PDA

View Full Version : Gaining An R.A.F Pilots Brevet In WW II


Pages : 1 2 [3] 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52

Mike Read
17th Feb 2009, 16:05
Re flying into cables, when stationed at Tangmere in the mid fifties the Station Commander, Gp Capt Jonny Kent regaled us with stories of doing that. He was not impressed, having been swung round a balloon cable when trying to test a device for cutting it. I understand that it was a "no-go".

andyl999
17th Feb 2009, 16:30
Yes he has a book out and I was horrified to read the chapter about how he missed the wire, then got a b***iking from his boss and had to keep going up until he cut it (or fell out of the sky).

I think I would have rather joined Reg and gone on a bombing raid! Maybe not:oh:

andyl999
17th Feb 2009, 16:47
Cliff, I have seen these BFTS dates before and I think they are wrong? Please see these I took in Terrell last year, they indicate a August start for BFTS 1:-
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v616/andyl999/Vernon/IMG_0568.jpg

Also seen at Terrell:-

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v616/andyl999/Vernon/IMG_0563.jpg

Any more information from readers would be helpful

cliffnemo
18th Feb 2009, 09:56
ANDY,
On Mikes post does the * on the Terrel entry mean anything to you ?
---------------------
* All but No. 6 started their training at other bases until their permanent bases were opened in July/August 1941.



-------------------

andyl999
18th Feb 2009, 10:35
Yes Cliff, i saw that but the Terrell calender shows the first intake of 50 cadets to Terrell on August 2nd.
Therefore I think Mike may have the dates wrong, I will investigate!

cliffnemo
22nd Feb 2009, 15:41
About three months after arriving at Carlisle and after the court martial, I was posted back to Harrogate, and as I had my motorbike at Carlisle I made arrangements with another cadet to take my kitbag back on the train. As my flying clothing was expensive, for security and warmth I decided to wear it. So clothed in flying helmet, goggles , silk inner suit , Sidcot suit , silk inner gloves , leather gauntlet gloves, suede flying boots I returned to Harrogate. Travelling down the A6 in convoy with hundreds of American, Tanks, Jeeps etc, I felt like staying with them all the way to Southampton, and France.

I can’t remember much about this period at Harrogate, but note I had three lessons on the Link trainer, and remember that I could travel home each weekend. Pressure was still put on me to transfer to the fleet air arm, despite my protests that I would not be able to operate efficiently when seasick under rough conditions. Strangely enough I was never air sick, even during two hours solid aerobatics.. After about a month or so I was then posted to Whitley bay, which I think was a months ‘unarmed combat’ course, where we learned a form of karate, and how to kill using knives, guns, with the usual P.T and swimming. The only highlight of my stay at Whitley Bay that I remember, is that one pub I visited, when I gave the landlord a shilling for a pint, he always gave me change for two shillings and wouldn’t change his mind. It was then back to Harrogate.

Wonder if you are as bored as I was.

regle
22nd Feb 2009, 17:03
I think that, unwittingly, a telephone conversation with Andy may have revealed a very possible start to the "Gone for a Burton" story.
I recalled the story of Burtons , the Tailors. They had and may still have, a large store in Blackpool. It was in the prime position of the corner of North Promenade and Church St. (at that time the main shopping street in Blackpool.) It had a huge window which went around the natural curve on the corner of the two streets. To you technically minded you will have grasped that this formed the wide entrance to a natural venturi tube. The natural conclusion was that every time there was a gale , depending on the severity of the wind force, Burton's window blew in. As they were directly on the promenade facing west there were lots of these gales and even storms so the expression " Burton's window has gone again" was probably changed, over the years to "The window's gone for a Burton again ". That's my theory anyway.
We left the "saga" on Jan 28th.1944 when , after my trip to Berlin I was told by the C.O. "Wilky" that my ops were finished and I was given leave to go to St.Helens to see my Wife and newborn baby son , Peter. I had to return to Snaith although the whole of my Flight, C Flight were going to be transferred to nearby Burn to form the nucleus of a new Squadron, 578. On returning to Snaith, Wilky asked me to stay on at the station for a while and gave me the task of flying with several new crews who were arriving to replace the "C" Flight crews who were going to Burn in February. This I did for a week or so and then was asked, again by Wilky to do an Instructor's course to gain an Instructor's certificate and was posted to a charming little Instructors training school at Lulsgate Bottom, near Bristol. One May morning I opened one of the Mess newspapers and saw that I had been awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross for "conduct during a long and arduous Operational tour". Due to failing health the King had been forced to give up the practice of investing Honours personally so my DFC came through the letter box many months later and the enclosed letter from the King still bears Peter's teethmarks where he tried to eat it when he got hold of it one day.
After a pleasant renewal of acquaintance with the good old Oxford, I received the requisite Instructor's rating and was posted back to 4 Group to 1652 Heavy Conversion Unit at Marston Moor. There I was entrusted with the task of converting "sprog" pilots to the beaten up ,barely airworthy old Halifaxes that were all that Bomber Command could spare for the crews about to be sent to the Squadrons, reeling from the dreadful losses that they were taking. Here I renewed acquaintance with one of the great characters of the RAF. Arthur Caygill was a fellow member of 51 Sqdn. and also a Blackpool Grammar Schoolmate. He was always known as "The Baron" and had finished his tour before I had finished mine. He was notorious for a series of school escapades but his best one and, also his last, was during the Master's temporary absence, Arthur looked out of the classroom window and saw a busload of girls from our Sister school awaiting their driver. He climbed out of the window and took them on a tour around Stanley Park. They probably had a better time than if their proper driver had been there. Trouble was it was the first time that he had ever driven in his life. Whilst at Snaith he had an old Austin seven and on the last trip of his tour, Arthur well and truly beat up the airfield. His Aircraft was seen to ,literally, jump fifty feet higher as he went over the Control Tower when he saw his Austin Seven perched there on the balcony where his Ground Crew had manhandled it with some valuable help from the Engineers' crane.
We were both made Flight Commanders of different Flights at Marston Moor and, as such, were given motor bikes for our personal transport. So Arthur organised a series of moto-cross races around the airfield with the finishing lap up the steps of the Officer's Mess around the ante room, finishing at the bar.
I had, by now, purchased my own very first car. It was a BSA three wheeler that I bought from one of the "erks" on the maintenance flight. It cost me £5 which was a fair amount those days. It was an open topped car that had seen better days but it was put in better shape by our good lads from maintenance who even "won" the perspex nose from a condemned Halifax and attached it to the car so that I had a convertible saloon when I pulled the perspex over me. To my everlasting regret, I never got a photograph of it. Trouble was the exhaust was none existent and when I drove over the Penines to see my new family in a nice little house that Dora's Grandmother (Called "Frosty" but never to her face !) owned, I pulled up outside and all the neighbours came running out to see what they thought sounded like a tank regiment arriving. I persuaded her to come for a ride and she did so but stuffed cotton wool in Peter's little ears. We proudly set off but it soon broke down and we all had to get the tram back. Once ,later, when the car was running comparatively well we went for a run taking Nell, our little dog. The perspex top had "gone for a Burton" by now, so we attached Nell within the car by fixing her lead to one of the hood supports. We had just set off from some traffic lights when we were stopped by shouts and waving of arms from pedestrians. Nell had jumped out of the car and was running like mad on her lead still attached to the car. Luckily she had not come to any harm. Probably because the old BSA could not go fast enough.
One day the Baron suggested that we should go and visit the nearby Tadcaster Brewery of Sam Smith and Sons. Petrol was very strictly rationed of course, but the problem was solved by the Baron who produced about three litres of M.T. Petrol (MT was the Motor Tranport section of the RAF). This petrol was always brightly coloured red so that it could easily be identified. The Directors of Samuel Smith warmly welcomed the two Officers of the RAF although their transport got some funny looks. They would not hear of us sampling the light ale for which the brewery was famous. No, the Director's Cabinet was ceremoniously opened and out came the single malt whisky. It was two rather fragile figures that staggered to the waiting BSA a few hours later. We managed to get it started....there was no self starter so it always had to be cranked.. and wound our way through country lanes in the general direction of Marston Moor. Then the engine began sputtering and I realised that we were running out of petrol. The Baron, as always, had a solution. Under the bonnet, the petrol tank was just in front of the dashboard and gravity fed the carburettor. There was no pump.. So by opening the bonnet then lying along the windscreen with his legs on the offside, the Baron could get his mouth over the tank filler opening and, by blowing hard, put enough pressure in the tank to feed the last remaining drops to the engine. It worked and we were weaving our way along when we heard the sound of a bell, a gong to be precise. All Police Cars "Gonged" you those days. A disbelieving policeman pulled his Wolseley in front of us and nearly collapsed laughing when the Baron, with all the dignity of a Country squire got off the bonnet and said "Is there something wrong, Officer ?". His dignity was somewhat marred by the circle of red around his mouth from the M.T.petrol . The nearly hysterical policeman went to his car, got out a can of petrol, poured it in to our tank, then said " Now, B....r off and for God's sake don't tell anyone you've seen me"
That's it for now but just for your interest there was a tune that was very popular around the thirties.. here's the chorus . No prizes if anyone can remember the verses. Think Harry Roy or Billy Cotton.
"I'm Gertie, the girl with a gong
and I saw your car speed along.
If you go over thirty,
then Gertie gets shirty
And tinkles a tune on her gong. Cheers, Reg

regle
25th Feb 2009, 18:03
England in 1943 was a veritable Island Aircraft Carrier. I always maintained that at an altitude of 5,000 feet, anywhere from Newcastle, down to Dover in a straight line , you could cut all your engines and make a dead stick landing on an aerodrome. I never tried it in case I was told to go round again as another aircraft was on the approach.
There was a very good RAF magazine , issued by Training Command , called TEE EMM (Training Manual.) It carried a monthly award of "The Most HIghly Derogatory Order of the Irremoveable Digit". It was awarded , each month, for the worst "Black". I should have been the recipient one month. 4 Group, to which I belonged, had three Heavy Conversion Units, Riccall, Rufforth and Marston Moor all quite close to each other. Our job as Instructors was to take the crews as they came to us, probably with a certain amount of time on aircraft such as Oxfords and convert them, as crews, on to Halifaxes prior to their postings to Operational Squadrons within the group. We had also to try and make sure that they were beginning to interact as crews as it was very unlikely that they had ever flown together before. After some satisfactory circuits and bumps had been performed they had to be checked for night flying. The procedure was that the Instructor went up and watched the Captain perform one or two satisfactory landings and then get out and let him do three or four landings on his own and with his crew for the first time. I watched, with approval, one night, as my pupil took off and landed perfectly for two landings. "O.K." I said "Taxi to the Control Tower, I'll get out and you can do do four more by yourself". When I got in the Control Tower I didn't recognise any of the personnel. We had taken off from Marston Moor and landed at Rufforth. Not only that but my pupil had taken off again and landed at Marston Moor. The Control Officer told me that it was happening all the time. When I telephoned Marston Moor and asked for transport I was told by the O.C. Flying to "Bloody well walk back !
The Station Commander of an R.A.F Station, usually with the rank of Group Captain, always had a Tiger Moth at his disposal for "communicating " with other Stations in the Group. The "Tee Emm" award was given, one month, to Group Captain X (They never gave names, happily ) for landing his Tiger Moth at an airfield and studiously avoiding all conversation until he had the chance to see D.R.O's (Daily Routine Orders) on the Mess notice board to find out where he was. The next month "Tee Emm" acknowledged receipt from four Group Captains asking them how the hell they had found out. That's my lot for now. I hope that you have'nt heard all the somewhat aged stories. Trouble is I am only able to remember the older things and can't remember all that I did yesterday. Anyway some of the things are so old most of you won't have known of them. As I said to Orville "You'll never get this thing off the ground ". Reg

regle
27th Feb 2009, 16:00
Cliff, I am never bored reading your so interesting "war". It is really interesting as I am pretty certain that everyone who served at that time has a completely different and just as interesting tale to tell It is a bit like the different stories told by several witnesses to a car accident. Your Belgian friend is so typical of the many Belgian pilots that I met and I bet that he would have a very different story of his war.
Seems very quiet on the Forum at the present...must be the recession that we are told so often we are in, Reg.

XV490
27th Feb 2009, 17:07
Gentlemen - Apologies for the interjection - I just wanted to say that my late father used the phrase "gone for a Burton". It was common parlance among his pals in their Royal Artillery unit, the 158 (Jungle) Regiment, in India and Burma during the war. Not just an RAF saying!

It's a privilege to read all your recollections. Long may they last. Thank you for them!

Wig Wag
28th Feb 2009, 09:11
This is easily one of the best threads ever on Pprune. There is no shortage of accounts as to what happened at the sharp end of WW2 air operations. I was weaned on 'Reach for the Sky, the 'Dambusters' and the 'Battle of Britian'. However, this individual detailed account of one man's journey through the training machine is really insightful. The story behind the story is a good one! I really like all the passing anecdotes that complete the picture of what life was like at the time and look forward to the next episode please!

More please Cliff!

cliffnemo
28th Feb 2009, 10:45
Thank you Wig Wag. Just working on the next one, but fingers a bit tired.

7x7
28th Feb 2009, 10:59
Well, don’t I feel like a smug and very clever dick for suggesting Cliff start this thread? Cliff and others who were there and walked the walk, keep the tales coming please. I wish I’d been as accurate in predicting the current economic crisis as I was in saying this would surely be a successful thread. Cliff, can I suggest you re-post your original post as a new thread with an appropriate title? Maybe 'GAINING AN RAF PILOT'S BREVET IN 194X'?
I think a lot of people here will be interested to read your recollections. I know I will. http://www.pprune.org/military-aircrew/321511-fg-off-wales-wings-8.html (post #160)

cliffnemo
28th Feb 2009, 15:46
With regard to executing a dead stick landing on any aerodrome from Newcastle to Dover, I remember thinking on a 1000 bomber raid, when crossing the coast it was almost possible to jump from wing tip to wing tip from Newcastle to the Wash, at least. With Halifaxs to the North of the Humber and Lancs to the South.

Another petrol story. When Francois and I used petrol drained from the Tiger Moth tanks. We had a lot of trouble, due to water in our motor bike carburettors. We eventually asked the flight mechs if they had any answers to the problem. It turned out that the drain tap on the bottom of the tank was solely for the purpose of draining off condensate each night , after which they filled the tank,. this then stopped any further condensation. After this we drained the water off first.

REGLE. Tee Em training magazine , and ‘The most highly derogatory order of the irremovable finger’. Think the offending airman was always given the name P/O Prune.

Burton’s venturi. I think Bernoulli of Bernoulli’s theorem fame, would have something to say about this, L.O.L.

After another month or so at Harrogate, I was posted to R.A.F Burnaston S.W of Derby. A few days elapsed and we were then ‘trucked to Battlestead Hill,16 E.F.T.S , Burton on Trent where we were again to ‘keep our hand in’ on Tiger Moths. On the way one, of our fellow travellers, told us the local draught Bass beer was twice as strong as anywhere else, and that it would be best to drink half pints, until we got used to it. Unfortunately nearly everyone ignored this advice (see later) . The camp composed of Nissen huts and outside ablutions, with a grass airfield but, was a very happy place. Most of the staff had done their thirty opps ranging from F/Sgts to F/Ls who I suspect, felt sorry for us sprogs, who still had to carry on where they had finished. The Sgts mess was the best we had ever experienced in the U.K, with white table cloths , and a bottle of H.P sauce on each table. A sauce I hadn’t seen for years. The food was even acceptable Another perk was that we were allowed to work in the brewery in our spare time , we earned a few ‘bob’ , and were allowed a certain amount of beer.

On our first Saturday night out, unfortunately some of our colleagues didn’t take the advice about drinking half pints. One of them decided to see if he could walk out with the ’Smoke room’ carpet. The operation was successful , and it set off a chain of events. Visiting other pubs, other comedians followed suit. I remember one of them struggling with a large wall mirror bearing the words, Inde Coup and Alsop’s Ales. They all finished up at the local town hall dance and stacked the loot in the foyer much to the surprise of the staff , who said nothing. Think they were used to it. Finally, as the items were picked up by the airman , one of them took a xmas tree, and they were then taken back to Battlestead Hill. ( Xmas tree ? We must now be in December 44) The following morning there were phone calls from various publicans. A parade was held, and the Adjutant said , that if all the items were taken to the guard room and loaded into a Q.L Bedford he and two Airmen , who new where each item came from , would return them to their rightful owners. Evidently at each pub, they were rewarded with a pint of strong bitter, and returned , including the Adjutant ‘somewhat the worse for wear’.

As for flying, we practised the usual, low flying, circuits and bumps etc, but some of us had more experience on the Tiger Moths then the instructors. We also ferried instructors to an airfield near their homes at weekend, a jolly bunch of flack happy vets.. It was at Burton on Trent we first came across , white nights, and black nights. The American blacks and whites had problems when both were in town together, so had separate nights. Even the ‘Snowdrops’ ( S.Ps, service police with helmets painted white ) were white on a white night etc. All in all a very enjoyable month but a waste of time?. With another forty five hours on Tiger Moths.

