg you! I had an instructor once who spoke in Q code, "QSY for the QFE, request the QDM, and then carry out a QGH". I needed an interpreter! :)
Edited to add a youtube link to take you back to the period you are describing. Sorry, you have to left click on it, so may have to lift that little bit of card :ooh:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nl3U_vtLAg8&feature=related

Danny42C
15th Feb 2012, 19:35
Chugalug (your #2313) - Marvellous! (I'm right back at the jukebox again!) Thanks a lot!

Re the Q code, ever heard of QOF? This would be sent by a c/w operator when he didn't think much of his respondent's key technique - (Use Other Foot!)

Bit more reminiscence tonight, as you're all such good boys.


Danny

Danny42C
15th Feb 2012, 22:05
Where were we (#2306)? Ah yes, getting ready to move down to the States.

Our B.F.T.S.s could be opened as units under RAF command, as we had become Allies after Pearl Harbor, but with American aircraft and civilian instructors, and with RAF Officers and NCOs for disciplinary purposes. They taught the RAF flying training syllabus, I believe. This was a third shorter (in flying hours) than the American one. * Our former places in the US Army flying schools immediately became extra training capacity for them; General Arnold was rewarded for his foresight and generosity.

You may have seen newsreel footage of the time showing RAF aircrew training in the States wearing US-style light khaki with RAF forage caps and white flashes. This has caused some confusion, as it seems to contradict the "civilian clothes" story. Of course these show only these later B.F.T.Ss, obviously there would be no film evidence of the US breach of neutrality involved in allowing us in before we became allies. Stictly speaking, that was Hitler's doing: he took the decision out of US hands by declaring war on them as soon as the Japanese set the ball rolling

Note *

What is my authority for this statement? Only this: a very good little book (probably long out of print) called "The thin blue line". It was written by a Robert Graves (I, Claudius ?), publisher unknown. It was very popular in the early days of the war; it told of the flying training experiences of a small group of friends. It stated that they had to do 60 hours at EFTS and the same at SFTS to get their wings. Graves was a well respected author, his book would have been well researched. Of course, the syllabus could have been lengthened later, but I don't think it ever reached the 200 hours we did in the USAAC Arnold Scheme.

Since then, I've poked about in Wikipedia, and not found a definitive answer, the average seems around 140, but over a wide spread. I stand to be shot down here, there will be many people out there who can put me right.

Another puzzle, on some Wiki entries it states that the B.F.T.S. Scheme was agreed with the US, and put into effect, months before Pearl Harbor. How can this possibly be? You can't have a uniformed military unit from one of the combatants in a War operating in your territory, and pretend to be neutral! Your duty in International Law is to intern them (as Eire, Sweden and Switzerland did to any of our chaps who landed there during the War). Enlighten me, please.



Carlstrom Field, Arcadia, Florida.

"Off we go - into the wide, blue yon - der
Flying high - into the Sun"

(Song of the United States Army Air Corps)

I broke off my story in Toronto, parading in the Fort York Armoury and dodging farm machinery at the Exposition. We marvelled at the quality and quantity of our food compared with wartime Britain. I don't think we had much time to explore the city. We had to get our new civilian clothes pressed and ready for the next stage of our journey, and that took some doing after weeks at the bottom of a kitbag. I managed to "lose" my beret.

An untidy gaggle of mock-civilians boarded a train for the States. It must have been a "special" of some kind, as there were no civilians on board and I do not recall any changes en route to Florida. But you need a load of some 3-400 to justify a "Special", and there was nowhere near that number going to Arcadia - perhaps no more than 50. Perhaps a coach or coaches was dropped off the end of the train at stages along the way, and coupled on to a train going to each individual destination. As we were going to the most southern point, we'd stay hitched up all the time.

It was to be a long haul, right down the country from top to bottom. We crossed the border at Detroit, and settled down to train life. This was vastly different from the spartan Canadian Pacific rolling stock. We were now treated as Aviation "Kay-dets" in the USAAC, but sadly not paid as such. We just got the dollar equivalent of our LAC pay - 5/6 a day. It must have worked out at about a dollar a day (about one-seventh of an American cadet's pay) * but as there was next to nothing to spend it on, that didn't matter.

We travelled in style, the night sleepers had the curtained berths with central gangway familiar in many a Hollywood film of the time, complete with smiling black conductor. The day coaches were comfortable, and the meals excellent. Things were looking up. It was late summer, and heated up quickly as we rolled South. I don't remember how long the journey took, but it must have been at least two or three days. At last we came, clanking and clanging, to a halt in Arcadia, a small town half way down on the Gulf side of Florida.

Note *

I believe they were paid $200 per month. Of this (a little booklet I found advised), they were expected to save enough for "a substantial down payment on an automobile" at the end of their (six month) Course. A basic Ford V8 or Chevrolet "sedan" then cost about $600. A convertible, a necessity in the Southern states in the days before air-conditioning, about $100 more . So they'd have to save about a sixth of their pay each month for a one-third deposit for the car which they must have as a Second Lieutenant.

It was September, and I remember the blow of heat hitting us as we climbed down from the train. They don't run to platforms out there, and it's quite a way to fall. Loaded into coaches, we went out a few miles to the Embry-Riddle School of Aviation at Carlstrom Field - now, I believe, ennobled as the Embry-Riddle University of Aviation, but then a recently opened civil flying school which had been taken over by the Army. The only Army presence was a lieutenant as C.O. and a couple of second lieutenants (these were purely "Admin". There must have been some US NCOs, too, for we were marched about and someone must have been giving the orders. All the rest of our instructors were civilian. Naturally there were no RAF Officers or NCOs, for obvious reasons.

Carlstrom must have been some past hero of military aviation, all their airbases were named in this way. His Field was just that, a square mile of grass. The Army must have put a good deal of money into the place, for the accommodation was luxurious. The barrack blocks were two storied affairs, with verandahs. Each room had ample space, polished wood floors, two double tier bunks, and its own white tiled bathroom. I was never in such a palace in all my service life - and never would be again.

The camp had an open air swimming pool, and countless Coca-cola machines. These did roaring trade, for the local water, freely available from squirt-up fountains, was faintly brackish. The Mess Hall was every bit as good as the accomodation, and we had the novel experience of being waited on by (black of course) staff. We were way down below the Mason-Dixon line, and segregation was the rule.

All this came at a price. Generally thought to be easy-going on their overseas assignments, American discipline was Prussian at home. As Aviation cadets, there was a whiff of West Point about our treatment. We did not have cleaners for our rooms. We had to keep them spotless. The rumour was that the Officer of the Day wore white gloves on his rounds to see if there was any dust on the light bulbs.

The beds had to be made down to a fixed pattern. The sheets had to be turned down exactly six inches, and the blanket folded exactly 45 degrees at the foot. Every square inch of the bathroom had to glitter. This was not too bad when there four of you to share the chores, but when it dropped down to one (as in my case) you had to dash about a bit.

Naturally, we were marched about all over the place. ("Hup - two - three - four"). Everything had to be done in a "mili-tary manner". We learned American foot drill, thankfully forgotten except : "To the rear, March!", a comical (to us) equivalent of our "About Turn!". The most extreme example came at mealtimes. We had to march in to our alloted places, stand at attention behind our chairs until the order "Seats", and then sit at attention until the order "Parade Rest!" ("Stand Easy"). Only then could we start to talk and eat.


Enough to be going along with. You may like to know that PPRune has only caught me out once tonight (out of half a dozen "slices") and then I only lost a few words. Keep your fingers crossed - we may have sorted it!

Danny42C


Take a brace, Mister! (Stand to Attention!)

NutherA2
15th Feb 2012, 22:37
Always thought that QRM (Queenie Roger Mike in old money) was a good one to know:

"I am being interfered with"

Chugalug2
16th Feb 2012, 09:59
Danny, I think I would have been the recipient of QOF for many of my efforts throughout my life, and I'm not thinking of my W/T efforts!
Your comments on the niceties of the US neutral status of pre 7/12/41 are well made, for they were indeed a very real preoccupation. The well respected Jack Huntington, co-pilot trainer extraordinaire (I have the honour to have been one of his "apprentices"), started his war time career as a transport pilot himself, delivering Lockheed Hudsons across the North Atlantic in that period. He explained that they could not be handed over within the USA then, as that would have been interpreted as assisting a belligerent power. Instead, US pilots delivered them to an airfield adjacent to the Canadian frontier. Teams of horses were then hitched to them so that they could be drawn across the border. Then and only then could the transfer be effected. The actual ferry flights to the UK were a saga in themselves, but that is another story....

Danny42C
16th Feb 2012, 14:10
Chugalug (#2317)

Yes, there were all sorts of legal problems buzzing about in this. Although we didn't bother our heads about it at the time, it was clear that any barrack-room lawyer could make hay with our situation. On enlistment, we'd taken an Oath to serve our King and his heirs and successors, and to obey all orders of the Officers and NCOs set over us. But who set this lot over us ? - it was no part of our contract! But they had this hold on us: they could send us back to Canada if there were any insubordination. That was more than enough to make us behave (an American cadet would simply be sacked if he didn't toe the line). We were so grateful for the chance to learn to fly, that we never even thought about our anomalous position. Besides, this was an era of discipline and deference, when all authority was accepted without question. The Class of 42C settled down to the job.

Pour out a nice single malt - I'll have to make do with a "Fortisip" - more story coming.

Danny.

Danny42C
16th Feb 2012, 14:48
We put our chalk-striped suits away, and wore plain overalls all day. Effectively we were confined to camp all the time, there being nowhere to go and no means of transport to get us there. We did have one weekend off in our two months there; six of us managed to hire an old Plymouth (bottom level Chrysler) and took off for West Palm Beach. I don't think anyone even asked about driving licences. What stays in my memory is a petrol stop somewhere in the sticks. It was only a hand-cranked pump outside a shack, and "gas" was 8c (four old pence) a gallon!

We had neither the inclination or the money for the high life, we booked in some scruffy motel at the back of town and spent our time swimming, sightseeing and stuffing ourselves with hot dogs and ice cream. Then the long lonely haul back across Florida. I think that was the only time I was off the camp, except from one weekend when our flying instructor took us out to his home in Sarasota for the day - and looked after us royally! We gazed in hopeless envy at his brand-new Mercury (upmarket Ford) convertible. You got a lot of car for your money out there in those days.

Minor infractions of the rules earned "demerits", and when a sufficient total had been reached, you had to expunge them by "walking the ramp". This punishment drill involved having to march up and down a beat - the "ramp" -outside the Admin. Office (where they could keep an eye on you) for the allotted period. You had to keep up this palace guard routine for this time. Half an hour under the Florida sun was enough to convince most people of the error of their ways. Needless to say, a Goody-two-shoes like me took care to keep his nose clean.

The only formal duty imposed on us was to attend the daily flag-raising ceremony. This was at dawn, it was still quite dark. The flagpole and surrounding recently planted palm trees were braced with guy wires. These caused some hilarity; the Officer of the Day sometimes garotting himself or tripping over these invisible hazards. Then it was back for breakfast (plenty of maple syrup and waffles as well as your ham-and-eggs). And then ground school or Flight Line.

They issued each of us with a little, amusing booklet of helpful tips and advice
for our flying training (oh, why didn't I hang on to mine - and also to the wonderfully funny "Tee Emms" - RAF training magazines - we had during the War?) * Many an octo/nonagenarian would love to read once more of the misdeeds of Pilot Officer Prune, navigator Flying Officer Fix, signaller Sgt Backtune, disreputable dog "Binder", Air Commodore Byplane-Ffixpitch and all the rest of that glorious crew - surely stationed at Much-Binding-in-the-Marsh or somewhere very like it.

From memory, two bits of doggerel I remember from the Carlstrom booklet:

Neither wind direction, sock nor Tee,
Cut any ice with Philbert Magee.
At last a crash made him change his mind -
You can't use a field you've left behind!

and

Otis McKay, still twenty feet high,
Sat stalling it in without batting an eye
Or using his throttle to help him on down.
The Flight Surgeon says he'll recover, the clown!

(Can't remember any more, except this bit of homespun advice to get you to relax in the air - "wiggle your piggies!")

Note *
Commercially produced photograpic facsimilies of the complete series are available on CDrom - I've got one since my words above - try Google.

And then we met our instructors, four students to each. I drew Bob Greer, a softly-spoken, unflappable young man from South Carolina. He cannot have been more than five years older than we were. A pilot always remembers his first flying instructor, the one who sent him "solo", in memory he will be the best pilot there ever was. Learning to fly is hard, and Bob was kind and patient.

We buckled on our chutes and waddled over to our Stearman. Boeing had taken over Stearman years before, but the name stuck. A very strong two-seat biplane (open cockpits) was hauled along by a 220hp Continental radial engine. It was bigger, heavier and more powerful than its contemporary, our Tiger Moth. Like the Tiger, the thing flies to this day and looks as if it might go on for ever. Many Stearmans went into civil life after the war, converted into crop sprayers, where agility and toughness are "musts". And they seem to be the aircraft of choice for "wing-walkers" - a waste of time if ever I saw one.

Bob took the front cockpit with me in the back. There was no intercom, a system of hand signals was used and obviously the pupil had to see them. Bob could also throttle back and shout at me. It worked quite well. His cockpit had a useful fitting which mine lacked - an airspeed indicator (ASI).

Now any pilot of a later generation is sitting bolt upright in frank disbelief. Pull the other one - it's got bells on! How on earth can you fly without an ASI? Well, you can and we did. Or, to be precise, I did - for my first sixty hours. What you've never had, you never miss. The trick lay in flying "Attitude".

The cylinder heads of the engine could be seen around the nose. On take off, you got the tail up, waited until the aircraft felt "light", and lifted it until the horizon came level with the top pair of rockerboxes. The Stearman would float off. Holding it in that position for half a minute (take-off climb), you raised it until the next pair of "pots" lined up on the horizon (normal climb). From there, we flew round the sky happy as sandboys. If the wires started to scream, you were going too fast (if a wing came off, much too fast - only joking!) If the wires fell quiet, and the stick felt a bit sloppy, you were too slow (if you fell out of the sky, much too slow). Back at the field, you throttled back, put the top of the nose on the horizon, and it would glide nicely.

It was classic "flying by the seat of your pants", and in this simple aircraft, it worked like a charm. I am sorry to admit that it was possible, when solo to cheat. If you raised your seat to the maximum, then stretched up over the windscreen, you could just see the ASI in the front seat. But you'd only do this in aerobatics, for example to see if you had enough speed for a loop.

On arrival, we were issued with a name card holder for our overalls, and a set of coloured printed name cards . Blue for a "lower class" man, red for an "upper" (or was it the other way round?) As in most flying schools, this referred to the two parts of the Course, senior or junior. Ominously, there was also a white name card in your set. This was a badge of shame for the dreaded "washout".

Danny42C


You had a good home, and you left, left, left, left.............(Get those arms up!)

ancientaviator62
17th Feb 2012, 08:03
Danny42c,
I can relate to your premise that you can fly by sound and feel alone without an ASI. My Supercub could easily be flown in this manner as I suspect could some other light a/c. Looking forward to the next instalment.

fredjhh
17th Feb 2012, 14:30
Training in England in 1941 the EFTs course was nominally 50 hours over six weeks, and the SFTS course 80 hours over ten weeks. I think the SFTS had been upgraded from 65 hours, and I did meet pilots who had started operations on Welingtons and Whitleys with a total of 110 hours in their log books. Winter courses sometimes took longer because of very bad weather.

TEE EMM. I have the bound set of TEE EMM in two boxes. I think they were published after the war and my set came from a friend in Australia.

Our Tiger Moths at Fairoaks had ASIs but many also carried a spring indictor on the port wing brace, - fairly accurate, and some aircraft had a length of strong tape as a wind gauge.
My training "log" start at about page 75 and It seems to be the only one about training in the UK. We have had nothing about training in South Africa. I seem to remember a pilot telling me of their airfield in Rhodesia and the problems of "taking -off" at 5,000 feet.
fredjhh

Danny42C
18th Feb 2012, 18:21
I've been doing a bit more digging - which I should have done before - and re-read some of the earlier Posts:

(my #2272 P114, expressing disbelief that a USAAC cadet would go to a BFTS after Pearl Harbor) See Bravolima80 (#123 P7) - says 20% of his BFTS course were USAAC Cadets at Terrell in 10/43 - 7/44. Also says course length at BFTS 200 hrs - same as the Arnold schools. Fredjhh (#2321 P117) says normal 50+80 (130) in 1941.

(my #2319 P116), referring back to Reg (RIP) (#326 P17), he says no ALT in PT17 (?). Cliff (#117 P6) says it had Compass, ALT, ASI ?, T&B.

What was in a PT17? Can't remember.

You flew the thing for 60 hours, and you can't remember? I'm afraid so.

For a start, were there any wheel brakes? Or was it like the Tiger, which came to rest by means of a) friction, b) wind resistance, c) grass resistance, d) airman resistance on a wingtip (if you were lucky), e) airmen on both wing tips (if you were very lucky), or f) any solid object in the way (if you were unlucky) - and everything was more solid than a Tiger.

My line manager in Civil Service pre-war had been a Captain in the RFC, flying Camels. He told a tale (couldn't have been a porky, could it?) about one ingenious lad who worked out that his aircraft (type unspecified) would slow quicker if he refitted the tailskid back to front. How did he get off the ground? (Bert didn't say). He landed; his idea worked - but only for the rear end, which parted company from the front half, in which he went into the side of a hangar.

Next question, did the BT-13 have wheelbrakes? I know the AT-6 did!

As far as the PT-17 panel is concerned, there must have been twin ignition switches, an RPM, an ALT (a circuit full of trainees is lethal enough when they're all more or less at the same height; the mind boggles at the idea of them being up and down all over the place). There was certainly no ASI. There were no gyro instruments. I think there was a T&B (needle and ball). I don't think there was a panel compass (and there certainly was no other kind). We didn't do any navigation, anyway. The fuel gauge was a narrow glass (plastic?) tube projecting below the tank in the mid upper wing section. The tank had a float in it, attached to the bottom was a sort of knitting needle going down into the tube. The little knob on the end gave you a rough idea of how much was left. I can't remember a fuel tap at all; an oil pressure gauge might have been useful, but I can't remember one.

There was a map case down the side, but it wasn't for maps. It was a holder for Air Force Form 1, which in spite of its impressive name, was only the equivalent of our Travelling 700. Making sure that this was fastened was a "vital action" before aerobatics!

What sort of seat harness was there? Can't be sure, but it certaily wasn't a "Sutton" harness (RAF) pattern. Think it was some kind of four-point, though. No radio. No intercom of any kind: hand signals plus shouting. Worked well.

As Reg (#127 P7) said, there was a "hand wound" inertia starter, which he said "We" had to wind. We ? - who was in the cockpit ? I can still recall the look of exasperated contempt on the face of a mechanic who'd just sweated his guts out winding it, only for the ham-fisted student fail to "catch" the engine - and he had to do it all over again!

I throw it open, anyone add anything I've missed? - or got wrong?


Danny42C

Chugalug2
18th Feb 2012, 19:53
Danny, wrt your suggestion that there must have been a US Aviator called Carlstrom, after which your basic training field was named, Wikki as ever has the word:
Carlstrom Field - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carlstrom_Field)
and a further link to this:
Abandoned & Little-Known Airfields: Florida, Ft. Myers area (http://members.tripod.com/airfields_freeman/FL/Airfields_FL_FtMyers.htm#calstrom)
as to the instrumentation of the PT-17, I have drawn a blank for the moment, but I suspect others more capable than I can download a pic of the instrument panel at least, and most probably a link to the Pilots Notes. Does anyone know where Avialogs has ended up, as they used to provide such things? Wikki I'm afraid omits both, but does say that only 18 of the 3519 delivered were fitted for blind flying:
Boeing-Stearman Model 75 - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PT-17)
In the absence of anything more authoritative, here is a site dedicated to the USAAC Cadets, and includes a photo of a restored PT17 instrument panel, that includes ASI, Directional Giro, Turn & Slip Indicator, Altimeter, as well as engine RPM, oil temp and press, fuel gauge and a clock. Not sure what date it represents, nor indeed if it's correct anyway. Maybe it was the de-luxe top of the range option? :)
Army Air Corps Cadet, Pilots and Instructors: WWII Flight Training (http://www.danielsww2.com/page10.html)

Danny42C
19th Feb 2012, 16:31
Thank you. chaps!

To fredhjj (#2321)
Yes, there seems to have been a very wide spread of total hours to Wings, depending on where and when you were trained, and by whom. The Arnold Scheme people seem to have worked to a fixed figure of 200 hours.

You're a lucky man to have a full set of Tee Emm. What comes across to me is the unspoken assumption that runs from the very beginning - we were going to win, no matter how long it took. I was there, and it was like that. It reminds me of Queen Victoria: "We are not interested in the possibilities of defeat. They do not exist".

Yes, I remember seeing the little spring flap on the wing strut on some Tiggies.
It was a simple idea (and there was no pitot tube to forget to take the cover off), but I would think they were hard to read in the air.


To Chugalug (#2323)
The links you found are very interesting. But five hangars at Carlstrom? I can't recall any! What use would I have been as a Boy Scout? It's not as if a hangar is hard to see!

The Daniel Collection is useful, until you come to the picture purporting to show a reconstruction of a PT-17 panel. I could write a book!

a) Panel Compass? Possibly, but can't remember one. We certainly never needed one.

b) An ASI redlined at 235mph! We had no ASI. And the wings would have come off at little more than half that speed. This has come off another aircraft.

c) Needle & Ball? Yes.

d) Altimeter? Yes.

e) RPM? Yes - but surely not showing up to 4500! This has come off something else, like b).

f) Clock? Possibly, can't remember. Don't think so.

g) Triple gauge? Certainly not - this has come off something bigger and far more sophisticated. For a start, what use would a fuel pressure gauge be in a gravity fed system? It's a total stranger here.

To summarise: the panel may well have come out of a PT-17, but the contents are a very mixed bag indeed. They may have been sold to Mr Daniel as the instruments which went into a PT-17 panel, and he has captioned his photo as such, but I'm afraid he's been "had".


Thanks again for steering me on to these links.

Might do a bit more of my story soon. But where are all the others? They were trained in the UK, Canada, Rhodesia, and all sorts of little places. Come out from the woodwork - you haven't much time left!

Danny42C

Danny42C
19th Feb 2012, 23:31
Cliff (your #232 p12) - way, way, back!

Quote (or words to the effect):

"There were US cadets on our (BFTS) Course to compare training methods".

Seems to be the answer to my #2272 P114, wraps it up nicely!

Cheers, Danny

Chugalug2
20th Feb 2012, 11:49
Danny, you have the devastating authority of an Antiques Roadshow expert disillusioning the proud owner of an objet d'art! :O So other than the T&S and Altimeter my prized fully instrumented panel is basically a fake? Oh, the embarrassment and the shame of it all! I suppose to be fair to Mr Daniel, he did say that all the Flight Instruments are genuinely of WWII vintage, rather than genuinely out of PT-17's. Sort of a "They're all the right instruments, Sunshine, though not necessarily in the right place!". At least if it appears on ebay we will be forewarned. :)
The Florida Airfield site is indeed interesting. So many of the satellite fields were just that it would seem, simply fields and long since slipped back into obscurity by later agriculture or Mother Nature. Some of the larger Air Stations though form the basis of modern Regional Airports, with aprons that still reveal the star shaped paved runway patterns that were often laid. Sort of mini Heathrows!
Do any of the Carlstrom related fields prompt memories within you? Would you have logged them if you had done your circuits there rather than at Carlstrom, or did you merely log the activity carried out? My own Log Book I see merely does the latter, though much of my basic training was carried out at Barkston Heath rather than at its parent, RAFC Cranwell. A security thing perhaps?

cliffnemo
20th Feb 2012, 11:52
And to prove it a pic of my oppo Hardie Albrecht , second generation German, from Atkins. Iowa. On graduation he became a 'loo tenant'. He delivered all types of aircraft, including Flying Fortresses all over the world.

Some one previously said the white flash indicated the wearer was a potential officer At the time of this photograph it indicated ' P.N.B U/T (previously Pilot U/T ). Most graduating as Sergeants.

http://i274.photobucket.com/albums/jj248/cliffordleach/HARDIECLIFF267.jpg

Danny42C
20th Feb 2012, 16:54
Chugalug (#2326)

The very last thing I am is an authority on anything! As you will remember, we were mostly young and stupid in those days, and tended to believe anything we were told without question. And my recollections represent this.

The gaps in my memory are frightening. For example, until I saw the pics on the link, I had no recollection of the circular plan of Carlstrom. Worse, they brought nothing back to me, and I must have flown over the place a hundred times. And the same with the hangars.

There was a "Relief Landing Ground", but I can't remember a name. It wasn't far from Carlstrom, but I can't remember in what direction. There we did our C&Bs and I did my first solo. There were half a dozen "fields" around, some with names and some without, on the map on the link. My log is no help, I just see Ex(ercise) 19B or some such, which now tells me nothing. Curiously, there was a second Dorr Field, it seems.
EDIT: Wrong! It was the Darr field I must have been thinking about. (Sorry, Cliff)

Cliff (#2327)

No authority for the "potential officer", either. But I, too, originally believed that it was just "trainee aircrew" (and that was the general understanding): but something fairly official must have come out to make me change my mind. And the "white" bit does add some weight to that. Again, there must be
somebody out there who knows the right answer. Let's hear from you.

What a nostalgic pic that was! There you were, both of you, full of the joy of youth (pity it's wasted on the young!). Those were the days, my friend!

This Thread is in danger of turning into a small comfy club - where are all the rest of you? Anyone at home?


Cheers to all,

Danny.

fredjhh
20th Feb 2012, 19:13
R.A.F. Flying Training. This list was pasted in Log books at EFTS.
A slightly different list was in SFTS training on Oxfords.

1. Air Experience
1a. Familiarity of Cock Pit layout.
2. Effect of Controls.
3. Taxying
4. Straight and level flying
5. Climbing, Gliding, Stalling
6. Medium turns.
7. Taking of into wind.
8. Powered approach and Landing.
9. Gliding approach and Landing.
10. Spinning.
11. First Solo
12. Sideslipping.
13. Precautionary Landings
14. Low flying.
15. Steep turns
15a Steep gliding turns.
16. Climbing turns.
17. Forced landings.
18. Action in the event of fire.
18a Abandoning an aircraft.
19. Instrument flying.
20. Taking off and landing out of wind.
21. Re-starting the engine in flight.
22. Aerobatics.
23. Navigation.
24. Cross country exercise.
25. C.F.I. Test.

Not all done in this order and all landings until after first solo were gliding landings.
Fredjhh.

Danny42C
20th Feb 2012, 20:48
fredjhh - thanks,

A very good idea! Why couldn't Uncle Sam think of that in the Arnold Schools? Did they have it in the B.F.T.S.? Of course, we might just have written our lists out for ourselves and stuck it in our logbooks. Stranger things have happened.

Cheers, Danny

Petet
20th Feb 2012, 21:55
I am not an expert by any means but all the research I have done over the last few months suggests that the white insert in the cap denoted aircrew under training.

Petet
20th Feb 2012, 22:02
If contributors are happy, can I ask cliffnemo (as long as he is happy too) to take us back to 4 SoTT as I am trying to get a complete syllabus for the flight engineer technical training course.

I am also keen to establish whether recruits flew any type of aircraft whilst at St Athan

Any help would be much appreciated

kookabat
21st Feb 2012, 01:28
Petet,
From my own research I believe that trainee flight engineers did no flying until they reached OTU and crewed up - ie after they had graduated from St Athan and received their brevets. Cliff mentioned something about this on this thread a year or so agao. I also asked another former flight engineer - Tom Knox of 149 and 199 Sqns on Stirlings - who wrote me a letter last year that confirmed this.
I don't have a full syllabus but from inputs from both Cliff and Tom I cobbled together a short description of flight engineer training on my blog - you can find it here (http://somethingverybig.wordpress.com/2011/11/16/flight-engineer/).

I also believe the white flash denoted an airman under training. One of the veteran aircrew I talk to regularly tells me they used to take it off when they wanted to abscond temporarily from their Initial Training School by diving through a hole in the fence - this way they would look like permanent staff rather than recruits while walking innocently down the road to the train station!

Adam

Petet
21st Feb 2012, 12:20
Thanks for the link ...... I have e-mailed St Athan to see if they can provide the complete syllabus so that we can use that in our research .... I have got the complete syllabus for ITW if anyone is interested.

In the meantime I will make use of the information that you and Cliff have pieced together as my start point.

I am in the process of trying to establish the types of "flight simulators" that they had at St Athan in 1943 / 1944 .... some say they were just static cockkpits whilst others say they were "prototype" flight simulators with movement.

The Silloth trainer has been mentioned but not sure if one of those had been installed or whether they had developed their own... I will have to keep digging on that one

Danny42C
21st Feb 2012, 15:28
(He has also changed his typeface, the better to keep track of his humble offerings from now on).

The first ten hours of military flying instruction are critical. This is where the sheep are sorted from the goats. In civil life, a flying club will keep on taking your money till the cows come home, irrespective of whether you're ever going to make a pilot. The Army can't afford to do this, it's working to a timetable.

An average pupil will go solo after eight hours. Nine hours is stretching it. Ten, and your instructor will hand you over to a check pilot, who will take you up and assess your performance, and who may give you a second chance, with a different instructor. But this rarely happens. You're "washed out".

It sounds hard-hearted, and we think of late developers and helping lame dogs over stiles. But, as is pointed out, your dog is still lame after you've got him over the stile, and there are more stiles ahead. Better to chop him now.

Once the decision is taken, the bitterly disappointed pupil was always whizzed away quickly. Back in Canada, most retrained as Navigators or Wireless Operators/Air Gunners, so all was not lost. But never a second chance as a pilot! (Or so we were led to believe at the time; I have subsequently heard that there were second chances - particularly when these were disciplinary cases, and the pupil's flying ability was not in question). Obviously, this information was hidden from us then: otherwise it would offer a sort of "soft option" to the Arnold scheme for those who wished to take it.