And what next? You’ve guessed it . HARROGATE.

P.S Why does a pilot always sit on the left or port side of an aircraft. Is it because most of us are right handed ?

cliffnemo
1st Mar 2009, 10:30
Yes 7 X 7 it was an excellent idea of yours to change from Fg office Wales to 'Gaining an R.A.F pilots brevet in W.W 2 especially as I might have finished up in The Tower. So many thanks.

But please don't use horrible words like 'current economic crisis ' , we are very sensitive on this thread.

brakedwell
1st Mar 2009, 10:39
Cliff, I am already in the Tower for suggesting William is not qualified to wear RAF wings! :ugh::ugh::ugh:

andyl999
1st Mar 2009, 10:47
I was just copying this illustrious publication (PeeTee the magazine for cadets at Albany) for another cadet I met on this course when I came across this (with apologies to Reg):-

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v616/andyl999/Vernon/reg.jpg
Sorry about the quality. Bit I guess we better call Reg "Don" from now on?

Reg what were the wings on your right shoulder, as this was just after primary training so you would have not got your wings yet?

Cliff Did you have a similar publication at Pocono?

kenparry
1st Mar 2009, 12:02
"Reg what were the wings on your right shoulder, as this was just after basic training so you would have not got your wings yet?"

Not wings - this was covered way back. This shoulder badge is still worn by all below Warrant Officer rank, really an eagle, but universally known (with due reverence) as the sh*tehawk. Below that, the 2-bladed propellor is the rank badge for LAC (Leading Aircraftsman), also still in use.

regle
1st Mar 2009, 12:15
Thanks Andy. Who needs enemies with friends like you ! Remember that old adage about people living in Glasshouses ? I am looking for some big stones and when I find the biggest... Beware ! "Those wings" are the Albatross (or Eagle ?) and a propellor which indicates that I held the noble rank of L.A.C. Leading Aircraftsman in the R.A.F. I am puzzled as to where the uniform shirt or jacket came from as we were not yet in the war when those photographs were taken and I notice that there are several to be seen. It's a "puzzlement". As far as I can remember we did not have any RAF apparel to wear at that time . (August 1941).
CLIFF, thanks for the correction. I apologise . I dont know my Benouilli from my Venturi. I told you that I was hopeless in the Sciences. At least you don't live in a Glasshouse like some people that profess to be my friends. Come to think of it, didn't the word "Glassshouse" denote something rather sinister when we were serving ? Look it up in "Wiki" my supposed friend , Andy, because that Word, "Glasshouse", is where you should be!

brakedwell
1st Mar 2009, 12:30
regle, did the helmet and goggles replace the cheesecutter? :}:}

cliffnemo
1st Mar 2009, 15:40
The albatross/eagle on Reg's shirt is of the tropical issue type. , red on a light kahki background. It is worn ,instead of the normal silver albatross which is silver on a dark blue back ground, on tropical shirts

Due to the temperature being over 100 F in Oklahoma we were issued with these trousers and shirts with red albatross on arrival at Ponca. Shirts , trousers , and belt were standard American army air force summer wear. We did however continue to wear the standard issue R.A.F forage cap, gllengarry, or hats field service , airmen for the use of. Take your pick. We changed back to standard R.A.F issue when the weather became colder.

The Glass House Sheffield. .A.K.A Sheffield jail. served No 1 Group bomber command. For insulting an officer an airman could expect 28 days residence, where he would be in sole control of a wheelbarrow for the full 28 days. His first job was to scrub out an area on the far side of the Jail yard and whitewash it, then from the opposite side load the wheelbarrow with coal and wheel it to the newly whitewashed area.He then returned to where the coal was originally, scrub and whitewash it, then bring the coal back to its original position. To and fro for the 28 days.
That's what we were told by airmen returning to base. followed by "I'm never ************** going there again (Hope some politicians are reading this). The food was even worse than ours. (Andy , take some oil with you).

P.S wasn't me in the Glasshouse, I was discharged with character reference V.G , known as X years undiscovered crime.

cliffnemo
1st Mar 2009, 15:52
Join Date: Feb 2001
Location: Under the clouds now
Age: 71
Posts: 693

I am already in the Tower Cliff!

It must be better than being in the glass house.

cliffnemo
1st Mar 2009, 15:55
BRAKEDWELL

Colours ?. Don't ask me, was just experimenting

cliffnemo
1st Mar 2009, 19:03
Would some one please tell me if my posts are appearing normally ? The whole 28 pages on my computer have some of the words highlighted in many colours, and I assumed this would also be the case on your screens. However, it has suddenly occured to me that it may only apply to my computer, and this would make a nonsense of my previous posts. (situation normal. Mrs Nemo)

Apologies to all.
Some one please put me out of my agony

RFCC
1st Mar 2009, 19:51
All appears normal to me, Cliff. :ok:

S'land
1st Mar 2009, 22:44
Cliff:
Just the usual blue text shows up. If you want to use colours in your posts I think that you need type, or insert, the text into the "reply to thread" box first. You then need to highlight the word/words you want and then change the colour.

cliffnemo
2nd Mar 2009, 10:28
Thanks folks ( R.F.C.C & S'LAND)
Have taken a print out of S'LANDs gen and will have a go, only hope my computer doesn't go into a spin again.

regle
2nd Mar 2009, 21:19
I am sorry if I am dim but I don't see the connection, Brakedwell. I know that a "cheesecutter" is, amongst other meanings, a sort of flat cloth cap but I just don't get the connection with the helmet and goggles. Please give me the "gen" on it. All the best, Regle.

brakedwell
3rd Mar 2009, 06:43
I am sorry if I am dim but I don't see the connection, Brakedwell. I know that a "cheesecutter" is, amongst other meanings, a sort of flat cloth cap but I just don't get the connection with the helmet and goggles. Please give me the "gen" on it. All the best, Regle.

Towards the end of the sixties forage caps were re-introduced as as an option to SD Caps for officers. They were nicknamed cheese cutters, which I think dated back to the forties. Our very unpopular ex bomber command navigator boss on 99 (Britannia) Sqn tried to make all his Officers wear forage caps. Those of us who had already bought one of these very practical down route foldable lids, put it in a draw and reinstated our battered SD Caps.

Warmtoast
3rd Mar 2009, 09:27
Regle

On with a little bit more...

Further to your anecdote about the Conversion Unit (1652 Heavy Conversion Unit) at Marston Moor there’s a very good site with photos and personal stories of those who trained there which can be found here:
http://www.wartimememories.co.uk/airfields/marstenmoor.html

Perhaps some of the names mentioned or bods who appear in the photos are familiar to you?

BEagle
3rd Mar 2009, 09:38
I've read several references to 'cheese cutters' during WW2, but these all referred to the 'No 1 SD cap', not the beret or the forage cap.

When the forage cap was reintroduced back in the late '60s, the most polite nickname was 'chip bag'. Otherwise 'tw@t hat' or an even more offensive term :ooh: involving four letters, followed by 'cap'.

cliffnemo
3rd Mar 2009, 10:53
And my Halton apprentice oppo, circa 1938 called his hat a Glengarry. My cockney friends called theirs , a TITFER. A steel helmet was a TIN LID.

regle
4th Mar 2009, 16:55
The system of using screened Operational pilots as Instructors was not entirely successful. A fine operational pilot did not always mean that he was a good Instructor so Bomber Command decided to open an Instructors School where the pilots fresh from ops would undergo an extensive course on how to become a successful Instructor.. I had always taken a keen interest in this application of flying so I was very pleased when my old C.O., Wing Commander Wilkerson, called me and asked me to join him at Finningley, near Doncaster, to help set up the new Bomber Command Instructors School. The aircraft to be used were Lancasters, Mosquito's and Wellingtons. I had, of course, flown the Mosquito but had to learn how to handle the "Lanc". I soon developed an affinity with what was a marvellous aeroplane. "Limit" flying was a wonderful experience in the Lanc. We taught battle hardened ,and somewhat doubting, veterans how to fly the Lancaster to it's absolute limit and all our landings were with two engines actually feathered on the port side which was the worst side to lose an engine on the Lanc due to the direction of gyroscopic, rotational effect of the propellors..
Tragically, before he was able to take command of B.C.I.S. Wing Commander Wilkerson, or Wilkie as everyone called him, was killed whilst flying as a passenger in a Baltimore. He was one of the finest men, in a Service that had many, and a born Leader.
Finningley was a magnificent "peacetime" Station. "Peacetime"
meant that it was purpose built before the war and had solid, permanent buildings. The Officers Mess was magnificent with all "mod cons" but the one exception to the high standard was the Billiards room which was pockmarked with holes all around the walls and even the ceilings. I asked one of the veteran staff of the Mess whether the Station had been bombed and was told that it was'nt the Luftwaffe that had done the damage but there had been a Sqdn. of Poles stationed there and they had hurled the billiard balls at each other when they had had a few drinks too many....quite often by the state of the room.
Dora and Peter had joined me by now. There was a nearby village called Kirk Sandall and,by coincidence, Dora's Uncle Joe and Aunt Polly lived there. They had managed to get us a small house to rent but it did'nt last very long as the owner was a P.O.W. and was repatriated so we started a long and heartaching series of renting furnished rooms . Kirk Sandall was, once again by coincidence, the Yorkshire home of the St.Helens glassworking firm of Pilkingtons where Dora's Father had worked most of his life. They had built a Pub, in Kirk Sandall made completely of glass and I can't even remember the real name because it was immediately named...you've guessed it "The Glasshouse" .
Our first Landlady was a character called Edna. She had a vocabulary that would put any swearing seaman to shame and all that with a very loud , broad Yorkshire accented, voice. One night we were all sitting in the Glasshouse when Edna nodded towards a very quiet innocent looking elderly lady sitting a few tables away. "'Er !" she almost shouted "She's 'ad Yards ". The number of Edna's acquaintances who had "Ad Yards" must have added up to a lot of miles. The next Landlady, this time in Doncaster, was a very well educated woman with three children whose husband (and she hated him !) was serving overseas. We rented her front room and shared kitchen. Grace, for that was her name , confided in Dora almost immediately . It turned out that she was a nymphomaniac and had a boyfriend who insisted on paying for "IT" as she told Dora one day. Another time she told Dora that they had done "IT" in the pictures on the back row for the first time. The best ,though, was when she said that her boy friend had been a bit short of money but had paid her with a pound of streaky bacon ! True, bacon was severely rationed but a pound of streaky bacon became a lifetime joke between Dora and I. Another byword was A Tiger Sandwich. I told Dora, one day when she said that she was starving hungry, that if she put some mustard on a slice of bread and then made a sandwich of it she would think that it was a real ham sandwich. I got it straight between the eyes.
I,of course, was having a good lunch in the Mess and then coming home in the evening and I don't know how Dora managed to feed the three of us on the miserable rations that we were getting
and a two ring stove in a shared kitchen to try and cook on. Dora was pregnant again and expecting the baby in June so life was very hard on her at that time but we had many a laugh together.
The B.S.A. had been replaced with a motor bike and sidecar. The bike was the most magnificent machine; a Henderson, an American make of 1301 c.c. It had four air cooled cylinders in line and the rear one was right underneath the saddle so that it got rather hot. It even had running boards on which to rest your feet . Wherever I stopped a crowd would gather to admire the beast. Once, on The Great North Road, the more mundane A1 now, with one of our Landladies on the pillion,a terrified Dora and Peter in the sidecar we were doing 90mph and the throttle was only about threequarters open. I had paid £35 for it.

regle
9th Mar 2009, 11:47
Is there anyone there ? I have had one or two questions regarding "Limit Flying", These questions were from someone who had read my last thread re the teaching of flying an aeroplane to it's limit. He telephoned me to ask if I could define the way it was shown and I wondered whether it might interest.
We had to be very tactful with our pupils at Bomber Command Instructors School as most of them came to us having considerable experience on the aircraft we were supposedly now about to teach them how to fly properly...or that was what seemed to be in the minds of most of them and there was a decided "anti" feeling amongst the majority of the very experienced officers that were our pupils. That was the first thing that was decided upon... No way were these people "pupils" in the accepted use of the term. The majority had recently completed tours of Operations with Bomber Command, some of them of quite high rank and a lot of them decorated. We decided that ,at the opening address to a class we would stress that in no way were we trying to teach them to fly the machines . The main object of the five week course was to show them how to put the complete performance of the chosen aircraft over to them by demonstrating what could be done and , more importantly, the results of what could or should not be done with it. This had to be done without offending the individual by any suggestion that they had not been doing this before and stressing,without them being aware that we were doing it, how to get this over to their future pupils.
We were divided into three flights, two heavy for Lancs. and one for the Mossie and the few "Wimpy" pilots that were a rapidly decreasing number as the fine but redundant Wellington was being withdrawn from the main Operations.
We were treated to a large number of very interesting lectures by various Specialists in various fields before we started operating as a School. Psychologists, Top Class Instructors from the Empire and Test Pilots Schools were amongst the people who spoke to us . One of the chaps who came was an expert in R/T speech comprehension and his way of demonstrating the value of sticking to known phrases was to play us a recording of a conversation between a Polish pilot and a Scottish Air Traffic Controller. It lasted about three minutes and was ,supposedly, all in English. We were unable to tell our Lecturer ( B.B.C, News Reader called Alvar Liddel . I think, but am not certain) anything of what the conversation was about. He then read out to us in "BBC English " the complete version of the next bit that we were going to hear from the same two people. He then played it and , Lo and Behold, it was reasonably clear to us and we could understand the gist of the conversation. This, he told us, was because we had heard all the words and phrases beforehand and very clearly proved the value of sticking to known phrases when using R/T
After about a month of flying with our various Chief Flying Instructor, our C.O. and each other we were deemed ready to take on our first course. We had two people each and always flew with both of them in the aircraft at the same time, one flying from the left hand seat and the other observing from behind. We would take the aircraft up to five or six thousand feet and then demonstrate what it could do in the way of stalls in various configurations of flight. For an example I would put the Lanc into a really tight turn with sixty degrees of bank and the requisite power to keep altitude . I would then pull back progressively on the stick to tighten the turn and continue until it stalled. With the Lanc you could continue to hold the stick back ,right in to your stomach, and the nose would come up, drop , the aircraft still turning, would begin to descend and regain its speed and then do the same thing again. There was no tendency to spin. We would then do the same thing again with the Lanc straight and level and clean, then with various degrees of flap and , finally with full landing configuration. All of these demonstrations were done without attempting recovery until you had thoroughly demonstrated the full behaviour of the aircraft . The Lanc never dropped a wing and, I am convinced , would hit the ground in a straight and level attitude eventually ,if allowed to do so. The Mossie was very different !
We would usually finish with two engined landings with both engines feathered on the same wing. As we got experience of the reactions of numerous trainees, it was interesting to find that the vast majority had never taken their aircraft to the extremes that we were showing them. During the demonstration we would give a sort of running commentary on what the plane was ,or was not, doing and we were told by many of our trainees that they had thoroughly enjoyed the experience and then we would let them loose to try themselves and it was gratifying to see how well the majority of them flew admirably and had obviously learned a lot from watching .
. Whilst this was going on , my wife had given birth to a little girl, Linda. Dora had to have the baby in Lindrick Park Golf Club which had been turned into a wartime maternity home as the beds in Doncaster's Hospital were all taken. Linda was born in the clubhouse on the first anniversary of D.Day, June 6th. 1945. I used to come over the course in a Lanc and fire off Very cartridges to let her know that I was there. I did'nt go too low as I|didn't want to be responsible for any premature births.
One of the most vivid memories of "Donnie" is the veritable "peasoup" fog that used to roll in regularly. Despite being riddled with coal mines all around there was very little coal to be had but what there was was certainly not the smokeless variety. There were times when you, literally, could not see your hand in front of your face. This did not stop one of the most popular Saturday night Officer's Mess event called "Hare and Hounds". I think that Doncaster would be high on the list of towns with the most pubs per square mile in England. To take advantage of this an area of the town was chosen to be the Hunting Ground. Two selected "Hares" would set off from a chosen starting point. Given half an hours start they would be followed by the rest of the Mess.... "The Hounds.!"
The rules were simple. You had to have a pint in each Pub that you visited. If you spotted the Hares you had to buy them a drink and have one with them, then give them ten minutes start after they had left. The winner was the one, or group, with the most Hares' signatures and the prize was the traditional chamber pot of beer which had to be consumed back at the Mess. There was no breathalyser in those days ! Come to think there were very few cars. We would all pile in the Station bus which usually left town about ten. As the Pubs closed at ten thirty you were faced with a walk of several miles when, as often as not, you missed the bus.

Spartacan
9th Mar 2009, 19:54
Great stuff.

>>He then read out to us in "BBC English " the complete version of the next bit that we were going to hear from the same two people. He then played it and , Lo and Behold, it was reasonably clear to us and we could understand the gist of the conversation<<

The advice I had on an airline psychology course circa 1997 was:

"English loudly spoken built an Empire!"

Keep posting please Cleff and Regle. I log in each evening for the latest instalments.

Chugalug2
9th Mar 2009, 20:38
Is there anyone there ?

Oh we're here all right, regle, and hanging onto every word from you and cliffnemo! The post re the Bomber Command Instructor School is surely something at last that we can all relate to from personal experience. The techniques and demonstrations that were such eye openers to your pupils (sorry scratch that! :)) are what all sim checks and refreshers should be about, a learning experience! Such knowledge as is passed on can just as easily disappear later. I remember an interview with the BBMF boss who recounted the challenge they found it to be 3 pointing the Lanc in a strong X-wind, and mentioning this to someone of your background. "But you don't even try to put it down on all three in those conditions, wheel her on and only let the tail go down later, before you've lost effective rudder control", was the experienced reply! Much the same as I was taught on the Hastings. Please keep it coming, gentlemen. You are filling in a lot of blanks in our knowledge of "how it was done" then. Thank you both. :ok:

The Recorder
10th Mar 2009, 11:07
Cliff
I was interested to see that part of your training was at Burnaston. I was there at No. 3 B.F.T.S. from February until May 1952 training on Chipmunks. I recently came across a pic of one that I flew there where a Museum in Essex had just the centre portion of the fuselage and which they hoped to use to restore the whole aircraft.

At that time the hangar contained many interesting aircraft, including an old Walrus. I was later caught in its slipstream while flying a Harvard from Feltwell (Norfolk) on a cross-country exercise. The Officer's Mess was in the old Manor House, now sadly reduced to a pile of numbered stones lying in a field somewhere to make way for the Honda? factory. There were only three RAF staff there to look after us -all the rest were civilian instructors. I must say we ate like fighting-cocks on 6 pence a day and had a fantastic time. Part of the airfield was given over to a Coles Cranes repair depot and any that we found with the keys in were used for jousting tournaments at the weekends. We used the C.O.'s car and the Fire Engine and Ambulance for unauthorised trips into Burton-on-Trent at the weekends until one thoughtless member drove one into a ditch when this activity was severly curtailed.

You may remember the pub at the far side of the airfield - the Spreadeagle I think it was. One member of our course had his 21st Birthday party there late one evening and thoughtlessly tried to return to the Mess straight across airfield and the flare path where the rest of us were practicing night flying (remember the old gooseneck flares for lighting the runway?). Both I and Fred Emery (later of Reuters fame) reported having hit something during take-off and the Tower sent out a jeep which found poor Roy Eason with both feet missing. We were all pretty cut up over this but never did find out what happened exactly - presumably he must have dived to the ground when he heard our aircraft approaching but somehow kicked his feet up into the props. We never heard what happened to him later. Both Fred and I experienced our rudders seizing up while airborne but although each aircraft was stripped down, they never found the cause of this and accused us of a strong & misguided imagination. Many years later someone told me that an explanantion for this had been found but they couldn't remember what it was. Can anyone else help?

All in all, though, it was the best part of our training and we all have fond memories of the Chipmunk which is more than can be said of the Harvard which formed the next part of our training - a real brute which I never really liked. In later years I was to come across the dear old Chipmunk again when we used them at Elstree at the Commercial Pilot Training School I was helping to run there and I was once more able to enjoy flying them again.

Now - a message to any ex-RAF WWII personnel reading this. I am endeavouring to record as many previously unpublished accounts of service in the RAF as possible at this time before their authors progress to the Great Hangar in the sky. Any help in this worthwhile project would be welcome, as would support for the Stirling Aircraft Society who have the very worthwhile aim of trying to reconstruct a complete Stirling Bomber without the use of the original drawings (which were destroyed by Short Bros.) and aided only by the use of photographs and scraps which have survived from crashes and museums - an almost impossible task, you would think. There is not a single surviving example of this, the RAF's first 4-engined bomber, anywhere in the world. Any new members would be heartily welcomed.

kookabat
10th Mar 2009, 11:22
Reg and Cliff,

Still here indeed, and thoroughly enjoying your posts as always.
I've recently started having a close look at my great uncle's wartime logbook (he was a navigator with 467 Sqn, Waddington, KIA 10MAY44 over Lille). Discovered some interesting stuff - seems his first operational posting was to Bardney with IX Sqn but his pilot was lost as a second dickey before they got on ops themselves. So back to the HCU it was, to crew up again. I've also just got a copy of another navigator's logbook from a similar time but with much more detail... the search never ends!

Though the logs are priceless sources of information, your words 'from the horse's mouth' are even better for an understanding of what it was like to be there. Please, please, please keep it up!
Adam

cliffnemo
11th Mar 2009, 11:54
Well Regle what an interesting report on limit flying. I have an interesting question on trim when flying minus an engine , but later. With regard to your four cyiinder ,in line engine, and 100 M.P.H That’s nowt , my Tiger Moth engine was a four cylinder in line with a top speed of 107 M.P.H. , and the engine was upside down , with the sump on top. Did you have any experience of a Merlin cutting out when subjected to negative G ? Seem to remember a story about a lady correcting the fault with a washer?, which subsequently became known as Aunt Sarah’s orifice. I also wonder if this fault appeared in the Packard Merlins, as these were fitted with a Stromberg? carburettor.

In my last post I said that we were at Battlestead Hill at Christmas time , but on checking find that we left about 15th November. 44, but I can definitely remember one of the pilots walking out of the town hall with a Christmas tree under his arm.

After the 15th we left Battlestead Hill, and were sorry to leave, as it was certainly one of the happiest R.A.F stations ever. Particularly as we were returning to the dreaded Harrogate. The only saving grace was the fact that I could travel home each weekend on my Norton. I also owned a genuine T.T Rudge ( nor kick start or lights) and used that for a while as it was a lot faster then the Norton. The family by that time had moved into the country, and I spent some of the weekends shooting , hares , rabbits, pigeons , and partridges . It reminds me I was home one weekend when the family pig (illegal) was killed, the offal being shared amongst neighbours , they returned the compliment when they killed their illegal pigs. Memories of Regle’s previous story re killing the pig.

Back to R.A.F Harrogate . The same boring days, so boring I can’t remember what we did, most likely , drill. P.T , swimming and link trainer. After a while we were informed we were posted to , could have been Bruntingthorpe, Hornchurch, or Newmarket. (All places where I served) but can’t remember which. We spent a month on this course where we were taught how to, make fires, catch, gut and cook rabbits etc. Make soup using nettles, mushrooms. ,dandelion roots, elderberries , and other edible items found in the country. Building shelters using any available materials. After enduring this very useful course , we returned , you have guessed it, Harrogate. So again pack, kit bag, big pack, small pack, water bottle, gas mask, cape and on the train again ( standing room only)

Pressure was again brought to bear on me, commission as a pilot in the fleet air arm. Flight engineer , glider pilot. Later I was offered training as a P.F.E , which was pilot flight engineer on Lancasters. As there now seemed little chance of flying single engined aircraft, I eventually succumbed, and was posted to the R.A.F St Athan school of engineering, so next , the flight engineers course.

It’s fantastic, I can now shoot clay pigeons , march at 140 to the minute, drill for 15 minutes without a word of command, swim and life save, cook a good rabbit stew , strangle with a piece of wire, polish brass, throw a hand grenade, what on earth next ?

regle
11th Mar 2009, 12:47
Telling us the tales that I, personally, look forward to immensely and , I am sure, everyone else does . That's what's next Cliff. I think that I must have encountered negative "G" once or twice but I can't remember whether I had an engine cut as I was so preoccupied at the times. It was probably when I was on my back in a Halifax over Munich in 1943 but no mention of engine cutting in log book but I dimly remember something of the sort happening. I think that I was too frightened to record it in my mind. CHUGALUG2, It was funny but whilst I was reading your last thread these words were running through my mind before I read your summary "You don't even think of a 3 pointer if there is a cross wind".
I think that I said before that wheelers were always the safest but watch for the landing run and that 3 pointers were a matter of personal pride. Strangely enough when landing a 747 you tend to use the 3 point type of initially landing the main wheels with the nose well up and then "land" the nose wheel gently.
SPARTACAN Yes and now an illiterate generation is left with an "Empireless" Nation.

Blacksheep
11th Mar 2009, 13:42
Aunt Sarah’s orificeMiss Shilling wasn't a Sarah, she was a Tilly.

Tilly Shilling is a legendary RAE Engineer who came up with the idea. Thus you can choose between "Miss Shillings Orifice" or, in Fighter Command, "Miss Tilly's Diaphragm". ;)

RFCC
12th Mar 2009, 12:13
"It was probably when I was on my back in a Halifax over Munich in 1943.."

You can't just let that one hang Reg! :confused:

regle
12th Mar 2009, 14:46
Suggest you look up Link 408 Page 21 and then you will not be left hanging. Thanks for the thread. It is very gratifying to know when people are reading your long gone past. Lots of luck with the horses or is that the wrong sort of horse? All the best Reg.

cockney steve
13th Mar 2009, 23:05
Gentlemen, I thank you for once again, passing on your memories and reminiscences. I was absoloutely cracked-up at the thought of "crane-jousting" A sign of the harrowing times you went through,that most of these "diversions" seemed to be studiously ignored byofficialdom. I'm sure that today's youth would be subject to a load of social workers,supervision orders and the like.

I remember Alvar Liddell anouncing his prescence on the wireless and his intention to read the News......It struck me as highly exotic, the name "Alvar"....again there were many other unusual names in public life.
Stafford and Anaurin, for two examples.
No doubt today's man would announce himself as "Al Varley Dell " :rolleyes:
Please keep the tales coming- It's the trivia that brings them to life, the little snippets that give a glimpse into those past times.
regards, Steve.

regle
14th Mar 2009, 14:12
I am glad that you are enjoying our "wandering in times past". One of the best things about them was the fact that some of the so called "diversions" were not only overlooked but , quite often, instigated or joined in by the very people that , normally, would be called upon to deal with the results. I can recall the , then , Commanding Officer of 2 Group Light Bombers, Basil Embry, visiting one of his stations for an inspection. Before I tell you what happened , you should know that he was a very small man and had , earlier in his career, been shot down over enemy territory. He had escaped capture but had strangled a German sentry with his bare hands and was a very much wanted man but succeeded in getting back to England .
He was an Air Vice Marshal,I think, when he came to the Station where, after the Inspection, he had a few drinks at the bar with the Station Commander then said goodnight to everyone and retired. About fifteen minutes later his head peered around the door and he came back in but wearing an ill fitting, Pilot Officer's Jacket. "Now that the old bas...d's gone......" he said and the evening started there and then.
This was fairly typical of the Officialdom in the RAF and was one of the main reasons for the very high morale of the Service.
Keep on enjoying the memories. They can't go on for ever. Regle.

cliffnemo
15th Mar 2009, 16:17
Before I start my journey to St Athan, no doubt sitting on my kitbag , or standing all the way. I would like to ask Andy to obtain permission from Reg to put photos ( Stirling and helmet and goggles ?) on the PPRUNE thread Sticky photos. (just enter sticky photos in the search box)
To give you an idea of how they appear, look for mine on page 34 number 663 . You will also find an alphabetical list on or near this page.

Thanks for that BLACKSHEEP I see from your profile you are a specialist on single malt. Have a Glenmonrangie on me.

RECORDER . Very interesting ,and your item re Coles cranes, reminded me there are some
pics of Coles cranes on the C.D Night Bomber showing an engine being replaced on a Lancaster and also lifting a rear turret. They are lifting in the latest type of turret, I think with two .5 s and no rear Perspex, which means the poor tail end Charlie is almost in the open air. Are there any old A.Gs out their who could tell us what it was like when firing ‘athwart ships’ . I did practice firing in the rear turret, but as the target was a drogue towed behind the aircraft, wind wasn’t a problem, cold was.
Sorry, RAMBLING again.
Night bomber used no actors, only people on the station, showing such scenes as Lancasters taxying along the perry track, taking off on a bombing raid, and pics taken from inside the fuselage. Think these inside pics were produced by kippering an old scrap Lanc., unofficially of course.
The original film was taken on a black and white , clockwork 16 mm camera . during wartime. Think it is now enhanced and in colour on C.D. It was produced unofficially (very) by a Group Captain Henyry Cozins , is factual and shows life as it was at Hemswell 150 sqdn during the war. A V.H.S version is on offer at the moment on Ebay. I would recommend it to any aviation historian .

Back to the story again.
On the train to S. Wales I seem to remember thinking the course would be a ‘piece of cake’. After all what could an engineer do up in the air at 20,000 feet. Little did I know that I was in for an intensive two months course, copious notes, exams , and burning the midnight oil again. Some relief was gained when I chummed up with other Sgt pilots and found one good “singing pub” in Tiger Bay Swansea, and another in Bridgend, both easily accessible by steam train, from St Athan station.

The first page of my exercise book is headed P.F.E course St Athan, and the second, a hand drawing of the Lancaster fuselage, showing all escape hatches, fire axes, and position of the six fuel tanks, which with a bit of luck I will produce below.
http://i274.photobucket.com/albums/jj248/cliffordleach/FUSELAGE137.jpg



At first sight copying the drawing from the blackboard seemed an easy task until we were informed we had to memorise every detail , as we may have to reproduce the drawing from memory on our final exam papers. We copied many more such drawings which resulted in much more spare time swatting. However , my admiration for the R.A.F education staff, and methods, if any thing increased. It became obvious that what we were taught , and when each subject was taught ,had been expertly developed into a rigid curriculum , and if one instructor was unavailable, then another could take over precisely where the previous one had finished. We were next lectured on the construction of the fuselage, even down to how the five sections were joined together by high tensile nuts and bolts, but we were soon to find out that this was very elementary, compared with the systems we had to draw and memorise later.

P.S Does any one know the meaning of ‘public groups‘ found under profiles.?
When I click on a contributors profile I see under public groups “ *** is not a member of any public group” Also , what is the difference between the B.B.M.F Lancaster flypast, and Lancaster display? A Lancaster display is to be held at Pocklington, on 10th May. If it is on the ground I may visit.

harrym
15th Mar 2009, 17:48
Mention of 16 EFTS Burnaston (now home to Toyota, not Honda), where I spent a few weeks in the spring of '44 bashing Tiger Moths round the hills & dales of the southern Peak District, reminds me that the CO was also the owner of the airfield and its flying school! Apparently he was conveniently enrolled as a Wg Cdr at the outbreak of war - surely a rather unusual arrangement, given possible conflicts of interest? Incidentally, where was Battlestead in relation to Burnaston – I recall the name, but nothing else about it.

After a brief return to Harrogate I was posted to 21 AFU Taten Hill, finding its location just north of Burton a great blessing given the beer drought prevailing that summer. As the virtual capital of the British brewing industry it had more than its fair share of pubs, so while other places sometimes ran dry one could always rely on finding a hostelry able to produce the necessary; to this day the aroma of brewing brings memories of that time flooding back!

Checkboard
15th Mar 2009, 19:16
cliffnemo, "public groups" are an option that the vbulletin software (which is what is running this bulletin board) can use. If you are a member of a group you can see forums which I cannot, and vice-versa. As an example, if you are a moderator here, you can see the moderator forum (where the crimes of commoners such as thee and me are discussed.) PPRuNe (indeed named after Pilot Officer Prune from the war cartoons) doesn't use the public groups option for any other reason.

A while back you also commented on some of the words you saw being coloured red - this highlighting happens when you search for a thread (the search words are coloured red.)

I would guess that the Lancaster display would be on the ground, and flypast in the air. :ok:

(Still loving the stories :ok: )

regle
15th Mar 2009, 22:29
Cliff, you constantly astonish me with your technical knowlege and memory. I am certain that you would have made a first class Instructor. Did your thoughts ever stray thataways ?
I will call Andy tomorrow and ask him to post some more pictures but I have never taken any of Stirlings.. I tried to keep as far away from them as I could. I am enjoying your threads immensely. Keep them coming, Reg

taxydual
15th Mar 2009, 23:53
Elsan Dipsticks!!! I hate to ask, but who's job (pardon the pun) to check them, was that delegated to?

Dan Gerous
16th Mar 2009, 14:24
Cliff, a display will probably be a proper airshow type aerobatic display,( but the BBMF don't throw them about). A flypast is basically just a fly by, but from all the ones I've seen, you usually get 3 passes from the participating aircraft. Hope your able to see it, and keep up with the stories, this sandbag is really comfy.:ok:

andyl999
16th Mar 2009, 16:21
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v616/andyl999/reg/halifax_hr_744.jpg

There you go ready for Reg to explain RFCC, I am reliably informed that this shot was taken over Munich. As I am flying to that very City this Wednesday I shall research any eye witness accounts, whilst refreshing myself with plenty of Pilsner!

Reg, how are you going to get the pictures to me to post for you?