The majority of these losses took place in the first ten days. After that they became progressively fewer. One of my room mates disappeared after a month, having absent-mindedly blundered through the circuit at our Relief Landing Ground. "Dangerous tendencies", they said, and he was out. Two others had fallen at the first hurdle, so now I had the room to myself

The Arnold Scheme had a "washout" rate of around 50%, I believe. Whether this was due to the impossibly high standards, or whether simple arithmetic had more to do with it, I have often wondered. My Course at Carlstrom started out some fifty strong. When we went on to Basic School, there were about twenty-five of us left. But we didn't find any "vacant chairs" when we got there. I think Carlstrom simply had to get rid of half of their intakes.

I do not propose to go into a lengthy account of all the stages of elementary flying training. They are much the same everywhere - a few Posts ago there is an excellent list of all the usual lessons, which was issued to pupils at British EFTS. As far as the Arnold (US Army) Scheme was concerned, the major difference was that we had to do without an ASI - did anywhere else do this? (We felt no pain). They exploited the strength of the Stearman to teach "Snap Rolls" and "Snap Vertical Reverses": we would call these "Flick" Rolls, did we do them in the Tiger? (I would have been afraid of tearing the wings off!). They taught a movement called a "Chandelle", which seemed much like a Stall Turn to me, and a "Lazy Eight" (imagine a large (maths) Infinity symbol on the horizon, and follow it round with the nose of your aircraft). It was rather pleasant and relaxing, but I could not see any practical use for it.

However, if I had been one of the real heroes which: "thank the Lord I wasn't, Sir", who went out night after night over the Third Reich (and there are a few in our company, and we should view them all with the admiration, respect and gratitude which is their due.), then the Lazy Eight might have been more comfortable than the "corkscrew", and just as effective, in foiling a Ju88 with Schrage Musik fitted (I'm told the exact meaning is "Ragtime"). And it would have been easier for the Pilot to keep a Course (which we later called a "Heading"), for all he had to do would have been to keep the "bridge of the spectacles" on it, and he would have a happy Navigator into the bargain.

Bob turned me loose after eight and a half hours. Before that we had a little excitement on a dual C&B session at the RLG. A plug blew out. The noise would waken the dead, and the metal propeller was known to fracture from vibration after this particular event. Bob took over and put it down.

My great day came on 19th September, 1941. You never know in advance. I'm doing dual circuits and bumps, taxying back down the edge of the field after each landing. Half way back, Bob tells me to stop, and climbs out with his 'chute. "Off you go - remember what I've told you!" Another instructor is sitting on his chute, with a cigarette. (I suppose he'd just sent his pupil off), and Bob joins him.

This is no time to feel nervous. You have to move the aeroplane. I taxi warily round to take-off point (no runways), make sure nothing's coming in to land on top of me, turn into wind and push the throttle open.

I swing a little, travelling diagonally across the field, and into the air. So far, so good. There is supposed to be a special Providence which looks after first solos, the same one which takes care of drunks and toddlers when they fall down. A first solo never comes to harm, at least not in my experience.

Round I go, mechanically following routine, and come in for quite a decent landing (I've done many worse). I trundle round back to Bob. He waves me off again. This time I keep the take-off straight straight, again I put it down in one piece. This time Bob's on his feet - clearly he thinks he's pushed our luck far enough for one day. He climbs in: "Take me back to Carlstrom".

From that day on, I'll always be a pilot. I'm still a long way from my "wings", but I've been up "alone and unaided"; I'm down alive, and the aircraft can still fly!


Danny42C


Sun's over the YardArm!

kookabat
22nd Feb 2012, 10:28
Lovely, Danny - beautifully written too! I think anyone - military or civil - who's taken that great first step solo knows exactly what you're on about.

:ok:


Petet,
I've seen somewhere a photo of a big group of the front fuselages of various different heavies all lined up in a big hall, ostensibly at St Athan during the war. Something about being procedures trainers? Unfortunately I can't remember where I saw that photo. I'll give you a shout if I come across it again.

Adam

Chugalug2
22nd Feb 2012, 10:50
Danny, the memory does indeed fade over the years, it is true. Mine certainly does anyway. The magic these days is that the internet allows of the dotting of those forgotten i's and the crossing of the unknown t's. Those who have been at war often relate their own vivid corner of it, but by the same token have, and indeed then had, little idea of how it related to the grander scheme of things. I expect that Cliff and your fellow raconteurs have not only had the satisfaction of recording here their unique historic accounts for posterity, but of having learnt at the same time such forgotten or unknown details for themselves. What you might call a win win scenario! :ok:
As to the seemingly few members posting reactions, I can only endorse your plea for more. If you look to the RHS of the thread title in the Military Aircrew Thread Listing you will see two numbers, ie the total number of posts and the total viewings of the thread. The latter of course is several orders in excess of the former, as with many threads. In a way it is rather like publishing a newspaper or magazine article. Yes, you will get some feedback in letters to the editor, but the great majority of readers do just that, ie read! As long as this thread remains well read, as it clearly is, then your posts are obviously valued. I know it is difficult for you guys to accept, but your testimony of those critical and fateful years in this country's history is highly prized and revered. The irony is that the less we tend to stand you all on a pedestal the more forthcoming and less reserved will be your response. I hope that I have the nub of it there Danny, both for you, for your existing correspondents, and for those yet to dip their toes into the water.
The point of my rambling is to encourage everyone to show Danny, et al, how valued are their posts by keeping a varied dialogue going. The subject is rich and varied; flying, cultural differences, girls, music, diet, administrative procedures, money, fear, resolve, fate, technical issues,.... er did I mention girls? In a way the more mundane the question the more revealing the answer. Try it. Chip in. It will all help.
Back to you Danny. Congratulations on your first solo! My next door neighbour sadly passed away last year. Having spoken with him about flying (I was then an active pilot), he revealed that he had trained in Rhodesia as a pilot. All of his course expected to be posted to BC when they had earned their wings, but VE Day came and so they were told to expect to go to the Far East instead. Then VJ Day came and so they were sent home for demob. That was his story anyway. His brother, at his funeral oration, let slip that Stan had crashed his Tiger Moth on his first solo, and that is why he hadn't become a pilot! Whatever the truth of the matter he, like all of you, was playing for very high stakes. It is for those who didn't cheat Lady Luck that your tales need telling. We owe it to their memory, do we not?

cliffnemo
22nd Feb 2012, 16:14
I am in the process of trying to establish the types of "flight simulators" that they had at St Athan in 1943 / 1944 .... some say they were just static cockkpits whilst others say they were "prototype" flight simulators with movement.

http://i274.photobucket.com/albums/jj248/cliffordleach/link_8-1.jpg
Petet this is a pic of the Link trainer, which was at most training schools and I would imagine we as P.F.Es would also use at St Athans. The hood was closed, after which we were instructed to fly using 'needle ball airspeed to climb descend.change course, maintain height and airspeed, . The Link tilted, in all directions responding to joystick , rudder pedals etc. A chart gave a print out of all movements. Think we would also practice standard beam approach etc on this.

Keep up your requests for info on F/Es you may be lucky and find a wartime straight F/E , as I have done in the past. I have triied to encourage all trades to join in, but it is hard going. Did send dozens of E.Ms to German museums, and Luftwaffe associations asking for contributions, but all to no avail. Will try and answer more of your questions later, but due to medical conditions, plus two teeth extractions yesterday, I'm 'not quite with it.' Are you sure you have accessed all my photobucket albums ? There are many pics of my hand written notes. written whilst on the F/Es course at St Athan.

Molemot
22nd Feb 2012, 17:56
We were still using the Link Trainer on the JP course at Linton on Ouse in 1972. I could fly approaches with my hands behind my head, simply by leaning....!

Petet
22nd Feb 2012, 19:29
Cliff

Thanks for the information; more than happy to keep asking questions but I don't want to hog the thread ... obviously as the FE did not go through the EFTS / SFTS route, my research ends at ITW and then goes through the 4 SoTT route (before converging with the EFTS/SFTS trades at HCU).

I hope that makes sense to the uninitiated!!??

RAF St Athan have got back to me today to say that they are unable to provide a copy of the syllabus for 4 SoTT as very few records exist from that period in their history .... which I thought was sad .... so I am relying on the various forums that I subscribe to to help piece information together .. ... so thanks to you all for your contributions.

I have been provided with this link regarding "flight simulators at RAF St Athan" which you may be interested in:

FLIGHT magazine, 13 July 1951 page 50. (empire airways | aircraft instruments | engine school | 1951 | 1331 | Flight Archive (http://www.flightglobal.com/pdfarchive/view/1951/1951%20-%201331.html))

Danny42C
22nd Feb 2012, 20:23
Chugalug, (#2337)

Thank you for your thoughtful, in-depth analysis of how things are going in this Thread. But I still think that we must have a few more "old hairys" of my generation still alive out there who could chip in and keep me (and others) on the right lines. For we often drift away from the truth, not intentionally, but simply because all memories are fallible, and old men's memories more fallible than most. The more of us we can find, the better.

So I'll soldier on, content that I'm not "wasting my sweetness on the desert air"! Even so, chaps: "this ain't just a private fight - anyone can join in".

Danny,

Danny42C
22nd Feb 2012, 21:16
First, thank you, Kookabat (#2336), for the kind words. Much appreciated!

Next, I should have added in my last Post what was probably one of the most important differences in USAAC practice: the "Square Circuit" they flew. Instead of coming round on a continuous curve from the downwind leg onto the runway, we had a straight "Base Leg" on which (I think) we maintained circuit height, then turned a right angle onto "Finals", closed the throttle and glided straight down to the landing. (Instead of our "Finals, three greens", some US wags were reputed to call: "On the base, rollers and draggers in place!")

Of course, this made their circuits much wider, but with the area of an English county to play with, this was no problem. (And this is probably the basis for the "Square Meal" with which their lower-class men were tormented).

To business: My first solo was just a beginning. I still had most of my sixty hours to put in. All flying schools are organised on a similar routine. The students are divided into two groups. One flies in the mornings and does Ground School in the afternoons. Next week they change over. The flying was all new to us, of course, but Ground School showed how valuable our six weeks in Newquay had been. Not to put too fine a point on it, we knew nearly as much about Navigation as our Instructors, and I can still remember a lecturer on Instruments tying his fingers in knots in an attempt to demonstrate the Three Axes of Precession of a Gyroscope.


In fairness to our hosts, their wide open spaces and reliable weather (at least down South) made classical navigation much less important to them than it was to us in the UK. Moreover, their commercial inter-city flights all navigated exclusively on "Radio Ranges" along all the major Airways. The Radio Range was an early application of the Lorenz Beam, and their commercial pilots had become so used to flying "on the beam" that they'd almost given up navigating. All was fine until Pearl Harbor, when Germany declared war on the US, and U-boats off their East coast started using the Range signals for their navigation. To stop this, they switched off the Range stations in the Eastern states. This practically grounded Civil aviation there, until the pilots dusted off their maps, and went back to the old, tried and tested methods of finding a way from A to B.


We had examinations, of course, and here we met the Multiple Choice Question for the first time. All this idea does is to make life easier for the marker. Needless to say, we cribbed shamelessly. This horrified our teachers. American cadets were supposed to be governed by an "Honor System", and not even think of doing anything so base. We made it clear that we were incorrigible, and that it was up to them to catch us. Which they often did, and not a few demerits were earned that way. It was this "Honor System" which required you to "inform" on your comrades - I need hardly add that that was a non-starter as far as we were concerned. I must say that they did introduce an attempt of humour in one of their Met exams: one of the choices for "What is the Tropopause?" was "The Pause which Refreshes" (ad for Coca Cola!)

"Coke" cost 5c a bottle. It ruled the market, its two principal competitors (Pepsicola and the unwisely named Royal Crown cola - try saying "R.C.Cola" quickly) couldn't make a dent in its sales, in spite of selling double the quantity for the same price. But the Coke machines would take only nickels, and soon they mopped up all the nickels on the camp. Plaintive cries of "Anyone got two nickels for a dime?" could be heard all over. The story was that "Coke" then contained cocaine, and was habit-forming, and there may have been some truth in it. Every day, the "Coke" salesman rolled up to collect the cash and refill the machines. He would be inundated with offers to change dollars (and even five-dollar bills) into nickels. He never had to carry away much small change. This reminds me of a good story. I think I may have got it from the "Readers Digest", so it must (?) be true. (And I hope the kind Moderator will let it through, though it is way off Thread).

A big US airbase opened near a small mid-western town just after the War. The usual frictions developed: rowdy airmen in town in the evenings, Service families driving up the cost of rented accommodation, parking congestion in the Main Street, and so on. The townsfolk's complaints were making the Colonel's life a misery. He decided to do something about it. Two aircraft flew down South, returning heavily laden.

Next payday, the surprised airmen got paid in dollar coins instead of notes (the silver dollar was legal tender for any amount in that State). They clanked off with pockets bulging. Husbands met trouble when they got home.
This was Friday, and they went to town to do the weekly shopping. Soon all was chaos, tills in stores, cafes and petrol stations were jammed full in the first hour. The banks were unprepared for the sudden rush of payings-in, and this caused further delays which effectively brought all commerce to a halt by mid morning. It was late afternoon before things got back to normal.

The townsfolk got the message ("see where your trade comes from!"). The Colonel was left in peace. Having the Forces on your doorstep is good for business. Put up with a few inconveniences!

Danny42C




Stand by your beds!

dogle
22nd Feb 2012, 22:14
Danny, Sir!, thank you so much .... I suspect that you have no inkling of how much enjoyment your posts are bringing to so many, but it is so - please bear in mind that we are quiet because we are sitting 'with baited breath' awaiting 'The Next Thrilling Instalment'. As to Danny's requests for others to join in, may I echo these, and here is a lead if you are shy - 'every dog has four thoughts, one for each paw - food, food, sex, and food'. Several contributors have mentioned their enjoyment of transatlantic grub when on the Arnold Scheme, but not many around today have any inkling of how tough things were in hungry wartime Britain, when a breakfast egg was a prized reward for having come back in one piece. So, what were rations like it those bitter times? They were certainly very important in the overall picture, but (apart from carrots!) not much mentioned. All ranks and trades ... here is your cue ...

eaw
23rd Feb 2012, 08:55
Hi Danny,

I concur with Dogle's sentiments. Have been reading your last post this morning in Krakow & the previous ones in Frankfurt & Manchester. Looking forward to the reading the next instalments in Liverpool & Amsterdam. Keep it comng Please!

Danny42C
24th Feb 2012, 02:11
Thanks a lot, Dogle (#2343), and eaw (#2344). for the kind words. Keeps my spirits up no end!


Further to my Post #2335, (P117), I've been re-reading earlier Posts in this Thread (they read better every time). I came to andy1999's Post #460 (P23). Some way in there is a pic of what apppears to be a medal. I racked my brains for the dregs of my Latin and came up with "The sea divides us, the heavens join us" - only to find that someone had done it for me a few Posts further on and I needn't have bothered! In any case, it's very apt indeed.


But the meat in the sandwich is the bare table of statistics which follows This shows that from Class 42A (which must have been the July 41 entry - these would graduate in Jan 42) to Class 42D (which would have been the last entry before Pearl Harbor), only 60% graduated. From 42E onwards to the end of the record, the figure rose to 98% ! The answer is clear: only the Arnold schools must have had British students prior to Pearl Harbor; unless the Arnold leopard changed his spots, the BFTS must have taken over all, or nearly all our people from then on.



It looks as if my suspicion that the USAAC schools simply took on almost twice as many people as their Basic and Advanced schools could handle (and had to discard the rest) was well founded. In that sense, Primary School was more of a competitive examination than a fair test of flying skill, and a lot of potentially good material must have been wasted. None of this reflects badly on the Americans, we were only too grateful for any help, and as neutrals they were under no obligation to lift a finger on our behalf, and if they chose to do so, it was their right to organise it any way they wished.


Danny42C

Danny42C
24th Feb 2012, 17:04
First, a few words to Dogle. What was our grub like? I can only answer in a general way:

a) any grub was better (at least in quantity, though not always in quality) than the poor civilians were reduced to back home. As for that, start off any octogenarian in your (or a neighbour's) family, and you might be in for quite a long haul.

b) I was essentially an ex-civvie from May 41 to the end. First, in Canada and the States, there was far more of it than we could eat. I could say what we were fed on, but I would really be saying what I think they eat now, and not really remembering at all - except that there were gallons of iced tea in Florida, and that was delicious. Steaks and ice cream, I suppose.

c) As for the wartime Jewel in the Crown, anything goes provided you curry it first, eat rice and chapattis with it, and ask no questions. I am told that Rattus rattus eats quite well, but can't say personally (I hope). Bully Beef? - I'm not sure (the Hindu people tended to be a bit touchy about that). And the never-to-be-forgotten "Soya Links", a sort of pretend-meat sausage with a faintly fishy taste. Dehydrated spuds, of course, plus anything else you can put in a tin. Eggs and the odd scrawny chicken. Plenty of fish, if you're near a coast; the squadron (all ranks) once feasted royally on an 80lb shark. The cooks made quite tasty fishcakes with the powdered spuds; the Mess found some Worcester sauce to go with it.



*****************


Way off track, get back on the rails.

One thing Carlstrom taught me stayed with me all my flying life. They were obsessive about the care of parachutes, never to treat them roughly, always to carry them properly and to fold them the right way when you put them down. This was backed by a ferocious sanction. An offender was ordered to carry his parachute (a heavy and awkward load) right round Carlstrom field. This was almost a mile each side, so he had a four-mile walk under the Florida sun. With flying in progress, he dare not short-cut, but had to keep to the fences all the way. Needless to say, parachutes were treated with great respect there, which is as it should be.

Autumn in Florida is a pleasant season, but hurricanes were not uncommon then, although not as frequent or as severe as they seem to be now. We had one, its route was fairly well plotted, it was coming our way. There was a scramble to get our aircraft away to Tampa (70 miles north and reckoned to be safe). At Carlstrom, our Stearmans lived out in the open in a long Flight Line, as we had no hangars. (Now, of course, I know that that was complete nonsense, there must have been three hangars staring me in the face. Why didn't they stow the aircraft in these?)

Three possible explanations:

a) Why isn't your car in your garage? Because that's full of your junk!

b) The whole lot might blow away, hangars and all.

c) It was less hassle to fly the lot away than have to manhandle them all in.

Naturally, this ferry job fell to our instructors, and there was a sudden rush to get away in mid afternoon. Perhaps Tampa were threatening to close. One of them, taxying fast down the line to take-off point, overdid it and took off involuntarily, floating a few feet in the air before dropping back! I never saw that happen again.

The Stearmans flew off, we battened down the hatches and waited for the storm. I'll always remember that sunset. It was glorious, the sky full of every colour imaginable, it needed a Turner to do it justice. Then the storm came, it wasn't too bad. Our posh quarters stood up to it all right, we lost some recently planted palm trees, but that was about all. The aircraft stayed safe and sound in Tampa overnight and came back next day

Flying in an open cockpit is pretty well a thing of the past, but in warm weather it's by far the best way. You can see all round, and with the wind whistling in your ears, and the sun beating down on your helmet, it's easy to imagine yourself chasing the "Red Baron" over the 1916 lines in France. I'd think the Stearman's performance was much the same as "Biggles's" Sopwith "Camel", and we enjoyed tailchases (mock combat) as a change from our training routines.

I can still recall the smell of warm grass as we were coming in to land, and watching out for the correct moment to check your glide. This was when you suddenly see blades of grass in what was just a green blur a moment before. Much later, flying off a Wiltshire field on a pitch-black night, the same idea worked fine. Gooseneck flares, mere points of light, turn into recognisable little flames. Time to pull up the nose and hold off. It's remarkable how little light you need to land at night. In occupied France, Lysanders could routinely drop off and pick up agents in mooonlight plus a few torches on the ground.

Now I feel the restraining hand of Wittgenstein (?) on my shoulder:
"Whereof you know nothing, thereof should you be silent".
But fools rush in........

Today's airline pilots must only dream of such pleasures. On their sealed, pressurised Flight Decks they can see only a limited patch of sky and horizon. They might as well be in a flight simulator, as these are now so sophisticated that you can hardly tell whether you're in the air or not (or so I am told).
(Ancient joke: "What are we going to do about old So-and-so? He's wizard in the air, but hopeless on the simulator!)

Now I'm in trouble! Goodnight, all.


Danny42C





Orderly Officer! Any complaints?

Petet
25th Feb 2012, 09:30
We have a copy of the duties and responsibilities of the flight engineer as set out by the Air Ministry in 1942 for the four engined heavy bombers and flying boats. They read:

to operate certain controls at the engineer’s station and watch appropriate gauges as indicated in the relevant Air Publications;

in certain types of aircraft, to act as pilot’s assistant to the extent of being able to fly straight and level and on a course;

to advise the captain of the aircraft as to the functioning of the engines and the fuel, oil and cooling systems, both before and during flight;

to ensure effective liaison between the captain of the aircraft and the maintenance staff, by communicating to the latter such technical notes regarding the performance and maintenance of the aircraft in flight as may be required;

to carry out practicable emergency repairs during flight;

to act as stand-by Gunner.
If there are any flight engineers out there watching in, but who would love to put fingers to keyboard, it would be great to hear what these meant in practice ... why were you watching the gauges, what practicable emergency repairs could you make .

In essence, a personal view of a typical flight from the time of reaching the aircraft to the end of the flight would be brilliant.

Danny42C
25th Feb 2012, 17:32
Cliff, old chap,
You've let me rabbet on about Arnold/B.F.T.S all this time (my Posts #2335 [P117)] and #2345 [P118] ), when you knew all about it from way back! I now sit on the penitents' bench as one of the dreaded sciolists whom our Moderator warns us about (in red) at the bottom of the page. I now must recant, retract and absolutely abjure everything I've written!

But it's a long time ago (three years), so I'll forgive you! Look back to two Posts, #460 from andy1999 (P23), and your #499 (P25). It seems that the Arnold and the B.F.T.S. Schemes started together in summer 1941.

From what Mr Mike Igglesden, of 6 BFTS Assn, says: the BFTSs started off openly as RAF units, with an RAF C.O. and NCOs for discipline. Civilian clothes had only to worn off camp. Presumably they wore "uniform" (US light summer uniform with RAF forage caps and white flashes) on camp. So what about US neutrality, then? Out of the window, that's what! So far, it makes some sense. Why should Roosevelt worry about Hitler? He had enough on his plate in Russia. It was not till Japan evened the odds at Pearl Harbor, and Roosevelt had his own plateful to worry about, that he felt safe in declaring war on the USA.

So why were we, in the Arnold Schools, hiding away hugger-mugger as mock-civilians at the same time? Search me! But that wasn't the end of the story.

Again referring to the BFTS Assn. Intake/Graduates Schedule: How do we account for a 6o% pass rate in BFTS over 42A-D, and 98% from 42E onward after Pearl Harbor? What happened to the BFTSs on 8th December 1941?

It's all beyond me. My own stupid fault for trying to be a historian! No more!


Cheers, Danny

Chugalug2
25th Feb 2012, 22:45
Danny 42C:
My own stupid fault for trying to be a historian! No more!
Danny if you stop posing questions and interpretations then who else is likely to do so? The one really positive advance in Flight Safety in my time has been the introduction of Crew Resource Management (nee Cockpit Resource Management, nee Flight Deck Management) started in civil aviation as a response to pilot error accidents occasioned by the "God sits in the LHS" syndrome. It is now making uncertain but continuing moves into Military Aviation. What is it about? You could say it is about the boy who is the only one prepared to say what everyone else can see, ie that the Emperor has no clothes!
If you can see in retrospect seeming inconsistencies in the US interpretation of neutrality then I am sure that is right. Lease Lend was scarcely an established traditional neutral position. Actively defending convoys far out into the Western Atlantic was scarcely an established traditional neutral position. Offering training facilities for thousands of Allied Aircrew was scarcely an established traditional neutral position. Yet the USA did all this and more as a neutral power, at a time when there was great opposition from within from both pro-Axis and Isolationist pressure groups. It would be only natural for a certain amount of back-tracking and regional variations to occur given these pressure I would suspect. Like Chamberlain's Britain the USA needed time to gear up for the inevitable war that it would have to face. Appeasement gave us that precious time, neutrality before 7/12/1941 gave the USA the same thing. I would submit that on the whole both nations made good use of that time, which was well spent.
It's strange, but your tale so far invokes in me a relevance not so much to my own early RAF days but rather to those spent living in a Nissan hut as an RAF CCF Cadet at Thruxton (The Wiltshire School of Flying) on a Flying Scholarship. Like you I was taught to fly bi-planes (Tiger Moths and Jackaroos). Like you we put up with many impositions (rising at dawn as Duty Cadet to walk out to the well on the far side of the airfield to start the water pump for morning ablutions and breakfasts, sweltering in the summer sun in our serge BD's until the Chief Flying Instructor allowed us to revert to shirt sleeve order) just as long as we could learn to fly! I especially relate to your celebration of open cockpits, though it was only for the aerobatic, stalling and spinning dual instruction phases that we were allowed to swap the Jackaroo's cabin for the Tiger's cockpit. You remember well, for the grass did indeed show up as individual blades at round out. That is the sort of detail that Ernest K Gann would have observed!, Well, that and the sound of Cows pissing on tin roofs to describe a tropical downpour!
More please Danny, much more! Oh, and please keep pondering on the many contradictions. That is what makes your tale one of reality rather than fiction.

Danny42C
25th Feb 2012, 22:59
Open cockpits do, however, bring their own difficulties. Things fall out when the aircraft is upside down - usually the student's loose change, much to his instructor's amusement. The whole student would fall out but for his harness, and the first up-ending sees arms and legs dangling helplessly. It needs conscious muscular effort to keep feet on the floor, and arms down, and everybody gets caught out first time. There is a bright side to this, if you have a canopy. I remember my instructor dropping his pencil into the bottom of a Harvard cockpit, then inverting the aircraft to pick it off the "roof".

The student's cockpit on the Stearman had a map case down the side, to hold Air Corps Form 1. This was the aircraft's maintenance record book, or at least a copy, for the original must stay on the ground (an Accident Investigator will want to see it). The RAF equivalent is the Form 700, and we have a "travelling" F.700, too.

One careless lad forgot to check that the Form 1 case flap was secure. He did a nice slow roll, and his Form 1 was on its way down to the Everglades. Rolling out horrified, he spotted it fluttering down a hundred feet below him. Down he went (he had plenty of height), and was seen by reliable witnesses flying circles underneath it, trying to grab it each time round. It was hopeless, like airshow balloon-bursting, it looks easy - but isn't - to fly onto a small object in the air. As for managing that, and then catching the thing as it went past him at 70 mph, well...... But he deserved full marks for trying (the alligators got the Form 1 - I don't know what they made of it).

One thing an open cockpit did have in its favour - you could throw-up over the side if you had to. If your instructor spotted this (in his mirror) in time, he'd kick on rudder to yaw the aircraft away, and save a hosepipe job when they got
down. It only happened to me once, it was my own fault, I'd been stuffing myself with my favourite confectionery "Peter Paul's Mounds" (which we know today as "Bounty" bars) before we went up. We had very little trouble with air-sickness, and that only in the first two or three days. Oddly enough, I never heard of anyone making himself airsick, it only seems to happen when someone else is flying you.


When flying dual, you had to keep an eye on the country below, and remember where the wind was, all the time. For at some point in your lesson, the throttle snapped shut. "Forced Landing", your instructor called. You went into a glide and picked a field you thought would do. Now the wind was important, for you must land into it. He'd leave you with your guesses of speed, height, distance, wind and obstacles until the very last moment before opening up and climbing away. He didn't need to tell you how well (or how badly) you'd done. It would be painfully obvious what would have happened if it had been "for real".


It was a useful exercise and might come in handy one day. Engine failures were rare even then, but aviation had developed fast over the previous two decades, and the era of "barnstorming" with rickety ex-service planes from WW1 was still fresh in memory. The motors of these old warhorses were guaranteed to break down regularly, and their pilots (often US mail carriers) accepted unscheduled arrivals in some farmer's field as all part of the day's work. Nowadays, I don't suppose the chances are even considered. But old habits die hard, and for a long time, travelling by road or rail into strange territory, we'd make a mental note: "Good (or bad) forced landing country!"


One afternoon, a vision of our future flew in, in the shape of a North American AT-6A . This we know as the "Harvard", on which most of the Empire's pilots were trained in WW2. We crowded round respectfully, and in turn climbed carefully up to have a look at the cockpits. We jumped down aghast. How could mere mortal men cope with a machine of such fiendish complexity? It was clearly impossible, and there was no hope for us. All in good time!

They didn't teach us any instrument flying at Primary School, so our Stearman cockpits had a bare minimum of "clocks". As skies were clear and blue every day, we didn't need them. We flew about in blissful ignorance. If there was more than a cloud or two in the sky, solo flying was cancelled.

One morning they got caught out. A dozen solos were wandering about above the Everglades, intent on their various exercises, when a raft of small cumulus rolled in from the Gulf at 2,000 ft. Most of the students were above this. Suppose the clouds gathered into a solid sheet? There was no radio in the Stearman. What might happen? Some of them would have the sense to get down under it before the gaps closed, but you couldn't rely on them all. Others might come to grief trying to get through the cloud, or get lost looking for a break in it and run out of fuel. You could end up with Stearmans strewn all over the State.

At home, RAF EFTSs were prepared for this. A "mortar" fired an enormous firework up to 2,000 ft, exploding with a mighty bang into a brilliant red ball visible for miles. This was the recall for all Tiger Moths. We had nothing like that. Every spare instructor grabbed an aircraft, and shot off into the sky to hunt down lost sheep. Finding one, he'd haul alongside and signal him to follow. All were safely gathered in.