Cliff, my next lesson with Reg (as it's a 300 mile round journey) is how to scan and post!

cliffnemo
16th Mar 2009, 17:16
Andy, if nothing else you have answered the question , who empties the Elsan. It's obvious, they used to send Regle up to do a bit of inverted fllying.

kookabat
16th Mar 2009, 22:47
Ahh yes, but who then empties the *ahem* rest of the aeroplane?? :uhoh:

I've just been given a heap of photos and letters and stuff from the family of an ex 467 Sqn Lancaster pilot. Some of them are pretty good - I'll scan them today and try to post soon if anyone's interested.

cliffnemo
17th Mar 2009, 11:05
KOOKABAT. Of course every one is interested, so keep up the good work. It's the contributions or posts that keep us old codgers going.

Blacksheep
17th Mar 2009, 14:09
I'd imagine someone from or close to the BBMF would be around here somewhere. Seems to me that a "Special Invitation" for a close-up look around PA474 would be in order...

Cliff could teach the young whipper-snappers a thing or two as well.

andyl999
17th Mar 2009, 14:10
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v616/andyl999/reg/elsan.jpg

I don't know what you are complaining about Reg and Cliff, looks quite comfortable and spacious to me?
Plus it looks as though you have the added advantage that you can throw out some flares and treat the wounded whilst still being sat down?

If you want to read a humourous story about a pilot actually using one read this:-

A Thousand Shall Fall: The True ... - Google Book Search (http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=zVbhC2_F3XEC&pg=PA317&lpg=PA317&dq='elsan+Toilets'+picture+ww2&source=bl&ots=eCrrNaCSLL&sig=ZMMn1aFUoVvkSiNt_vsaFhPqiTY&hl=en&ei=-qi_SaNnjMiMB66JoDM&sa=X&oi=book_result&resnum=6&ct=result)

Quite funny really, just shows that the pilots had tricks played on them?

BEagle
17th Mar 2009, 20:50
I understand that it wasn't unknown for the Elsan to be emptied over Das Reich?

Which prompted a Luftwaffe chap to complain that the RAF was breaching international conventions on the use of biological weapons!

kookabat
18th Mar 2009, 02:38
OK then, here's two to get you started. The pilot in question was S/Ldr DPS (Phil) Smith.

http://i228.photobucket.com/albums/ee27/kookabat/img-3172026-0001copy.jpg
The aircrew of 103 Sqn, Elsham Wolds, in around 1941 or 42. Phil survived a tour of ops on Wellingtons - no mean feat in itself - before going to 467 Sqn and Lancasters (which is where he flew with my grandfather's uncle - hence my connection). I'm not sure if Phil is in this photo, I have a bigger scan of it but it won't fit here - I will need to have a close look at each face in turn to see if I recognise him.

http://i228.photobucket.com/albums/ee27/kookabat/img-3171901-0003copy.jpg
'My' crew, which is the focus of my research, infront of a Lancaster. We believe at Waddington, the light on the right is the nav light and the bright light is the landing light of the Lancaster - both put on especially for this photo.

The crew, L-R:
1352851 Sgt Eric Reginald HILL (Mid-upper gunner, RAF)
423311 F/S Gilbert Firth PATE (Rear gunner, RAAF)
1350279 Sgt Kenneth Harold TABOR (Flight engineer, RAF)
425413 F/S Alistair Dale JOHNSTON (Wireless operator, RAAF)
400495 S/L Donald Philip Smeed SMITH (Pilot, RAAF)
412686 W/O Royston William PURCELL (Navigator, RAAF - my connection)
658844 F/S Jeremiah PARKER (Bomb aimer, RAF)

Apart from Phil Smith, all were KIA 10 May 1944 when their Lancaster exploded over Lille in France. Phil was blown out of the windscreen and parachuted to safety, evaded capture and survived the war.


More to come when I have a chance to look closely at everything!

Wiley
18th Mar 2009, 07:05
Phil was blown out of the windscreen and parachuted to safety A Lanc pilot wearing his parachute whilst in the driver's seat? Cliff or Regle, was it the norm for the pilot to wear his bum pack parachute whilst in the driver's seat? I thought I'd read somewhere that it was very difficult to do so, (getting over the main spar with bum pack and full leather flying suit?) and so most stowed it behind the main spar - hence the very small number of pilots who made it out of badly damaged Lancasters.

As many have said before me, please keep the stories coming.

kookabat
18th Mar 2009, 10:15
No Wiley it was not normal, for much of the war - apparently a standing order came out only a few weeks prior to Phil's little adventure saying that pilots could use the seat-type 'chutes if they wanted to. Phil by that stage in his operational career was not known for taking any further risks than he needed to and so decided to use the parachute that in the end saved his life.
Exactly what brought the aeroplane down is unknown. Phil remembered, just before dropping the bombs, everything going very hot, very dry and very red - then tried to find the aircraft's controls but couldn't, realised he was falling and pulled the ripcord. He was then hidden in a barn by a French family for a few months and eventually the invasion passed him. he returned to the UK in September 1944, and to Australia shortly thereafter.

Quite a remarkable man.

regle
18th Mar 2009, 11:32
The very much easier exit in the Halifax was one of the main reasons that most people who flew that aeroplane on Ops preferred it to the much more manoeuverable and better performance , Lanc. There was no huge main spar to climb over if you had to get to the rear of the aircraft and the protection of armour plating was more plentiful and stronger.
I am pretty certain that I have seen, somewhere, the official report that more people escaped from stricken Halifaxes than from Lancs. I know that I much preferred flying a Lanc in peacetime but give me the sturdy old Halifax (Especially the Mk. 111 with Bristol Herc. engines) for OPs. Regle

papajuliet
18th Mar 2009, 12:08
Andy999 - surely that's a Coastal Command Halifax - not very likely over Munich!
For those with a morbid fascination with Elsan toilets, they might like to know that we had them in our Royal Observer Corps underground posts - they were left there when we finished in 1991. I often wondered if they were taken out of scrapped aircraft after WW2, put into store and then issued to the ROC.

cliffnemo
18th Mar 2009, 17:22
Will try and answer some of the previous questions soon, but will join in the parachute topic now.
I cannot remember exactly the details , but as far as I remember the pilots seat in a Lanc was a very simple affair. Constructed of aluminium , with no padding. I think it had a depression in the bottom to accommodated the shute , so not sitting on the chute, the pilot would be sitting about ten inches lower which would reduce the pilots forward view I would imagine when I took over to the give the skipper a rest, I would sit on my chest ‘clip on’ shute, unless the skipper left his chute in the depression Can you remember Regle,? but later Lancs may have been fitted with more sophisticated seats similar to the American ‘armchairs’. I would only take over for fifteen minutes, as I had to change tanks, calculate fuel used, record temps, pressures, etc.

Regle the picture I was referring to was of a Halifax and not a Stirling. Entitled avec mustache. 0 out of 10 for my aircraft recognition.

regle
18th Mar 2009, 18:59
Thanks Cliff. That solves the mystery. I will get on to Andy as soon as he gets back from Munich. I hope that he hasn't been upside down "sans ou avec un avion ". We are airing our French! Reg

regle
18th Mar 2009, 19:05
I only flew Lancs from the right hand side and so wore the chest type harness but I am pretty sure that the seat type was worn on the left. I do remember talking to a Lanc pilot who said that he always wore the chest type even though he had to take his own cushion along as he said it was almost impossible to climb over that main spar in a hurry even when the plane was immobile on the ground.
Disregard that flying from the right. I can't remember ever flying a dual control Lanc. I think that I used to demonstrate whatever from the left and then sit in the F/E 's seat when the other chap was flying. I may be wrong but has anyone experienced flying in a dual Lanc, or Halifax for that matter? Reg.

Fareastdriver
18th Mar 2009, 20:06
The Halifax had a kit for fitting dual controls. IIRC the 202 Sqn Halifaxs that flew the weather trips from Aldergrove up to 1950 ish had them fitted. This was because the trip used to last about 14 hours with two pilots..

Blacksheep
18th Mar 2009, 22:34
The Lancaster also had a kit for fitting dual controls, which the old Chiefs who I worked under on PA474 (and who were wartime ground crew) said was used for pilot conversion and/or training flights. At that time (1966/67) PA474 was still in original wartime single pilot configuration, but has since had the dual control kit installed and BBMF seems to operate her with two pilots.

regle
19th Mar 2009, 15:37
I started my flying at the Bomber Command Instructors School in Dec.1944. I had reached 953 hours when I got there. I stayed there until November of 1946 and had many pleasant experiences and met some very interesting people . One of them was a Sqdn. Ldr. Jim Wyatt who came through Finningley as a pupil and stayed on as a Flt. Commander. We became great friends and I was surprised to find out from him that he was the Brother of R.E.S. Wyatt who was England's Cricket Captain for a long time beforethe war. Jim told me many tales including showing me some of the letters that his Brother had received from the English cricket fans. R.E.S. Wyatt was not, as Jim freely admitted, the most handsome of men but some of the fan mail ...."Call yourself an England Captain ! You look like a b....y Frog.! and that was one of the milder letters.
We were at Finningley when VE Day came along and I had the pleasant task of flying some repatriated POW's over Germany to show them the damage that we had done to the Third Reich. I see, from my log book that, on the 9th. July1945, I took some of these people on a 5 hour flight over Rotterdam, Arnhem, Essen. Cologne, Aachen, Antwerp. I have noted that one of them was a W.O. Booth, a navigator, who was
shot down over Wilhelmshaven in a Blenheim of 107 Sqdn. on...wait for it!
the 4th. Sept. 1939 (The Day after war was declared.). I can't remember much about what he said but I have always remembered the grim smile that he gave when we flew over Cologne and said " I see we left them the Cathedral".
The Examining Flight of the E.F.S. came round again, this time for the new "Green Card" that was neccessary to hold if you wanted to fly in the new Control Zones under IFR that was coming in. This time I was in for a surprise as the examiner, a Sqdn. Ldr. Beardon, passed me and in making out the card asked me if I would join the E.F.S. as a Tutor for the Empire Course that was given to those chosen from various Empire Air Forces...we still had an Empire... and , also, various civilians from our own Ministry and other countries. I was, by now, looking forward to peacetime and knew that this posting would do me no harm for my ambitions in carrying on flying so I accepted the posting, which carried a Flt. Lt. ranking, with very good feelings.
I had enjoyed my stay at Finningley and had learned a lot. I had now about 1500 hours when I took up my posting and moved the family, now four of us, from the wilds of Doncaster to the very different atmosphere of The Empire Flying School, Hullavington , Wilts.

regle
21st Mar 2009, 07:19
I went down to Hullavington late November 1946 and very quickly found us rooms in a farm cottage at Halt which was , literally, a train halt on the line between Calne (Sausages !) and Chippenham. The cottage was owned by a larger than life like Margaret Rutherford character called ".Mrs.Bod". She was a widow who lived in the cottage and let out her farmland to a local farmer.
The flying part of the job was very interesting. It was my job to accompany my two or three "Students" through an advanced Instrument Flying course and get them thoroughly proficient in both the flying and theoretical side of Instrument flying which, with Civil Aviation finding it's ante bellum wings, was becoming an absolute neccessity for the new generation of pilots. And we had to train the people who were going to be responsible for the introduction of All Weather, Instrument flying, RAF and Civil pilots. One of my first students was the Grandson or Great Grandson of the famous Australian pre war pioneer, Charles Kingsford-Smith. Our Chief Flying Instructor was a tough South African Air Force Lt.Col. called after his famous Boer pioneer Voortrekker Grandfather, Piet Retief, the leader of the Great Trek to the Traansvaal.
On arrival at Hullavington , the Station was abuzz with a sensational police case that had briefly involved the Officer's "Dining In" night which had become a monthly ritual in the peacetime RAF.
One of the School's Senior Officers had met a charming RAF Group Captain in a Hotel, the "Tollard Royal" in Bournemouth. They had some drinks together and then the Group Capain whose name was Rupert Brook was invited to the next "Dining In" night by the Officer from Hullavington.
As it happened he didn't turn up and did not send any message of regret. He had been very busy with other matters. His real name was Neville Heath and he was a Captain in the S.A.A.F. He had been arrested for the murder of a Doreen Marshall who was staying at the "Norfolk Hotel" , in Bournemouth. She had dinner with Heath at his Hotel and rang for a taxi to take her back to her Hotel but Heath persuaded her to cancel it and offered to walk her back. She was never seen alive again.
Heath was also suspected of the murder of a Margery Gardner at a Notting Hill Gate Hotel, "The Pembridge Court ". This had been a savage, brutal affair and Heath's fate was sealed when a railway cloak room ticket found on Heath produced a brief case, inside which was a horsewhip with the identical pattern of the seventeen slash marks found on Margery's body. He was tried in November 1946 and found guilty and executed. He was reputed to have asked Albert Pierrepoint, the Executioner for a whisky and said " Better make it a double". I seem to remember the words "Branksome Chine " and think that the poor Doreen Marshall's body was found there but I am not certain. As you can imagine "Group Captain Rupert Brook" was discussed for a long time afterwards.
To get back to Hullavington; one of the "perks" of the job was that you had the chance and right to fly any aircraft that was on the RAF's list. The Station had it's own Spitfire and I very quickly availed myself of the wonderful opportunity to fly it and what a magnificent aeroplane it was. Mrs Bod and Dora had plenty of visits from a very low flying "Spit" for quite a while.
There was a story going around, probably apocryphal, of one of the students on a previous course , a Group captain X, who had the desire to fly in a Sunderland. This was arranged for him and he was flown down to Calshot in the Station Tiger Moth by his tutor. He was duly installed in the Sunderland and allowed to take the controls once he was airborne. He said that he was Station Commander at Tangmere and would like to fly over there. He duly made a mild "beat up" of the Station and then suggested to the amused tutor and Sunderland pilot that they land and have lunch. The faces of the crew made his gaffe very clear and it was a rather chastened Groupie that went back and landed at Calshot. When they were taxying to the pier he turned to the crew and thanked them for the trip and apologised for his stupid mistake "Please don't say anything" he begged them "I would never hear the last of it " They promised to keep quiet about it, "Thanks a lot " he said and stepped out into the water .
We had acquired a nice little Austin Ruby saloon and I was ,foolishly, teaching Dora to drive. We used to take our little dog over the level crossing (no gates, just a wooden platform with "Halt" on the signboard). and then I would get out and take "James" as Peter had named the dog, for a walk. One day Dora , gaining in confidence drove off and left me, fuming, to walk back with the dog. When I got back to find Dora sitting, smugly smiling, in the car I said "You know I always leave it facing the other way". She reversed, put her foot on the accelerator, instead of the brake, and shot backwards into the henhouse in a cloud of feathers and squawking chickens. Mrs. Bod rushed out, looked at the devastation then said "You know; if it wasn't so funny, I should be very angry. ".
It was now January 1947 and the snow started coming down late in the month and it never stopped until late March. We were completely cut off from anywhere for over a month. The only telephone was a little way down the river, which ran behind the cottage ,and was completely frozen over. The telephone was in the cottage owned by an elderly man who was a recluse. I skated up the frozen river to try and phone Hullavington and let them know that we were still alive. He couldn't find the phone which was buried under dozens of books and smothered in thick layers of dust. He was a decent old chap and invited me to go shooting pigeons with him. He would stand there, shaking like an aspen tree in a high wind, fire his old musket and down would drop half a dozen pigeons . I would be lucky to get one all morning. Mrs. Bod would go out each morning and blow a hunting horn and when he answered , with a toot on his, she would know that he was alright. Country Life in the snow .!

cliffnemo
21st Mar 2009, 17:58
I am very annoyed with young Andy199, gallivanting in Munich , while I work my fingers to the bone. I bet he is sitting in a bier kellar, a full stein in his hand ,and singing away to an umpah band.

But they won’t be singing. Du bist mien leibehr,
Mien klienes flieger,
Du bist mien lebher unterofizier


HARRYM Battlestead Hill is about eight miles South West of Burnaston, just above Tatenhill airfield..

Regle , Always the instructed, never the instructor. I did however receive a few letters from the A.M , after demob, asking if I wanted to re-enlist , but I commenced employment as soon as I returned home.

At St Athan we carried on with our studies, We next had to draw the instrument panel in our exercise books showing every instrument and switch, and memorize the position of every item.. How on earth we did this complicated task I can’t remember, but think we must have used a mock up panel.. This was followed by more drawings of the elevator and rudder controls., which were push pull tubes running down the port side . Next , was Action to be taken in event of controls jamming. How to disconnect Rudder and elevator push pull tubes , so that pilot could used tabs to control the aircraft
. If the ailerons became jammed, the instructions were to go to the rocking arm on main spar, and endeavour to knock straight . ~That must be the reason that every engineers large green tool bag , contained a large two pound ball pein hammer., not to mention a very large screwdriver about half a metre long. Every service , system, electrical circuit. Hydraulic circuit, and pneumatic circuit had to be studied, memorized, drawn and fully understood . I will not bore you with every detail, but will add a few more details on my next post , as you, like I thought at the time, might think what on earth could an engineer do on a Lancaster.
http://i274.photobucket.com/albums/jj248/cliffordleach/LANCINSTPAN142.jpg

Checkboard
21st Mar 2009, 20:04
There's a "Detonator button" just under the "Engine starting buttons" !! :eek:

cliffnemo
22nd Mar 2009, 11:07
A "detonator button " Cor blimey, I shouldn't have joined. But thanks CHECKBOARD at least I know the drawings are legible.

andyl999
25th Mar 2009, 12:52
Cliff, no gallivanting, well not much, there was a lot of work to do in Munich and some serious customer entertainment that was inflicted on me. No beer kellers but a nice club where bottles of Champagne were €284 for Moet.
Reg says I should keep a passenger log book as Wednesday was LHR>>Muc, Friday MUC>>LHR, Monday Bournemouth>>Edinburgh>>Dublin, Tuesday Dublin>>Bournemouth Oh don't I love Ryanair!