Our flying at Carlstrom was very safe. Whether on account of the excellent instruction, or the perfect weather, or the strength of the Stearman, or just luck, I cannot recall any serious accidents while I was there. Two months passed, and it was time to move on. I was genuinely sorry to say "goodbye" to Bob Greer. He was the best flying instructor I ever had, and the only civilian.

Enough for the time being.

Goodnight, all.

Danny42C




Entitled ? - You're only entitled to eighteen inches of space in the ranks, lad, and six feet of earth to bury you in!

fredjhh
26th Feb 2012, 17:31
""As skies were clear and blue every day, we didn't need them. We flew about in blissful ignorance. If there was more than a cloud or two in the sky, solo flying was cancelled."

Had this been the case in flying training in the UK our 6 week EFTS course in 1941 would have lasted 6 months.
The first flight each morning was flown by an instructor as a Weather Check and, if we could see him from the ground, it was declared fit for flying Most of our flying was over broken cloud, and it was a great delight to chase other pupils through the valleys between the cumulous. The Balloon Barrage at Brooklands was pointed out as a good reference point and we learned the bearing and distance from it to Fairoaks. In the second week of flying we were caught in a sudden summer storm. We were soaked to the skin and landed like a Flying Boat. The worst consequence was that my instructor caught pneumonia, which upset my training programme.
The Signal Rockets and the Signal Mortar were demonstrated from the signals square, but I only ever saw then fired “in anger” when I was caught in a violent storm at night, a year later. We had been unable to land and had lost wireless contact. After calling “Darky” I got a very indistinct answer, so I asked for Rockets, then Mortar signals which the airfield had already been firing, When we saw a Mortar shell burst, we lost height until we could see the Airfields Drem system and could land.
Fredjhh.
Danny. We must have been at Babbacombe at about the same time. What made the powers that be decide who went to USA, or who stayed at home?
When The Arnold Scheme was outlined to us, we were told the married men would train at home and the single men would go abroad. The married men were moved first and we followed a day later, -to Fairoaks. A married friend wrote from Marshalls' Field at Cambridge before posting to Canada.
Fred

Danny42C
26th Feb 2012, 18:51
Fred (#2351) Greetings,

Your question: "What made the authorities decide who went to the States, and who didn't?" Absolutely no idea! We had both married and single people with us out there. I think they spun a coin.

Only once, in nearly thirty years, did the RAF ask me what I'd like by way of posting. It was in 62, I was coming home from Germany. An air trafficer then, I'd done my stint in the Flying Training saltmines. "Anywhere you like", I said, "Any Command" - but please not that again! Guess what? (I don't have to tell you, do I?) Linton-on-Ouse!

Mercifully, I only had to do eighteen months before they put me out to grass as an Instructor at Shawbury.

Cheers!,

Danny

kookabat
27th Feb 2012, 12:30
Ahh Danny, I really enjoyed your thoughts on open cockpit flying - and you write so eloquently too.
I only have a dozen or so hours in a Tiger Moth and they remain the highlight of my (very much recreational) flying to date - it did feel very much like learning to fly all over again though!

Fantastic stuff, keep it coming!

Adam

Danny42C
27th Feb 2012, 16:08
To Adam, Chugalug, Cliff, Fred and all the others who have welcomed me so warmly and been so complimentary with my efforts so far,

Don't imagine that my calls for "back up" are simply fishing for plaudits for myself -. although I'm naturally only too pleased to get them - but the danger to this thread is that the contributors, who by definition must all be 90 or very near it, will drop off their perches before much longer. It is for this reason that I beg all my contemporaries (who are reading this. and shyly waiting on the sidelines, as I did for six months) to come aboard before it's too late, and so keep the show on the road.

I am very taken with the suggestion, made by Cliff a few Posts ago (and remember all this is his doing, for he started the whole Thread off years ago) that the Moderators might be asked to broaden the scope of this thread to include our wartime service, our postwar service (for those who managed to stay, or wangle their way back in) and perhaps even the odd bit of civil life if relevant or amusing. I have noticed that they (the Moderators) cut us no end of slack in this respect already: (think what a loss it would have been if (the sorely missed) Reg's tale had been chopped off when he got his wings). What came after our training is usually more interesting than the training itself - this must necessarily be "variations on a theme") between individuals.

We could keep the title of the Thread, or pick a new one (how about "Great Grandad's Air Force"?) Here Cliff must have the last word - as indeed he must over the whole idea put forward - it's his baby, after all. I throw it open for discussion.

Danny42C

Danny42C
27th Feb 2012, 16:53
GUNTER FIELD, MONTGOMERY, ALABAMA.


"And stars fell in Ala-bama...that night" (popular song of the day)


Stars didn't fall in Alabama while we were there. Snow did, and it caused just as much of a shock. The white stuff hadn't been seen for a long time so far south. There wasn't enough of it to stop us flying, but it made a nice change after the heat of Florida. We'd come up here at the beginning of November for the second (Basic) stage of our flying training. Sixty hours on the Stearman at Primary School, seventy hours here on the Vultee BT-13 ("Valiant"), and a final seventy on the North American AT-6A ("Harvard") at Craig Field, Selma (also Alabama); that was our training with the US Army Air Corps in the States.


It totalled 200 hours in the air. At that time the RAF's curriculum (at all the Empire flying schools) was only 120 hours to Wings standard. (EDIT: This is questionable, we've had various opinions about this in recent Posts, shall we guess at an average of 150?) Which begs the question; what did the US get for the extra third of time and money it was putting in? The answer seems to be - not a lot.


We furnished ideal guines-pigs for a direct comparison. Starting with the same raw material, both syllabi finished with identical products, as far as anyone could see. It was never claimed that the USAAC-trained pilot was any better than his RAF-trained counterpart. Our Operational Training Units, which took our training on to its final stage, found no difference in the material with which they had to work. So where was the slack in the USAAC system? Here, at Basic School! The RAF (and later BFTS in the US) simply did without a "Basic" intermediate stage. They had an Elementary Flying Training School, which equated with the US "Primary", and a "Service Flying Training School" corresponding to their "Advanced", but no "Basic". At the time I wondered what point there was in Basic School at all, other than in finding a use for a training aircraft which was best forgotten (and largely has been). It might have been designed to show the student how cross-grained an aircraft can be, and yet fly.

It was a metal low-winged monoplane with fixed undercarriage and a Wasp Junior 450 hp engine driving a two-speed propeller. It had flaps, but these had to be wound down by hand. We had R/T and intercom. Instructor and student's cockpits, in tandem, had a "glasshouse" canopy to protect them from the elements. I'm sure that it was the same canopy that Vultee fitted on their "Vengeance" a year later. These two aircraft shared another family resemblance in the outline of the fin and rudder.


The BT-13 was very awkward in the air. You started a turn to the left with a bit of left stick and ease back. The thing skidded and you had to use rudder to bring the nose round. Then the nose would drop, and you had to take off bank to avoid losing height. It left you with crossed controls (left rudder and right stick), crabbing round uncomfortably. And in right turns, vice versa. This aircraft should never have gone into production. I have never flown anything with worse harmonised controls. It had a lot of dihedral and a big fin, so it was stable enough. Straight and level flight was fine. Turns were the problem.


In Florida, they'd never trusted us out of sight of the field, but here they started us on practical navigation, doing cross-country runs. Map-reading our there was easy. Weather was usually perfect, roads and railways were far apart, and you could always be sure that you had the right one in sight. Not like the UK, where you could fly over three railways in as many minutes, pick what you hoped was the right one to follow, then see it vanish into a tunnel!

From Gunter we were sent on triangular cross-countries, one of the turning points sticks in memory
- Chattanooga, Tennessee, of the "Choo-choo" song. On these trips, the long straight "legs" could be boring, and one of our chaps thought he would enliven a (solo) exercise. Following a long, straight country road, he dropped down onto it and roared along with his wheels on the tarmac. He could shoot off into the air if he saw anything coming, so it wasn't really dangerous. And he would have got away with it too, if there hadn't been a telephone linesman up a pole. He was justifiably shaken by the sight of this thing flying past beneath him, took its number and reported it. Our friend was on the next train back to Canada, sadder and wiser.


We started night flying, and night cross-countries. I've already mentioned the "Radio Ranges", which airliners (mostly DC-3s) used for navigation between towns (but we didn't have the radio frequencies to be able to use them). But the tracks of these "beams" were the forerunners of today's airways, and extra help was laid on at night. Every 15 miles along the track of the beam was a light beacon. On a clear night you could see 30 miles ahead from 5,000 ft, and have two of these beacons in sight all the time. You couldn't go wrong, it was just like driving down the High Street!

My final night flying session ended with the one (and only) false entry in my Log Book. I needed only another twenty minutes to complete the total night hours for the Gunter part of the Course. Taxying out for take-off, I reached the end of the runway, but the Tower told me to hold. It seemed that bad weather was moving in; there was discussion among the instructors as to whether night flying should continue. They cancelled. I taxied down the runway back to the flight line. "Hell", said my instructor, "Put in twenty minutes flight time!" So I did.

That raises a question, which has never officially been answered - as far as I know, up to the time I finished flying (1954). How should flying time be measured? The obvious answer is the time between take-off and landing, when you're actually in the air. That's the only time you're flying, isn't it? Wee-ell, yes, I suppose so. But what about the time spent taxying out and in? That can add up to quite a bit on a busy airfield when there's a lot of holding. Taxying often needs more care and skill from the pilot than flying straight and level. It's not like driving down a motorway. In some cases (eg Spitfire) a particular technique has to be learned. And spare a thought for the captain of your 747 Jumbo, rounding corners on a narrow taxyway, worrying what his sixteen main wheels (a long way behind him) are doing.

To my mind, there is a clincher - at least as far as the RAF was concerned. Have an accident when you're taxying, and you'll soon see whether you were flying or not! A taxying accident was treated just the same as a flying one, reported on the same form (F765C), investigated with the same rigour, and punished with the same severity. So most people logged their time "chock to chock", ie from the time they left the flight line until they parked again. It makes sense to book all the time that you're wholly responsible for an aircraft moving under its own power, and I always did so.


Goodnight, all.

Danny




Gravity never lets up.

Molemot
27th Feb 2012, 18:34
For all the others who, like me, are captivated by these anecdotes and tales of WW2 aviation; I've found this:

RAAF Museum: Air Crew Association's Donated Archive (http://www.airforce.gov.au/raafmuseum/aircrewaca/index.htm)

Which is a collection of similar tales from the RAAF...

I would also like to join with Danny42C in asking for everyone who was there, or knows anyone who was there, to add as much as possible to this peerless record of times past. Contributions from aircrew other than pilots would also expand the thread; there seems to be little available anywhere from Air Gunners, Wireless Operators, Navigators and Air Bombers...we have Cliff's accounts of Flight Engineer, with his contemporaneous training notes, which makes it all so real. I would be fascinated to read accounts of the training and operational experiences of those who risked everything in the other crew positions.

dogle
27th Feb 2012, 19:47
....... and it would be splendid to hear from former members of what was once British Airways Limited - the guys (and especially the girls!) of the Air Transport Auxiliary.

Danny42C
27th Feb 2012, 20:12
Sorry for the sudden rush of fine print - it'll teach me not to monkey about with things I don't really understand. Back to size 2 Verdana from now on!

Danny.

Chugalug2
27th Feb 2012, 20:35
Danny, your incisive take on what must have been a demanding and anxious time (because every extra hour that it took to gain your wings was another hour in which you could face the "chop") is very interesting. You present the differences between a country at war and one which isn't. One where everything had to be pared to the bone and another where there was an abundance of everything, including that most precious of all commodities, time. Did that not tend to irritate at the very least? Did you feel at the time that your training was unnecessarily drawn out, or was it only in retrospect that you came to that conclusion? Perhaps being young though you were more interested in soaking up all your new experiences; different countries, different customs, different climates, and left all the higher direction of affairs to those higher up the ladder?
The Valiant certainly doesn't sound much use for anything, let alone a possibly unnecessary course. Do you think that was the rationale that let it through? "The basic course isn't really crucial whereas the elementary and advanced ones are, so they won't do any harm". Some recommendation!
You are absolutely right in your Call to Arms to your other compatriots, be they of any aircrew discipline (and perhaps the groundcrew might be welcome also?). The massive challenge of recruiting and training up all these skills in such huge numbers is one of the uncelebrated keys to ultimate Victory. How on earth was it all managed? Was there a central registry where each individual's progress was monitored and future planned? Presumably you were ostensibly on the charge of RAF Training Command so one would suppose it to be there. Perhaps someone with knowledge of the then CoC would inform us.
Oh, far be it for me to speak for the Mods, but I think you will find that the fairly loose reins that they use on the Military Forum are very loose indeed in your case. This is your thread, ie WW2 RAF/FAA veterans. If you decide that the title needs changing then no doubt it can be (no idea how, but I'm sure that PPRuNe Pop will oblige), but personally I wouldn't worry. Let it be yet another British idiosyncrasy that a thread about pilot brevets includes all other ones as well, as well as none at all! Well why shouldn't it? :ok:

Danny42C
28th Feb 2012, 00:13
Chugalug,

Thank you for the last post. Your point about our leaving it all to the Powers that Were (in the trusting faith that they knew what they were doing) is spot-on. Much later on in my "Jottings" (from which my Posts are filleted), I put it like this: "We lived a carefree life, going where we were sent and flying whatever they gave us to fly when we got there, not worrying our heads about the aircraft's political background or production history". It is only now, looking back with seventy years' hindsight, that I can see that we perhaps should have asked a few more questions at the time. But you don't think of it when you're young, do you? As Kipling's old soldier, going home after a lifetimes' service said (in "For to Admire"):

"The things that was that I 'ave seen,
In barrick, camp an' action too,
I tells 'em over to meself,
And sometimes wonders if they're true.
For they was odd, most awful odd."

In the same way, the BT-13 and Basic School were there, and that was all there was to it. Ours not to reason why!

On reflection, you're quite right about my name-change idea. When it's not necessary to change, it's necessary not to change!

Danny

Danny42C
28th Feb 2012, 20:22
Danny is still at Gunter Field.

Montgomery was quite a pleasant little town, but I quickly found that the Civil War was far from over. "Goddam Yankee" was the most charitable description for anyone resident north of the Mason-Dixon line. The annual football match between the "Blue and the Grey" roused the supporters of both sides to a passion which made the Celtic/Rangers affair look like a vicarage tea-party. To whistle even a few bars of "Marching through Georgia" invited instant assault and battery.

I got a shock one night. Solo, on a cross- country, I was happily cruising down a light-line. I was near the end of the trip, not far from home and the navigation exercise was "in the bag". I couldn't get lost now if I tried, so I relaxed. I was running up to Birmingham; there was no blackout in the States, and I could see the city lights spread out in front of me.

What I didn't know was that this was a major steel town. As I was running up to it, they chose that moment to take the top off a blast furnace (probably to put in a fresh charge). A tremendous blaze lit up the clouds and the sky, blinding me and knocking out my night vision. I jumped out of my skin, certain my last hour was come. Luckily this was in the pre-atomic era, otherwise I would have thought "Armageddon". But before I could decide whether to bale out or start praying (or both), they slipped the lid back on the furnace, and all was dark once more. My heart thudded back into place, I started to see the instruments again, and was breathing almost normally by the time I landed.

Half way through our time there came the 8th December 41 - "a day that will live in infamy" (Roosevelt) - and all changed with Pearl Harbor. The effect on the American public was as dramatic as the open blast furnace had been on me. They were shocked out of their wits. Their only consolation was that they now had us as their Gallant Ally (for what that was worth). And they only had that because Hitler took the decision out of their hands and declared war on them. We became Flavour of the Month overnight. The southern belles suddenly found our English accents attractive (Ah jest lurve to hear yo' voice talk!")

Our instructors caught War fever, and decided they had to do something. They suspended training and organised patrol flights, day and night, over Alabama and Georgia. What they thought they were looking for, and what they might do (unarmed) about it if they found it, nobody seemed to know. Eventually they came to realise that their nearest enemy was thousands of miles away and quite unable to do them any harm.

"The wisest thing, we suppose
That a man can do for his land
Is the work that lies under his nose
With the tools that lie under his hand"
(Kipling)

The best thing to do was to get on with what they were already doing, and our pilot training resumed as normal. Allies now, I suppose we could have worn RAF uniform if we wanted, although my recollection is that we carried on as before, wearing overalls all the time. No RAF officers or NCOs appeared, and our aviation cadet status continued for want of a better idea. Gunter Field was an Army post, and our instructors were all USAAC 1st or 2nd Lieutenants. A joke of the time was that there was nothing in the US Army Air Corps except Lieutenants and Generals!

While on the subject, it's worth mentioning a curious anomaly in US officers' rank badges. It sometimes crops up in a pub quiz, or in "Casual Pursuit" - type questions: "Where is silver worth more than gold?". It's here, a US 2nd Lieut. wears a single gold bar on collar, shoulder or tin hat, a 1st Lieut. a silver one. There is a gold oak leaf for a Major, but only a silver one for a Lieutenant Colonel. Why - Lord only knows!

There must have been a full Colonel (a silver eagle - a "Boid Coinel") somewhere around at Gunter, but I don't recall seeing him. Above full Colonel, you're in "Star" territory. These insignia are common across all four Services: a Navy Captain in shirt-sleeve order on his bridge wears the same silver eagles on his shirt collar as an Army or Marine Colonel would do.

(By the way, let me point out that the USAAC (and USAF) has Bases, the RAF has Stations - a fact seemingly lost on today's Newsreaders and TV Documentary producers, although "returning to base" and the like - in a general sense - is all right).

While I'm at it, let's clear another thing up. Do you "bale out" or "bail out", when you have to "hit the silk"? The words seem to be treated as synomymous. But they're not. When you find your leaky dinghy half full of water, you use a "baler" to "bale" the water out over the side. The analogy with jumping out of your aircraft (baling yourself out) is obvious. On the contrary, to "bail" a person out is something quite different - to put up cash to secure his release from jail or otherwise get him out of trouble. "Bale" is clearly the better word, and I always use it. (No, I've never had to "bale" out myself - the flames would have to be licking my toes before I'd leave a perfectly good aeroplane - I don't like heights!)

I think I've tried Mr Moderator's patience enough tonight.

Goodnight, all.

Danny42C



It's just the way the mop flops.

Danny42C
29th Feb 2012, 19:43
I like to think of being on this thread this way: I'm in my early twenties once again; we're in the Squadron crew room in an old Laing or Nissen hut; I'm in a tatty old armchair, one of two or three chucked out of a Mess. The place stinks of cigarette smoke (but then, so did everywhere else those days and we didn't even notice it, it was so normal). A battered old table is covered with the last month or two's "Flight", "Aeroplane" and "Autocar". Always "Tee Emm" and a copy or two of "Pilot's Notes". Odd bits of flying kit hang on hooks or are draped over empty chairs. Among the full ashtrays and over the floor would be the "Daily Mirror" (always open at the "Jane" page, or the "Two Types"). Question, did Captain Reilly-Ffoull - clearly a member of the Blackadder clan - come out during the War?

There would be a tea bar in the corner, with "honesty" jam jar and half full milk bottle - I don't think powder coffee had come in then, but we had "Camp" (bottled concentrated coffee). I'm pretty sure we had primitive electric kettles; the hut wiring might be overloaded, but hey, we can get at the fusebox and find a six-inch nail, can't we? Would there be bar stools? (a 500 lb bomb fin container was the perfect size, did we have them in the UK or was it just in India?) The walls would be festooned with Aircraft Recognition Silhouettes and the latest veiled threats from Group. (Outside, usual filthy UK weather - get the cards out, chaps! - poke the stove!)

I'm nattering to the other blokes (but is it just a dream?) I'll be lucky to get this past the Moderator!



Danny

Fareastdriver
29th Feb 2012, 20:48
Danny42C. American ranks are graded from the centre of the earth to the stars.
Gold is found deeper then silver so you start with gold.
Leaves are on the trees.
Eagles are in the air.
Stars are above the Earth

Danny42C
29th Feb 2012, 22:46
Fareastdriver, thanks a lot - that's really clever! I've never heard that explanation of their insignia before. With all the time I spent with them in training, seeing a lot of them in India, and meeting quite a few after the War, that one's completely new on me! Just shows, you're never too old to learn!

Cheers,

Danny

kookabat
1st Mar 2012, 00:41
I'll be lucky to get this past the Moderator!
Not at all Danny. This is exactly the sort of stuff I'm particularly interested in. You've just made a very evocative description of one of the bits of 'daily life' that you don't generally get from the 'official' sources. But it's as much a part of the story as any of the rest of it.

Adam

TommyOv
1st Mar 2012, 11:56
Danny,

I don't think you need worry about any moderation of this thread; I wouldn't be surprised if the Mods are simply taking a back seat and enjoying the ride along with the rest of us!

Also delighted to read of your care with words ("bail", vs. "bale")! As a proud pedant (one of many on this forum, it seems) it's a pleasure to see a story written so well. Your description of a crew room is wonderfully evocative, and I suspect that you'd find many similarities between the crew rooms of your era and those of today (except the smokers - we make them go outside now!).

All the best,

Tom

Danny42C
1st Mar 2012, 13:27
TommyOv,

Tom, thanks for the last Post. I've put a bit more detail into the old crewroom. It would be typical of those times, Players and Gold Flake ruled, there might be the odd aesthete with "Balkan Sobranie": he would be looked at askance!

Danny

Danny42C
1st Mar 2012, 15:04
Our instructors were not happy bunnies. All creamed off from last year's graduation classes, they would have much preferred assignments to a "Pursuit" or "Bombardment" Group. Their classmates from Flight School would soon be going overseas into action, winning glory and promotion (and dying like flies in the 8th Air Force first B-17 mass daylight raids into Germany).

It was said that they didn't need to navigate on the way back - just follow the smoke trail from burning aircraft on the ground. The casualty rate was appalling. I remember a good book on the subject: "A Fall of Fortresses" by one of their navigators (can't recall author or publisher). But all this was well in the future, meanwhile our people were stuck in the back of their BT-13s, chanting the patter all day, and it might be finished before they got there. It was like the "It'll be all over by Christmas" cry in 1914. In the end of course, there would be plenty of War for everyone, and a bit too much for some.

The consequence was that our officers didn't have the professional attitude of the civilian instructors we had had at Primary School. So we got, I don't say rougher, but certainly less patient treatment. Not only that, but you chopped and changed instructors, and that never makes for smooth learning. Nevertheless, we all got through, except for one or two like the road runner, who'd really asked for trouble and pushed their luck too far.

The BT-13 had a full set of blind flying instruments, and we sweated away in cloud, or "under the hood" , in the front cockpit. "Never mind the goddam ship - fly that goddam panel!", Lieutenant Akin hammered into me. And on "power let-downs", "Your stick controls your goddam airspeed - your throttle controls your goddam rate of descent!" (counter-intuitive, but true). And always the mantra "needle-ball-airspeed". Put in practice, this is much like herding cats (not that I've ever had to do that), inasmuch as: as fast as you corralled one, the other two had got away from you.

And we started formation flying, too, but I can't remember much about any other exercises. The only other thing I can recall about the BT-13 is the one helpful trick it could play for its pilot. Landings were always off a glide approach, and you could trim the thing to glide "hands-off" very nicely at 70 mph. On final approach (from a square circuit), you started high, looking over the nose well into the field, and then slowly hand-cranked the flaps down. As you did so, your glide grew steeper, but the 70 mph stayed rock-steady on the clock. You cranked away until the fence (or runway threshold) came into view just over the nose. Stop cranking, and "every time a winner". Touch-down would always be in exactly the right spot.

We witnessed an interesting (on the ground, of course) experiment one day. Two of our instructors decided to see whether it was feasible, wearing parachutes, to abandon the aircraft via the front and back knock-out side panels in the canopy. Perhaps a five-dollar bill was riding on the outcome. They were not the mountainous Americans you see today, but wiry young men. One got hopelessly jammed half way, like Pooh Bear, and it took a lot of manhandling to push him back into the cockpit. The other got out, but it took over five minutes. The moral was clear - get the hood open, or jettison it, for you'll never get through it! As i've mentioned, I came across the same canopy on a "Vengeance" a year later, so it was very useful experience for me.

I can't remember any Christmas festivities, bu I suppose there must have been some. Our hosts were still in a state of shock from being pitchforked into war a fortnight before, and were in no mood for jollification. For that matter, my twentieth birthday had gone unnoticed (except by Mother) the month before.

It was at Gunter that I first met that magnificent American military facility, the Post Exchange ("PX"). In our service stations overseas, the "NAAFI Shop" is the equivalent, but a very poor one. The Americans start with this principle: that their Armed Forces should have the best that money can buy (I'm afraid we tend to take the opposite view). So, if you're going to run a Camp Shop for your troops and their families, it has to be a first-class one. The goods on sale were always of high quality, and usually far cheaper than in the town shops. I bought quite a good wrist watch at Gunter for five dollars. It flew with me on all my "ops" in Burma, and I relied on it for all my hit-and-miss navigation out there until 44, when I stupidly took my eye off it, and it was stolen from a train compartment.

For the same money, I bought my first pair of "Ray-Bans", then the standard aviator's sunglasses, which were necessary in the blinding sunshine of the southern States, and in India/Burma. Now that I had left the open cockpit and flying helmet of the Stearman, we flew (in the States) just with forage cap and headset, so you could wear sunglasses quite comfortably.

Years later in 61, I spent a short time in Berlin, where there was a magnificent PX for American forces and their dependents. It was really a huge department store, where "white goods" and every conceivable electrical item of household equipment was on sale at half the price in Britain. They were quite happy to sell us this stuff, but we couldn't take advantage of the opportunity - it was no use to us, as it all worked on 115v. Berlin (and the rest of West Germany) was on 240v (like the UK), but the Americans had organised a special 115v mains electricity supply just for themselves from the Berlin municipality. Truly: "to the victor, the spoils".

All in all, my two months in Gunter were largely forgettable. At the end, I happily put the name "Vultee" out of mind, not knowing that it would come back to me (literally) "with a Vengeance", on the far side of the world the following year. Next stop would be quite close by - Craig Field, Selma (still in Alabama).

More soon,


Danny.



Pass right down the car, please!

Fareastdriver
1st Mar 2012, 17:21
"A Fall of Fortresses"

It was by Elmer Bendiner. My brother-in-law brought me a copy from the States about twenty years ago. Brilliant narrative on what really happened in the Mighty Eighth.

Chugalug2
1st Mar 2012, 21:21
I can but join in the accolades so deservedly being heaped upon you Danny, for your elegant and evocative style. I must say though that I am surprised. I offer you the most prestigious of the PRuNe Towers Ante Rooms and you spurn it in favour of a litter strewn corrugated dispersal hut. So be it, we must be at war! Steward, draw the blackout and get me another G&T please!
Wikki is still keeping track of you but I fear that eventually you will fall off its radar:-
Gunter Annex - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gunter_Field)
How ironic that your instructors knew less about war than their pupils. How soon they would discover that the reality is always worse than the rose tinted view of it seen through their Ray-Bans!
Your mention of the PX's (BX's I believe for the USAF as Army Posts became Air Force Bases) strikes a chord. My favourite was the one at Lajes Field in the Azores. An Aladdins Cave of domestic bliss! We still have some of the Corning dish-ware that I bought there shortly after marrying, and the Samsonite "Gents 2 Suiter" Suitcase that I bought in the Hickam BX out flew my RAF career and half way into my civilian one. Bargains all!
Sobranie ciggies? I recall them, black with a gold filter, sold in white tins. As you say, very effete and somewhat suspect. Keep an eye on him, if you get my drift, old chap!
You bring a far off world, of which we know little, to life. Thank you Danny!
Well! Thank God at least for these few armchairs, now that we've had to quit our Pied-a-Terre for this "quaint" abode. Thanks for the coffee by the way, it tastes surprisingly good. Camp? Rings a bell somehow. Ah yes, an Indian Servant in attendance in a tented bivouac. That would never do these days though. Dear me, no!

Danny42C
2nd Mar 2012, 18:56
Fareastdriver, Adam, Tom and Chugalug, thank you all for your kind words of encouragement. But I have an uneasy suspicion that this Thread is turning into something into a monologue: I'm "hogging it", and that is neither necessary nor desirable. However, my faithful "Starwriter" will have to go into dock soon (printer u/s), this will cut off my story as it is all on Floppy Disc, and I have no confidence in my ability to remember all the details "off the cuff". So you're all due for a rest from me fairly soon. How long for? How long is a piece of string? Time for someone to take over!

*****************

In the early new year of 42, my time at Gunter had finished. I moved by road to Craig Field, Selma, for the last stage in my flying training - Advanced School on the AT-6A. Craig was another Army Corps field 40 miles from Gunter (but still in Alabama), near the small town of Selma (then unknown, but destined to become notorious round the world twenty years later for the Race Riots there).

At Craig they decided that. as allied combatants, we should now bear arms, and so we learned American arms drill. The US seemed to be better off than we were in the UK, and had a large stock of Springfield rifles kept in mothballs since 1918. So we did not have to use "pretend" wooden rifles, or pickhelves, as we (and the Home Guard) had to do in the early part of the War. It might have been better for us if we had, for these museum pieces had been inhibited against corrosion when they put them away in 1918. They'd been smothered in an evil Vaseline-like goo. It has a trade name, which I've forgotten. Twenty years of drying out had turned this into a coating which wouldn't shame a rhinoceros. We had to shift this stuff, and the only way was with steel wool, kerosene and elbow grease.

It's a wonder we had any prints left on our fingertips. To this day, I can't smell paraffin without recalling the hours spent on that miserable chore. Thankfully, we only had to clean them externally, so as to make them look nice. To clean out the bores would have been an awful job; even if it had been done. I wouldn't have cared to be the man who fired the first round through them. Looking back, I suppose the only reason we got them in the first place was that nobody in the US forces would touch them for love or money.

It would be nice to record that we took pride in our new playthings, and could perform like the Marching Bands you see on films and TV. But US arms drill is comical enough (in our eyes) even when it is done properly - I dare say they would say the same of ours. It is better to draw a veil over our efforts, which almost drove our Master Sergeant to apoplexy.