I know it's off topic and many apologies, but after a heavy night of drinking in Limerick I staggered out of the hotel in Limerick and nearly fell over these beauties, I invited them to join us (following good RAF policies) but they did not respond!
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v616/andyl999/photo.jpg

Again Cliff and other readers apologies for being off topic!

I will be talking to Reg to scan some more pictures!

Blacksheep
25th Mar 2009, 13:00
Lot's wife. Dunno who the other bint is, probably her sister. ;)

andyl999
25th Mar 2009, 13:15
Look carefully it's three of them, probably Limerick virgins if they exist?

The Recorder
25th Mar 2009, 20:05
I was at a meeting of the Stirling Aircraft Society earlier today (more recruits urgently needed please - anyone can sign up for an incredibly modest sub and they have the noble ambition of rebuilding a Stirling from scratch: no plans have survived) when the subject of escape from a downed aircraft came up and I heard one ex-Stirling crew member say the the Stirling was by far the easiest bomber to get out of. It had a wider fuselage than its contemporaries with room for an easily accessible escape hatch between the cockpit seats. In, I think it was the Lanc to which they were referring, a seat had to be physically removed to allow access to the cockpit escape hatch - not exactly the sort of job you wanted to do if you were in a hurry. No doubt an ex Lanc crew member will correct me if I misheard.

cliffnemo
26th Mar 2009, 11:15
Yes Recorder, there was a seat blocking off the escape route, and it was the F/Es. A contraption consisting of a pull down seat, and a back rest that was purely a canvas strap pulled across to the the pilots seat onto a hook.I have happy memories of sitting on one for up to seven hours. Will explain our antics when we were told to "Emergency, Emergency, Jump, Jump " later. Trying to keep info in chronological order. Good luck with the Stirling project.

It's a long while since I heard the word bint, Andy.
Should't it be 'shufti bint' ?

andyl999
26th Mar 2009, 13:14
bint: n woman, in the loosest sense of the word. One step short of a prostitute, a bint is a bird with less class, less selectivity, more makeup and even more skin. Blokes don’t talk to bints unless they’ve had at least eight pints of beer, which is why bints turn up in free-for-students nightclubs at 2:45 a.m. with their faked student ID and dance around their Moschino rucksacks. The word derives from the Arabic for “woman.” Well, I say “derives from” – it is the Arabic for “woman.”

Well that says it all, we know where Blacksheep goes for entertainment?

However they are right about 8 pints of beer, know wonder the young ladies did not reply to my advances?

Cliff, your notes are incredible, anyone rebuilding a Lanc should borrow them!

Here's a photo that Reg probably forgot that we scanned I can't remember him asking me to post it, but here it is, I think it's Reg at an OTU?

BTW Reg "Wiki" failed me they did not recognise "Bint" which I think is a Midland slang saying?

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v616/andyl999/reg/5.jpg

Now I promise not to go off topic again :0)

taxydual
26th Mar 2009, 20:20
Typical, there's always someone in a photo with their arms folded the wrong way!!

Sorry, Regle. I'm assuming the blacked out name is you.

Anyhow, back to back on thread........Gents, please keep it coming.

zotbox
27th Mar 2009, 09:33
I would like to start by saying what a wonderful thread this is and wonder how I could have missed it for so long! The first hand accounts of Cliffnemo, Regle et al are absolutely fascinating, and written in such a style to make them eminently readable.- I have read the entire thread over the past couple of nights and am now fully up to speed and ready for the next installments!
Now , the reason for my intrusion:

I have been pointed to this thread by some fellow ppruners on the "Aviation History and Nostalgia" forum in the hope that one or more of the contributers may be able to answer a question I have regarding the use of Infra-red detection and /or identification systems on RAF aircraft during World War Two.

My question regards the use and operation of "Resin Lamps" which are to be found on some Mosquito aircraft on the trailing edge of each wing, just outboard of the ailerons. Were these lamps designed to operate in the Infra-red spectrum?
I understand that similar lights/ lamps were to be found on other aircraft including the Lancaster, the Hawker Tempest and reportedly the Varsity.

I would be grateful for any responses which you might have, either on the Aviation History and Nostalgia thread (entitled "Mosquito Resin Lamps" ) or by PM.
Thanks very much for your assistance,
regards,

Zotbox

regle
27th Mar 2009, 09:56
This is the first time in my long career that I have ever heard of Resin lights. We never used them in any shape or form . Contrary to many writers on aviation , we never attempted to try any sort of formation when night flying on Ops. We were too concerned with keeping out of the way of the others to get any nearer. On Mossies, Bostons etc. Formation flying was loosely tried but fairly quickly abandoned when it was found that it only added to the stress and made little difference to the losses. The fire power only came into it when there were turrets with something formidable in them to fire. The 14 man crew of the American B17's was a different matter. The general opinion was that we presented a much bigger and more quickly seen target when we formated and as the German fighters soon developed the diving through the formations combined with head on attacks, formations were abandoned. You only have to look at the horrendous losses suffered , particularly by 2 Group, Bomber Command on Blenheims and Bostons, to see what a disaster formation flying with slow, and lightly armed, aircraft was.
Re the photo. I can only see four people in the front row with their arms crossed the wrong way.!

green granite
27th Mar 2009, 10:50
some more info here: Resin Lights and Mosquito - Aircraft of World War II - Warbird Forums (http://www.ww2aircraft.net/forum/other-mechanical-systems-tech/resin-lights-mosquito-5017.html)

zotbox
27th Mar 2009, 11:36
Thank you for the quick response Regle, I had hoped that you would hear my plea!

Here is a picture of the lights on the trailing edge of a mosquito in the De Havilland museum- they do look rather unusual.

The thread is over at Britmodeller and Post 11 contains the pictures.

Mosquito Resin or IR Lights - Britmodeller.com (http://www.britmodeller.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=27665)

Any idea as to their use or nomenclature?

Many thanks for your help,

regards,

Zotbox

taxydual
27th Mar 2009, 11:39
Regle

10 out of 10.

Good answer!!

Best regards

TD

eaw
27th Mar 2009, 16:03
This is somewhat off topic but as an avid reader of this thread I am hopeful that one of the regular contributors (regle?) may be able to shed some light on a question I was recently asked. (if anyone knows of a better info source then please pm me)

A friend who is now aged 70+ was given a 12” tall toy monkey which was dressed in blue serge, with the stitches on the blue in white thread to make it look like the monkey was wearing a RAF uniform. The toy monkey was given to my friend when she was about 5 years old. The only information she has is that a family friend went down south (from Northumberland) at the beginning of the war to be measured for a uniform and brought the monkey back for her. Was this a one off? Were there similar children's toys about and if so are any examples still around today?
http://i587.photobucket.com/albums/ss313/nineate/RAFMonkey2.jpg[/font]

Mike Read
27th Mar 2009, 17:15
Toy monkey ??

In 1956 the Comm Flight at Nicosia had a pet monkey which lived in their office. During the Suez period an RAF Regiment squadron with their Bofors guns was deployed to the airfield to defend it. One Saturday lunchtime this creature was brought into the OM bar dressed in uniform with RAF Regiment flashes on it shoulders. Needless to say it caused mayhem by knocking glasses over etc.. The RockApes were not amused though somebody was heard to comment was that it was acting in character.

cliffnemo
27th Mar 2009, 17:20
My mind wanders again, Shufti Bint ? How about Dohbiwalla, Punkawalla. Charwalla, I wonder if these terms are still used by the current serving erks. Any Erks reading this may let us know. Suppose the Dobhi walla doesn’t collect the Dohbi each week now.

Oh well , back to the grind. I intended to gloss over the P.F.E course, but then decided to give a few more details. Particularly as others may think, as I did what on earth could an engineer do on a Lancaster, so will reproduce a copy of the engineers log sheet below (our next lesson). I think the engineers deserve a bit of publicity , for everyone knows what , a gunner, bomb aimer, wireless operator, navigator pilot does, but ?

Page one shows the pre-flight check carried out by the F/E, which on return had to be signed by the engineer leader, who even double checked the gallons per hour figure . We were not told why, he wouldn’t notice the odd gallon missing out of 2154 galls.. We were told that the high octane petrol would burn out the valves on our motor bikes and cars, but I never heard of any one having that trouble. There were other checks not mentioned on the log. One was ‘ walk round the aircraft and check the general aspect of the aircraft. This was a typical, catch all rule (all embracing ?) typical of the R.A.F, as was the offence, conduct prejudicial to the good order and discipline of the R.A.F . It covered such things as checking for tyre creep, on each landing wheel a white mark was painted on the tyre adjacent to another mark on the wheel hub. Under heavy braking, the tyre could move round the hub in which case the marks would indicate the amount of movement. After all the checks the pilot would sign the form 700 ? to say every thing was in order, including ‘ The general aspect’
http://i274.photobucket.com/albums/jj248/cliffordleach/LOGPAGE1PHOTOS150.jpg

BEagle
27th Mar 2009, 18:00
How about Dohbiwalla, Punkawalla. Charwalla...

At Brize in the early days of the VC10K, we had a navigator of Indian descent - a super chap with a fine sense of humour!

He was, of course, frequently nicknamed 'Chartwallah'! Which he thought was most apt.

One day some young lady fighter controller rang our crewroom and asked if a navigator could tell her when the moon came up over the Taj Mahal on a certain date, because her mother was going there on holiday and wanted the information. So Chartwallah put on one of those 'Peter Sellers' Indian accents and told her "Dear lady, I am looking in my books and consulting my charts - I am soon finding the answer, indeed to goodness"; he went on and on like this for about 5 minutes and the whole place was in utter hysterics. The poor girl didn't know whether it was a wind-up or what - Chartwallah assured her that Professor Gujirati of Bombay University had taught him how to predict the moonrise and he would soon have the answer......

And now back to our regular programme!

regle
27th Mar 2009, 18:13
I am sorry but I never saw anything as elaborate as that monkey. Believe it or not there was the odd Teddy Bear and I once had a very senior First Officer who bore a strong resemblance to your picture but the monkey is unique. Give your young friend my apologies, Best regards, Regle

Warmtoast
27th Mar 2009, 21:25
andyl999

Cliff, the meaning of the "B" word

As the OED says:-


bint, n.
A girl or woman (usu. derog.); girl-friend.

The term was in common use by British servicemen in Egypt and neighbouring countries in the wars of 1914-18 and 1939-45.
1855 R. F. BURTON Pers. Narr. Pilgrimage to Meccah I. v. 121 ‘Allah! upon Allah! O daughter!’ cry the by-standers, when the obstinate ‘bint’ of sixty years seizes their hands. 1888 C. M. DOUGHTY Trav. Arabia Deserta I. viii. 231 Hirfa sighed for motherhood: she had been these two years with an husband and was yet bint, as the nomads say, ‘in her girlhood’. Ibid. xiii. 374 The homesick Beduin bint. 1919 Athenæum 25 July 664/2 Bint, girl. 1930 E. RAYMOND Jesting Army I. ii. 24 Damned jolly little bint, that one, too! 1938 ‘R. HYDE’ Godwits Fly xi. 169 Fancy turning in a smoke for a bint. 1941 New Statesman 30 Aug. (list of war slang) BintGirl friend. 1942 N. STREATFEILD Table for Six 151 I'd like her to grow up a lush bint. 1946 Penguin New Writing XXVIII. 175 What are the bints like round here, Tom? 1958 K. AMIS I like it Here xiii. 162 As the R.A.F. friend would have put it, you could never tell with these foreign bints.

Weheka
28th Mar 2009, 03:06
This, for me anyway is the best thread on pprune. I have read every book I could get my hands on about Bomber Command, but having people like regle and cliffnemo tell their stories is so much more personel, and it feels like you know them and have just been having a chat with them.

I had the honour of meeting a chap at a RSA funeral here who was a pilot on the Halifax. Not sure what year it was but they were still doing second dickie trips and he was shot down by a NF on his first trip coming back over Holland. Apparently one of his jobs was to collect the skippers parachute, which was in a container by the back door, in the event it was needed. He did not make it back to the cockpit area as the aircraft was on fire and spinning, first right way up, then upside down. With two others he thinks they were spat out when the aircraft broke up, but doesn't remember opening his chute or anything much. The rest of the crew were killed. Easy to see why they stopped that practise when you consider the amount of training that went into each crewmember.

I asked him what happened to his "headless" crew who were waiting for his return, they were all killed eight weeks later with a new skipper. Its hard to understand in this day and age how there was never a shortage of volunteers.

You can only imagine what some of the crews went through whos stories will never be told, so keep up the good work cliff and regle, and anyone else who was part of it.

Davaar
28th Mar 2009, 04:06
we had a navigator of Indian descent

My case was at an aircraft manufacturer. We had an English fellow, "Ken", who could do any number of take-offs ... he was very good at doing me, for example ... but his Peter Sellers Indian was superb.

One morning he arrived with his usual "Good morning! Good morning! Oh my goodness! Holy Cow! It is very good ..." and so on, until he caught our frantic pointings towards a new Chum who was pure laine Indian from India.

It was all taken in good part. As time passed, the new Chum would break off when telling an anecdote: "Oh I am telling you deary me! I am a silly fellow. You do it, Ken! You are far better than I am!".

Wiley
28th Mar 2009, 06:53
TOTAL tread drift, but on the subject of Subcontinetal people with and without a sense of humour, I see comedian David Janson has been forced to apologise for making an off the cuff joke on the Beeb (radio). Suggesting a name for a Pakistani cloakroom attendant, his answer, Mahtma Coat, is considered totally unacceptable and racist in this, the society of today that regle and cliff and so many others fought so valiantly to defend.

Molemot
28th Mar 2009, 09:37
Was not always so; first heard that one from Diz Disley in a folk club somewhere around 1968...

regle
28th Mar 2009, 11:37
This society..... I remember that the Oxford debating society ,well before WW11, passed a motion "That this House will not go to war against Herr Hitler".. I don't think that was the exact wording but that was the gist of it. My Father despaired of my generation with it's "Decrepit and shocking morals" and I bet your Grandfathers and Fathers were of exactly the same outlook. "But "Cometh the hour, cometh the man".Regle

S'land
28th Mar 2009, 12:41
This, for me anyway is the best thread on PPRuNe. I have read every book I could get my hands on about Bomber Command, but having people like regle and cliffnemo tell their stories is so much more personel, and it feels like you know them and have just been having a chat with them.

The problem with a book or recorded interview is that once it has been printed or recorded it is fixed. There can be no further questions or discussions. The joy with this thread, and the one from Old Hairy some time ago about flying the Sunderland, is that they are totally interactive. Although each of the authors has a plan for telling the story anyone can interject with either questions, or even asides, and this will spark a further discussion. It is this facility that makes the thread so interesting and brings the whole thing to life.

regle
28th Mar 2009, 19:00
Well said, S'land. I have had more enjoyment in the last few months from answering questions and hearing comments from people of all ages, than I can remember in the many ,many years since I did my last flight (1981). Believe me, when I see that someone has something to say about something that I underwent sixty odd years ago, I get a real sense of it being all worthwhile. Keep those comments going. That is what brings a Forum like this to life. Thanks a lot to you all, regle.

Weheka
28th Mar 2009, 23:05
regle, what was the highest you got to on any of your trips? Did you always try and bomb from the heights given at briefing or just try and get as high as you could?

Lanc crews seemed to like it when Stirlings and Hallys were on the same op, as they could see them below catching hell while they felt safer higher up.

I have been reading about one crew (432 Sqd ) who had to change from their Lanc IIs to the Hally III. They were not very happy about this at the start, "it looked like a designers mistake from the outside and was built like one from the inside" but soon came to respect it for its good points. They said you could easily get to 24/25000ft and once bombed from 29000ft!

Their brief tour ended over Berlin with some or all the crew surviving? ( I wonder if that would have been the case had they been in a Lanc? )
The Skippers last comment in the book, "I wonder if any historian will remember the Hally, it too was a good kite".

V2-OMG!
29th Mar 2009, 05:54
Likewise, I've been spending too much time on JB, and have missed out on this wonderful thread.

It is a privilege to read this. I say that because I am an ardent supporter and member of several flight museums with a large military component. We rarely see any WW2 pilots anymore - most of them have passed away.