Then we met the "Harvard", in its original form as the North American AT- (Advanced Trainer) - 6A. While Harvards were built under licence in Canada and elsewhere, the AT-6A was peculiar to the States, and varied mainly in the fact that it was armed. (None of the Harvards I flew in the UK and India were). A single .300 Browning was mounted in the top right of the nose, firing through the prop. The cocking handle stuck out from the top corner of the front cockpit panel, so you could deal with a No.1 stoppage (common, as I suppose the ammo dated back to WW1, like the Springfields, and there would be a lot of duds in it). We used it only on ground practice targets, and that without much success; the cordite fumes came back into the cockpit and choked us. I think they had a different kind of heater, too, but I could not be sure about that.

We no longer wore our RAF flying helmets with the mask/mike, but only a pair of headphones over our RAF forage caps. There was a hand-mike to transmit, and a little hook to hang it on. This often came off when you were upside down, and could give you a nasty clout. The Harvard is well enough known to need no description here. Nearly all the Empire's pilots did the later part of their training on it, and after the War there was usually one on every flying station, doing odd jobs and giving ground-duties pilots a bit of flying practice.

Not only did Craig Field have plenty of AT6s for us, but over on the far side of the field sat a few lonely, sinister shapes under tarpaulins. These were AT-12s, long out of memory except for specialist historians. These put the fear of God into our instructors, for whose use they had been supplied (for Staff Continuation Training), for they had a grim history behind them.
(EDIT: I have Google/Wikied the thing; the official story says nothing about this; I can only tell you what our Instructors told us).

They were built by the Republic Aircraft Corporation, who for decades had supplied generations of good piston-engined aircraft for the US forces (ending with the fine P-47, the "Big Fighter", which we used as the "Thunderbolt"). This AT-12 was originally designed as a one-off single seat dive bomber for the Swedish Air Force, and looked very similar to the Republic "Lancer" of the same era.

Even with today's computers, aircraft design is still something of an art as well as a science; you can never really tell how an aircraft will turn out until you build and fly it. A murderous gremlin had crept into this one. Any wing will "flick" ("snap" in US) stall if you suddenly pull enough "G" at a low airspeed. But this one would do it at approach speed, wheels and flaps down, if more than the slightest back-pressure were applied when coming in over the fence. The effect was to roll you into the ground with no time to recover. I can only hazard a guess that a new, untried wing section had been decided on, and as Burt Rutan once memorably said of a similar case: "It was a real bad dude".

The Swedes sent over two of their test pilots to try out their intended purchase. It killed them both. The customer called off the deal (wouldn't you?), and Republic was left with a pre-production batch on its hands and no offers for them.

What to do? Sell it to your Air force as a trainer, of course! This always happens when an aircraft is no use for anything else, but too expensive to throw away. Why would an Air force buy these lemons? Because the maker is on the doorstep, crying "Save us, we perish!" It's all too true, the aircraft industry lives from hand to mouth on the edge of bankruptcy. The capital cost of scrapping a whole new design, its production line and the surplus unsaleable product, could tip it over. Why should that worry an Air force? Because if you don't keep some of his competitors alive, the last man standing has you over a barrel. (Come to think about it that's pretty well our situation in the UK today.)

Our instructors were required to put in two or three hours a month on these horrors. It was always a crowd-puller when one took off, and even more so when it came back to land (don't begrudge us our schadenfreude, we didn't
have much other fun). A speck on the horizon, exactly aligned with the runway, and scraping dead straight and level over the scrub, would gingerly lower its wheels onto the concrete (nobody dared to try to three-point). Excitement over for the day, back to the crewroom for coffee!

We were naturally interested in these machines; they held no terrors for us; we didn't have to fly the beastly things, and we went over to have a good look at them. All the instrumentation was metric, and all notices in Swedish, of course (it is surprising how many of these little metal plates they can find room for on an instrument panel). We noted with approval one nice little touch. There was a "rounds gone" counter (like the trip mileage recorder in your car) for each wing gun (I think they were .50 Brownings). This is so simple and so useful an idea that you would expect all fighter aircraft to have it. But the Spitfire and Hurricane certainly didn't. From memory, I think they put tracer in the last hundred rounds, so when it appeared you knew you had only a few seconds' firepower left. That was the idea, but my figure may be wrong.

It was at Craig that our first RAF officer appeared, in the form of a "creamed off" Pilot Officer Instructor. I don't know whether he was ex-Canada or ex-US trained, as he had nothing to do with us other than to instruct. All our other Instructors were "Lootenants", as at Gunter.

That'll do for tonight, chaps. Sleep well!

Danny42C



Don't you know there's a war on?

Chugalug2
3rd Mar 2012, 09:43
Danny, however you and your fellow WWII brevet gainers choose to tell your tales is of course entirely up to you, but speaking as a devoted recipient could I just say that the sequential format, ie one tale at a time, is much the easier to follow. Far from "hogging" the limelight, you are doing a great service in enhancing the understanding of later generations of aviators as to what was really involved in producing the vast skilled manpower to launch, for example, thousand bomber raids over and over, never mind the machinery itself. Your generation is famous for its taciturn reluctance to speak out for itself, but I can only beg you to do just that for the sake of posterity. Of course if technical problems have first to be overcome they must be addressed, but please do consider the use of the deferred defects sheets in your Starwriter's F700, if at all possible.
I can assure you that there are many many more who read and appreciate your words than the handful of us that post in response to them. None of us can do other than simply to thank you for your effort and literary style in posting them, and I most sincerely do.
Craig (recently deceased in your days there it would appear) Field for those following Danny's perambulations via Wikki:
Craig Air Force Base - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Craig_Air_Force_Base)

ricardian
3rd Mar 2012, 10:22
Marvellous stories, Danny. Keep them coming - please!

Danny42C
3rd Mar 2012, 19:27
Thank you, Chugalug and Ricardian. I'm a bit worried about Cliff. We haven't heard from him for some time, and at our age.......?

************

Either USAAC regulations were very loose, or they took a cavalier attitude to them. It was not unusual to have your instructor champing on a fat (lit) cigar in flight (his cockpit may even have had an ashtray, but I doubt it). On dual formation sessions, the No.2 instructor sometimes added spice to the proceedings by closing in tight on his leader, and gently tapping wingtips together. We loved it. (Don't try this at home!)

Our exercises were generally a continuation of those at Gunter, complicated by the fact that we had a retractable undercarriage and a constant-speed propeller to play with. Apart from that, the AT-6A was so superior to the BT-13 that it quite restored our shaken faith in aircraft designers. We did a lot of formation practice, and started to use oxygen for the first time.

Their masks varied from the RAF pattern, having an external rubber bag for re-breathing (much like the anaesthetic mask used by dentists in the old days). Wearing one of these, I managed to get an AT6 up to 21,000 ft, and can confirm that as the absolute ceiling of the type. It took me about half an hour, and I was just hanging on by my wingtips at 75 mph with the throttle wide open. and maximum revs. The thing was sitting up like a Praying Mantis. Any attempt to get any higher, and it fell fifty feet out of the sky. Try as I might, I couldn't get another foot out of it.

This was our first experience of retractable undercarriages, but the absent-minded "wheels-up" landing, popular in myth, never happened while I was there. Of course, we were in radio contact with the Tower all the time, and the AT-6 had a warning horn which sounded when you closed the throttle without your wheels being locked down. You'd need to be a dumb bunny indeed to get down without them, but an apocryphal tale told (throughout the RAF) of one who had managed it in a Harvard. Coming in, "wheels-up", the Controller had bawled at him (over the radio) to go round - to no avail, he slithered to an ignominious stop. Duly arraigned, he was asked why he hadn't obeyed. "I couldn't hear what you were saying, Sir," he said, "for the row this damn' horn thing was making!"

American Bases still rang to bugle calls ("Taps" is a lovely call, even more haunting than our "Last Post"). I don't know the derivation of the name, as I recall, it was their "Lights out" call, late in the evening. We expected to be awakened in the usual way, by "Reveille" over the Tannoy. But for the first few weeks, we were treated to the luxury of a full brass band. At 0600, in the cold and pitch dark, these unfortunates marched up and down between the barrack blocks, giving spirited renderings of "Washington Post", other Souza favourites and (inevitably): "You're in the Army Now". An unappreciative audience shivered under thin blankets (it was a very cold winter) and cursed them.

An amusing tale lay behind this. Some time late in the previous year, the Craig Field band had been engaged to play sweet airs at a State Governer's official function in Montgomery. This was a great piece of publicity for the Base (Selma was right out in the sticks), and the Colonel stood to get no little kudos for himself (not to mention a pair of invitations for him and his lady).

The Band arrived at the Governer's Mansion early on the appointed day, so as to have plenty of time to settle in place before kick-off. Their hosts, mindful of the duty of Southern hospitality, plied the bandsmen with the hard stuff ad lib. Give a donkey strawberries! You can imagine the scene when the performance began. It was hilarious for the guests, the talking point of Montgomery next day, and all over the State in a week.

The Governer was mortified, the Colonel furious. He put the whole band under arrest on their return to camp. Hauled before him, the miscreants
were awarded this novel form of collective "jankers" (an early form of "Community Service", perhaps?) It must have been for several months, for they were still at it when we got there. Nowadays it would be regarded as a Cruel or Unusual Punishment, but a US Colonel was (and is) a power in the land, and can do what he pleases "on his own patch".

During our time there, we spent two weeks detached for gunnery training to Eglin Field, Valpariso (on the coast of the Florida "Panhandle"). There we blazed away with our single gun at ground targets without much success. There was no air-to-air practice.

The single runway at Eglin had to serve for all purposes - parking, refuelling and take offs and landings. This meant having to land on a half-width runway, and a swing could be very expensive. They were really pushing their luck, but it held and there were no accidents while we were there.


That'll do for tonight, more later.


Danny42C




We don't get much money, but we do see life!

Brian Abraham
4th Mar 2012, 00:51
Two of our instructors decided to see whether it was feasible, wearing parachutes, to abandon the aircraft via the front and back knock-out side panels in the canopy. Perhaps a five-dollar bill was riding on the outcome. They were not the mountainous Americans you see today, but wiry young men. One got hopelessly jammed half way, like Pooh Bear, and it took a lot of manhandling to push him back into the cockpit. The other got out, but it took over five minutes.Just missing the necessary adrenaline Danny.

RAAF chap had a ditching from a height which precluded getting the canopy open in time. Exited through a knock out panel with chute, an exercise he was unable to repeat on dry land later.

Keep up the great yarns, think you missed a great vocation. Know much of the US country side you talk of, having trained out of Pensacola - brings back memories.

Danny42C
4th Mar 2012, 21:48
I am still worried about the extremely narrow base this wonderful Thread is resting on. As far as I can see, the present "core" of circa 90-year olds is only four strong: Cliff (who started it), Padhist, Fred and myself. There must be more of us out there somewhere.

Padhist has put his finger on it (#2221, P.112).

Quote:

"I am amazed how few of my old aircrew mates are on the web".

I can say "Amen" to that. You can't teach an old dog new tricks. I myself held out until last summer. How I found PPRuNe, I don't know. Even then I watched timidly on the sidelines until a month or so ago.

What's to be done about it? The only thing I can suggest is that our younger readers go to work on any old Great/Grandfathers* whom they know (or suspect) to have been in our happy band. Be ruthless - threaten to cut off their cocoa and hot-water bottles unless they "give". Dig out their old logbooks - they'll have them tucked away somewhere. You have all the skills to do the rest. The "hits" on this thread outnumber Posts 170/1. So there must be plenty of you about - it's your history you're letting slip through your fingers. Go to it!

* As it's RAF wings, I think we can safely exclude Grandmothers - yes, I was told there was one delivering Lancs in the ATA.

Any more ideas?

Danny.

TommyOv
4th Mar 2012, 22:39
Danny,

Chugalug hit the nail on the head when he said...

Your generation is famous for its taciturn reluctance to speak out for itself...please do not worry that you are hogging the thread; the impressive posts/views ratio you refer to is simply because of the sheer quality of the narrative. Please address your technical issues and continue!

You're absolutely right that we all need to encourage other contributors to share their experiences; however small they may consider them to be, it is all "meat on the bones" and a vital part of history that would otherwise be lost. Perhaps if you are members of Squadron Associations you could persuade your colleagues to register with PPRuNe?

Where are you Cliff?

phil9560
4th Mar 2012, 22:44
Agreed.Please keep these tales coming.They're priceless.

Danny42C
4th Mar 2012, 22:51
In hindsight, the pattern they used at Selma for local night flying raises the hairs on the back of my neck. Then, knowing no better, we accepted it without question. It really needs a diagram to explain it properly, but I can't do diagrams, so I'll have to do the best I can without one.

Imagine a huge 3-layer cake centred on the airfield. Slice it across in two along the line of the runway. Then slice again at right angles. Now you have four equal slices. Call them Zone 1, 2, 3, and 4. I think Zone 1 was 12 o'clock to 3 viewed from take-off. Zones stretch quite away out - can't remember exactly, but must have been at least two miles for safety.

First man off goes into Zone 1, climbs up to 2500 and orbits left inside the Zone. Second man follows into same Zone, orbits at 2000. Third man, same thing at 1500. Then same thing over again in Zones 2, 3, and 4 until all Zones full.

Then recovery starts. First man leaves his perch on order from Tower, clears well away down to 1000 outside the Zones, comes round on a very wide circuit, does a roller and climbs back to 2500 in his Zone, which should now be empty as the Tower has cleared Nos. 2 and 3 down on time delay after him. Now Zone 2 starts down after all three Zone 1s have rolled. And so on.

(No, I have not just dreamed all this up! - any ex-Selma type will confirm).

The whole thing was reminiscent of that music-hall turn, where plates are spinning on canes, and the juggler has to dash round furiously to keep them up. As a way to set up a mid-air collision, it could hardly have been bettered. We didn't have any fatal ones, but we did have the closest near-
miss imaginable.

One AT6 managed to cross over another diagonally so close that the prop of the upper aircraft cut slots in the canopy of the lower and twitched the headset off the pilot's head, but left him without a scratch! The radio mast of the lower aircraft was carried away, but no other damage was done to it. The other aircraft was unscathed (prop blades are harder than Perspex). Both got down safely, the occupants rather pale about the gills.

Nobody could believe it, or imagine how it could happen without a wing knocking off a rudder, or the props colliding. Many were the sketches on the backs of envelopes, or chalked on blackboards, and flat-hand demonstrations of the kind more commonly seen in "line-shooting".

At one point on the Course there was an epidemic of "ground-looping". The AT-6 is above-averagely susceptible to this at the hands of the ham-fisted (or I suppose I should say, the ham-footed) student. There were cases on night landing, and our instructors devised a special technique to deal with it.

You came in at 70 mph, flaps down, with enough power set to give a descent of 700 ft/min. Then you simply flew into the runway with no attempt to check or hold off. There was an almighty bang, you shoved the stick forward, the aircraft skipped once then thumped down, tail-up onto its wheels. You held it there until it had slowed down enough to let the tail down.

It was a "controlled crash". How the AT-6 stood up to this barbarous treatment, I'll never know. The undercarriage must have been massive. I suppose, as a training aircraft, it had to be. At least, none of ours broke.
(en passant, I've recently read that the German for a ground-loop is ringelpilz ("fairy ring"). Rather nice, I thought (is it true?)

My six months in the States came to an end, and my log book proudly attests that, on 6th March, 1942, I received my Wings and an Air Corps diploma from a Colonel Julius P. Haddon, who, I suppose, must have been the Base Commander. The Diploma has long since disappeared, but the Wings (which are not sewn on like ours, but in the form of a brooch in dollar-alloy silver) are somewhere around yet.

The brooch is quite a good idea, as it is easily moved from uniform to shirt or bush jacket - you could put it on your pyjamas if you wanted! But you are not allowed to wear it with RAF uniform, although foreign decorations can, with permission, be worn. This seems a bit illogical, but I suppose it's a question of where you could put them. Over the right breast pocket, I suppose.

Having successfully completed the Course for an Aviation Cadet in the United States Army Air Corps, it was rumoured that we would become (honorary) Second Lieutenants in that Service. It was a pleasing conceit; the RAF gave it no credence. But the rumour insisted that we were so recorded in the records of the USAAC in order to account for the Aviation Cadets who would otherwise (on paper) simply have disappeared. Why anyone would bother, I don't know, for Hitler couldn't very well complain now about our having been trained there! If the rumour be true, and normal rules of seniority apply, I must be at least an honorary Brigadier by now.

And so ended my six months in the States. It had been quite an experience. Now for Canada, our RAF wings, and then home to Britain for the final stage of our training - Operational Training Unit. Now we must learn to fly whatever weapon the RAF chose for each of us, and start to earn our keep on our first Squadrons.


Goodnight, all.

Danny.




Not to worry!

Chugalug2
5th Mar 2012, 08:13
The whole thing was reminiscent of that music-hall turn, where plates are spinning on canes, and the juggler has to dash round furiously to keep them up. As a way to set up a mid-air collision, it could hardly have been bettered. We didn't have any fatal ones, but we did have the closest near-miss imaginable.
It brings to mind the ingenuity of those auto-changer record players of the 60's. First record finishes, tone arm is run out towards the centre of the disc, lifts, retracts to the side, allowing the stack above to release the next one to fall onto the first, tone arm moves to above the start, lowers and commences to play. Nothing can possibly go wrong...go wrong...go wrong...Until the whole stack is released simultaneously to land with a crump on those below!
Also reminds me of "Exercise Tense Caper", the most aptly named ever! Having had a met briefing that lied like a cheap Changi watch, a stream of Hastings waited to launch on a dark and wet night. We were about number 8, and just as number 7 was about to roll ahead of us, the stream leader broadcast an abort. Those already airborne had carried out the "Scatter Plan", which to cut a long story short put each one on a diverging heading and height. They were then on their own and for the rest of the evening they arrived back, shut down, and converged on the bar. Many were the ingenious measures related to ensure that they could do just that, including filing airborne flight plans in order to join Controlled Airspace. Eventually the last one made it.
"What did you do?"
"We thought the best thing was to go where there was no-one else, so we held in Pxxx (a Prohibited Area near Bath)"
"Oh! So did we, what Altitude were you?"
"x,000 Feet"
"Oh! Which way round were you holding....?"
More please Danny.
Cliff, check in, please.

ancientaviator62
5th Mar 2012, 09:21
Chugalug2,
not to mention the Bevs and the Argosy's also doing their own thing at different speeds ! Danny your devoted following await the next instalment with eager anticipation.

millerscourt
5th Mar 2012, 12:46
re products of the Empire Training Scheme

Have just read Yellow Belly by John Newton Chance and The Devil Take the Hindmost by Denis Peto-Shepherd. Both were Flying Instructors on SFTS during WW11 and both said the following which clearly is a generalisation as follows.

In the autumn of 1941 the first fruits of the EFTS fell into our laps and they were rotten.

What had happened was that the SFTS's had been shipped out to Canada and the US for their flying training. They were then shipped back as Sergeants and Officers with their wings up. It was then arranged that we should become (Pilot) Advanced Flying Units with the object of just brushing up these pilot's flying before shipping them off to their Operational Units.

From this it would seem we Instructors would have a jammy time. Afterall we were not going to be given pupils but but fully trained pilots. This was the case with those from those trained in Australia, New Zealand and South Africa but these were few in numbers.

In the case of those from the US and Canada, they were so bad that the whole of the old SFTS course had to be reinstituted. It was just as if they had come straight from Elementary Training School, needing the full treatment.

The mind boggles at the cost of this. Their navigation was hopeless as they could follow a road or railway in conditions of startling vis and they had never flown in total blackout.

THe Air Ministry calmly ordered the old SFTS course back into effect so those Pilots were getting three whole courses of which the middle one was cancelled out by the third.

Our situation became Gilbertian as we found ourselves sitting beside men with more flying hours then ourselves and putting up pilots for rejection who had qualified elsewhere. They could not be bowler hatted and had to be found ground jobs elsewhere etc etc

Danny42C
5th Mar 2012, 21:51
Millerscourt,

This is a most surprising story. I have never heard of it (which of course is no evidence that it didn't happen).

Cliff (where are you?) can answer for the BFTS in the States. I can answer for the Arnold Scheme. Is there anyone out there who can answer for the SFTS in Canada?

First shot out of the locker: the two authors quoted speak of graduates coming back to the UK "from Autumn 1941". The first Arnold/BFTS people only started out there in July, 1941 and (to the best of my knowledge) did not finish until January, 1942. There would be a time lag before they appeared at AFU - see my experience below. On this basis, the only people they could be talking about must be from Canadian SFTS.


To illustrate the time frame I am talking about, I append my own dates:

"Wings" 6.3.42.

PRC Moncton 9.3.42. - 19.3.42.

(Transit to UK and (hopefully) some Disembarkation Leave).

3PRC Bournemouth 30.3.42. - 3.5.42.*

9PRC Harrogate 4.5.42. - 4.6.42.*

9 (P) AFU Hullavington 5.6.42. - 30.6.42.**

57 OTU Hawarden 1.7.42. - 21.9.42.

* Illustrates the extent to which we were "bug--red" about in those days.

** Perfectly normal AFU ("UK Familiarisation") There was never any mention of the existence of any "re-SFTS" Courses - and I must have been there right in the middle of any such Course going on. (Could nobody know about it?)


As to the gravamen of the charges:

a): We followed roads/railways under cloudless skies - "Guilty as Charged, m'Lud". - so did everbody else out there!

b): We couldn't fly in the blackout - there was no blackout! - did they have blackouts in Aus/NZ/S.Africa, then?

I would like to see "further and better particulars" of this - preferably from some official record.


Danny42C

kookabat
6th Mar 2012, 06:29
Danny,
I can't say anything definite, but I have this from a letter written home by an Australian pilot in the UK on 02NOV41. You already know about the English blackout conditions of course, the relevent bits are the first two sentences:

I was surprised to hear you complaining about the blackout practise. If they make a permanent thing of it you will find it a dreadful worry. In all English homes these days it's quite a ritual blacking out and it has to be done well because there are always snoopers about and they complain about the smallest cracks of light and can impose a fine if their complaints are not attended to after a couple of warnings.
A tremendous amount of work has been done making blackout fittings and all bathrooms passageways etc are fitted with very faint blue lights. "

The pilot's family lived in Sydney. I read it as there being no permanent blackout at that time, but preparations had been made to implement one if it became required. Bear in mind this was a month before Pearl Harbour - I don't know if anything changed once the Japanese had entered the war and appeared to be a direct threat to Australia.

Adam

Petet
6th Mar 2012, 20:56
I would love to be able to experience getting on board a Lancaster or Halifax in 1944 / 1945 and flying an operational sortie (and getting home safely of course).

I have had my briefing along with the rest of my crew and had my egg and bacon. It is dark and cold as we are on a night time raid ..... we are on the dispersal pad.

Do I need a torch or are there lights on in the aircraft?

What is that smell when I enter through the doorway?

Who's got my rations and the coffee flask?

I can only ask questions .... is anyone able to talk me through what I will experience until I get back on this pad in the small hours of tomorrow morning

Danny42C
6th Mar 2012, 21:10
My time in the States ended in March 1942, and I went back to Canada with my pair of USAAC silver wings. We bypassed Toronto, ending up in a transit camp (where else?) in Moncton, where we waited for a ship back to Britain. They issued us with our first pair of RAF wings - come to think of it, it was the only pair of issue wings I ever got, you had to buy your own after that, and at 5/6 a pair (say £11 in todays' money) it wasn't funny.

Needless to say, sewing them on (using your "hussif") was a first priority, and you did that yourself, too. We'd have sewn them on our pyjamas if we could! These wings may have been very old stock, differing from the later pattern: they were deeper and more arched. It would have been nice to report that I held on to this first pair through thick and thin, and in fact I managed to do so for quite a long time before they disappeared. Of course the USAAC wings could not be worn with RAF uniform, and were kept as mementos.

They also gave us a brand new pair of sergeants' stripes to sew on the creased and scruffy uniforms we got at Babbacombe when we first joined (and which had spent six months stuffed in a kitbag). They would need some pressing to make them half way presentable.

We'd risen a long way in the RAF hierarchy. We were remustered from Trade Group IV as Aircrafthand (General Duties) - the bottom rung on the airman's ladder - to Group I (Pilot), top of the tree, and promoted to Sergeant. The pay was 13/6 a day (£27 today, seven days a week and "all found"). We were better off by far than any newly commissioned Pilot Officer.

It was here that the selections for commissions were notified. I wasn't among them. I think that only a few were granted to our bunch of thirty-odd, and they went to the older (and hopefully more mature) men. There was a Selection Board, but I wasn't invited to attend. I suppose there was a thinning-out process before that, and most of us were thinned-out.

I remember hearing of one chap who did go before this Board. He was a pukka public-school type and was expected to be a "shoo-in". He was asked the inevitable question: "Why do you want a Commission?" (always followed up by: "Why do you think you should have a Commission?). But before he came to the second question, he dealt with the first. Instead of spouting the usual flannel about wishing to extend his capabilities in the service of his country, blah, blah, he replied insouciantly (and probably truthfully): "So as to get to wear a decently fitting pair of slacks, Sir". His candour did not impress the Board - they threw him out. The rest of us did not nurse any grievance, it was the luck of the draw, and if we were interested there'd always be another day.

A ship came in - I forget its name - and we were packed on board. No cabin for me this time, just a hammock on a mess deck. They're quite comfortable once you've worked out how to get into them. You must have a "spacer" - a strip of wood about 15 inches long to hold the top ropes apart where your pillow is going to go. As to getting in, my memory is that there was some form of handhold on the deckhead between the hammock hooks. You grabbed hold of this and hoisted yourself up into the fold of the hammock. An RN rating could give you a better description, but all I can say is that I did not fall out and slept like a log. The hammocks had to be taken down each morning ("lash up and stow"), and stowed against the ship's side, out of the way of the mess deck tables where you ate and spent most of your day. They'd also absorb the steel splinters which would be flying about if the ship were hit by gunfire.

We spent a week at sea, our convoy playing hide-and-seek with the U-boats, and docked on the Clyde. I think we got a fortnight's disembarkation leave. I have only the haziest recollection of that time, but a single incident stays bright in my memory.

At that stage of the War, the RAF enjoyed enormous prestige. Only eighteen months before, against all the odds, it had won the Battle of Britain and saved the country from invasion. "I do not say that the French cannot come", old Admiral St.Vincent had said a century and a half before, "I only say they cannot come by sea". To this we had added: "Or by air".

Moreover, we were the only Service fully on the offensive. Bomber Command was hitting back, night after night, far harder, but in exactly the same way, as the enemy had bombed (and were still bombing) us in the "Blitz". Nobody felt the slightest guilt about it at the time - that was a luxury we could allow ourselves post-war, long after the danger was past.

The other two Services simply could not compete in the glamour stakes. The Army had been routed and chased out of France at Dunkirk. There was a body of opinion that Hitler had deliberately let it escape, reasoning that Britain would soon sue for peace anyway, and meanwhile he couldn't be bothered having to feed and house 300,000 prisoners. If he had thought along those lines, he mightn't have been all that far wrong. The Chamberlain/Halifax government might well have run up the white flag. Luckily for Britain: "Came the Hour, Came the Man" - Winston Churchill !

Until 1944, the Home Army could do little but re-equip and train. The Desert Rats were keeping up the Nation's spirits, but North Africa was really only a sideshow. (I think the Germans had some half dozen divisions out there: they had 130 on the Russian Front). And in 1942, the less said about our military prowess in the Far East, the better.

The Navy had its back to the wall, keeping our sea lanes open, but theirs was essentially a defensive war against the U-boat, and we were far from winning it. (It is arguable that but for Ultra we would have lost it). It didn't make headlines. With hindsight, we should be thankful that Hitler hadn't learned the lesson of WW1, and didn't put far more resources into his U-boat campaign. It is clear from both wars that this was (and still is) the way in which this country can be brought to its knees. Kipling put it into verse a century ago:

The sweets that you suck and the joints that you carve
Are brought to you daily by all us big steamers,
And if anyone hinders our coming, you'll starve!

The Navy was engaged in a life-or-death struggle, but with them it was a case of: "No news is good news". Theirs was a mundane day-in day-out slog that didn't catch the public imagination in the same way as the more flamboyant deeds of the "Brylcreem Boys".

And we were the "blue-eyed boys". A little of it rubbed off on me one morning. I was trotting along in Liverpool with my new wings and sergeant's stripes. I can remember exactly where I was - by the side of Lewis's, opposite the Adelphi. A dear little old lady buttonholed me: "GOD BLESS YOU, MY BOY", she quavered (surprisingly loudly). Passers-by murmured approval. Liverpudlians wouldn't see all that many aircrew at that stage of the war, so I suppose I stuck out a bit. Naturally shy, I was dumb with embarrassment, but managed to stammer a few words of thanks. I hadn't even flown my first "op", but Liverpool had taken two year's battering from the Luftwaffe, so I suppose I looked like a possible St.George for their dragon. I'll never forget that day.

I was posted to Bournemouth, another Transit Camp, in a seaside hotel - had been a rather swish one, I think, but can't recall the name. Here the natives were well used to seeing aircrew and old ladies did not greet you with little glad cries - nor young ones either, come to that, (the Yanks were in town).


Got the bit between my teeth tonight, I'm afraid.


Danny 42C




Tallest on the left, shortest on the right.

fredjhh
7th Mar 2012, 16:43
My thanks to Cliff and all who wished me a Happy Birthday, yesterday. Does this mean I am "The Oldest Member" of this thread? Fredjhh
TO Petet 2385
Have you been aboard the re-built Halifax in the Yorkshire Air Museum at Elvington? I strongly recommend a booked visit to go on board. A guided tour of four will explain everything, and they even have the sound effects of take off, etc. I told the engineer in charge that the only thing missing was the smell, - a mixture of Elsan fluid, oils, cordite fumes and others difficult to name. He promised to work on that!
Tiny orange lights were in the Navigators, Bomb Aimers and Wireless
compartments, which could all be blacked out with curtains. Torches were not issued but I had a "Waterproof" torch which I acquired from Coastal Command in 1942. Pilot and F/E worked entirely by the luminous dials and by knowing exactly where each switch or knob was. Fifty-five years later the the Elvington engineer tested me blindfold, and the only mistake I made was on the position of the Landing Light switch. BUT the Elvington cockpit was for a Mk 111 and I only flew Mk 11. - the switch had been repositioned.
Flasks, night flying rations in steel boxes, pigeons, and navigation equipment were shared among the crew. The Wireless operator was responsible for collecting the pigeon. The Locker room was next to the Parachute Section and, when we collected parachutes, we could also plug in and test headphones, mikes and the oxygen flow before boarding the crew bus, which dropped us at dispersals.
We exchange greetings with "the owners," who let us fly their 'plane, and dumped parachutes, etc. inside the rear door.
The pilot and F/E walked round for the usual inspection, then went on board for the internal check, starting by removing the rudder locks. In the cock-pit the ground staff Sergeant, usually a Fitter 1, A & E, would have removed the control column lock when he did his earlier engine tests. The crew stowed 'chutes, checked in to the pilot to say all was well, then the pilot switched on oxygen to 10,000 feet and each crew point was checked - a little kicker on each flow meter showed oxygen was being delivered.
Then we started the engines, ran them up and checked mag drop, rotated the turrets and closed down. The Fitter would then hand the Form 700 to the pilot to sign in column 14 and so transfer the responsibility to the pilot. Then we all got out so the smokers could have a final cigarette, and others could relief themselves. There was an AM order prohibiting the practice of urinating on the port wheel (or the tail wheel) - it caused problems with the metal!
During this time the Wing Commander or the Night Flying Officer would drive by each aircraft to ask if all was well and wish good luck.
Shortly after that a Green Very Flare would be fired from the Watch Office and, within minutes, the airfield would erupt as engines were started up, then "Chocks away" and the slow crawl round the perimeter track to take off point.
There was usually a small group of well wishers standing by the caravan to wave us off.
We turned onto the runway in turn, the rear gunner called "No aircraft on the approach," the ACP flashed a Green Aldis and we were away.
There are dozens of books which describe operations far better than I could, but an Elvington on board tour will give you the best impression.
My flying ended in 1943, courtesy of an 88mm shell. 1944/45 brought more aircraft on target and lynchings by the Germans on aircrew who baled out. Fredjhh.

Danny42C
7th Mar 2012, 17:19
Fred - awfully sorry, didn't know, (Bad Officer!) Happy Birthday, anyway. Have put it in my diary for next year (we live in hope !)

Cheers,

Danny

Petet
7th Mar 2012, 18:46
Fred

Thank you so much for that insight .... trying to document the service life of someone that was KIA is difficult as you can't get a sense of the sights, sounds, smells and emotions ... that is why this thread is priceless ....

Once you were airborne .............. hope you get the hint.

Danny42C
7th Mar 2012, 22:04
Kookabat,

Thank you for your #2304. Yes, the blackout was all too real in wartime Britain. The Air-raid Warden's cry of "Put that light out!" rang round in every town and village in the land.

I cannot think that it ever came to be a fact in the Dominions, but I can quite see that it made sense to practice it. I would think that Sydney was a long way for the Japanese to attack by air - places like Darwin would be more likely.

There is a possibility. In the eastern coastal cities of the US, they had to institute a blackout because it was found that the U-boats were having a field day with coastal shipping, which was clearly silhouetted against the shore lights. Could a similar thing be a problem at Sydney? It's a long way for a U-boat, but I suppose they could lay on a refueller way out in the Southern Ocean.

All the best, Adam,

Danny.


*****************


Millercourt, Greetings!,

Following my Post #2383, and seeing that nobody else is leaping into the ring to defend the US/Canada trainees, I should like to expand on my remark about "more and better particulars".

The two authors say "In the autumn of 1941". These two gentlemen will have kept their logbooks, so exact dates, please, and the number(s) of the Unit(s) involved in this "re-train" exercise. Perhaps you could contact them through their Publishers and try to get this information for us?

These units will all have had to keep up their Operational Record Book (F540) and then render the pages monthly to Flying Training Command. Now these will be stashed away somewhere in the Air Historical Records Branch. Although I don't have the computer skills to dig about at that rarified level, I know from reading past Posts, that many of our PPRuNers have; it should not be hard to get at the "nitty-gritty" in them about this business. Then we can all read the whole sad story (which I cannot find in Google or Wikipedia - can anyone else?)

From the authors' remarks, there seems to be some misapprehension:

First: "The SFTS's had been shipped out to Canada and the US for their flying training". I don't quite understand. Do they mean that trainees did their EFTS in the UK, and then went over for their SFTS? As far as I know, all the people who went overseas for training went straight from ITW, did their EFTS and SFTS out there, and returned to the UK for AFU and OTU. In the Arnold Scheme, we did our whole training in the States, then came back at the same point.

AFU - "ay, there's the rub!" (what did "AFU" stand for?) Even at the time, nobody seemed to know - a stamp in my logbook reads: " No.9 Flying Training School, RAF Hullavington". Someone had crossed out "Flying Training School", and written "(P) AFU". Nowhere was it written out in full.

However, our authors seem to know: "It was arranged that we should become (Pilot) Advanced Flying Units with the object of just brushing up these pilots' flying before shipping them off to their operational units". (They went to OTUs in fact, but let that pass).

I spent 25 days at No.9 AFU, 20 hours on the Master by day and night, two and a half on the Hurricane by day. Hardly SFTS! It was explained to us that the purpose of the Course was to familiarise us with the different British weather, the blackout (yes), the more congested British countryside (yes), Instrument panel layout and wheel braking systems - all eminently reasonable. Nowhere was "brushing up our flying" mentioned - and nobody tried! (on my departure, the CI certified that I was an "average" pilot and a competent pilot/navigator).

"..........fully trained pilots. This was the case with those trained in Australia, New Zealand and South Africa" - (S.Rhodesia?) - "but these were few in numbers". So what was it that they had been doing which differed from the practice at the US/Canadian Schools? Did nobody ask, so that the problem could be sorted out - the War has still four years to run? I was told that the UK EFTS-SFTS curriculum was followed unchanged at all Empire Flying Training Schools, wherever they were - and it would have been stupid if it had not been so.

I've asked more than enough questions. Let's wait for some answers to turn up.

Danny42C

I'm getting a bit worried about Cliff. Does anybody know?

millerscourt
8th Mar 2012, 07:07
Danny42C

Those quotes were from John Newton Chance's book Yellow Belly but i remember Denis Peto Shepherd saying the same thing. I will look through his book and once I find what he said will copy the relevant bits.

Newton Chance was an Instructor until about 1944 when he was declared unfit medically and discharged. He died some years ago as did Denis Peto-Shepherd who around 1944 went onto bombers the Lancaster via Wellingtons and Stirlings and after the war was given a permanent commission reaching Wing Commander.

If you google his name you will see his logbooks and other stuff have been donated to some place.

Chugalug2
8th Mar 2012, 08:30
Hmm, as Danny was around at the time and was unaware of any of the sentiments expressed as told by Millerscourt, despite being one of the alleged "rotten fruits", I would suspect that this was more a case of an attitude towards America by Messrs J Newton Chance and D Peto-Shepherd. If it were otherwise then surely Danny and others would have been the first to know and in no uncertain terms?
There was then I suspect at the very least an irritation that the USA was once again to be a late comer to the party, that the British Commonwealth, and in particular the United Kingdom, had to carry on alone confronting Naziism, until Barbarossa and Pearl Harbour made allies for us of Russia and the USA. Could that be the explanation? These trainees had to be "harmonised" to European conditions at the AFU's anyway, so where better to hang one's prejudices than on them, depending whether they were Commonwealth or US products? I take the point that the Canadians were lumped in with the States as providers of overripe fruit, but perhaps it was their bad luck to be subject to "Location, location, location".

Fredjjh, a belated Happy Birthday to you. I see that Cliff beat us all to it. There has been some concern that we have not heard from him in a while. You obviously have. Good News!
Thanks for the minutiae of the pre-departure sequence. Perhaps the tradition included thereof, re the Port Main Wheel, might account for the much later failure of the Starboard one on my Hastings. It might have been once thus fitted to the Port Undercarriage of a Halifax!

glojo
8th Mar 2012, 10:28
Good Morning Danny,
Your wish is my command :)
No cabin for me this time, just a hammock on a mess deck. They're quite comfortable once you've worked out how to get into them. You must have a "spacer" - a strip of wood about 15 inches long to hold the top ropes apart where your pillow is going to go. As to getting in, my memory is that there was some form of handhold on the deckhead between the hammock hooks. You grabbed hold of this and hoisted yourself up into the fold of the hammock. An RN rating could give you a better description, but all I can say is that I did not fall out and slept like a log. The hammocks had to be taken down each morning ("lash up and stow"), and stowed against the ship's side, out of the way of the mess deck tables where you ate and spent most of your day. They'd also absorb the steel splinters which would be flying about if the ship were hit by gunfire.

http://i1258.photobucket.com/albums/ii527/glojoh/TheCrew-1a.jpg

Hopefully the red arrows mark out the spacer (stretcher) that you are describing which also does exactly what you are talking about.

The very tired looking sailors in this picture have fitted them in a different way to how we were taught, the strings (nettles) should go over the spacer (stretcher) this then helped keep the hammock from smothering you but looking at that picture the stretchers may have deliberately been fitted like they are to keep the occupants warm!!

They say a picture paints a thousand words and looking at that image I would guess this is a Second World War destroyer on active service during the war, probably deployed in either the North Atlantic or Artic convoy duties. The ship has just stood down from action stations and those off watch are attempting to grab a few minutes precious sleep. Wearing a cap on a messdeck is a very BIG no, no and I am guessing the guilty parties are far too exhausted to know what they are doing.

When the hammocks are stowed the messdeck looks similar to this...EXACT same class of ship but in peacetime and on Christmas Day, note the hammocks in their stowage area at the top right of the picture.

http://i1258.photobucket.com/albums/ii527/glojoh/brig33600.jpg

Danny, I trust you put in seven turns on your hammock when you stowed it and yes this is where the saying 'Lash up and stow' comes from.

The hammock would be used to 'bung up' any holes from incoming shells, shrapnel etc. plus if they are secured tight enough, it was alleged that they would float and could be used as a buoyancy aid but how they would escape from a sinking ship is beyond my imagination :)

I hope this picture has bought back some happy memories and I do have a copy without the red arrows :)

Incidentally, approximately TWENTY sailors would live in that messdeck, they lived, eat, slept and played in that confined area for weeks on end, sometimes not ever seeing the light of day until the ship arrived in harbour!

Back to your engrossing tales of yesteryear and I concur with the sentiments expressed by Chugalug.. The author of that book might well have a grudge or any of a dozen reasons for making such a silly and unsubstantiated claim. It would only need an instructor to have a pupil that might not reach the standards required and all of a sudden EVERY pilot trained at the same location as that poor student might get branded as being of the same poor standard?? YOU KNOW DIFFERENT :ok::ok: and more to ,the point the free citizens of Great Britain know different. We ALL owe your generation so much and I guess I get tetchy at those who dare to criticise those that were prepared to pay that ultimate price in defending our freedom.

kookabat
8th Mar 2012, 10:35
Could a similar thing be a problem at Sydney?
Indeed Danny, in May 1942 exactly that happened - see Australia Attacked - Sydney Harbour (http://www.ww2australia.gov.au/underattack/sydharbour.html) for a very quick overview.
Darwin was attacked by air a number of times - it was recently the 70th anniversary of the first raid (19th Feb 1942). I believe they were attacked something like 64 times all the way through to November 1943.

We're still no closer to having official confirmation that there was indeed a permanent blackout in Australia, but the evidence for that having happened is certainly stacking up! I'll ask a few people and report back.

And Fred - Happy Birthday, and all that - and thanks very much for that description of preparations for a raid. There are a few little gems in that - I particularly liked hearing about the Elvington engineer giving you a test!

Adam

millerscourt
8th Mar 2012, 11:05
Danny42C

I have now skimmed through Denis Peto-Shepherd'd book and his career was as follows

Nov 1940 No7 ITW Newquay

Feb 1941 No 9 EFTS No 33 course RAF Ansty Leics 56 hrs in 53 days

May 1942 No 6 SFTS Little Rissington 85 hrs and wings with total of 141 hrs

After 4 days leave though expecting to go to an OTU was instead posted to No 15A Flying Instructor's course at No 2 CFS RAF Cranwell

Oct 1941 one yaer after joining RAF posted to No 3 SFTS South Cerney as Flying Instructor Cat C ( probationery). Coinincidentally that is where J Newton Chance spent the whole of his FI career until 1944 when dischaged in rank of Flt Lt

Mid 1942 he was posted to No 2 CFS Montrose the same school he had trained at Cranwell as a FI which had been moved to Montrose and just after 8 months as a FI he was teaching pilots to be Flying Instructors.

In 1944 he went on to Lancasters after training on Wellington and Stirlings

Whilst at RAF South Cerney in No 3 SFTS he says in Feb 1942 and I quote as follows Page 183 of his book

Jan 1942 gave way to Feb and some of the first courses to arrive back from the US and Canada and were sent to an SFTS for refresher training. It was a shock to the staff and no doubt to the authorities to find that in the main the ability of these were so low that they would never have qualified in this country etc etcIt was quickly realised that the requirements were not a brief refresher course but a complete retraining in the entire SFTS course from start to finish. With the passing out of the Mid Feb 1942 course of the SFTS partially no doubt to mask the predicament that had arisen No 3 SFTS was renamed No 3 (P) A.F.U and we continued with the same syllabus as before.

In terms of wasted effort this was apallling but not our concern but must have been a painful delicate predicament for the authorities.

I find it hard to believe as Chugalug says it was a case of sour grapes but who knows. I am just stating what two FI said and why was the SFTS changed to a (P) AFU if that was not the case??


Clearly this low abilty did not apply to all and certainly not the late Regle or Danny or Cliff plus many others no doubt


PS Danny In answer to one of your questions Peto Shepherd says those who returned from the US and Canada were all shipped off overseaes after the ITW and did both EFTS and SFTS overseas and according to Newton Chance and Peto Shepherd they on arriving at SFTS Soutrh Cerney did in effect three courses. Perhaps Danny they weeded out the lower ability types and sent them to places like S Cerney and others like you who were rated better to a different place even though it was a (P) A F U as at South Cerney but with less hours required to reach the required standard??

Danny42C
9th Mar 2012, 00:40
I have so many people to thank that I'll have to lump you all together in one Post - so thanks, chaps!

Millercourt,

I must first thank you for providing the answer to a question which was bothering us a few Posts back: what is a ballpark figure for the total training hours up to Wings in the UK in the early part of the War? Now we've got it - 141.

As for the main business, it is probably going to be hard and non-productive to get to the bottom of it. The two sources are no longer with us, and de mortuis non nisi bonum applies. It is pointless to speculate over possible motives. I would think that this might be a case of arguing from the very particular to the general, and that the numbers involved were very small in relation to the totals returning. Indeed, if it were not so, the story would have been all round the Air force in no time, and I certainly never heard a whisper of it.

The institution of the (P) AFUs was a perfectly sensible step; all the newly trained pilots from the Empire Training Scheme were coming back to a world utterly unlike that in which they had been trained. It was clear that they would have to be "acclimatised" to wartime UK conditions. It is true that 9(P) AFU took over this task from the former SFTS at Hullavington (as the stamp in my logbook attests), but I would hazard a guess that the requirement for flying training had greatly lessened now that the Empire, BFTS and Arnold schemes had shouldered the load.

It is obvious that the former, now redundant SFTS instructors and aircraft would be ideal to take over this new task, and possible that they did not appreciate the precise nature of their changed roles. To quote: "....to mask the predicament which had arisen No.3 FTS was renamed No.3 (P) AFU and we continued with the same syllabus as before". The same syllabus ? 85 hours and about three months, while all our Course (at No.9 (P) AFU) were doing 30 hours in 25 days ? Or was it just possible that this one AFU was chosen for the putative dullards? Assuming that this was the case, it went on without anyone else knowing about it ?

Anyway, we've got a handle on the thing now. We know Jan-Feb 1942, and No. 3 SFTS becoming No.3 (P) AFU. That's plenty. Bring on our computer wizards - who can be the first to get the true story out of the Historical Branch?

As to the minor point about when the trainees went out - we're in agreement now - straight from ITW.

Cheers, Danny.


Chugalug,

As ever, a thoughtful analysis of this rather strange story. I do not think that there was very much resentment of the johnnies-come-lately in the early days, although later the well known gibe: "Overfed, overpaid, oversexed and over here" was, I regret to say, bandied about.

I think it might have been more a case of "making a mountain out of a molehill", or, as I have suggested to Millercourt, an imperfect understanding of the purpose of (P) AFUs. Anyway, we'll find out soon, I hope.

Danny.


glojo,

Marvellous pics, that's just how we were, living cheek-by-jowl! Thanks for the kind offer, but I'm just as happy with this one in my laptop.

Without detracting in the slightest from the incredible courage and endurance of Bomber Command, let's all spare a thought for the men of the Navy and Merchant Marine, who lived for weeks in miserable conditions with a constant "sword of Damocles", of a torpedo and sudden death, hanging over them.

Thanks, John,

Danny.


Kookabat,

I think we've got as near as we can to the Australian blackout story. As Darwin was being bombed, they'd almost certainly have had a full blackout. In the South, it would just be a few-mile wide coastal strip that would have to be blacked-out. Get hold of an old-timer, buy him a tinnie and ask!

Goodnight, Adam and all,

Danny.

fredjhh
9th Mar 2012, 19:06
One item of training in the UK which has not been mentioned is The Grading School. I first met some one who was at a grading school in late 1941, I think it was at Cliffe Pypard, and he explained to me that his course from ITW had been posted there to fly 12 hours in Tiger Moths. They were not expected to fly solo but their assessment determined if they would continue pilot training.
It was explained to them that it would save the expense of shipping them abroad, then finding they had no aptitude for flying.
My bomb aimer on a second crew at OTU had done 12 hours in Tiger Moths then told he would never become a pilot. He was offered the new post of Air Bomber and a commission if he accepted. In 1943 I met several B/As who had been "scrubbed" from Grading Schools. I don't know how long this continued but many Grading Schools later became AFUs. In addition to AFU(P) there AFU (N) for navigators. I never heard how Bomb Aimers were trained. The very first lot, former Wireless Operators, were trained by Pilots and Navigators at OTUs.
Fredjhh,

Danny42C
9th Mar 2012, 21:17
Fred,

Thanks for the Post. Yes, I had known about Grading Schools, but they must have come in after I went over to the States, so they didn't concern me. I am interested in what you tell me about their becoming (P) AFUs later, though - I thought that these had all been "remustered" from former SFTS, as mine (No. 9) had been.

As to bomb aimers, I believe it was the practice early on for the "Observer" (later Navigator) to find his way to the target. Having got there, he would be out of a job until they set off back. What better way to employ him than to stuff him down the nose with a bombsight? I'm not sure, but I think that that excellent war film "Target for Tonight" (the one in which S/Ldr Pickard and Wellington "F" for Freddie appeared) showed this taking place.

I find it hard to believe that rejects from these Grading Schools had to be "bribed", with offers of a Commission, to become Bomb Aimers. In the Air force I was in, you did what you were told and went where they sent you.
And I've often wondered what the Bomb Aimer did en route to and fro the target (I know they "doubled" as Gunners, but I should think that on a bombing run was when you needed all your gunners with eyes peeled!)

All the best, Fred - you probably are our Oldest Inhabitant and fully entitled to the best seat by the fire. I am as enthralled as any "sprog" by your highly detailed accounts, for my flying was a far simpler affair altogether.

Danny

fredjhh
9th Mar 2012, 22:20
You are right. Most AFUs were based on SFTS schools.
I don't think the early bomb-aimers were "bribed" with commissions, - the Bomb Aimer I mentioned was 33, wealthy, and had spent two years as an A/c2 Balloon Operator. His Balloon Site was quite close to a pub, so he spent more nights sleeping in the pub, and dining there, than under canvas. I don't know how he managed to get on a Pilot's course.
The Wireless/Operators ordered to re-muster to Bomb Aimer were all Sergeants.
Until the beginning of 1942 the Whitley and the Wellington had two pilots, a navigator, two wireless operators and a rear gunner.
(A second pilot could get in ten trips before promotion to Captain. Later you were lucky to get one trip.)
One W/Op manned the front turret, the second pilot acted as the bomb aimer and spent the rest of the time attempting to map read, - looking for the coast, rivers and lakes.
In March 1943 Bomber Command decided they could no longer lose two pilots from one plane, so the second pilot was taken off the crew list, and navigators dropped the bombs until the new B/As came into being.
The Bomb Aimer sat next to the pilot on take-off and landing, then went forward for his map reading duties. When Gee and other devices were introduced, the B/A was give a seat alongside the navigator and helped with these gadgets, so he could be quite busy. The Front gun (Vickers G.O.) in the Halifax was rarely used. Fredjhh

Danny42C
9th Mar 2012, 23:42
At Bournemouth, our little bunch of some thirty new NCO pilots had (in the nature of things) to be placed under the command of someone whom authority could hold to account for our misdeeds. The choice had fallen on a brand new Air Gunner Pilot Officer - of all things! We wouldn't have minded if he'd been a tour-ex NCO from bombers - we'd treat such a man with the utmost respect due to him. But this chap was just a "sprog" like ourselves. Everyone knew that you only needed a month's Course to qualify as a gunner, whereas we'd all had a year's hard graft in pilot training. It was a delicate situation, but this chap realised just how incongruous his position was, and treated us with "kid gloves". We rubbed along well enough.

At this point, I should explain that everyone in the training system would spend some time (often quite a lot of it) in Transit Camps, as the sequence of Schools had gaps between stages. All Transit camps are basically the same, nothing much happens apart from meals and the occasional inspection or roll-call, while you wait for your posting to arrive. In fact, it must be much like being a POW, except that you can escape! In the spring of 42, Bournemouth wasn't a bad place to kick your heels in, for a month. Then, for some unaccountable reason, they shipped us all up to Harrogate. Here we were billeted in the "Majestic" (is there anyone who didn't spend time there?) This was much less majestic than the name implies, after years of being knocked-about by generations of trainee aircrew. We did another month's "stir" there.

At last the RAF took notice of us. Our next move was to Hullavington (Wiltshire), a Flying School, to accustom us to map-reading in England, where the countryside was vastly different from the wide open spaces of the New World. Also new to us would be British weather, the Blackout, and RAF cockpits and wheel brake systems. Hullavington was an RAF "Expansion Station", built in the late thirties when the RAF was "expanded" to meet the threat of oncoming war. It was the last time the RAF ever had any money to spend on permanent buildings (as this only happens when the public and the politicians get really scared). These "Expansion Stations" are with us yet; the architect seems to have sketched only one set of designs for the individual components of a Station, then slightly adapted them and moved them around to suit each particular site (and the Treasury saved money).

The result (quite helpful) was that you could walk round any new Station and confidently say: That's the Armoury, that's the M.T. Section, that's the NAAFI, that's the Sergeant's Mess, that's the Stores, that's Station HQ,
and every time you'd be right - even though they'd all moved about from the layout on your old Station.

They had another enormous advantage - they were centrally heated! And they had proper paths and roads round them! They even had garages! Nobody who has not struggled with those dreadful little square coke stoves we had in our rooms in the Mess huts, can imagine how we seethed to see our transatlantic cousins ensconced in luxury, while our Squadrons were banished to the forests of Nissen huts in forlorn fields, ankle deep in mud.

But at Hullavington we were billeted in the peacetime airmen's Married Quarters. It must have been a brutal upheaval for the families living there at the outbreak of war, for they'd been turned out without ceremony, and left to fend for themselves to find somewhere else to live, so that the accommodation could be used for the wartime influx of single airmen. These stripped-out quarters were sad little places, and I imagine very cold in winter, but we were in early summer, and in any case all we did was to sleep in the places and sweep them out.

We flew from Castle Combe, a few miles away, and next time I'll tell you all about it.

Danny42C



It's being so cheerful 'as keeps us going.

ancientaviator62
10th Mar 2012, 08:21
In respect of the Bomb Aimer discussion I have a copy of the log book of a chap whose qualification reads Air Observer Armament. He qualified in June 1941 after dropping just 48 practice bombs and firing a few rounds. The navigation side of his training took a little longer but when he graduated he had a total of 165 hours before he joined his first (Whitley) squadron. Only 20 of these hours were at night ! He goes on ops as a Navigator until he becomes the CO of a squadron when he operates as an Air Bomber until the end of the European War.
I am sure there were others like him who could alternate between the roles as required.

fredjhh
10th Mar 2012, 10:55
Danny.
All Transit camps are basically the same, nothing much happens apart from meals and the occasional inspection or roll-call, while you wait for your posting to arrive. In fact, it must be much like being a POW, except that you can escape!
Tut! Tut!

POW Camps were not at all as you see them on TV, or a Harrogate Hotel!
I was stripped of my civilian suit (I had been on the run for some weeks) and given a Polish Cavalry Jacket and Breeches. The Jacket would not button across my chest, so I secured it with a piece of string. The breeches would not pull over my calves, so the German Sergeant cut them off to wear as shorts. A pair of ancient German army boots and a French army blanket, dated 1917, and almost transparent, was all I had until we were liberated in 1945. And the German winters went down to Minus 22 in unheated barrack rooms, with no glass in the windows. I never caught a cold!
Fredjhh.

Danny42C
10th Mar 2012, 17:52
Mea maxima culpa, Fred! I shouldn't have been facetious about a subject which was not at all funny - even though the wartime "Majestic" was no "Savoy", I can assure you!

I should think you couldn't catch a cold where you were - conditions must have killed off all the virus!

But, after the taster he's just given us, there must be a new Thread waiting to appear - let's call it "Fred in der Kafig" or something like that. For there has to be a book in Fred's experiences (my apologies if there's one already). Better still, will kind Mr Moderator let it in here, where it'll feel at home?

What do you say, chaps?

Danny.

Danny42C
10th Mar 2012, 18:32
That's what was said about the village of Castle Combe, and it may well have been true. Our interest was in the hilltop above, where a large field had been turned into a Relief Landing Ground for Hullavington, a few miles away.
(Today it serves as a motor racing circuit, but the runways there now had not been built in our time).

Here the Air force had planted the usual gaggle of Laing and Nissen huts, with a collection of Miles Master Mk Is and a few elderly Hurricanes, left over from the great days of 1940. The Master was a curious aircraft, the story I was told was this:

At the end of the biplane era, the RAF had in store large numbers of Rolls-Royce "Kestrel" engines, new and low-hours, taken from the scrapped Hawker biplanes used throughout the thirties. Miles was a small builder of wooden aircraft; they'd already sold a primary trainer, the "Magister" to the RAF, but I don't think it was much competition for the established De Havilland "Tiger Moth" (DH82). The Air Ministry then had the idea of building a wooden advanced trainer, to use up these "Kestrels". Miles got the contract.

With hindsight, we can see that they had simply re-invented the wheel. The definitive single-engined advanced trainer already existed: the North American AT-6A, which we know as the "Harvard". This was mass-produced in the States and Canada, and was available to us after "Lend-Lease" in 1941. Maybe the "Master" was ordered earlier, when we'd need scarce dollars for the Harvard, whereas Miles would be happy with sterling. And of course, we wouldn't have to buy any engines. Waste not, want not.

We didn't realise that the Harvard is one of those rare aircraft which simply couldn't be bettered for the work it had to do. The C47 "Dakota" was another, and in today's civil aviation I suppose the Boeing 737 fills the bill. In the end, almost all single-engine pilots trained in the Empire Air Training Scheme or in the USA flew the Harvard. The Australians converted some into single-seat fighters (the "Wirraway") in the desperate days after the fall of Singapore. They were a good deal better than nothing, and at least as good as the Brewster "Buffalo", which had been the main air support in Malaya.

Before leaving the story of the Master, there were two sequels. It's well said that the only thing we learn from history is that we learn nothing from history. A decade later, the same mistake was made again. Again the RAF had a batch of good engines on the shelf (Merlins), and aircraft builders looking for contracts.

This resulted in not one advanced trainer, but two. Avro produced the "Athena", and Boulton Paul the "Balliol" to the same specification. They were as alike as two peas, and the ostensible reason for their introduction was the new policy of side-by-side seating for student and instructor. I could never see the point in that idea, but the Air force was decided on it, and it led to the "Provost" family of piston and jet trainers. (I suppose it could make it possible for the instructor to thump his student - or vice versa. Our instructors' only recourse was to slam the stick violently from side to side to deliver a painful blow inside our knees).

But surely we didn't need all that many new pilots in our scaled down post-war RAF? There would be plenty of demobilised wartime pilots about, still in their mid-twenties, and only too keen to get back into the "band of brothers" of happy memory.

The Athena and Balliol soon faded from the post-war scene. I did a refresher course on the Balliol in 1953, and remember a real "old gentleman's aircraft", comfortable, easy to fly and no more than a bigger and more powerful copy of the Master.

The second sequel? Post-war, Miles diversified into making the very first ball-point pen in 1945. A few got out to India via welfare sources. I forget its trade name. (EDIT: It was the Miles Martin Pen). I bought one, it cost two guineas (say £50 today). The business end was much the same as now, but the ink was contained in a long, fine, copper capillary tube, folded several times. This made the barrel rather fat. No matter, we were used to fat fountain pens and marvelled at this new invention.