As to the WW1 pilots -- heck, the average lifespan was only six weeks.
" 'Huns' yelled the observer. 'Six of 'em and coming in like stink,' and he pointed up and astern to half a dozen dots in the sky. 'Would you like to scrap, Scotty?' shouted the pilot. 'Shall we take 'em on?'"
- WW1 Display, Seattle Museum of Flight.

With most of the pilots gone, what remains are the airplanes. Each one is entwined by these stories of the noblest human attributes.

That is what stirs my committment to support these flight museums. And the next time I pass by the Spitfire, Tiger Moth, or a heavy bomber, your words will again give lift to them, Cliff.

Thank-you for serving and sharing.

Mike Read
29th Mar 2009, 09:06
I remember walking in the Tiergarten in Berlin with my ex Bomber Command captain one day in the early 70's. He said that he often did this when in the city and tried to visualise the place where he had arrived by parachute. It was, he said, the most horrific moment to be unprotected on the ground in the middle of a major bombing raid having escaped with his life from his Lancaster. He also thanked God that it was Luftwaffe troops who captured him as he would almost certainly been strung up from a lamppost by civilians.

BEagle
29th Mar 2009, 09:26
At RAF Valley, one of the MPBW (or whatever it was then called) seniors had been on Halifaxes in WW2. A nice chap; occasionally, after a couple of beers in the OM bar, we could get him to talk about his time in the war - he'd been shot down over Munich.

As is often the case, it seems, he made friends with the local Germans not long after the war and used to go back to visit thm on holiday nearly 30 years later.

He told us that, just after the Munich Olymics time, he was visiting and his wife said to their hosts "What wonderful modern buildings you have...."

To which the German replied "Ja - und your husband was one of our chief town planners!"

Oops....:uhoh:!

cliffnemo
29th Mar 2009, 15:45
Thanks WAHEKA. Having a chat is the way I hope people treat this thread. No one too worried about, grammar and the odd mistake. (See below). Just cheerful comments and help, and no one upset if someone wanders off thread.

To S'Land. What a marvelous post, thanks . I think interactive is the operative word. From my point of view, and possibly Regle's, sometimes when I feel far from energetic, a new post appears on my screen, and it's 'Full Power' again. So it is thanks to all the contributors and also to our hard working Mr Moderator , who wards off he pedants and critics. (Yes there have been one or two)

Just for a laugh I applied for an award for poor journalism on the thread reproduced below. Not only did I not win the award, there were no further posts after my application

Join Date: May 2005
Location: UK
Age: 61
Posts: 88

PPruNe Awards For Poor Journalism
How about we create an award (or series) for the worst articles published in the name of rubbish Journalism on the subject of flying.

This would apply to all Pilots on Prune, so we could all have a go. Maybe we would need an entirely new catagory? CLIFFNEMO Says yer what , catagory? Mods?

Extra points could be awarded for; poor research, oft repeated words and phrases etc. We might also consider 'Prune Annoyance Factor' for the overall effect created by the inaccuracies in the article.

The serious part of this is that poor journalism creates panic amongst the Public, who then think that an aeroplane CAN 'plummet 20,000 feet' in seconds or whatever (fill in your own here).

Come on, we can strike back!
Last edited by DeeCee : 23rd September 2008 at 10:32.
DeeCee is offline Report Post Reply
DeeCee
View Public Profile
Send a private message to DeeCee
Find More Posts by DeeCee
Add DeeCee to Your Buddy List
Old 23rd September 2008, 10:01 #2 (permalink)
Fright Level

Join Date: Feb 2001
Location: one dot low as usual
Age: 51
Posts: 482
Send a message via MSN to Fright Level

Shouldn't that be spelled PPRuNe

How about the most misspelled word here? My vote is on Stanstead.


ABSRACTED FROM ABOVE
!!!!!!panic amongst the Public, who then think that an aeroplane CAN 'plummet 20,000 feet' in seconds !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!


Dunno about that, but we were taught it could fall accelerating at 32 feet per second, per second until it reached a terminal velocity only limited by air resistance .TARA

cliffnemo
29th Mar 2009, 15:58
Hi, zotbox

Join Date: Mar 2007
Location: Suffolk
Posts: 17

Mosquito "Resin Lamps"
-------------------------------------------------------------------
SEE MY REPLY ON YOUR THREAD.
CLIFFNEMO.

regle
29th Mar 2009, 18:37
We always tried to bomb from the altitude given to us at briefing as there was always a good reason for it. i;e Other Groups and Squadrons would be given different heights and times and you could get in to a lot of trouble if you got mixed up with them. It was bad enough coping with your own aircraft and the opposing flak, searchlights and nightfighters without making things more difficult.
Altitudes varied for differing reasons; I will give you the last "Ops" that I made . Only the last two were on Hally 111's. All the others were on the Mark 1a series 11. All were made at the end of 1943 when the Bombing of Germany was at it's maximum. July 23rd. Hamburg, 18,400 ft. Aug.10th. Nuremburg, 16,000 ft. Aug. 12th. Milan,17,000 ft.
Aug. 17th. Peenemunde 11,000ft. (Accuracy on a small target vital), Aug.22nd. Leverkusen,19,000 ft. Aug.27th,Nuremburg,17,500ft. Aug. 31st.
Berlin, 17,500ft. Sept.5th.Mannheim,17,500ft. Sept 6th. Munich, 16,000ft.
Oct.4th. Frankfurt 18,000ft. Oct. 8th. Hanover, 18,000ft. Nov 3rd. Dusseldorf, 19,000ft. Nov.11th. Cannes (Marshalling Yards),13,500ft.,Nov 22nd.Berlin, 19,000ft. Dec. 3rd. Leipzig, 16,000ft. Jan 20th.'44,Berlin, 21,000ft Halifax 111, and Berlin Jan 28th.'44, 21,000ft. Also Halifax 111.
During an Air test several Squadron Pilots tried differing heights but these were without operational fuel and bomb loads. I think that 29,000ft. was about the average maximum but not possible unless ,later on when the targets were nearer but then they were usually tactical and much smaller such as V2 sites and lower altitudes were neccessary for accuracy.
I have already given my opinion on the difference between the Lanc and the Hally but will reiterate that there was no doubt at all that the Lancaster was the better aeroplane, by far, than the Halifax but the Halifax was much easier to escape from and had the better armour protection and was much sturdier . I, for one , would choose the Halifax to operate with ,but thank God, I do not have to do it again. I hope that this answers your questions Weheka, Good luck, Regle.
P.S. I couldn't agree with you more, Cliff, on your comment on being spurred into action by a comment or question appearing. I sat down this time with absolutely no intention of writing anything and then I saw your thread and then WEHEKA's and just had to get cracking. So keep them coming.

V2-OMG!
29th Mar 2009, 18:46
Cliff, I don't know if you mixed me up with someone else (I wrote post #601) but that's okay. Keep writing. It doesn't matter who inspires the writing - as long as you continue to be inspired.

Here's another literary moment from the WW2 display at the Seattle Museum of Flight. I think you may get a kick out of it:
"I heard a funny story about Tracy Bird. Two old maids got frightened at the air raids in London and moved out to the country. The third day they were there, Tracy crashes through their roof in an airplane and lands in their sitting room. They were so frightened that they moved back to London."
(True story, apparently, taken from the journal of a Spitfire pilot.)

Mike Read, regle, (and others I may have missed, as I haven't had time to study this entire thread yet).

Wow! I'm mesmerized. This thread is a treasure trove! A lot of those museum warbirds are going to find that lift as I get into this thread.

Your stories will keep those military flight museum doors open. It is so important that we never close that chapter of our history.

Thank-you all again, for serving and sharing.

Weheka
29th Mar 2009, 21:34
Thanks Cliff and regle, and more thanks to Wing Cdr Wilkerson for screening you and most your crew when he did regle.

Being a radial engine fan I think the Hally looked better when herc powered. The Lanc seems to suit the Merlins.

You must have lots more stories to come and I look forward to them.
Thanks again.

MTOW
29th Mar 2009, 22:51
Mistakenly, I hit the link to Page 1 of this thread, which leads me to say that I think we should all make a collective pause to thank the future king of England, Prince William, for being such a clever Bill - (good thing his name's not Richard, or I'd be in real trouble) - and getting his wings in 40 hours.

Let me echo the comments of many others. Keep the stories coming, Cliff and Regle. My Dad would only tell the funny stories. I suspect the other ones still hurt too much to recount.

cliffnemo
30th Mar 2009, 10:23
V2-OMG

Sorry for confusion. Just put it down to 'short term memory loss' or summat. Years ago they would have just said he's Doolally tap.!

CLIFF.

Icare9
30th Mar 2009, 17:44
cliff and regle: If either of you ever do get too tired to post, how about the rest of us chase you up if we haven't had a post from one of you in say 3 days? Perhaps you could work a rota, so you each get 6 days to recover from the effort of posting, but you have a huge public following eager for your reminiscences! I don't want to pester or for it to be a chore, but (forgive this, due to your advancing years) sometimes I can't help but worry if you haven't posted for several days!!

regle
30th Mar 2009, 22:05
Thank you for the very moving message. I know that Cliff must feel the same and I am very, very grateful. It is nice that we seem to be appreciated. I look forward to Cliff's expertise and technical knowledge and I know that he appreciates my humble efforts. Thanks a million and I will plunge straight in to my story.
We were still in the terrible Arctic winter of 1946/7 and still living in the cottage and Mrs (Margaret Rutherford) Bod would invite our two very small children, Peter and Linda to tea. She would pretend to be the Lady of the Manor and the children ,Lord Peter and Lady Linda. For those of you too young to remember the English Film star, Margaret Rutherford ,I can only describe Mrs Bod as an eccentric, lovely, old Lady with a heart of gold. Her chickens each had their own names and were called collectively, her Cubadees! She would scatter their food and they would come running as she called "Cubadees, Cubadees"
The snow and ice ,ground on remorselessly. There was no way of getting to the aerodrome and, in any case, flying was impossible. As soon as the field was cleared, down would come the snow again. The temperature plummeted. We were boiling snow for water and living on scraps that the farm had produced. The Cottage had no gas or electricity anyway and the only heating was from a wood burning stove in the big kitchen. Every morning my poor wife would go down and try and light the stove. One morning I heard the most God Almighty bang and I rushed down to find Dora there with her face all black, and in tears. She had got fed up with trying to light the very awkward stove with newspaper and shavings so had primed it with some paraffin from our oil lamp. The top of the stove had blown off and then down came Mrs Bod , ""It's happened. I knew it would happen. I heard a little explosion this morning and I always knew that the cold would do that to the pipes." she cried dramatically. How we kept our faces straight ,I will never know.
We shivered under our woolen blanket which was covered in ice in the morning from our frozen breath. The ceiling had small icicles dropping from it. Our only contact with the outside world was Mrs. Bod's accumulator driven radio. She would only allow the news, to be listened to and that with the volume turned down as far as possible ,so as to conserve the large acid filled batteries. One night, Dora and I were sitting , gloomily reading by the dim light of our evil smelling paraffin lamp ,when in swept Mrs Bod " My, aren't we looking cosy ?" she boomed and turned the lamp down a few more notches. One evening, when the snow had stopped for a few hours I attempted to take Dora in the car to Chippenham. We had only gone a few hundred yards when the car slid backwards into one of the huge snowdrifts and down into a hidden ditch. I was standing there ,cursing when out came Mrs Bod swinging a lantern and holding a spade, looking for all the world like a large member of the seven dwarfs. "My, aren't we having fun ? " she boomed out ,as Dora quickly put her hand over my mouth. She then pitched in and dug us out but we didn't attempt the trip to Chippenham.
This was March and the bitter cold went on into April and Dora was expecting our third at the end of May. Eventually the coldest winter of the century gave way to what was to be the hottest May on record and little Roy was born on the 30th. of May in Chippenham Nursing Home. Tragically he was only to live a week and then died. It was the first real setback in our lives as we had been so fortunate until that dreadful winter .
My position, and such interesting work, at the Empire Flying School had been the pinnacle of my career and I felt secure with my permanent Commission but our whole lives were to be changed drastically. Civil Flying was just starting up again and British European Airways, proposed to start a Check Flight to train and check their Captains who had very little experience of the new, and very much feared ,concept of "All Weather and Advanced Instrument flying". It was to be based at what is now the Atomic Research Station at Aldermaston, near Reading. BEA had received Air Ministry approval to recruit Instructors direct from the Empire Flying School and I was amongst those chosen to start their Civil Aviation career, right at the top as a Check Captain in the newly formed Check Flight under the command of an old friend, Neil Green, who was from the Examining Flight at the EFS.
With some misgivings, I resigned my precious
peacetime Permanent Commission ,and was told to report for demobilisation at the RAF staion of Kirkham, a few miles from my home at Blackpool. I was demobilised on June 26th. 1947. I had flown six years with the RAF with a total of 1527 hrs and 25 minutes. I had been given the substantive rank of Flight Lieutenant.
Before Demobilisation, we went to Reading to look for somewhere to live and were lucky enough to find a furnished house in Tilehurst near Reading. We had another car now, a Riley Kestrel with a fabric body ,and we made the long journey south from the Demob Centre at Kirkham to Reading. There were no Motorways and Garages were to be found with very great difficulty. We had no less than eight punctures en route. New tyres were impossible to find and every puncture had to be repaired wherever you could find a garage. Luckily the A.A. were splendid in those days. If the AA man didn't salute your car when he saw the badge on the bonnet then you knew there was a speed trap ahead ! That is absolutely true . I can remember Dora, once, pregnant, and standing on the running board, holding the distributor head on , when it had cracked and getting electric shocks every now and then, until we reached a garage.
I find, as I write this, that I can hardly believe that it happened . It was over sixty years ago and yet, with all these drawbacks we enjoyed life and thought each new invention was wonderful. I will stop now and continue my adventures in Civil (What a misnomer !) Aviation as soon as I can. I do hope that you don't find this sort of thing boring. Please let me know if you do.

Straight Up Again
31st Mar 2009, 00:56
Regle, I suspect you are incapable of writing a boring post. (same goes for Cliff and the other contributors)

I find the whole thread fascinating, and count myself very fortunate to be able to get this glimpse into a fascinating era.

I suspect many people my age (mid 30s) find it difficult to really comprehend what life was like during WWII and the time afterwards, I know I certainly do. Sure, there are plenty of facts around, but it's the intermingling of the operational and forces aspects with the stories of daily life that help to get some sort of understanding.

Post as much as you like, this is the first thread I look for when I log on, and it will never be boring.

Weheka
31st Mar 2009, 02:21
Couldn't agree more with straight up again. As you mentioned to cliff a while ago, maybe you should get together on a book. Your memories are amazing to say the least.

Just to go back to your ops regle, did you ever have any premonitions about others before going on ops? or were you too busy with your own worries. I know there was a lot of luck involved to get through a tour, but you seemed to combine that with using every tactic you could, ie weaving all the time to increase your chances. I suppose that was why the first five or so ops were statistically more dangerous?

Bear in mind I only have the books I have read to go on for info on the subject, untill you guys came along.

regle
31st Mar 2009, 09:37
I have a very fine Hardback book, beautifully written and containing wonderful Cutouts of the Halifax. It is called "Based at Burn" (A small village, near Selby, Yorks.) The ISBN No. is 0 9525317 0 4 . It is written by Hugh Cawdron and published by The 578 Burn Association , Riverhythe Bundys Way, Staines, Middlesex, TW18 3LD England.
I cannot say whether it is still in print but it is well worth reading and contains over 400 finely printed pages with contributions from all ranks and many great pictures.It is very informative and goes in to great detail of the various Marks of the Halifax including the dreaded "Rudder Stall " which caused many fatal crashes before the fins were discovered to be the culprits , losing response at low speeds and locking, causing fatal spins. The fins were changed to the rectangular ones of all the later Marks and solved the problem but many people lost their lives before this was done.
Wing Commander Wilkerson was revered by all his crews and the Royal Air Force lost one of it's finest leaders when he was killed on 16th. Sept. 1944, whilst a passenger in a Baltimore that crashed , just after
take-off from Hullavington where he was training to instigate the first Bomber Command Instructors School, that he was to command and which he had already asked me to join him there as a Flight Commander.
I thought that this might interest you and others. Reg.
No, Weheka, I never had the slightest premonition about the future, probably because , deep down, amongst all of us was the almost certain knowledge that there was no future...but it wasn't going to happen to you ! I always had in mind a notice that hung in the Briefing room at Snaith, our 51 Sqdn. base near Selby in Yorkshire. It has remained with me throughout my whole career and read "The Price of Safety is Eternal Vigilance ". All the best , Reg

brakedwell
31st Mar 2009, 09:53
regle, Amazon UK is showing two used copies of Based at Burn are available from associated sellers for £70.99 and £75.00 + £2.75 pp !!!! :eek:

240 Gardner
31st Mar 2009, 11:38
"Straight Up" - I concur absolutely!

I have been enthralled by this thread, and by the way that Cliff and Regle have recounted their experiences. My father was a WW2 Sunderland pilot and, whilst I know a little about his squadron life, I know virtually nothing about his time square-bashing, learning to fly in Pensacola, or going for other training. Now, sadly, it is too late to ask.