Back at Castle Combe, bussed out from Hullavington on our first morning, we had a good look at the Master. First impressions were favourable. It stood four-square on a wide undercarriage. Narrow meant trouble. A wide "track"
makes an aircraft much easier to handle on the ground and lessens the chance of a "ground loop". This shaming faux-pas happens to a pilot when a "swing" develops, usually on a cross-wind landing or on take-off when power has been fed in too quickly before reaching "steerage way" (don't throw the horse into the collar before the cart's moving). If you don't catch a swing at once, it may go out of control and you describe a graceful pirouette (usually in sight of a mocking audience), Damage is rare - unless you hit something or are swinging fast enough to put a wingtip in. In those days it happened to nearly everyone at one time or another. Now nosewheel undercarriages are almost universal, and they can't ground-loop. For this reason, many of today's pilots are wary of flying an old "tail-dragger".

Climbing in, we were introduced to the standard British cockpit and panel layouts we were going to fly with from now on. The Master was dual, we had the instructor in the back. His forward visibility was poor, and the designers had (unusually) taken pity on him. The roof of his "glasshouse" hinged up to form an extended windscreen, and his seat rose so that he could see over the cockpit in front. There must have been some way to extend or raise his stick (and rudder pedals), otherwise he would have a better view of coming disaster, but no way of doing anything about it. My recollection is that instructors didn't use this facility much.

That's about your lot for tonight, Goodnight all !

Danny




Gentlemen, today is the tenth - again!

rmventuri
11th Mar 2012, 00:46
Must admit I've been off the forum for a long while - glad to see it has regained steam and going strong again. Have much reading to catch up.

Danny42C - its a long shot but do you remember an RAF pilot by the name of Arthur (Jack) Salvage - he trained in the Arnold scheme (Albany) right around the same time you did - unfortunately I don't have the exact dates?

Cheers
Rodger

Danny42C
11th Mar 2012, 01:33
rmventuri #2405

Rodger, thanks for the kind words!

Sorry, can't help, I'm afraid. I trained in Carlstrom (Florida) , Gunter and Craig (Alabama). Your chap (Albany) would be in Georgia (I think). It's possible we travelled out and back from the UK together, (with hundreds of others) but - so long ago, and so many names!

Cheers,

Danny

rmventuri
11th Mar 2012, 17:37
"... so long ago, and so many names!"Thanks Danny - knew it was a long shot but you never know. Now I need to catch up on this great thread. Keep the stories coming!

rmventuri
11th Mar 2012, 18:30
Fredjhh,

I spoke to someone who is in contact with a handful of Hali Mk2 pilots (with the triangular fins). All the corkscrewing and other stress they put their aircraft through they never experienced the stall issue attributed to the fins. Suggesting it may not have been as big of a problem as originally thought and replacement with the square fins may have been an over reaction?? Did you ever experience any of the stability/stall issues attributed to the fins?

Cheers
Rodger

Danny42C
11th Mar 2012, 20:18
Fred,

Nosing about in the old Posts (as one does), I came across your #1500, and it made me "sit up"!

We were 15 more or less together, and we rarely had five bob in our pockets any time except (possibly) Christmas or birthdays. But you must have cashed in your piggybank and entrusted your life to G-AACB and M.Girou(x) ? I hope you enjoyed it - I think they squashed four into the tiny cabin? - and thought it money well spent.

I believe he was of Belgian descent, had flown in WW1, and often wore the old, long, black leather aviators' coat that he had used in those days. It was rumoured that he was as blind as a bat, but the old Moth was like the milkman's horse, and trundled round the circuit by itself by sheer force of habit, without much input from him.

Came the War, and I believe he went back into the RAF, though he would have been well past flying age then - probably a S.Ad.O., or something like that. The Fox Moth went into storage "for the duration" in a barn somewhere round Crossens or Tarleton. There it gathered dust and bird droppings, and a colony of rats gnawed through the wing fabric to establish a snug home therein.

Came the Peace; I came home from the wars to Southport. "Well", I thought, "that's one business whose time has passed. Nobody's going to pay five shillings for a quick turn round the Pleasure Beach any more" How wrong I was! They got out the Moth, dusted it off, evicted the rats, patched up and doped the fabric. Then it was business as usual.

Only difference was: he charged ten bob now! (which more or less was level with inflation). Still the queues built up at his little pay station on the sands. (I suppose the Corporation took a cut). In what we laughingly called the summer, I tried to keep up my Indian tan, stretched out in the Lido. I timed the Moth; it flew round every four minutes exactly, hour after hour. So he grossed £2 every four minutes! Not bad going in 1946.

How long did he keep going? I left in 1948, and he was still at it.

Happy days,

Cheers, Danny.

fredjhh
12th Mar 2012, 11:06
Rmventuri 2408
I never encountered difficult with the rudders until I was shot down.
The rudder trouble was a combination of the irregular airflow, as the Merlins were supposed to be set too low; and the poor surface areas of the fin and rudder. It was essential to raise the tail plane as high as possible on take off to get rudder control. In the air we were instructed in two engine flying but neverwith both port motors stopped. The handbook said, with both port motors stopped the strain on the pilot's right leg became rapidly intolerable. _ It did.
I saw a Halifax crash with all engines running, and doing nothing more than normal turns on the approach circuit, and this was attributed to rudder lock.

Danny42C 2409
Somewhere I have a Magazine with an article on our Fox Moth G-ACCB and its owner. I still have the Passenger Certificate No. 118057 they gave me. The Giro Aircraft Corporation survived many years after Giroup's death. If I can find the article I will send it you.
Fredjhh

Danny42C
12th Mar 2012, 22:11
My #2368 p119 is at fault.

I have said, referring to Gunter: "Nevertheless, we all got through, except for one or two like the road-runner, who'd really asked for trouble and pushed their luck too far".

Since writing that, I tried Googling: Class of 42C in the US Army Air Corps Arnold Scheme - and clicked on the first option: The Arnold Scheme, British pilots, the American South and the.......

This took me some tinkering to bring up, but it was worth the effort. It is a mine of information. There is a short comment on p524 on the necessity of introducing the AFUs, but it is relatively uncritical.

The real meat is in the tables of statistics at the end, from which I have extracted the bare figures for 42C:-

(Field: Intake/Scrubbed/Graduated/Killed).

(Primary) Carlstrom: 127/40/87/0

(Basic) Gunter: 205/19/186/0

(Advanced) Craig: 147/3/141/3

From this it appears that a) At least two lots of primary graduates must have fed into Gunter. b) The Gunter output must have been split into two or more Advanced Schools. c) except for one or two - there were 19! washouts at Gunter. d) three were killed at Craig in my time and I remember nothing about it! This is incredible. Could it be the way we rationalised all our losses - "hard luck, good chap, no use brooding on it, forget it, get on with the War?" Cliff, Padhist and Fred could give us their views on this. It sounds heartless, but perhaps it was the only way to remain sane.

As I've remarked before, memory is fallible (and maybe you forget things you want to forget).

Danny42C

Danny42C
13th Mar 2012, 23:22
We were only going to spend less than three weeks (7th to 26th June) flying here, so we got down to business at once. Two hours dual on the Master, and we were off. We were glad of the wide wheel track, for the field was anything but level - and rough. Most of our remaining time was taken up with dual and solo navigation exercises. Everyone had one trip to see the Old Man of Cerne Abbas - one of those white horse type figures cut out of the chalk by our ancestors. This one was renowned as a fertility symbol, and you could see why.

They picked a moonless night for night flying: two dual circuits and two solo. There were no luxuries like runway or taxiway lights, just a row of goosenecks (kerosene flares) laid out into wind in the middle of the field. From memory, I think there were at eight at hundred yard intervals, with a double flare at 300 yards to indicate the ideal touch-down point. You taxied down one side of this line, turned round the last flare onto the other side, took off and landed on it, and round again.

There was an approach aid in the form of an Angle of Approach Indicator. This primitive kit was positioned near the first flare, and set up so that it would show you a green pin-prick of light if you were more or less right on approach, amber if too high and red if too low. A car battery powered a car sidelamp bulb as the light source. The light was interrupted by a slowly turning fan, so that it blinked to avoid confusion with a flare. As the battery drove both the fan motor and lit the bulb, the result was "dim as as a Toc-H lamp" - but better than nothing. I think there was an airman there, too, with an Aldis lamp, to give you a green if it was safe to turn round the corner for take-off, and a red in the air if you were coming in to land on top of someone on the ground.

It all sounds very Heath Robinson now, but it worked quite well. My night was very dark. With no natural horizon, you had to stick to the AH like glue all the time. And whatever you did, you mustn't lose sight of that flarepath, or you'd be hopelessly adrift over blacked-out Britain. We had no radio aids of any kind.

So we hogged the flarepath all the way round, and came round on finals with infinite care. With luck, you were "in the green", and carried on down with the flarepath tucked close on your left. Now the problem was when to "round out". You could estimate roughly where the ground was from the perspective of the flarepath, but there was a very useful trick. You watched the closest flare intently, until the point of light suddenly turned into a recognisable flame. That was it - you eased back on the stick and you wouldn't be far wrong (a variant of the blades-of-grass trick by day).

After two dual circuits the instructor thankfully climbed out and left you to it. Checking out a student at night from the back seat (when you can see even less than he can) must put years on the poor devils - nearly as bad as being a driving instructor in today's traffic! (No, I've never done either job).

Very Old Joke:- Student to Instructor: "What's it like, Sir, flying at night?" - "Much like daytime, but a lot smoother, and you'll find the controls a lot heavier". - "Why's that, Sir?" - "Because I've damn' well got hold of them!"

After all this effort, I never flew a minute after dark for the next seven years, and never in India. I stll think night flying is akin to black magic. After all, "only birds and fools fly, and the birds pack it in when it gets dark".

'Night, all!

Danny42C




Ground tested and found servicable.

Danny42C
15th Mar 2012, 01:11
I quite liked the Master. It was roomy and comfortable, smooth and simple to fly; it would have made an excellent thing to take away for a weekend (fat chance!) However, as a fighter advanced trainer it was nowhere as good as the the Harvard: in a straight fight the Harvard would win every time, other things being equal. But the Master was fine for our purposes, and as the feared British weather (perversely) turned nice and warm for the fortnight, our course had no trouble finding its way round the (usually) triangular plots. The corners of a solo exercise were always two airfields, and on the signal square of each a letter was displayed which we had to record. Of course, the staff had to telephone ahead to both airfields to pre-arrange a new letter for each trip.

After we had had about ten hours on the Master, and they were satisfied that we hadn't forgotten how to fly, they let us have a go on the Hurricanes. Their undercarriages were narrow and bandy-legged, the poor old things rolled about like drunken sailors over the lumpy meadow. Not only that, but they had little dihedral, and so from the cockpit the wingtips looked to be very near the ground. And the Hurricane struck me as one of those aircraft you sat on rather than sat in (unlike the Spitfire, which you wear like a glove); we have all known cars like that. I was terrified of putting a tip in every time (well, only four) I took one off the line. Thankfully I didn't bend one.

With only two hours I would not dare express an opinion of the Hurricane, and in any case we were forbidden to fly them in any but the gentlest way - or they might fall to bits. All we did with them was take off, fly round for a few minutes, come back and land. All I can remember about them was the little metal "gearbox" style "H" gate for the hydraulic selectors. You had a "neutral" in the middle for your car-type lever; where Reverse and First lived in your car selected wheels up and down; Second and Third (that's the lot in those days) did the flaps. (Or was it the other way round?) When you made a selection, nothing happened until you pressed an actuating lever to get pressure up. I think the Harvard had the same idea.

A Funny Thing happened to me at the end of my final Nav test. This time, the letters weren't necessary, for a navigation instructor (the Link Trainer F/Sgt) was riding shotgun. One of my corners was Weston Zoyland, in Somerset. Twelve years later I would land a Meteor there for the very last time, at the end of my flying career.

The navigation was fine, and we came back into the circuit at Castle Combe. "Do you mind if I do the landing?", asked my examiner "I like to keep in practice from the back seat". Be my guest! I came downwind, did the checks and handed over. His approach was fine, and the landing as smooth as you could expect on the rough surface. The Master rolled to a stop.

He raised the flaps - or thought he had. He'd grabbed the undercarriage knob instead. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw the control in my cockpit move, and made a frantic grab at it. Too late, the Master flopped down like a weary camel. I felt a heavy thud, and saw a broken piece of wooden propeller blade fly off.

A horrified silence fell. I don't remember who broke it or what was said. We'd to think about our position. We were in the middle of an undulating grass field, and as ill luck would have it, in a hollow so that, lying flat, we couldn't easily be seen from the flight line. I don't think we had any form of radio contact. This was common on grass airfields, you simply looked after yourself. Obviously we had to stay where we were until somebody spotted us. It would be far too dangerous to try to walk across an active flying field. It seemed ages before a truck came out.

I was sorry for the F/Sgt, but very glad it wasn't me. I don't think anything drastic happened to him. The Master wouldn't be badly damaged. They'd just have to jack it up and drop the wheels. A new prop would have to go on, but the engine wouldn't be shock-loaded as it was only ticking-over when we flopped. It was no worse than stalling your car at the lights.

Next time, I'll tell you all the things you wanted to know about the Link Trainer, but were afraid to ask.

Say something, somebody, even if it's only Goodbye!

Danny42C




Get weaving!

kookabat
15th Mar 2012, 03:52
That description of landing with reference to flare paths from a couple of posts back will probably be useful to a researcher I know who's looking at a Stirling crash in 1941. I'll point him in this direction...

Keep it coming Danny!

Adam

ancientaviator62
15th Mar 2012, 09:33
Danny,
I suspect that everyone like me are all keeping a hushed respectful silence as befits us 'sprogs' as we listen to your enthralling story.

JOE-FBS
15th Mar 2012, 09:51
Danny,

Worry ye not, sir, you are being read avidly. I have been following this thread for a good eighteen months now and I am always fascinated, often amused and occasionally moved.

Of your recent posts, I was especially interested in the night flying one. I have just done that myself in a modern aeroplane (well, a thirty something year old, 10000 hour 152) from a large tarmac airfield lit up like Blackpool in October so reading how you did it was awe inspiring. Nor, as my teenager pointed out when I flew him, very high, over the dams above Sheffield where 617 trained, is anyone ever going to be shooting at me while I do it.

Anyway, enough of my irrelevant ramblings, please keep it up. It is much appreciated.

Joe

Chugalug2
15th Mar 2012, 10:08
Amen to that, AA62 and Joe! What can one say other than thank you, Danny?
I don't know about others but I am amazed at the detail that you can recall. As kookabat says, the little throw away asides such as the AoO indicator workings, the layout of a flare path, why the Master even existed, all of them dot the i's and cross the t's of what was involved, not in simply gaining a brevet, but of getting to an Operational Squadron in WW2. The immense organisation behind all these innumerable courses and postings must have been a story in itself.
What really comes out is the self reliance required of a pilot then. You had to take care of everything, for there was no-one else to do it for you. Navigation with nothing but a map and DR. Circuit flying at night with only some half dozen paraffin fed flares, a car battery, bulbs and a fan to help, and if you are lucky an alert airman with an Aldis. At the same time, the sky full of lots of others doing exactly the same as you!
Please keep dotting and crossing, Danny. It is the detail that both fascinates and informs. Oh, and your pay off punch lines. Love them!

Yamagata ken
15th Mar 2012, 12:22
Danny. We say nothing because we have nothing to add. The silence is that of respect and we are all paying attention. Please proceed.....

Danny42C
15th Mar 2012, 18:50
I'm surprised and delighted by the interest I seem to have stirred up. I feel like the Sorcerer's Apprentice! For the last week or so, I have imagined myself in that crewroom of memory of mine - but all the chaps had gone and left me. Perhaps I'd been using the wrong kind of soap!

Kookabat, Ancient Aviator62, JOE-FBS, Chugalug and now Yamagata Ken, thank you one and all!

Chugalug, glad you appreciate the little tags at the end, but it was originally Cliff's idea. How is Cliff, by the way? - anybody know? Changing the subject, I quote from you: "The immense organisation behind all these innumerable Courses must have been a story in itself". We-eel, yes, I suppose, but some malcontents expressed different opinions. One often heard was: "When I joined this Air Force, I thought that it was run by rational human beings. Half way through my career, I had to realise that in fact it was run by irrational human beings. Only at the end did the truth dawn on me: the place must be run by monkeys!" (I trust I am beyond the reach of Court Martial - could they dock my pension?)

Error, (#2404, p121), Google tells me there are no runways at Castle Combe, they race round a peri-track, presumably the middle is just field.

More soon,

Danny42C



When I sez "fix", you don't fix!

500N
15th Mar 2012, 18:53
Danny
Your posts are superb, this is one of the not to be missed threads on here.
Thank you for your time and effort.

:ok:

BEagle
15th Mar 2012, 20:21
Danny42C, here's a reasonably recent aerial photo of Castle Combe:

http://i14.photobucket.com/albums/a341/nw969/CC.jpg

I can just about remember Weston Zoyland from my early childhood - and the huge pile of silver painted wreckage in the station crash compound. Dead Meteors, I guess....

Great stories, by the way!

Chugalug2
16th Mar 2012, 18:19
Danny:
Only at the end did the truth dawn on me: the place must be run by monkeys!
Point taken, but would it have been the near infinite number of monkeys in the Stan Freberg (?) sketch, where they are all seated at desks and pounding away at typewriters?
"Hold it fellas, this one is looking good, "To Be or Not To Be, That is the qestwischcanzite". Sorry guys, false alarm!"

Great photo, Beags. Wikki has an entry but no pic. Interesting that the motor circuit follows the old peri track quite closely but just inside it. The dispersed pans still show up clearly around the latter.
I remember a great pyramid of Bristol Brigands at RAF Colerne when I was a CCF Cadet. They were waiting for the scrap metal man to be turned into saucepans. Did any survive?

diesel addict
16th Mar 2012, 18:38
Hi Chugalug

Bob Newhart - Warner Brothers LP K 46001 Side 2 Track 3

along with several other pearls of "wisdom"

Anorack off - GO

Chugalug2
16th Mar 2012, 19:05
Indeed, DA, many thanks:-
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ji_--Q1S9Gk

Danny42C
16th Mar 2012, 22:38
(It'll have to be another scattergun reply)

500N (#2420) Thanks! My cup runneth over! This is exactly the response I hoped to provoke. Now my old "virtual" crewroom is alive again.

BEagle (#2421) Ta! - Lovely picture. I think the buildings at top left are where the old RAF flight huts were. I guess the top frame would be heading East, the left therefore North (but see reply to diesel addict below). The long run would therefore be NW/SE, which seems about right. We would have landed into NW when my little chap had his mishap, and the night flying flarepath would have been laid on this heading. I have no scale: how would 800 yards have fitted in?

Chugalug (#2422) Sorry, old chap - I wasn't trying to make any point. But I think Higher Authority was having to "play it off the cuff" all the time to suit changing circumstances, and this gave the impression of "organised chaos". This would apply to Courses and Postings above all. It was commonplace to get outcomes like mine: in a previous Post I have recorded an occasion when they (most unusually) asked me what I wanted, and then gave me the precise opposite! And I shall shortly relate how they trained me on Spitfires, then sent me out to India, where there were no Spitfires at the time. Also, when I came back in '49, they converted me on to Meteors, then posted me to a Vampire unit! This happened to everyone, so you can see how the "monkey" jest could become popular.

I think Tolstoy, in "War and Peace" (no, I didn't finish it, did anybody ever?) has a character explaining how a General starts off a battle according to plan, but then the battle develops a mind of its own and goes off increasingly out of his control, until he is just being dragged helplessly along by events.

(This recalls the apocryphal story of the flying instructor, who is supposed to have summarised a report on a pupil as follows: "This young man opens the throttle on take-off, and initiates a series of events over which he exercises no further control!")

Re scrap metal: I heard that the Vickers Valiant carcasses (minus engines, all electronics and instruments) went for £75 apiece. Don't know if it's true.

diesel addict (#2423), and Chugalug (#2424), Love the LP - Jolly good! You're from Wiltshire, d_ a, I see. Can I ask you, please, to confirm my orientation of Castle Combe from your OS Landranger map? and the rough dimensions? - if it's no trouble.

My sincere thanks to you all,

Danny42C

Petet
16th Mar 2012, 23:47
On Google Earth, you can get a picture of the site as it was in 1945 by using the timeline button ... if may help if you want to do comparisons.

Perhaps someone with more technical ability than me could post the 1945 picture on here if it would help.

green granite
17th Mar 2012, 08:05
as requested:

http://i68.photobucket.com/albums/i11/orangeherald/castlecombe.jpg

BEagle
17th Mar 2012, 08:14
As requested, here is the image from Google Earth, showing Castle Combe at the end of the war:

http://i14.photobucket.com/albums/a341/nw969/CC45.jpg

The yellow line I've marked is 920 yards in length, to provide some scale indication.

The image I posted previously was taken from this website:

Aerial Views Of UK Airports & Airfields (http://www.content-delivery.co.uk/aviation/airfields/)

If you click on any of the aerodrome names, an aerial image of the aerodrome is shown. Great for seeing how your old aerodrome looks today!

(gg - Snap!)

Fareastdriver
17th Mar 2012, 10:10
A great site. It's amazing how long some old blister hangers have lasted.

Danny42C
17th Mar 2012, 18:05
Profuse thanks to you all!,

Petet (#2426) for the bright idea.
Green Granite (#2427) for the picture.
BEagle (#2428) for the picture and the key dimension.
Fareastdriver (#2429) for the compliment (It's amazing how long some old blister hangars have lasted). Only joking!


The questions come crowding in:

Nobody's mentioned North, I take it the picture is correctly orientated?
I think this must have been taken late in '45, with the war over. I can't see anything that looks like an aircraft. The "runway" is SE/NW, 920 yards, whereas they had about 1100 yards SW/NE (the taxiway was clearly looped-out to give this extra distance). Why didn't they use that? I'm sure we used that direction when it was all grass. (EDIT: Of course they did - I need a new pair of specs - sorry, chaps).

(Have been doing a bit more Googling) Seems the runways were Somerfelt tracking (put down long after my time). Looks as if it's been taken up. But what's this about a hundred yards in from the NW end? Looks like a building of some sorts on the edge of the runway - and there's an access track to it! The footpath across the field looks well used. The whole thing gives the impression of a field not long abandoned. And what are those huge flat-top structures behind the RAF buildings, in the far NW corner?

Perhaps we should close the book on Castle Combe.

Once again, thank you for all the help.


Danny42C

Fareastdriver
17th Mar 2012, 20:03
If you do a distance chck between the shallow loops at the 2 o'clock and 9 o'clock it comes to about 1100 yds with a runway heading of 070/250 true.

Danny42C
19th Mar 2012, 18:13
First see Cliff's excellent pic (#2338 p117). A picture is worth a thousand words.

We are still at Castle Combe. In one hut dwelt the Link Trainer and its keeper, a Flight Sergeant pilot who doubled as Navigation Instructor and check rider on our final nav exercises. The Link is a forgotten instrument of torture, so I shall describe it at some length. It was the first realistic attempt at an aircraft simulator, and quite advanced in the technology of its time.

A stubby representation of of a fuselage had a cockpit with full flight instruments and a throttle, stick and rudder bar. A hinged top covered the occupant, so that he had only his instruments to "fly" on. Modern multi-million pound simulators can roll and pitch on computer controlled hydraulic rams (I read). The Link could too, but teetered on compressed air bags or "bellows". Movement of the controls actuated air valves, and the Link would lurch (anything but smoothly) in the desired direction. That was the idea, anyway.

It was also able to turn complete circles on its own axis. This is more than today's simulators can do (in the real world), and I don't know how the Link managed it without screwing up its cable runs. Perhaps they had slip-ring connectors. This might explain the jerky controls, for slip rings oxidise and get dirty (like the volume controls on your old radio and TV). Whatever, control operation called to mind Ogden Nash's immortal words:

Tomato sauce, shake the bottle.
None'll come - and then the lot'll!

That's exactly how the Link stick and rudder behaved. It "flew" like no aircraft that ever was or ever will be, and trying to follow any Air Traffic procedure or flight path was a nightmare. Nevertheless, it had great value as a procedural trainer, for it fixed in your mind what you were supposed to do, and in what order, so that it would come naturally to you later in the air.

While you struggled in this sweat-box, your mentor sat at his desk outside. He had an intercom and dual instruments. On his (glass or perspex covered) table (over a map of the surroundings) crawled a "crab". This electric toy tricycle faithfully followed your movements. A little marker wheel left a trail of red ink, so your errors were plain to see. The besetting sin of Link instructors was to forget to switch this "crab" off, for although moving only at a snail's pace, it had no sense of self-preservation and, if not watched, would crawl off the table to self-destruct on the floor.

As if your erratic controls were not bad enough, your instructor could input drift and rough air into the system to make your task even harder. All things considered, it was not surprising that accumulated stress convinced some people that they were actually in an aircraft. We'd all heard about one poor chap who was supposed to have got his Link into a spin. Unable to recover, and unnerved by the unwinding altimeter, he'd flung the top open and hurled himself out. Grabbing for a (non-existent) ripcord handle, he'd landed heavily on the linoleum several feet below. His injuries were not life-threatening.

It's quite credible, the Link could spin very realistically. It could rotate quite fast, and with the inner "wing" down there'd be a real "G" effect inside; with the T&B in textbook spin display, imagination could easily do the rest. I've read that, even in modern simulators, a pilot's heart-rate speeds up in the final stages of a "landing", just as it does for real, even though he knows it's all make-believe.

I can't recall any Links in the US, but I think they had one on every flying school in the RAF. You were supposed to log Link time in your logbook, and I seem to have run up 46 hours, but it was all in "fits and starts" as the Link was the fill-in on non-flying days for weather or whatever. What did I do? Can't remember.

Before I leave Hullavington, I must mention one or two things. I must have been issued with a battledress (and, no doubt, the whistle) there, for I distinctly remember wearing it when I suffered a sad loss. It seems that the Air Ministry had asked the War Office to provide troops at airfields to defend them in case of parachute or glider attack. Lord knows, the Army had enough people doing nothing. Churchill got to hear of this, and bristled. "Why should one lot of able-bodied men need another lot to defend them? Let them defend themselves!" So Station Defence Days became the bane of our lives.

Hullavington had one when I was there. I was flat down, hurling half-bricks ("Mills bombs") at Bren Gun carriers ("Tanks"). Wriggling about, I lost my fountain pen from the top pocket of my battledress "blouse" (official name). I'd had the pen for years. It cost the princely sum of 2/3d (and two "Typhoo" tea packet tops). For that I got a 14k gold nib; it suited my hand better than anything before or since, I'd really "run it in". I mourned the loss for ages.
In those days you could buy a perfectly good iridium-tipped gold nib fountain pen for half-a-crown - Waterman, Swan and Conway Stewart were well known brands. That's £5 today. What's the chance of getting a gold nib for a fiver now?

All good things come to an end. I packed my kit and said "Goodbye" to Hullavington. That was not a simple matter. You had to trail round all the sections of a Station with a Clearance Certificate, and get a signature from each one, to certify that you were not making off with any item of their (official) property. This could take all day in some cases. (There was a comparable Arrivals procedure; a story told of one bright airman on a new Station somewhere , who booked in with the Barrack Warden - so that he got his biscuits, blankets and pillow, and with Accounts - so he got paid, but nowhere else. All he then had to do was eat his meals, turn up on Pay Parade to draw his pay, but do no work. Apparently he got away with it for quite some time, before somebody totted up, and noticed a discrepancy).

But that pales in comparison with the true story of a National Service Accounts clerk who called into existence a whole squad of phantom airmen, and collected the pay for the whole lot. It was very skilfully done, his creations went on leave and came back, went into SSQ with 'flu and came out, got remustered and in due course discharged, and so on. I believe this genius was actually discharged at the end of his 18 months, having carefully arranged for all the members of his "squad" to be discharged before him. A few weeks later, Records raised a perfectly innocent query about one of them, and the balloon went up.

Next stop for me would not be the Transit Camp I expected, but direct to Hawarden, near Chester, to No. 57 Operational Training Unit - the end of the training line. Thankfully, it wasn't a Hurricane OTU, but a Spitfire one. The pinnacle of every young wartime pilot's ambition was at last within grasp.


That's enough to be going on with,

Goodnight, all,

Danny42C




I thought it might be a Hurricane, so I only gave it a short burst (Combat Report)

kookabat
19th Mar 2012, 22:39
to No. 57 Operational Training Unit
Now I'm really looking forward to the next bit Danny, I've recently been doing some research on an Australian pilot who was at that unit between January and March 1943.

Adam

Danny42C
21st Mar 2012, 00:20
First, a quick query. What was the Edmund's Trainer? I see from my log that it seems to be associated with the Link trainer, and I had two or three sessions on it, but I have absolutely no idea what it was or what it did (tried Google and Wiki, no joy). Does anybody know?

I arrived at Hawarden, was allocated to my Training Flight, and got down to work straight away. I see they put me into a Spitfire nine days after I got there (cautiously they gave me a quick dual check on a Master - which I'd last flown five days before - just to make sure that I hadn't forgotten how). Those nine days were busy. We mugged up Pilot's Notes every spare moment of the day and half the night. They had a "simulator" even more primitive than the Link; it was a scrap fuselage from a crash, the cockpit was intact, controls and instruments did nothing, but we had to memorise the position and function of everything so that we could lay hands on it blindfold. When we weren't blindfold, there was a masterpiece of sophistication - on the wall behind us was a head-on view of a Me 109 at firing range. This was covered by a piece of card hanging on a hook, painted to blend in with the skyscape on the wall. A piece of string was arranged so that the instructor could surreptitiously pull the card away. Woe betide us if we didn't shout out immediately! We quickly learned the value of the mirror. It all helped.

Curiously, I don't remember any formal classroom work, but we eagerly spent every spare moment sitting in the cockpit of any aircraft on the ground and drinking it all in. I think we had about ten pupils on our flight (all Sergeants), and for Instructors we seem to have had an officer, a warrant officer and a sergeant - at least those were the only names which appeared on the (few) Instrument sessions on the Course (flown in the Master). I think we had quite a lot of one-to-one instruction.

Our Spitfires were (like the Hurricanes at Castle Combe) old Mk.Is and Mk.IIs,
reach-me-downs from the squadrons which had managed to survive from the great days (I was told that the Spit was designed for a service life of six months). We didn't like what we saw of the Spit's undercarriage. It was narrow, the tyres were thin and the legs looked a little splayed out. It looked
like trouble. It seemed as if it would be a handful to taxy. In fact, as we later found, the Spit was the exception which proved the rule. I never heard of one ground-looping yet. Taxying was difficult at first, but not because of the undercarriage.

Our great day came. It was high summer, and very warm. This would be problem No. 1. The (liquid) cooling system of the Merlin engine is designed to keep it cool in the air - not on the ground. Once running, the coolant temperature rises until you get airborne. The maximum allowed is 120 (C). If you were still on the ground when you reached that figure, you must pull off onto the grass and shut down to avoid engine damage.

The fact that our Flight's dispersal was on the upwind end of the runway (most days) didn't help. It meant that we had the longest way to taxy. For the first few days there were always one or two stranded aircraft on the grass. No damage was done, it was more of a nuisance than anything. A half-hour's wait, and the engine could be restarted. But you couldn't do it by yourself. The Spit had a direct electric starter, like a car. But the starter load was far more than the battery could handle, and you'd only try it in emergency, with little hope of success if the engine were cold.

Normally power to start was plugged in from a "trolley-acc". A large, heavy battery pack was mounted on a two-wheeled hand trolley. On top of this a small petrol engine (the "chore-horse") drove a generator to keep the battery topped-up. Now this cumbersome kit had to be got out to the stranded aircraft, which might be half a mile away. It was a tractor job and they were scarce (for a few yards to-and-fro in dispersal, erk-power had to do). A lot of time was wasted; you'd done the right thing; but that wouldn't save you from the rough end of your Flight Commander's tongue.

Enough for tonight, (much) more later,


Danny42C





Two-Six!

TommyOv
21st Mar 2012, 12:41
Danny,

Fantastic stuff. I, like all the rest of us I'm sure, can't wait to hear how you got on when you were finally able to take a Spit up solo. Absolute magic.

You're right that Google yields little in the way of information on the Edmund's Trainer...some of my own searching around (during a 10 minute lunch break!) has thrown up a couple of indications that it was an add-on to a standard Link Trainer, the idea being to teach pilots the art of deflection shooting. Does this ring any bells? What sort of 'add-on' could it be?

Quite impressed by the technique of the suddenly-appearing Me 109 in the 'simulator'! Were you taught to incorporate the mirror into your usual continuous scan?

I shall be checking back later tonight for your next installment!

Regards,

Tommy

Petet
21st Mar 2012, 18:22
Found a useful background document on the Link Trainer if anyone is interested:

http://files.asme.org/ASMEORG/Communities/History/Landmarks/5585.pdf

Chugalug2
21st Mar 2012, 19:14
Ah! Such memories you evoke, Danny. Hullavington Officers Mess, a grand "triple decker" Baldwin Mess complete with a minstrels gallery for musical accompaniment at Guest Nights. Merely a domestic overspill site for Lyneham in the 70s, Hullavington meant that as we were in Married Quarters there it was our Mess also, instead of the "contemporary" one at Lyneham.
More memories too of the Link Trainer Section at various CCF Summer Camp venues in the 50s. We would patiently wait our turn in the queue for a go and of course then log it in our Record of Service book, which I have still.
A question which occurs, but will probably show my lack of attention to your previous posts, in which case I beg your forbearance. When exactly did you know that you would be trained as a fighter pilot? I presume that the great bulk of people were destined for multi engine training and thence Bomber Command.
Was the decider your showing in Training? It certainly was in my case. My final handling test with a Canadian Wg Cdr CFI brought forth the comment from him, that I was "a lousy pilot, but you've got guts!". I can only surmise that he was referring to my non stop patter as we fell out of aero after aero (my instructor having enjoined me to not dry up, no matter what happened!). I was grateful enough to go on to multis. :O

Fareastdriver
21st Mar 2012, 19:53
The Google Earth black & whites are dated 1945. I had a look at some stations I was at as a kid. Moreton in Marsh was fields and so was Little Rissington. They were started in 1940 and 1938 respectively so the pictures are before that.

Danny42C
21st Mar 2012, 21:01
Kookabat (#2433)

Hope this will be useful, Adam, but beware - things changed awfully fast, and six months was a long time in 42/43.

TommyOV (#2435)

Deflection training on a Link Trainer ! The mind boggles, Tommy. On an arthritic tortoise as target, possibly. Yes, we were taught continuous scan. It just so happened that, as the Me was fixed on the wall and our scrap fuselage didn't move, you could keep an eye on it in the mirror and didn't have to screw your neck round. No luck with the Edmund's Trainer so far. There was a "Silloth" trainer, never saw one, think it was a "customised" Link for a particular type of aircraft. Don't really know.

Petet (#2436)

An interesting link to the Link! Never realised it went back so far, or spread so wide. Bit puzzled about the USAAC, supposed to have been used in all their schools, can't remember any until Advanced, then did 10 hours on it.

(Two late comers, pushing the replies in as an EDIT).

Chugalug (#2437),

Ah, those baronial dining rooms with a minstrel's gallery! But they were not for the likes of us in 42 ! (Got there in the end).

When did I get to know that I'd be trained as a fighter pilot? When they sent me to OTU ! (and much good did it do me) How did they select people ? With a pin, I think. I heard that many fighter OTU trained people were later retrained on twos and fours to plug the gaps in Bomber Command, but not sure.

Fareastdriver (#2438),

1945's good enough for me on Castle Combe - don't think it had been going long when we got there in 42.



Thank you all. Another slice coming along,

Danny

Danny42C
21st Mar 2012, 22:21
There was a trick in taxying the Spit, and once you got the knack, you could move along briskly with just a trickle of power. At first we crawled along awkwardly, fighting the engine against the brakes - you could almost watch the coolant needle creeping up.

But if you started on one side of the track, put on full rudder and a one-second blast of power, you'd coast across the track. Then opposite rudder and a tap of brake (which would all go on the one wheel), another shot of
throttle and you zig-zagged back. A pendulum swing built up, and as speed increased you needed less power (and heat) each turn. Once you got into this rhythm, you could go for miles without "coming to the boil".

Coolant temperature permitting, you turned onto the runway for your first take-off (you had look out for yourself, traffic was far too heavy for any form of Aerodrome control as we know it today). It had been hammered into us to tighten up the throttle friction nut hard; people who hadn't paid attention would soon regret it. Power on smoothly, check the swing, keep it straight, don't lift the tail too high (or the prop may hit the tarmac), and you'd soon float off effortlessly. It was just like a Stearman again.

Now a loose friction nut bit the unwary. You had to use your right hand for the undercarriage control, but still needed to keep a hand on the stick, because the full right rudder trim you had on (to counteract swing) was trying to roll you over. No problem, move left hand from throttle to stick to free right hand for wheels. You did this, the throttle shot back smartly of its own accord and your power died. Uncomfortable near the ground !

Frantically, you grabbed the throttle and rammed it back open. Now you've run out of hands. You couldn't let go of the throttle with your left, or the stick with your right. You'd no hand for the undercarriage, so the wheels had to stay down. You certainly couldn't wind off rudder trim, so the aircraft yawed ever more to the right as it speeded up, even though you held it level with the stick and pushed on the left rudder pedal as hard as you could to oppose the trim.

Critical watchers on the ground (ie anyone who'd had it happen to him, which was just about everybody) chuckled as they saw you crabbing away with wheels still down. You were stuck until you'd reached a couple of hundred feet, when you could safely let the throttle go for a few seconds, and have a free hand to sort things out. From then on, you had the friction nut tight every time ! Even then, your troubles might not be over. Some of our Mk.Is went so far back that they didn't even have an engine driven hydraulic pump. It wasn't just a matter of selecting wheels "up", you had to pump them up (and down) by hand.

Our tyro would have the stick in his left hand while he rowed away with his right on the pump handle. The Spit is highly sensitive in pitch. You can land one, or do a loop, with just the end of your little finger in the spade grip. So while our chap's right hand pumped, his left moved in sympathy. He couldn't help pushing and pulling a bit, a little goes a long way, and he'd porpoise away out of sight to the amusement of the bystanders. It wasn't the only aircraft of the day to rely on muscle power for the undercarriage. The early "Anson" was notorious for the 149 turns of a crank handle needed. Luckily, "Repetitive Strain Injury" hadn't yet been invented.

The most terrifying part of every trip was getting back on the ground. Not that the Spit was difficult to land, far from it, provided you didn't come in too fast, for then you'd float down the runway like a piece of thistledown, until there wasn't enough tarmac left, and you'd have to swallow your pride and go round again.

No, the trouble was the congestion. If you flew a wide, timid circuit, you'd never get down. Some one would get inside you and cut you out. Grinding your teeth, you'd have to go round and try again - tighter this time. The loss of time might be serious. Mid-morning and afternoon the NAAFI van made its round of the Flights. Joining the circuit at such times, you scanned the field for it to see how far round it had got. If it was at or near your flight dispersal, it was imperative to get down at all costs, or you'd miss your "char and wad".

You had to learn the "Spitfire Approach", variously known as a "steep turn round the caravan" or "a dirty dive at the runway". It looks to the uninitiated to be a highly skilled, flamboyant and dangerous procedure. It is none of these things. Any fool can do it (look at me). The secret lies in the Spitfire's wing flaps, which are like no others in aviation. They operate on compressed air (which also works wheel brakes and gun firing) instead of the usual hydraulics. So there's no intermediate setting, it's all or nothing, they go up or down with a bang. Or rather with a malign hiss from the Flap Gremlin, which lives behind its neat little chromium lever on the left of the panel.

The drill was this: you flew downwind hugging the runway - so tightly that it looked impossible to get round to land on it. At the end, you throttled right back, banked almost vertically left and pulled round hard. Now you're losing height very fast - more falling out of the sky than gliding - without increasing speed much. Half way round, it looked hopeless (and would have been so in any other aircraft). You were still far too high and too close, and couldn't possibly turn tight enough without stalling.

Time to work the magic. Put the flaps down. Level, this would push your nose up hard. But you're not level - you're "on your left ear". Your Spit spun on its left wingtip like an old London black cab in a narrow street. A runway which looked completely impossible a moment before had miraculously swung round into easy reach. All you had to do now was to take off turn and bank smoothly as you came down the last two hundred feet, the masterstroke being to space out the turn so that you straightened-out a mere moment before touchdown.

If you did this right, nothing but a bird could get inside you. But if you weren't tight enough, surprising things could..........

Bedtime now. Perhaps more tomorrow.

Goodnight, all.


Danny42C





Panic over.

Chugalug2
21st Mar 2012, 22:23
DanFirst, a quick query. What was the Edmund's Trainer?
Whatever it was, there was one at RAF Long Newnton according to this:-
RAF Long Newnton, Wiltshire (http://airfields.pikfu.net/set1724073/media59482562.html)
The search continues....

Petet
21st Mar 2012, 23:41
Re: Silloth ... I think Cliffnemo posted a photo of a Silloth trainer a while back, but the following is a resumee:

The Silloth Trainer was designed for the training of all members of the crew, and was primarily a type familiarization trainer for learning drills and the handling of malfunctions. As well as the basic flying behaviour, all engine, electric and hydraulic systems were simulated.

An instructor's panel was provided to enable monitoring of the crew and malfunction insertion. All computation was pneumatic, as in the Link Trainer.
Silloth trainers were manufactured for 2 and 4 engined aircraft throughout the war; in mid-1945, 14 of these trainers were in existence or on order.

Towards the end of the war a Wellington simulator was developed at RAF St. Athan, using contoured cams to generate the characteristics of the aircraft's flight and engines. This machine, however, did not supplant the Silloth Trainer, as all activity on these ceased at the end of the war.

A Brief History of Aircraft Flight Simulation ( Flight Training ). (http://homepage.ntlworld.com/bleep/SimHist5.html)

Re: Edmunds Trainer ... No luck with finding any information on this, although RAF Long Newnton (Wiltshire) had a "Link Trainer and Edmunds Trainer Building". (Great minds Chugalug) I will ask the question on another forum to see if they can throw light on the subject

Still loving this thread .... learning more and more each day .... thanks to everyone involved

Danny42C
22nd Mar 2012, 21:35
A word all round: jobbing back a few pages, I came across "Project Propeller" by nmarshal (#2260 p113). I quote: "Annual reunion for 150+ WW2 aircrew". It's a wonderful, generous idea: have they really got a hundred and fifty WWII chaps on their books? If so, why aren't they (or at least a good few of them) here? I have been beginning to think that we were the last half dozen of the old brigade alive. What can we do by way of a recruiting drive?

****************

I was a bit slack one day. Half way round there was this big black shadow. I looked up into the wheels and underside of a Wellington! Being cut out by another Spitfire would be bad enough, but this! In all fairness to myself, I must say that the (newly assembled) "Wimpey" *, with an expert test pilot, no crew, no load, no guns in the turrets, and little fuel, could manage it, but even so it was a "poor show" on my part. I went round again with my tail between my legs.

* ("Popeye" had a pal: "J. Wellington Wimpey"), There was an assembly factory for the things at Hawarden. I had better elaborate.

There was quite a mixed bag of units sharing the airfield. Most of one side was taken up by De Havilland's factory where they assembled the Wellingtons (yes, I know it was a Vickers Wellington, but everybody was sub-contracting then). I had a good look at their assembly line, and was fascinated by the "geodetic" construction of the fuselages. They looked like the old wicker waste-paper baskets, but of course fabricated in light alloy. They were supposed to be able to take more punishment than the conventional arrangement of longerons and frames. When complete, they were fabric covered and doped. Wings, engines and turrets were added; the finished aircraft were wheeled out for test and delivery.

Across on our side, there were four (or six) training flights of Spitfires. From memory, I think that each of these flights had eight aircraft. Further down there was a mysterious Armament Practice Flight. We certainly didn't do any air-to-air firing in the Spitfires. They operated small twin high-wing aircraft (I think they were something by Percival or Fairey). We had nothing to do with them.

There was an Air Transport Auxiliary unit to do the Wellington deliveries. The ATA was a civilian outfit of pilots too old or unfit for the RAF. They took women - I believe they had one grandmother delivering Lancasters! The famous Amy Johnson (now Mrs Jim Mollison, another record-breaking pilot of the time) was killed in the ATA during the war. Some of their deliveries staged through Hawarden, so interesting novelties flew in from time to time.

All these aircraft took to the air pretty well as they liked and the result was a hectic circuit. No attempt was made to control it: indeed Air Traffic Control as we know it today was simply impossible. although we had TR9 R/T sets. It was "every man for himself and the devil take the hindmost". There was one small concession to flight safety. A "duty" student was parked on the grass near touchdown. He had a kitchen chair, a Verey pistol, a big bag of "reds" and his groundsheet if it looked like rain (we had no ATC caravan in those days).

If collision threatened on final approach, he'd bang off a red. The rule was that the higher aircraft must overshoot, but often both would go round together (another collision hazard). Beginner's luck held: I don't remember a collision while I was there. At busy times you'd have quite a crowd of aircraft in the circuit. Twenty was not unusual. Years later, I'd reminisce about this to a new generation of student pilots (and tell them about flying with no ASI). They'd exchange meaningful glances - "the old chap's rambling again - he's off his head" - but it was true.

I saw my first "Typhoon" there, flown in by the ATA; in early 42 that was a very rare bird indeed. They hadn't got the carburetion sorted out properly yet; every start was a toss-up whether the engine would run or burst into flames. A fire truck had to stand by every time, and this always attracted a crowd (don't we all enjoy a good bonfire?) On the morning of the Typhoon's departure, a small bunch of us, not scheduled to fly till later, strolled round the taxyway to watch the fun from a safe distance.

All was made ready, the pilot came out and jaws dropped. A pert little blonde in a snazzy white flying overall hopped up into the cockpit. This put quite a different face on things. We hadn't come here to watch a re-run of St-Joan-at-Rouen, and were glad to see that she didn't strap herself in before pressing the button. The fire crew gripped their extinguishers, we held our breath.

The ancients believed the unicorn to be a savage beast, only to be subdued by a chaste young maiden. There may have been something in it, the big "Sabre" fired-up with no more than the customary snarl of fire and brimstone from the exhaust stubs, then idled sweet as a nut. Our aviatrix ran through the checks, imperiously waved chocks away, and off she went.

We walked back pensively to our Spitfires with male egos sadly deflated. If this chit of a girl could handle a monster like that, where did that leave us? The message was reinforced as we came up to the marshalling point, the thing came bellowing down the runway and flashed past us fifty feet in the air. We trudged glumly back to our Flights.

That's about enough for the moment,

Goodnight, everyone,


Danny42C





Easy come, easy go.

Petet
22nd Mar 2012, 23:00
I managed to get this feedback on the Edmunds Trainer question from the airfieldinformationexchange forum .... hope it helps


The name of this device is usually mispelled as Edmunds or Edmonds; it was invented by F/O Morgan Rice Edmondes. There were a large number of gunnery training simulators in use throughout WWII This particular device was one of a number of 'dual purpose' synthetic trainers for gunnery and recognition.

It instructed fighter pilots in deflection shooting combined with aircraft recognition and range judging, using a standard Link trainer. This was fitted with a reflector sight (modified for the purpose) and a spotlight triggered by a firing a button on the control column. At the required distance from the Link, a 1:48 scale model aircraft was positioned 6.5 ft from the ground and mounted on a castored trolley. A 'deflection' graph was also positioned 3 ft from the floor

On the floor in front of the 'aircraft' were painted a number of arcs of circles worked out from the pivot point from the Link. These were at intervals of 37.5 in (representing ranges from 150 yds to 600 yds at 50 yds increments).

The trainee flew the Link to ‘attack’ the model which then moved to simulate an aircraft under attack. When the pilot considered he was in range, he pressed his trigger in short bursts and the beam of light from the spotlight registered on the graph, the instructor immediately read off the range from the arcs on the floor and the errors shown on the graph. The instructor was in communication with the pilot, giving advice and corrrecting his aim throughout the simulation.

I think the prototype went to Grangemouth, and was intended for all Fighter Command OTUs, and Group I SFTS, (plus a few Gp.II).

A report described it as very effective and extremely simple to construct, though it required a fair amount of floor space.

Source: AIR20 /6058 Synthetic Training Devices, AIR2 /8785 Synthetic Training Committee (STC) reports.

Danny42C
23rd Mar 2012, 18:09
Petet,

Good man! - you've cracked it. I ought to be able to say that my rheumy old eyes lit up with instant recognition, but I'm afraid they didn't. Still, it sounds like a Good Idea. My first reaction was: why didn't they use a 1/72 model? - they'd need much less space. And there'd be plenty of Airfix 1/72 models around, wouldn't there? Better check Google, perhaps. Just as well, turns out that there weren't - it was a post-war product. And a big model would stand more knocking about, anyway.

I can see how it would do very well as a range estimation trainer. What I can't quite grasp is the deflection part of the trick. The trolley could be moved at various speeds - how was that taken into account on the "graph"? And you'd need less deflection on a quarter target than on the beam. How about that? Remember, we only had a static (reflected) ring sight.

Better not go on; maybe only displaying my ignorance and forgetfulness. Best
piece of advice on deflection I ever heard came from the famous "Screwball" Beurling: "Estimate the deflection you need - then double it!" (he did all right with that).

My thanks to all who have taken part in the hunt,

Danny.

P.S. I worked alongside a Wing Commander Edmondes in a Special Duty Flight in India in 45. He was an "Armaments Specialist", too. He wasn't my Boss, so I haven't any of his initials in my logbook. Met him again as a S/Ldr at Bomber Command HQ in 49........I wonder.

Danny42C
23rd Mar 2012, 22:13
(Danny at Hawarden)

It was not the only time I would be put firmly in my place. I was sitting in the cockpit, waiting for the "trolley-acc" to start me. The cockpit flap was open, a warm breeze from the Welsh hills mixed with the petrol and hydraulic fumes; a lark sang in the heavens. This idyllic scene was interrupted by the appearance of a small, serious bespectacled face in the cockpit opening - "Harry Potter" to the life, half a century before his time.

This was no surprise. A class at the local primary school had swapped a Nature Study day for a trip to our airfield. The teacher (probably a young lady) found being chatted-up over a coffee in the crewroom a nice change from droning on about some nondescript creature or shrub in a muddy field. She had turned her charges loose, she could afford to do this. The young lad of that era had proper respect for property and adults, well knowing the stinging clout round the ear coming his way if he misbehaved. Besides, just to touch a Spitfire was Heaven for a small boy. They would not stray far.

I beamed down on the little lad. Now I would be in line for a nice dollop of hero-worship. He might even want my autograph, and we were sometimes asked "How many have you shot down, Mister?" (the little blighters knowing full well that we hadn't fired a shot).

"Sir", piped this one, "what is the reduction gear ratio between engine and propeller on this aircraft?" I gaped at him dumbfounded. I'd no idea. I knew, of course, that the prop wasn't just splined onto the shaft, and would guess at 2:1 if I had to. But I'd been a small boy myself and knew exactly what this little devil was up to. He'd come across this information somewhere, mugged it up (probably to three decimal places), and was now revelling in being "one up" on every one of us he could find to catch.

Mr Nicholas Soames recalls that, as a small boy, he'd wandered into the library and found the great man busy at his desk. "Grandfather", he'd asked, "is it true that you're the greatest living Englishman?" "Yes", said Churchill testily, "Now bugger off!" My tormentor got similarly short shrift. "That's a military secret! You shouldn't ask! Clear off!" He grinned and disappeared. But of course he knew that I didn't know, and that I knew he knew. Later I learned that I was by no means his only victim that afternoon. (He'll go far, that lad - the farther the better - he should start at once).

We lived in reasonable comfort in the Sergeants' Mess. I don't recall that we had any Pilot Officers on our Flight. Housed two to a room in the huts, my room mate was Alan Morley. He'd been a Metropolitan policeman, a reserved occupation. Aircrew service was the sole exception, he was allowed to volunteer for that, but nothing else, and he'd grabbed the chance. (Later I met a pilot who was a qualifed veterinary surgeon and had got in the same way). Alan was older than most of us, married, with a spell-binding fund of stories about the old East End. We got along very well together, we were both tidy souls by nature and kept our room in strict regulation order. There's no point in trying to buck the system. On a photo in my log book he's perched next to me on the back of a Spitfire. What happened to him I don't know, but I hope he survived. He was a good chap.

Our C.F.I. was a Wing Commander Farmer. We didn't see much of him, but he had one idea which would stand all of us in very good stead. Whenever he was out of his office (which seemed to be most of the time) he'd jump into "his" Spitfire. This had a very distinctive white spinner with a spiral painted on it. In this he'd roam around looking for lone Spitfires. Any that he found in the area would almost certainly be his. Finding one, he'd try to "bounce" it - carry out a mock attack. Catching one napping, he'd haul alongside and note the aircraft letters. There would follow an uncomfortable five minutes in front of your Flight Commander, and a "fine" of a day's pay. If, however, you'd "kept weaving", never flying straight and level for more than a few seconds at a time, watching your rear-view mirror and screwing your neck round* to spot any stranger behind, you'd see the CFI coming. Waiting till he came into firing range (about 400 yards), you'd turn tightly into him - the standard defensive parry. He'd waggle his wings to say "Cheers" and fly off to find another victim.

It drove home the most valuable lesson a fighter pilot must learn - Watch your back! - you'll never see the aircraft that shoots you down! It recalls an old saying (from the WWI trenches) "You never hear the shell that kills you!" There is a romantic myth that air fighting was a knightly combat, and of course there was some like that, especially in the large scale dogfights of 1940. But a much more effective way is to creep up on your man with a piece of lead pipe.

This "fine" business was highly irregular, there was nothing in King's Regulations to warrant it - but nobody objected. All minor flying misdemeanours were similarly punished, and the "kitty" paid for the Flight party at the end of the course. There was a tariff of fines for the things you forgot when leaving the aircraft. First flights were a rich mine for the "kitty", the offender being in such a state of euphoria from having got down safely that he could hardly remember his own name. Taxying in with flaps down was expensive at 10/- (there was some point in this, over grass a stone could be flung up and damage them). Leaving the Radio or Fuel cocks on, and Not caging the gyros earned lesser penalties. I think my first flight cost me 15/- from then on, Nil - you learned fast.

* This was much easier on the neck if you took off collar and tie, and wound a silk scarf, or anything else silk you could beg or borrow, round it.

The witching hour! Goodnight, all


Danny42C




Leader? - he couldn't lead the pigeons round Trafalgar Square!

Danny42C
24th Mar 2012, 16:51
To all who have sent me PMs and had no reply - my most profound apologies! It never occurred to me that anyone might want to write to me; it was not until daughter borrowed laptop just now, and scornfully pointed out that I had seven unread messages, that realisation dawned. She is now standing over me with big whip and showing me how to do replies.

Covered in shame and confusion,

Danny.

Danny42C
26th Mar 2012, 19:01
(Danny is still at Hawarden)

One day the Flap Gremlin nearly had me. Half way round on finals I put the flaps down. I had always thought that the pair were interlocked, though I suppose there is no reason they should be. They're not - and only one came down. The effect was to roll me out back level (about a quarter turn) in a flash, before I could react. I promptly put flaps up and took it round to come in flapless, 10 mph faster and even more float.

I'd got back to the crewroom before the thought struck me. What if the other flap had stuck up? I'd have been upside down in a moment, wheels down and throttle closed. The early Merlins didn't run inverted. I might have managed to roll out before I hit the deck, but it would have been a very close thing, with perhaps 300 ft to play with. Nobody seemed greatly bothered by the story! I never heard of that happening again.

I've a soft spot for the Wellington, even though one did cut me up. Not that I ever flew in them, but one proved a good friend. It happened this way. I've mentioned Station Defence Days, we had two while I was at Hawarden. To avoid wasting good flying time, we had them at night, and each time it was raining.

A truck dropped off little groups of us at points round the taxiway. What the nature of the "threat" was, and what we were supposed to do about it, I can't remember. The main thing was that we had to be there, for the Orderly Officer would come round at odd hours during the night to check. Skulking back to our quarters was not an option, they had Service Police posted to foil this. So a miserable little group huddled together, the rain dripping off our caps and groundsheets. But nearby a Wimpey was parked on the grass, awaiting delivery.

Why not get under a wing? It'd be dry there, and you could see the (masked) lights of the Orderly Officer's van in plenty of time to man your "post". No sooner said than done. Then, "I wonder if the fuselage door is locked?" We tried it, it wasn't. "Bingo!" All aboard except for a lookout. Not only were we four snug and dry, but there was a canvas bunk down the rear of the aircraft.* Now we were really set up for the night, all we had to do was to work out a roster for the bunk and the lookout!

* Calling all Wimpey experts, why, on an operational aircraft with no spare crew?


More later,

Danny.




Please, Sir, I'm not lost - it's just that I don't know where I am!

kookabat
26th Mar 2012, 22:59
Calling all Wimpey experts, why, on an operational aircraft with no spare crew?

Not a Wimpey expert but... for casualties? I believe the Lancaster had something similar.

Adam

Danny42C
29th Mar 2012, 19:50
I flew 75 hours on the Spit at Hawarden, but have only the haziest recollection of what we actually did. My logbook is no help, the entries being, as usual, Ex(ercise) 15B or something of the sort, which is no use to me now. There was a lot of formation practice, up to 12-aircraft "balbos"*, cross-countries and we must have done a fair amount of aerobatics and mock combat. What I am more clear about is what we didn't do. There was no night flying; it would be difficult in any case because of the exhaust flame dazzle (particularly on the overrun, with throttle closed on landing).

It must have been contemplated at one time, though, for I remember that the undercarriage tell-tale** (a very simple little two-part panel with red "down" and green "up" sections) - [EDIT, got it wrong, haven't I? Short Term Memory Loss!] - had a tiny dolls-house roller blind to reduce glare after dark. But in any case, the Spit wasn't used as a night fighter.

Note* : Pre-war, a Marshal Balbo led 12 Italian flying boats on a world tour. The RAF used his name as a generic term for any large formation.

Note** : From the top surface of each wing, quite close to the cockpit, a retractable, pencil-thick, about four-inch long rod would pop up to confirm "wheels down".

You'd think we would practice air gunnery. Not so, the only time I pressed the "fire" button was in a Mk. II with two 20mm cannon. The idea was to give us an idea of what it felt like to fire the things. They loaded half-a-dozen rounds into each gun, and sent us off to a ground range near Prestatyn to blaze away into the sands. What a row! I thought the wings would come off with the hammering the guns gave them, and was glad to see them still hanging on after I'd loosed off my ammo.

There was an amusing (for the bystanders) incident in which this Spit was involved. An armourer was tinkering with the firing button in the cockpit. A second airman walked past right in front of the aircraft when the guns unexpectedly fired. As he was exactly in line with the nose, the rounds passed harmlessly either side of him and off to the Welsh hills. The gun camera (in the port wing root) still had film in it, it worked and this was developed. Seemingly, the prints clearly showed his hair standing on end!

In hindsight, I can't think why they didn't use these gun cine cameras for our training. All Spits had them - or did when they left the factory, and we could have been put up on mock combat practice. The film, developed and analysed, would show how well (or how badly!) we'd "fought". But no, I suppose it would have taken too much time, or would be too much trouble, or would cost too much, or film was in short supply. Whatever the reason, your brand-new fighter pilot might well join his squadron having fired nothing bigger than the popgun he had as a toddler.

Clay-pigeon practice would have been better than nothing, it would have taught us the basics of deflection shooting, but we didn't even do any of that.
Really, I suppose air combat (I never did any) must be rather like learning to ride a bike; there's absolutely no way to learn except by having a go and seeing how you get on (here's a Heinkel, lad, see what you can do with it!) The best pilot by no means ends up with the best score:

Can't fly but can shoot,
He still can be a bit of a brute.
Can fly but can't shoot,
For him the Huns don't give a hoot!