Having very recently made contact with one of his crew via a Squadron website (they had lost touch in June 1945!) I am hoping to learn some more about OTU and Squadron experiences, but your posts have been wonderful in bringing to life the background and atmosphere of all the other aspects of those dark years.

I log onto Pprune daily, and for no other purpose than to read this thread!

Thank you, Cliff and Regle!!

Icare9
31st Mar 2009, 17:18
240 Gardner: Have you found the Sunderland thread? I hope you have as it is similar to this, but specifically about the flying boats and what they got up to.
I have to admit that these old b*ggers certainly have a fine recall and writing style which puts many of the other threads to shame.

Warmtoast
31st Mar 2009, 19:42
regle

Your post # 571 of 21 March


Our Chief Flying Instructor was a tough South African Air Force Lt.Col. called after his famous Boer pioneer Voortrekker Grandfather, Piet Retief, the leader of the Great Trek to the Traansvaal.


I was reading the letters page of the current (May) issue of The Aeroplane monthly and what should be there but a letter from your former CFI's son. If I may quote:


More on the Buckmaster

Sir, I was most interested to see the photograph of the Bristol Buckmaster, coded RCV-F, in the Archive Colour feature of your September 2008 issue. I note that it served with the Empire Central Flying School at RAF Hullavington between at least April 1946 and May 1949.
From December 1944 to December 1947, my father, the late Maj-Gen Pierre Marais Retief AFC & Bar, of the SAAF, was seconded to the RAF. During this time, he was on the staff of the ECFS in the posts of Chief Flying Instructor and Wing Commander Flying, holding the rank of lieutenant-colonel. According to Dad's pilot's logbooks, he flew "Buckmaster F", obviously the same aircraft as in the photograph, on many occasions. According to one report that I have read, the Buckmaster "was an unpleasant aircraft at the best of times", but I don't think that it held any fears for Dad, as he was by all accounts an exceptionally able pilot.

Incidentally, earlier in 1944, Dad himself attended a course at the Empire Central Flying School (ECFS). There he met one Flight Lieutenant F. Chichester, a navigation officer at the school. This was none other than the later to-be-famous Sir Francis Chichester, renowned British pilot, yachtsman - the first man to complete a single-handed yacht voyage around the world in 1966-67 - and author. Retief and Chichester flew together on at least one occasion, in October 1944. Francis was my father's navigator on a navigation exercise, flying in a Miles Magister. In his book The Romantic Challenge (Cassell & Co, London, 1971), Sir Francis makes mention of his RAF service in the ECFS.

PIERRE K.M. RETIEF
Elarduspark, Republic of South Africa

Weheka
31st Mar 2009, 20:54
Thanks regle and brakedwell. I have checked that site and the prices seem to range from 30 pounds to 75. With our great exchange rate of about 40p per $1 it will be an expensive book, but will try to get my hands on one. The only book I have on the Halifax is one combined with the Wellington by Chaz Bowyer and Armand Van Ishoven, quite a good book with many good photos and stories. It also gives a bit of detail on the rudder overbalance causing accidents and 'christmas tree' syndrome effecting performance.

A good tribute to the Halifax in the December issue of Flypast. Gives you a good look at the Yorkshire Air Museums Halifax re-creation 'Friday the 13th', 128 ops!

My wife and I will be making our first trip to your part of the world in July but only have three days in London, what would be worth a visit re Bomber Command, museums etc while there? I know this is a small window but we have a bit of ground to cover and only have a month to do it. I figure at 57 if I don't do it now I never will.

Where are you cliff?

240 Gardner
31st Mar 2009, 22:24
Icare9

yes, thank you very much, I have, plus also had several PMs from one of the contributors who was kind enough to answer my dumb questions about some of the terms in my Dad's log book.

regle
1st Apr 2009, 08:23
What a coincidence. I have not yet seen this article in the "Aeroplane but I remember flying the Buckmasters when I was at Hullavington. I see from my log book that I flew Buckmaster RP243.1 with a S/Ldr. James on March 21sr. 1947 and then twice, on March 24th. in 243 and RP177J also with S/Ldr. James on "familiarisation" flights and then twice again on March 26th. in RP145M with a S/Ldr.Lupton so we must have had a few of them. I can't remember much about the aeroplane except that it didn't impress me. Possibly that was because the next day, March 27th. 1947 I was allowed to take the station Spitfire 1X, MA709C, up a couple of times . It was my first flight in one and I still remember the utter joy of flying it. We were still in the snow and ice of the winter of 1947 but the high pressure that was giving us those conditions also gave us a wonderful blue sky and unlimited visibility over the white landscape and to fly a Spitfire in that beautiful sky was one of the best days of my life. I would be just 24 years of age and I shall never forget it.
Switching to Piet Retief, I remember him , in his capacity of C.F.I. calling me over to his Office one day and saying "Reg, I want you to take a Lancaster over to Little Rissington this afternoon ( It was May 6th. 1947). They are having a VE Day Air display and have asked us to show them a Lanc. Nothing showy . Just a few circuits and, perhaps a three engine landing ." Little Rissington was the important base for the Central Flying School and a very short flight from Hullavington. I picked up one of our Lancs and got a Flight Engineer from the "pool" that we had and I notice I had a F/Lt. Jones as second pilot. I thought that we would show them what a Lanc could do so I called up their Flying Control and got permission to come up from behind the Hangars and sweep over the crowd at a "fairly low altitude" and then pull up in front of them to about two thousand feet and execute a couple of very steep turns (60 degrees of bank) in both directions within the perimeter of the airfield then dive down over the spectators ,disappear and come back and make a landing with both port engines feathered. I tried to forget the CFI's Instructions of "Nothing too showy. I went back to Hullavington and landed . I could see the imposing figure of Lt.Col. Pierre (Piet) Retief waiting for me at the dispersal and groaned inwardly. "I have just had the C.O. of Little Rissy on the Blower " were his opening words. "I thought that I told you , nothing showy " then he started smiling " The CO was raving about the performance. Evidently you stole the show and he wants you to have dinner with him tonight." We had a very fine evening but the story is not finished.
About six years ago we take up the story. I was then about 82 and am with my wife in our nice apartment on the sea front in Dover. We have a very nice lady who is our friend as well as helping my wife out with housework once or twice a week. She was looking at the photographs in my little study and said "My husband's brother was in the RAF." I showed interest and got the rather unusual story of her brother in law's career. He had started as an Engineer's apprentice and had gone through the ranks ( One of Trenchard's "Boys") getting to Warrant Officer and then being commissioned and achieving the rank of Wing Commander.
He had retired and had written a book "Down Chestnut Avenue ". He was living in Andorra. My wife's good "Help" lady friend brought the book in for me to read and my wife opened it up and said "Look, this chapter is entitled "Hullavington"". I read it and realised that he was there when I was and he had been in the pool of Flight Engineers. I looked through my Log Book and saw his name many times , W/O Pennal. He came to Dover and visited me . The first thing that he said was " I think that I have only been scared stiff in an aeroplane once in my life and that was when iI was Flight Engineer with you when we beat up Little Rissington and then had that wonderful evening over there with the Little Rissy crowd."
Sadly, he has since passed on ,as has my wife, but I still have his book which is a tale of sheer hard grind and ,to go from a "boy apprentice", through the ranks ,all the way to Wing Commander was a magnificent achievement and I take my hat off to him and to the many others of similar determination. If I were to be asked what was one of the highlights of my service I would say that I was fortunate enough to meet so many MEN. I put it in Capitals because I mean men ,who you knew , instinctively, were out of the ordinary; Leaders and people that were born to command and yet were humble in their ways. The RAF was and, I am sure,is, fortunate in having more of it's share of such people and I have been lucky enough to meet or serve under many of them.

cliffnemo
1st Apr 2009, 11:00
Hi Weheka. I am in Liverpool, which , unfortunately is too far North , (210 miles) from London. As you are only in London for three days, the R.A.F Museum , Hendon is your only option, think you can take the undergound to Hendon. Pitty you cannot go to view the Halifax at the Yorkshire Air Museum , but that is also about 200 miles North. Just Google 'R.A.F Museum, Hendon. for full details.

kookabat
1st Apr 2009, 11:06
If I were to be asked what was one of the highlights of my service I would say that I was fortunate enough to meet so many MEN. I put it in Capitals because I mean men ,who you knew , instinctively, were out of the ordinary; Leaders and people that were born to command and yet were humble in their ways. The RAF was and, I am sure,is, fortunate in having more of it's share of such people and I have been lucky enough to meet or serve under many of them.

Reg,
Amen to that.
I have been lucky enough to meet a number of veterans of the Bomber war in the course of my research - and to a man they have epitomised your comments. Ordinary men doing extraordinary things - and even today, so humble about it.

You ARE part of a very special generation.

Sorry Reg :ooh:

cliffnemo
1st Apr 2009, 14:46
For Johnny OR ICARE
by John Pudney

Do not despair
For Johnny-head-in-air;
He sleeps as sound
As Johnny underground.
Fetch out no shroud
For Johnny-in-the-cloud;
And keep your tears
For him in after years.

Better by far
For Johnny-the-bright-star,
To keep your head,
And see his children fed.

For Johnny
by John Pudney

Thanks Icare , ' Good on yer ' but think I can carry on as usual I’m still enthusiastic . So back to St Athan, and on to page 2 and 3 of the flight engineers log, which hopefully, will miraculously appear below. I must correct a recent mistake, when I said tanks etc , had to be checked every fifteen minutes., as you will see it should have been every 30 minutes or when there was any change in engine conditions.. Four oil pressure gauges, four engine temps, four coolant temps, etc, whether super chargers were in M or S gear, and most of all amount of fuel left, all had to be checked , and recorded. The Lancaster had six self sealing tanks holding 2154 gallons of high octane fuel, with a fuel booster pump fitted in each tank, with numerous cocks, so that fuel could be pumped from tank to tank. An inert gas ,think Nitrogen, was fed into each tank to reduce chance of explosion. Although there were six fuel contents gauges, the engineer had to calculate consumption using a table, for various revs and boost, plus an allowance of seventy gallons for take off, and enter on page four of the log ,as well as entering the flow meter readings on page three. There was also, a cross balance cock in the middle of the six tanks so that the aircraft could be flown using only one tank, from one side only. All this had to be assimilated without ever seeing a Lancaster, considerably harder than a hands on lesson.
Think I have got most of that right. Don’t we have any flight engineers , or P.F.Es out there who would help me out, Must be some correction needed.




http://i274.photobucket.com/albums/jj248/cliffordleach/LOGPAGE1PHOTOS150.jpg

http://i274.photobucket.com/albums/jj248/cliffordleach/LOG1PHOTOS147.jpg

http://i274.photobucket.com/albums/jj248/cliffordleach/LOG1PAGE3PHOTOS148.jpg

http://i274.photobucket.com/albums/jj248/cliffordleach/LOG4PAGE3PHOTOS149.jpg


Now, you lot , buzz off to another thread while I chat to Reg, Yes Reg, that idea of it can’t happen to me was believed by everyone. It was explained in a lecture that this was so, and was quite normal. The snow of 1947 I remember well, it drifted to up to thirteen feet deep in places. We were ‘snowed in’ for a week, couldn’t get in to work, only as far as the village pub. A pic below was taken about twenty miles east of Snaith. It was taken outside our front gate, with 'War Agg' dozer rescuing us.








http://i274.photobucket.com/albums/jj248/cliffordleach/SNOW47WOLDCLOSE155-1.jpg
This one is pic of a previous summer looking towards the same gate.
http://i274.photobucket.com/albums/jj248/cliffordleach/SUMMERWOLD2CLOSE158.jpg
Reg , please don't put me on a fizzer for conduct prejudicial to whatsit, just for wearing my battledress off station. Probably just wanted to show my mother. (to the uninitiated, the battle dress was only to be used when flying and on station, and certainly not outside. An Acme whistle was hung on the collar for use when ditched in the oggin.
http://i274.photobucket.com/albums/jj248/cliffordleach/LOGPAGE1PHOTOS154.jpg
If their is a pic of me in front of a Q.L 4X4 Bedford, I don't know how it got there, as I posted it on a thread relating to Belsen. If it does appear, I will probably tell you about cliffnemo the heavy goods driver, and maybe even how I drove the Hanover - Bremen express. I wonder if some one who shall be nameless will tell us about a hijacking ?

regle
1st Apr 2009, 15:08
I should have put "privileged" to serve with them instead of "lucky". Do you know something that I don't know, Kookabat ? I am referring to the tense that you used in reference to me in your last sentence, I am not being pedantic. Just kidding.
Cliff, those pictures of the dreadful winter of '47 were so evocative. They took me back, immediately to that era. I, too, like the rest of us had the Acme whistle and know that they saved many lives. I am learning a lot about the Lancaster that I never knew before, from the excellent drawings that you have shown us. All the best , Reg.

kookabat
1st Apr 2009, 20:53
Oops!!!

Tense changed.... sorry Reg!!! :eek::}

regle
1st Apr 2009, 21:28
Apology readily accepted. I am going to bed still laughing ! You've made my day.Reg.

Union Jack
1st Apr 2009, 23:08
Regle

I am going to bed still laughing!

When you get up in the morning, please check your PMs.:ok:

Jack

clear to land
5th Apr 2009, 12:36
Just to bring this to the top again gentlemen. From an avid reader of this thread (and a late Uncle who was a Lancaster F/E).

harrym
5th Apr 2009, 15:00
Regle comments (31/3) on accidents suffered by early versions of the Halifax, due to poor design of the tail fins. It would seem that Handley Page had a long-standing problem with some aspects of aerodynamic design, for not only did the prototype Hermes crash on its maiden flight due to elevator over-balance, its close relation the Hastings Mk1 was hardly a model of perfection in this department. Flying it was most definitely a two-handed job and especially so where the elevators were concerned, indeed it was said of one pilot of below-average size that on his first attempt at landing the control yoke stayed put while he slid forward in his seat. Apocryphal maybe, but the effort required in pitch made one wonder if HP were playing it safe and deliberately designed the elevators to be grossly under-balanced. The Mk2 and other variants were much better in this respect, though still not over-pleasant in use to due a rather spongy action. As for the other control axes, the rudder could start to tramp if speed was allowed to fall too low when a large degree of movement was applied (such as during asymmetric flight) and could lock at full travel if the condition persisted; aileron forces were passable but nothing to write home about, and all round I always thought the Mk1 was something of a pig.

Chugalug2
5th Apr 2009, 16:36
harrym:

Flying it was most definitely a two-handed job and especially so where the elevators were concerned,

No doubt the reason why the following information was so helpfully etched into the control wheel boss on some of them: "MENU COW PIE"! :ok:

cliffnemo
6th Apr 2009, 10:37
At some point during the course we studied the oxygen supply system , the importance of oxygen to the crew, and the effects of lack of oxygen. Particularly understanding the symptoms of anoxia, so that it could be recognized immediately and dealt with. We were told to use the word anoxia, but I think hypoxia would be more apt, but who cares?. Evidently the affect of losing ones oxygen supply resulted in the same affect as consuming too much alcohol, so that should a crew member suddenly become exuberant or start to act in an unusual manner , or even hallucinating
a problem with the oxygen supply should be suspected. To this end we studied the supply system with all the usual drawings in our exercise books and then , visited a decompression chamber, where before entering, received a lecture from the M.O. which included info on how the amount of oxygen in our blood stream would reduce with altitude if we didn’t have extra oxygen supplied..

The visit to the decompression chamber was very interesting, and quite surprising. Four airmen sat on each side with four more facing them on the other side. I and my three oppos on our side were instructed to fit our masks and breath oxygen, while the men on the opposite side told to breath normally. As the air was pumped out, my opposite number, who had a pad on his knee was told to draw squares, which he did. An altimeter in the chamber indicated the equivalent height in feet, and increased as the pressure dropped. At about 17000 feet he suddenly commenced to draw circles, then just scribbled . A t about 25000 feet ,I think, he became unconscious , When all four were unconscious we were instructed , over the intercom to remove any item from our opposite number. I removed his tie, and was told to refit his oxygen mask . When I then informed him that he had been unconscious, and I had removed his tie he would not believe me. I was then instructed to remove my mask and write Jack and Jill went up the Hill . The next thing I remember is writing the last line when I noticed my page was covered in squiggles. Despite watching the antics of those opposite ,I could not remember being unconscious , and was surprised that my wallet was missing.
http://i274.photobucket.com/albums/jj248/cliffordleach/DCLCARAVAN160.jpg


Ironically , the only one to suffer from anoxia and benefit from all this knowledge was me.
At an altitude about 20000 feet, whilst in a Lancaster, I decided to go to the Elsan, so disconnected the bayonet fitting on my oxy tube and connected it to my portable bottle, then ‘went aft‘. On return , I suddenly felt elated , but carried on towards the cockpit, and then began to feel faint. I think that because of that training in the decompression chamber, I realised I needed oxygen. I managed to struggle to the main spar and grab the ‘Wops ‘ arm, pointing to my mask as I passed out. Evidently Jock the W/Op (more P.C ?) connected his portable bottle, after which I recovered, wondering what had happened. It transpired , later, that the bottles had not been checked by the flight mechs.
http://i274.photobucket.com/albums/jj248/cliffordleach/oxy1-gauges164.jpg
http://i274.photobucket.com/albums/jj248/cliffordleach/oxy3-162.jpg
http://i274.photobucket.com/albums/jj248/cliffordleach/oxy4-163.jpg

Spartacan
7th Apr 2009, 06:20
Love it! My hypoxia training was carried out in the 1980's at North Luffenham and it was very similar. However, they reconnected the oxygen before you passed out so that you were able to remember the symptoms. I had to play noughts and crosses with a Group Captain and nearly thumped him when he started winning!