All things considered, I think the CFI's "lesson" alone was worth more than everything else we learned at Hawarden put together. After all, if you can just stay alive, chances of a "kill" are bound to come along from time to time, aren't they?

A Swordfish landed one morning and lumbered across to the Duty Flight. This large and obsolete (but still very effective) Navy biplane had most likely come in from a carrier in Liverpool Bay. What caught our expert eyes was a strange, convoluted array of tubing under both lower wings. Some new kind of radar, perhaps? We toddled across to have a look. But before we got there, all was made plain. A bike was lashed to each practice bomb rack. The two matelots hopped out, untied them, straightened the handlebars, then booked-in and pedalled off to the fleshpots of Chester. Full marks to the True Blue!

That'll do for the time being,

Goodnight, all.

Danny42C


(The curious "wraparound " failure in my 8th para seems to stem from my laptrop).




Thank God we've got a Navy (or have we?)

harryhrrs
30th Mar 2012, 16:25
Hi, I was an armourer in the RAF in 1941 and this piece of equipment has left an indelible memory in my mind. The "rear sear spring retainer keeper" was a very small piece of metal at the rear of the breech block of a Browning 303 machine gun, which - believe it or not - kept the rear sear spring retainer in place. I can't remember the shape but I certainly remember the name. Can't remember what I did yesterday though. I'm knocking on 90 and still play keyboard, entertaining in old age homes. I can play more than 2000 songs from memory - without even thinking "what's the next note" but if I go from one room to another I can't remember why.
All the best
Harry

Chugalug2
30th Mar 2012, 18:19
Hi Harry, welcome to the thread! Don't worry about short term memory loss, for only long term is needed here. The amazing recall from that far back is as you say amazing, as the posts of our many contributors testify. So get stuck in with more "Naming of the Parts" or whatever else may come to mind.
I was struck by the information (was it posted here?) that the four cannon ammunition feeds in the nose of the Westland Whirlwind Fighter were designed by a Process Engineer. Baked Bean tins and Cannon Shells it seems have a lot in common ;-)
Danny, your tale of being exiled to a cold and wet night's airfield guard duty brings back memories of my own of a snowed in Oakington 1962/63. It had snowed, thawed, refrozen, snowed, thawed, refrozen, etc, while we student pilots were on Christmas Grant. We returned to find a flap on, as every RAF runway except ours was rapidly attaining "Black Top" status, thanks to such things as Goblin engines mounted on trailers. 5FTS had none of these, but plenty of us students. So armed with shovels, spades, pick axes, brushes and whatever else might fit the bill, we were herded out to the runway. Unfortunately a previous attempt to clear the snow, involving Vampires parked in echelon on the runway with engines revving, had merely melted the snow, but with iced up drains the slush soon froze hard. Hence the pick axes! Eventually half the length and half the width was cleared. The CFI fired up a Vampire, took off in the cleared length, did a circuit and landed. He soon used up the cleared bit, overran into the contaminated bit, and only came to a halt thanks to the barrier.
Luckily for us they then went to plan B, and we flew out the aircraft (Varsities) to Wyton and flew from there, until nature did what we could not. I've never been so cold and so miserable! If they'd tried to get us to dig out the whole runway length I think we might have seen the second RAF mutiny!

Petet
30th Mar 2012, 20:05
Sorry to interrupt the flow but there is a question circulating on other forums about whether any of the seats fitted on the Lancaster (or any of the heavy bombers) were fitted with harnesses or lapstraps.

The question started with whether the fold down "second dickey" seat had one, but the question has widened from there.

Can any of the veterans assist with this question? If the answer is there were no restraints (which is current thinking) how did the crew cope with a corkscrew?

Any help to solve this mystery would be brilliant

Danny42C
30th Mar 2012, 23:55
Harry,

Welcome aboard, and congrats on your first solo! We can certainly do with some new blood on this Thread. I can't do better than second Chugalug's suggestion in his earlier Post #2359 p118, and I quote:

"Let it be yet another British idiosyncracy that a thread about pilot brevets includes all other ones as well, as well as none at all ! Well, why shouldn't it ?"

Couldn't have put it better myself ! We were all on the same side - come on in - the water's fine !

Now we can ask all the armourer questions which have been troubling us. For starters, was it true (as I was told) that the British .303 Brownings stopped with the block at the rear, but the American .300 ones forward, so that there was one always "up the spout", which could go off spontaneously in a hot gun ? (the thing I flew had two of each - I ought to know, but I don't !)




Chugalug,

Ah, the winter of 62/63 - (what use would the wind farms have been then, with that enormous high anchored right on top of us, no wind and ground temperatures never rising above freezing for about six weeks ?) Just back from (centrally heated) Germany, I was at Linton, we had a rig with two Derwents mounted on a kind of pallet pushed by a 2500 gallon bowser. They gave it welly, the sheet ice in front flaked off a treat, but the thrust pushed the bowser backwards at a rate of knots over the ice, so they had to pack it in. Best thing with snow is leave it alone - trouble is convincing the Wg. Cdr. (Flying).

Came across our old friend the triple gauge (remember the Daniel "PT-17" panel ?) It was from a Vultee BT-13 panel (something more sophisticated, I said - how wrong can you be ?). Remember it well, one day in Burma my affrighted gaze fell on one such: oil pressure zero! Got the thing home, then pranged it ! Gunner and self survived all right. Aircraft beyond repair.

Have you any news of Cliff?


Harry and Chugalug, my regards to you both, and Goodnight,


Danny

Hipper
31st Mar 2012, 20:25
The Lancaster Manual (publ Greenhill Books) has two pictures of the pilot's seat. One shows a bucket seat (so the pilot can sit on his parachute) and this shows what could be two straps on the back cushion of the seat, but it is not obvious exactly what they are.

On another picture there is a seat with a padded base (not suitable for the sit on type parachute) and this clearly has a 'Y' shaped strap running over the back cushion such that the two top ends of the 'Y' would go over the shoulders of the pilot. The end of the strap is not visible so it's not possible to see how it connects to anything.

Both pictures show a lever called the 'Pilot's Harness Release Lever' which is situated on the right on the outside front of the arm rest and attached to it (which can be raised so the pilot can get in or out of the seat). This lever looks like it could be hydraulically operated, or some sort of flexible rod, as there seems to be a flexible pipe coming from behind it leading round to the back of the seat.

There's also a photograph of the Flight Engineer's foldaway seat and I can't see any evidence of strapping in the vicinity.

Petet
31st Mar 2012, 22:50
Hipper

Thanks for the feedback on the pilot seat.

Photographs I have seen support the theory that the FE did not have any restraint on his fold down seat.

The position regarding the navigator and wireless operator seats is also unclear but current thinking is that there were no restraints, although one veteran believes there were lapstraps (and one photograph suggests that the navigator seat had a webbing strap of some description).

The assumption is the gunners had no restraints either.

Would be interested to hear from others

Regards

Pete

cliver029
1st Apr 2012, 08:41
Well in one of the publicity photo's for the DamBusters film it shows Richard Todd looking down on the Dam well and truly strapped in................I know I know Hat Coat etc:E

CDR

Petet
1st Apr 2012, 08:51
Thanks cliver029 for your feedback.

I am assuming he was portraying a pilot (excuse my ignorance) in which case, as you say, he would have had a harness to keep him firmly in place.

Assuming that is correct, we have one position on the aircraft sorted, just the other six to go.

Thanks again

kookabat
1st Apr 2012, 10:49
I think this confirms that the pilot in a Lancaster definitely had a seatbelt. From an unpublished manuscript written after the war by S/Ldr DPS Smith, of 467 Sqn - my great uncle's pilot and the only survivor from the crew. This is his description of the moment they were shot down over Lille on 10 May 1944:

We were just about to drop our bombs when everything went hot and dry and red. When the flame had gone out, I was still in my seat but could feel no aeroplane about me. I immediately released my seat belts and then my parachute. It seemed to open immediately...

I've asked another veteran I know (a rear gunner) if he can add to the discussion.

Adam

Hipper
1st Apr 2012, 15:11
Of course a corkscrew manoevre didn't involve a 360 degree roll, 'just' a 45 degree roll:

Evasive maneuvers and formations (http://www.429sqn.ca/acmem.htm)

I would imagine the rest of the crew would hear the 'corkscrew' announcement and take appropriate action. It doesn't matter if they fall out of their seat whereas it is a problem if the pilot does!

fredjhh
1st Apr 2012, 22:32
a lever called the 'Pilot's Harness Release Lever' which is situated on the right on the outside front of the arm rest and attached to it (which can be raised so the pilot can get in or out of the seat). This lever looks like it could be hydraulically operated, or some sort of flexible rod, as there seems to be a flexible pipe coming from behind it leading round to the back of the seat.
Once strapped in with the usual Sutton Harness, this additional lever could slacken off the harness, giving the pilot extra movement, e.g, to lean forward to see the magnetic compass. Simply leaning back tightened the harness.
Whitleys, Wellingtons, Lancs and Halifaxes all had lap straps on the "jump" seats. Engineers on Halifaxes seemed to stand behind the pilot as their instrument panel was situated there, and they had to move to change tanks. When we were inverted and dropped 7,000 ft, my engineer "hit the roof."
I think Gunners and Navigators used lap straps.
All the above mentioned heavy bombers had a "bed," or stretcher, in the rear. Carrying an unconscious Bomb-aimer from the bows to the bed, using portable oxygen bottles, was hard work. Other casualties went on the floor (deck.)
]rear sear spring retainer keeper[/I]. I remember it well, but I know nothing of the differences between British & American Brownings.
In the sixties and the seventies I regularly met some of the wartime ATA women pilots, and their log books made our eyes water. To qualify for heavy aircraft they attended a Halifax conversion flight. If they passed, they were qualified to fly all four engined aeroplanes, except flying boats.
They had flight engineers (ATA) for the bigger aircraft.

Danny42C
2nd Apr 2012, 21:58
A Funny Thing happened to me one day.

Open cockpits are fine in the summer in Florida, and you're glad to have your canopy open in places like India. English weather is different - you keep it closed or freeze to death. But there is the odd warm day, and this was one of them. I slid the canopy back. You normally flew with your seat as high as possible, so as to get the best all-round view (of marauding CFIs!), so your head is usually only an inch or so under the perspex.

My goggles (pushed up on my head) flew off. Held by the band which is buckled to the back of the helmet, they fluttered madly about in the slipstream. I slammed the canopy forward. It shut - with the goggles still outside, but now with the band jammed in the frame, and consequently with me pinned to the top of it by the scruff of the neck! My head was so close to the canopy catch that I couldn't get my hands behind to open it.

Now what? I could see by squinting sideways, and reach the spadegrip at full stretch. I could still fly, but I certainly couldn't land. Not the brightest pebble on the beach, it took me a few seconds to realise what to do. Take your helmet off, idiot! Done, now to retrieve the goggles. It would be a bit of a struggle with the canopy catch as the band was jammed in it.

Now my readers are settled back in delighted anticipation. You know what's going to happen next, don't you? The canopy flies back, the goggles act as a pilot chute and pull out the helmet, which acts as main chute and takes out mask, oxygen tube and then yanks out radio flex and plug! All overboard in half a second!

Stop grinning, it didn't happen, I'm not as thick as that. I secured my end of the flex, and now I could get both hands on the two "butterfly" catches (leaving the Spit to fly itself for a bit). With some difficulty, I got the canopy open and "all was safely gathered in". I was not to go down in RAF legend as "The Man who Managed to Lose his Helmet in the Air"; (although years later it seemed for a while that I might be "The Man who Lost the Corpse he was supposed to be Looking After", but that must be a story for another day).

Changing the subject, you might be interested in the tale of the Dual Spitfires.
I first heard of these in the early sixties, but didn't really believe they existed until I saw one for myself at Coxyde (Ostend), looking very sorry for itself under a tarpaulin in the rain. For who on earth would want such a thing? Apparently some people did, and I was told various stories. They all agreed in that the RAF had nothing to do with them, apart from supplying a number of Mk. IXs for the conversion. I have heard several figures, but 20 seems to be about right. First I was told that someone like Marshalls of Cambridge or Oxford Air Services had done the job. Now I believe that they went back to Vickers, which seems more likely, for it would have been a tricky conversion. Who was the customer, though? First I was told that it was the Belgian Air Force, which tied in with the Ostend specimen I'd seen in 61.

But quite recently I've been whiling away some time in a Hospital waiting room, and picked up a dog-eared copy of "What Car". In it , James May gives an account of a ride in one, and he puts the finger on the Irish Air Corps - it figures! (and no, it's no use setting the Race Relations police on me, with my name I can crack any Irish joke I like, and they can't touch me!). Seriously, the best known example (the "Grace" Spitfire) is a heartening story in itself.

Why would the Irish (or anyone else) want them? Anyone who's been trained to Wings standard in any Air Force can surely jump into a Spit and take it away? As an advanced trainer, perhaps? Why, when the world was full of redundant Harvards? Doesn't make sense. And the aircraft's C of G must have gone walkabout, for they put a panel, seat and pilot with controls where just a radio set used to live. It can't have been pleasant to fly.

That'll do for the time being,

Goodnight, all,

Danny42



Why do Kerry dogs have flat faces? - from chasing parked cars!

fredjhh
2nd Apr 2012, 22:37
Now what? I could see by squinting sideways, and reach the spadegrip at full stretch. I could still fly, but I certainly couldn't land.

Shades of Saturday morning cinema in the 1920s. Last few breathless moments. We puzzled all week, wondering how our hero would escape.
Next Saturday, "With one bound, Danny was free........"
Fredjhh

Chugalug2
3rd Apr 2012, 07:21
fredjhh:
Shades of Saturday morning cinema in the 1920s.
..and even into the 50s Fred! I am proud to reveal that I was an ABC Minor, and still have my membership card somewhere to prove it.
Would Flash escape this time from the Merciless Ming, having rescued Dale from a fate worse than death? Would he then be able to light the sparkler that seemingly powered his space ship suspended on wire? All would be revealed next Saturday, after the birthday parade, community singing, and Abbott and Costello, of course....
Wonderful images conjured up there, Danny. I wonder though if you shared the experience quite so freely at the time, or was it a case of "Mum's the word"? As you say the Grace Spit is an inspiration, not simply by being a Spitfire, though that is enough in itself, but because of the tale of love and devotion that goes with it. As to why it was, I'll leave that to those that know. I rather suspect though that if it had not been converted it would have never been restored, and would by now be a very ex set of saucepans!

Petet
3rd Apr 2012, 08:59
Thanks to everyone for their feedback on the subject of restraints.

I am not sure that we have reached any conclusions across the forums as some say seats had lapstraps (pilot a harness) and some say they did not.

I thought there would be a straightforward answer to this, but clearly information is being lost in time, which is why this thread is so important.

However, having watched "Into the Wind" last night, I can understand why veterans have difficulty putting pen to paper.

Danny42C
3rd Apr 2012, 22:20
Petet

I am sure Fred (#2461 p124) is right about this in his reply to Hipper (query #2455 p123). The "flexible pipe" he saw would be a Bowden cable. All single-seaters in later years had a four-point harness; the two shoulder straps were anchored to a cable behind the top of the seat. The cable ran back round a spring drum, which locked when fully "back" (like your car seat belt).

The pilot had this little release lever by the side of the seat; he needed it to reach the far corners of the cockpit (and that might be quite a way in the big American ones). When he straightened up, the cable ran back and locked (or at least that was the idea).

I know nothing of the "heavies", but would think that the presence of this
"release" proves that there were shoulder straps in the seat.

*************

Fred and Chugalug,

Glad that my "Perils of Pauline" moment raised a smile or two - even after I managed to wriggle out of it! (Ah, those happy flea-pits of long ago!)

*************

Chugalug,

Too right I kept quiet! I've always been a believer in the old adage : " better keep your mouth shut, and let people think you're a fool, than open it and prove it!"

Goodnight, all.

Danny.



"They can't do that to me!"
- "They can do anything to you lad, except put you in the family way - and they'll have a damn' good crack at that !"

Icare9
3rd Apr 2012, 22:42
Danny, those familiar with this thread will understand that somehow Reg and I forged a bond that spanned many years. I know nothing of the war years, but am filled with wonder that night after night "ordinary" men became heroes simply by taking off to take the fight to the enemy.

There are those, as in the Nuremburg thread, that argue about the motives, the strategy if you will, and whether what was done was right.

I cannot judge, but I do know that I question whether I would have done that, night after night, fly 4 hours into enemy territory, using fairly rudimentary aids to find a specific place, then settle down for a minute straight and level till "Bombs gone, Skip" and then find my way home again for another 4 hours, never being able to relax until touchdown. Then the wonder of whether friends on another aircraft made it home or not.

Cliff began this thread and many of us wonder why he has been silent. The reason is not too difficult to guess. He is fighting his hardest foe and I wish him success.

My heart was broken when Reg took his final flight and there is too much dust around tonight for me to see clearly but this thread must go on as a record not only of the training but also the SPIRIT of those men who daily (well, nightly) took the fight to the foe.

Cliff, I wish you well, you created a marvellous testament not only to yourself but for others who cannot voice their memoirs, and for those scarce few that have done so, we salute you.

You have ensured that the Torch of Remembrance has been successfully passed on. Rest easy and God speed.

Danny42C
4th Apr 2012, 00:54
Icare9.

Kevin (I hope you don't mind my using your name), Thank you for passing on the grave news about Cliff. We all suspected and feared it, yet while there is life, there is always hope and we must hold on to it to the end.

I can only join you in your tribute to our in-thread Bomber Command heroes like Reg, Cliff and all the others. Speaking as one whose "operations" were hardly worth the name - they were so (relatively) - safe, I have always marvelled at the repeated courage of those young men who went out, night after fearful night, with full knowledge of the odds against them. "Screwing your courage to the sticking point" is fine enough on even one occasion, but to do it repeatedly over a period of months is on another plane altogether.

Had it fallen to my lot to take part, I hope I would have acquitted myself well, but who can tell ? I was very glad that it didn't.

Of course we must keep this Thread going in their honour, and we will. But keep the questions coming (it's what gives life to it), and let's have some recruits. I'm sure they're out there somewhere.

Thank you again Kevin - keep us posted, and Goodnight,

Danny,

Chugalug2
4th Apr 2012, 08:22
Well spoken Danny. This thread will always be a memorial to "cliffnemo" who started it almost 4 years ago. A memorial to him and all the other brave souls to whom we owe so much. The Nuremberg thread may have raised issues with Harris (who in due course I suspect will be reappraised by the historians just as the WW1 Generals have been) but all are as one in unstinting praise for the volunteer aircrew who went out night after night against fearful odds. Such courage is awesome and humbling.
Cliff, you lived life to the full, from what one learns of your more recent ventures and witness the trail blazing grappling with IT here. Don't stop now, but keep fighting on! Thank you Cliff, for every thing.
Chug

TommyOv
4th Apr 2012, 16:46
...and the same tributes from this corner, too. This thread is an absolutely magnificent memorial to an incredible group of people. Of course, without Cliff it would never have started and all of us reading/contributing would never have been brought together.

Cliff, thank you for starting this thread - the best on this website by a nautical mile. It will continue as a splendid resource for a long time, and I wouldn't be surprised if there's another 400,000 views to come.

Chin up, chap. All the best,

Tommy.

fredjhh
5th Apr 2012, 21:50
I have obtained Cliff's home address and I have written to him, or to his family.
If I get a reply I will post it on the thread.
Fredjhh

thing
5th Apr 2012, 22:04
A wonderful thread, I'm sure many people like me read it and feel too humble to comment but I would just like to pass on my thanks, for what it's worth to you guys who walked the walk and took the war to the enemy. I don't know Cliff but best wishes are sent.

Danny we have a two seat Spit at my flying club and the CG problem was solved by moving the front cockpit forward by around 19 inches if memory serves me correctly and making the fuel tank smaller.

Danny42C
5th Apr 2012, 23:48
thing,

Thanks! - that would certainly help, and I'd think they'd have shoved it further forward still if they could, but then there'd be no room at all for the tank!

The whole thing looks slimmer and longer than a "normal" Spit, but I suppose that must be an optical illusion.

Cheers,

Danny.

fredjhh
6th Apr 2012, 17:37
To all Pprune's of this great thread. I received this e-mail a few moments ago.

Dear Fred,
I am the son of Clifford Leach.
Thanks for the kind letter which we received yesterday morning.
Unfortunately dad passed away in the early hours this morning.He had been diagnosed with cancer in December and deteriorated rapidly in the last week. I managed to read him your letter yesterday and, even though he was unable to speak, he listened attentively.

I do not have time at the moment to go into more detail, but I will visit the forum soon. The family would like to thank Pprune members for their enquiries in my father, his writings have been of great interest to all of us. Please pass on my regards to them all.

best wishes,

Bill Leach

God bless you, Cliff. I am sure you made a perfect 3 pointer landing. Certainly your approach was impeccable.
Fredjhh

Danny42C
6th Apr 2012, 19:50
Fred,

Requiem aeternam dona eum Domine.

Sad news indeed. Thank you for bringing it to us so promptly. Please pass on to Bill and the family the sympathy and condolences of all us PPRuNers (for I am sure I speak for all) who have enjoyed, and are continuing to enjoy, this magnificent thread which he founded. Let's keep it up as long as we can.

God bless you,

Danny.

Icare9
6th Apr 2012, 19:50
Bill, when you are able to visit this thread, please read Posts 2468 to 2475 to know a very little of how much Cliff has been appreciated for initiating one of the "must read" threads on any forum I know of.

I do wish the news had been better, but the ever lengthening silence would have been broken, had Cliff been able to do so.

It does fall to us now to try and provoke a response from Project Propellor and the fast dwindling band of those who were in the RAF during that most hazardous of times, WW2.

Please, YOUR memories are not just yours, they include all those who did not return. If for no one else, tell it for them.

Sunny skies, Cliff, it'll be several large ones in your Name tonight

Petet
6th Apr 2012, 20:36
What a sad loss.

We will be forever indebted to you Cliff; your contribution of information and photographs for use in our research was priceless; God bless you.

Pete and Laura

KN647
7th Apr 2012, 10:23
You sound knowledgeable - what is QDH and what is a 'Safety Path'?
This is from a 1954 Kenya RAF crash investigation.

Much appreciated if you could enlighten me.

Regards, NICK

Xercules
7th Apr 2012, 10:23
I am only a very recent reader of this forum and my plea is made all the more urgent because of the very sad news of Cliff’s departure. His contribution in starting this forum and his continuing comments have been a delight being both informative and amusing and above all valuable. Please pass on my condolences and best wishes to his family. Through this forum his name will live on with the many of us who have so enjoyed his company and memories.



My father, apparently, also trained under the Arnold Scheme although, in common with many mentioned here, he rarely spoke about his experiences and I certainly then never asked him about them. Unfortunately, he was killed in a hit and run accident some 35 years ago. The only clues I currently have are in some old photographs with the stamp of McCollum’s Photo Shop, Albany GA on the back. One of these is of my father (in shorts only) his head down in his books, dated Jul 29 1941. I also met Mr and Mrs Carter who had befriended him (hospitality as frequently mentioned in the blog and in the book) and were on their Grand Tour of Europe on Mr Carter’s retirement. That was some time in the late 50’s as they stayed with my grandparents on their visit to the UK.



My father was LAC Cook E 1072966, information I can obtain from his (RCAF issue) Observer’s and Air Gunner’s Flying Log Book. I knew he had not completed pilot training. At that time he would have been aged 28 which does seem rather old and may have been part of the reason.



His first observer experience was on 27 November 1941 in an Anson piloted by P/O Sorby from No 33 ANS, Mount Hope, Hamilton, Ontario. He completed that course on 14 February 1942 (his birthday) and then went to No 31 B&GS (Bombing and Gunnery School) at Picton on No 38 Course until 27 April 1942.



Working from his log book:



On 12 May 42 he did 2 hrs 40 in a Ventura flying from Moosehead Lake, Maine doing Sunsights, followed on 17 May with 5hrs 10 at night in a Hudson from Windsor to Montreal doing astro navigation. Both are logged as first navigator. There is no evidence of any training in either the Ventura or the Hudson.

Then on 19 May with pilot P/O Sargent he flew Montreal/Dorval– Presque Isle – Gander before at 0900 on 22 May setting off from Gander to Millom, a 12hr 20 flight of which 5 hrs 10 was at night, and then finally to Prestwick on 24 May. (I never did get to ask him about the Flyers in 1942!)

He then appears to have been commissioned, as the first entry with a P/O signature is the August 1942 summary at 5 OTU, Turnberry where he was on No 20 Cse flying Ansons and Beauforts.

He left for North Africa in March 1943 and served at 5 METS (Beaufort) and then 39 Sqn (Beaufort –May/June 43) and 458 Sqn (Wellington – July to October 1943) and Communication (?) flying (Fairchild, Anson and Ventura) at HQ 203 Group before returning to the UK between February and May 1945.



I have applied to RAF Records for his Record of Service but there will be a wait of several months before they can reply and it will, no doubt, be more of the bones and little of the meat. However, my plea is simple– is there anybody out there who remembers him and can give me any other information about his wartime career either as a cadet pilot or cadet/qualified observer/navigator? Any information at all will be very gratefully received.

kookabat
7th Apr 2012, 11:47
Blue skies and tailwinds, Cliff. Blue skies and tailwinds.

Adam Purcell
Melbourne

Danny42C
7th Apr 2012, 16:23
Nick,

I think this is a typo for QDM (there doesn't appear to be a QDH).

QDM is a "steer", or a request for one.

Your "Safety Path" sounds like the "Safety Lane" which is associated with a QGH ("Controlled Descent through Cloud", or a request for one - yes, I know the book answer is "May I Land ?", but I never heard it used in that sense).

In a QGH procedure, the ATC used manual (or later CR/DF and CADF) bearings to "home" the aircraft down a "Safety Lane" to the airfield. The only "Safe" thing about it was that there were no hills sticking up in it. It might be full of other aircraft, but unless they were under his control, or on radar, the ATC wouldn't know.

I would think that this procedure might well be in use in Kenya in those days.

Cheers,

Danny.

rmventuri
7th Apr 2012, 19:51
So many have learned so much from what you started in the fabric of these wonderful poetic stories written by those who lived it. Quoting from post #1

Well here goes ... So full power, wheels up, flap in by five, and 2850 plus 9. We are away ... PHEW. wonder if any one is interested ... God Bless

Rodger

rmventuri
7th Apr 2012, 20:24
5 OTU Turnberry caught my eye as my father trained there as a Hampden pilot Sept 1942 to Feb 1943. 5(c) OTU was part of Coastal Command equiped with Beauforts and Hampdens both of which had been "fitted" with a single large torpedo for anti ship operations - you might see reference to 1 TTU Turnberry (Torpedo Training Unit). Right around Feb/Mar 1943 5 OTU moved to Long Kesh and Maghaberry. Turnberry retaining 1 TTU. I know that around the time your father was stationed in North Africa some graduating classes were being sent from Turnberry to Malta to shore up air support for the latter stages of Operation Torch (ousting Rommel from North Africa). Don't know anything about 5 Middle East Training School. Operation Torch ended in May '43 when the Germans capitulated.

If you are interested I can PM you with the e mail of a researcher having many records and photos of 5 OTU Turnberry.

Chugalug2
8th Apr 2012, 09:49
So sorry to hear of Cliff's death. My sincere condolences to you Bill, and to the rest of your family. I hope that the really great affection and respect for your father felt among the membership of PPRuNe is of some consolation to you. This thread stands here as his memorial, and to all of his compatriots including those now posting and those who are yet to do so. He fearlessly tackled the IT challenges of posting, including the all important visual evidence from photos and logbooks, as he did with every new challenge and opportunity. He indeed lived life to the full, and is an example to everyone, and not only aircrew, as to how to live a good life. I may not have had the privilege of meeting him, but feel grateful to have learned so much from him on the pages of this thread.
RIP Cliff, now up in the wide blue yonder...
Chug

TommyOv
8th Apr 2012, 21:02
So very sorry to hear that Cliff - one of PPRuNe's finest contributers - has passed away. The history contained in this thread is priceless and it is in large part down to him.

Bill, if you've not already done so, a read of this thread from start to finish may give you an idea of the esteem in which your father was held. Long may it continue.

Kind regards to you and your family,

Tom

Bill Stig
9th Apr 2012, 19:18
Thank you for all your kind messages of best wishes regarding my father Cliff.
He was extremely proud of this thread and has left a printed copy for his grandson. As a part of our families history it has been invaluable to us, and I am sure, along with other contributers, of great interest to others.

A week before he passed away he was given the opportunity to fly again when his friend, Jim Coleman, arranged for a free flight with Liverpool Flying School. He did not think he could make the trip to John Lennon Airport, but with help he made it there and was astounded that he was ordered straight into the pilots seat and took the controls for the whole flight. He was told that if it wasn't for a strong cross wind he would have been allowed to land the plane.

Once again, thanks to everyone here and long may this thread continue while it can.
Now get to your keyboards and tell your tales!

Bill Leach

Petet
9th Apr 2012, 21:49
Bill

Thank you for your kind message in what must be sad and difficult times for you and your family.

I am glad to hear that Cliff managed a final flight .... I hope he wore his flying gauntlets that he so proudly displayed for us some months back!!.

I hope other veterans are inspired by your "call to keyboard" .. I would love to hear more about Basic Training, Initial Training Wings, EFTS / SFTS etc

An interactive forum, where you can question the information supplier, is worth 1000 books ..... please keep it going ... it is a priceless resource.

If anyone has any memories of RAF Regents Park we would love to hear about them.

Union Jack
10th Apr 2012, 10:32
As someone who has followed this wonderful thread from Day 1, increasingly enthralled and with the greatest admiration for all the "original" contributors, from Cliff, through Regle, Fred et al, and now their successor, the equally talented and very articulate Danny, my very sincere respects.

And Bill, thank you so much for sharing what are such strong and personal family memories, especially the marvellous story of your great Father's last earthly flight - a wonderful last entry in the logbook of a very distinguished pilot with a brevet very well earned.

Jack