Cracking thread. Keep it coming.

kookabat
7th Apr 2009, 08:34
Cliff that scan of Jack and Jill is brilliant - makes it very real. :ok:

regle
7th Apr 2009, 16:59
Starting a new life as a Check Pilot in the newly formed BEA Check Flight meant that I had to find somewhere to live . We found an old Rectory in Tilehurst Rd. Reading which looked just the job, albeit very expensive. We were warned by several friends that the place was reputed to be haunted by a little old lady who had been seen, by tenants, roaming around the house. We never saw her but there was no doubt that something was strange about it. The two children would wake , crying, whereas they had always been sound sleepers. I woke one night to the very loud sound of racing hooves coming from the meadow beside our room. It was a bright moonlit night and I went to the window. The sound was still there but everything was calm and there was not an animal to be seen ; the most puzzling thing was the disappearance of the fairy that we had placed on the top of the Xmas tree, December 1947. It was there the night that I had placed it and next morning it was gone , never to be found.
Our job at Aldermaston was to give BEA Captains a two day course and check. We would start by giving them dual instruction on the ubiquitous Dakota and the brand new Vickers Viking using, what was called, two stage amber. This involved placing amber panels all around the inside of the cockpit windows so that the Instructor could see outside and then placing a pair of blue goggles over the pilot's eyes . This enabled him to see the brightly lit Instrument panel clearly but the amber side windows now appeared as an impenetrable black. The first day was all instrument flying practice followed by a comprehensive check on their flying, including all emergency procedures.
The job was very interesting and the majority of the Captains who came to us were 100% enthusiastic . They saw the need for the different approach to instrument flying ,that was neccessary with all the new aids to landing and Flying Control that were coming in and performed accordingly. Unfortunately there existed a very hard core of the older pre war Captains who had never been checked by anyone in their lives, brought up on the old "seat of the pants" system ,and who resented the possible idea that their flying was not all that was now required of them.
There had been some cases of aircraft arriving over a beacon and being told to "Hold at X feet" and then their next call was asking where they should taxi in to ". !
I, personally, never, encountered any of these people and made some very good friends amongst the many that came to Aldermaston
during the next nine months or so. One of these was Johnny R---- who later,tragically, "collided " with a MIG who was "buzzing" him whilst flying in the "corridors" which were insisted upon by the Russians in those "Cold War" days, There were quite a few who, on making a return for a "Refresher", would bring us some small gift of something that had been bought abroad ,knowing that we never did any of those flights that were so looked forward to by the ones that were able to escape the still strictly rationed peacetime Britain of 1947.
It could'nt last and it didn't. Labour swept the Country and decided that a poverty stricken Britain would not allow it's citizens to take out more than Five Pounds in cash on leaving the Country. This was, in effect, the same as putting a travel ban on Europe and the outcome was
inevitable. BEA, running with virtually empty aircraft , declared that they had too many Pilots and some ninety were declared redundant. The "Old Boys" were all powerful and only agreed that it would be done on a "Last in, First out. " basis and this was to include Check Flight. So Check Flight no longer existed and we were out of work in a flooded market. As proof of the panic that had beset BEA, within six months they were writing to most of the sacked pilots, offering them jobs again...but not Check Flight. The Old Brigade had won.

TommyOv
8th Apr 2009, 18:04
Cracking stories as always, gentlemen.

Cliff, your oxygen-deprived scrawls are most amusing. And with regard to your passing out at 20,000 feet...all I can say is that it's a good job that you didn't pass out whilst on the Elsan itself. Much worse for all concerned, I'd imagine...! Please keep uploading the pictures, they really help the stories come alive.

Reg, to digress slightly to your time in the RAF immediately post-war: I've read that during the war, discipline on RAF bases within Bomber Command was fairly relaxed with regards to saluting officers and the like. Was this addressed and things tightened up fairly quickly in the post-war RAF, or did things remain quite casual for a time afterward?

regle
9th Apr 2009, 10:33
TommyOv, There was a decided change and,believe it or not, some of it was actually for the better.
To start off with....The end of the war did not actually change the status of the RAF. In fact the hostilities were never ended. The occupation and splitting of Berlin brought the Cold War in to being and the RAF was faced with virtually being in a state of continous alert. The "Incident" that I referred to in my last article when a Russian MIG buzzed a completely unoffending BEA Viking and collided with it causing the deaths of all on board including my very good friend, Johnny Ralph, the innocent Captain , was only one incident of what so nearly became the Third World war and was only averted by the awesome, and I hate this word, as it is used today, and has become meaningless , but in this case was the only way to describe the Allied miracle of the Berlin Air Lift which so shook the Russians with the show of what could face them with, that the catastrophe was averted...but, like Waterloo, it was a "close run thing".
The "Berlin Luftbrucke", in which I was proud to take part, was vital and is very much a part of history. If anything it could be described as a "Dunkirk in reverse " and should be shown as vital as Dunkirk in shaping our History.
So how did the RAF change ? Quite slowly, to start off with. The RAF was always different to the Army as was the Navy to the RAF and the Army, if you get my meaning. I won't say that it went to extremes but there is no doubt that many wartime practices and habits were quietly and , quite easily dropped. Dress was consdered in a different way and the rules were more strictly adhered to. If anything, as aeroplanes grew more complex and control of them even more so, self discipline and strict adherence to Check Lists ,read or electronic, made this discipline vital.
The pre-war requisite of University, Public School education and
the outright class distinction of selection virtually disappeared as it was doing in the "outside world". There was always something that remained but technical knowledge was recognised as being of vital to the existence of the Air Force as a power in the very difficult , poverty stricken and still, rationed Great Britain.
"Dining in" nights became the rule and, once again, rules of dress were quite strictly adhered to. Camp, or a better term, Station discipline became more rigid without going to extremes. Gradually you could see yourself changing in the way that you looked at life...one of the things being that the expectancy of living longer was now a reality, and this change affected different people , differently. The few "real B******'s
that did exist and were fortunate enough to be allowed to continue didn't change , but were more likely to be told a few things by their Superiors to "Knock it off" in a quiet way. Trouble was that one or two were one of the Superiors !
The whole subject is a very interesting one and well worthy of comment in this Forum. To sum it up is not easy. During the war you had only the goal of winning it. Now , in peacetime, the aim was, and is, to sustain that peace and requires the same self discipline as before
but it is very evident that the summary dismissal of Churchill and the advent of Labour was a stern warning; the Nation wanted a big change in the whole system and the Forces would have to abandon a lot of the Old Boy mentality even though we owed our "Battle of Britain" survival to it's existence ... I have a feeling that I have not quite explained the difference in the wartime and peacetime RAF. Perhaps I have opened up the subject and I should like to hear Cliff's and other people's views. A very interesting subject, Tommy. All the best Regle

cockney steve
9th Apr 2009, 13:34
^^^^^ As always, you open the window a crack and give us a glimpse,- you big tease!:}

I, for one, would like to know more about the Berlin Airlift, among the many other subjects you tantalise us with as a "byeline" that you drop in to an anecdote.

Sadly, the number of survivors of WW2 are dwindling, those , like the contributors to this thread, who are willing to talk about it, are few and far between.

In my time in the Motor Trade, I had a customer who was an ex-military type. -obviously wealthy, he was a very friendly and down to earth chap....in conversation, it emerged that his father had owned a Shoddy-mill (dirty/waste cotton/wool ) which they processed....Eric went through the mill, so to speak, -he proudly stated that "when the Old Man snuffed-it, I flogged the mill and live quite comfortably off my investments....there's no bloody fun getting covered in muck every day"
Although he lived within sight of my garage, I had occasion to phone him.....Imagine my amazement to see the entry in the Phone -book,- " Milne, E. J. D.F.C. ".........Other than finding that he flew Mustangs as a Recce Pilot ( "unarmed,but nowt could catch us!" ) he let out very little,without a lot of pestering.

A wonderful , down-to -earth guy who is sadly missed.

Please continue , Gentlemen, you bring history into the present and give the past so much more relevance.

Blacksheep
9th Apr 2009, 15:17
...discipline on RAF bases within Bomber Command was fairly relaxed At Waddington in the sixties, discipline was very relaxed. On visits to other stations within No. 1 Group it seemed the same.

While on an exercise Mick at Lyneham however, we found ourselves back in the RAF. One of our SACs, having missed the garry, was walking to the the airmen's mess with his hat off and hands in his pockets in the rain. The Staish came along in his car, flag flying. When he spotted the erk he screeched to a halt, and flinging the door open yelled "You There!". Our SAC jumped into the front seat and said cheerfully "Thanks very much Sir! I'm off to the mess!"

Staish was so taken aback that he gave our friend his lift, but we certainly heard all about it later from the detachment commander and were banned from the domestic site for the remainder of the detachment.

cliffnemo
9th Apr 2009, 16:15
TommyOv, I have difficulty defining discipline, as to me at least, it means many things, and discipline in the air or on the ground.? I think Reg has answered you query better than I could, but would add that in the air every one practiced what they had been taught implicitly.. For instance a bomb aimer was instructed to use only the words, left left, or steady, or right, or bombs gone , exactly, no other words, and that is what they did. We had been taught that , left left , could not be mistaken for right even when almost deafened by the sound of four 12 cylinder unsilenced Merlins. Also remember, all aircrew are, and were volunteers, their main aim was to stop the war and be on the winning side. They did not need some one with a big whip behind them . Perhaps a suitable analogy would be the loose horses in the Grand National which carried on after unseating the jockey. My opinion is that in the air , rank was less important, respect was shown to all the crew, and the “skipper was boss". We did however always salute the Kings Commission on camp . I was once stopped by two S.Ps for walking along with my greatcoat collar turned up in non- inclement weather , a chargeable offence. They started to charge me, but suddenly decided to disappear when I said I would be charging them, for not addressing me correctly. They had shouted “ Eh you stop“, luckily, for me there were other ‘witnesses' around

Thanks for that Kookabat, but thought you would ask what the final line was on the oxygen post., perhaps being chestnut corner every ones knows. For those who don’t it was “ Do you think it was water they were after”
Thanks Spartacan, Will do my best to keep it coming, and I’m sure Reg will do the same however Mrs Nemo says it is about time I did some gardening, plus the oil changing on ‘her ‘ car, and my old Beetle preparing for M.O.T. Don’t worry. I’m the boss.
Would love to know what would have happened if you had thumped the Groupy. Under the influence of hypoxia ?

regle
9th Apr 2009, 16:44
I have been called many things but never a tease (unqualified T.G.). Everything comes to them wot waits but I am still in 1948 and the air has suddenly become fragrant with the scent of distant climes and some of the scent is not so fragrant ! Wait for it ! Coming to your screen in Living Black and White..........? Where ? 'til later, Regle.

TommyOv
9th Apr 2009, 18:49
Cliff and Reg, thanks to you both for your very comprehensive replies; really interesting as usual, and also it's nice to have your questions answered in such a thoughtful manner.

The way that the RAF evolved from its formation through to its post-war guise is something that interests me...from being the most junior service it seems that it went through numerous 'attitude changes' (for want of a better description) in a very short space of time. I think you got it about right Reg when you mentioned the importance of the technical trades to the increasingly complex post-war RAF...I think that this may have gone some way to helping break the social barriers, as it were, that may have existed pre-war.

I suppose that discipline (perhaps "formalities" would be a better term?) must have been harder, and perhaps to an extent counter-productive, to enforce on a largely non-volunteer force - however enthusuastic that force was about winning the war. And - as Cliff says - rank didn't mean so much in the air. Perhaps it was easier to re-introduce pre-war rules and codes as people were de-mobilised, and the ratio of conscripts/volunteers shifted once again?

There's probably a University thesis in there somewhere....

...but I shall let you both get on with your stories! Many thanks again gents.

Spartacan
11th Apr 2009, 09:29
>>Would love to know what would have happened if you had thumped the Groupy. Under the influence of hypoxia ?<<

That made me laugh. I suppose the answer is that, by the time I reached the 'Yellow Submarine' I had learned enough self discipline to be emotionally detached in a stressful situation! More seriously, it taught me that feeling aggressive toward other crew members probably meant I should check to see if I was unplugged.

I still wonder what would have happened if I had thumped the Groupy and the thought that I will never know doesn't bother me in the slightest.

cliffnemo
14th Apr 2009, 16:40
As I have said before , we had assumed the engineers course would be quite simple, but whenever we commenced a new subject, we were constantly surprised at the complexity. Subjects like , pneumatics, and hydraulics, were we had to memorise working pressures, circuits, colour codes of pipes, etc. Electrics, were I had a reasonable knowledge already , I had to learn about Coulombs , and things like 746 watts equals one horse power., it was never ending. When we came to the subject of Dinghies, we thought surely we must know it all by now, but no, more writing and ,memorising .To prove it I have scanned two of the pages which should give you some Idea. Thought it was just a case of shouting “I’m in the dinghy Jack, let go the painter” ( A wartime expression). So the days were spent writing notes ,and the evenings, “mugging up” and questioning each other.
http://i274.photobucket.com/albums/jj248/cliffordleach/DINGHY1165.jpg
http://i274.photobucket.com/albums/jj248/cliffordleach/DINGHY3Nr167.jpg


However Saturdays were a different proposition. We found three ‘singing pubs’ one in Tiger Bay, one in Bridgend, and I think one in Llantwit Major. All of these were easily accessible by steam train from St Athan station. I remember well, one night when it snowed hard ,the return journey should have only taken a few minutes from Bridgend,, but , talk about press on regardless , the engine driver rammed the drfts, backed up and rammed again, and again. We reached camp about six A.M. . Seven hours of ramming. Unfortunately no one claimed for whiplash in those days, or complained that it was a no corridor/toilet carriage. ( nuff said, or we will be back on Elsans again.) The grand finale to most evenings, was when friendly rivalry , between towns and counties began. Geordies sang ’Keep your feet still Geordie Hinny, Glaswegians ’I belong to Glasgae, Welshmen ’We’ll keep a welcome in the hillside’ Cockneys ’Doing the Lambeth Walk’ etc . All ‘at the top of their voices’ . The singing continued on the return train journey. don’t remember any serious arguments, or fights. Writing the foregoing reminds me of recently watching ‘Night Bomber’ on my video, and hearing all the flight mechs, who were fitting a Merlin to a Lanc, whistling the number one top of the hit parade tune, and thinking “don’t hear much whistling and singing these days.

Just wondering if there are any ex flight engineers reading this, could you come in and answer a question on Merlin engines that I was asked on my final exams. I had much difficulty answering, but managed it in the end. If there are no replies, I will give the answer later.

A Lancaster lands and taxies down the perry track into the dispersal. Engines are switched off, they almost stop, and then fire up again. They continue to do this, add infinitum,. What is the cause ?.
Although most will understand the words ‘perry track, and ‘dispersal’ I should explain for the benefit of any one who does not ,that ‘perry track’ refers to the concrete track running round the perimeter of the airfield not , only to allow aircraft to taxy to all runways, but also to reach dispersal points located at intervals around the perry track. This reduced the chance that all aircraft could be destroyed by one bomb. During the war this was also practised by civilian firms who operated any type of transport. At the end of the day the vehicles would be taken home by drivers so that they were well dispersed. Should two drivers live close together an office staff member would take it home instead.

Reg , I notice the words in ditching subject, Sutton Harness. Is this what we now call seat belts, I can’t remember .
N.B Call light signal D.D.D represents the call "Dinghy, Dinghy, prepare for ditching. da dit dit X 3 in morse. I can still remember my morse.

regle
14th Apr 2009, 18:01
Cliff, if my memory serves me right the "Sutton Harness"" was the webbing worn to enable the pack type parachute to be hooked on to the wearer. It was , probably by accident, very useful to grab on to if in some sort of emergency such as Ditching or moving an otherwise, difficult to get hold of body ! It rings more true to me than the "Safety Belt" in the Check List. On further thought I think that the proof is that the Pilot of a Halifax did not wear the webbing but had an unwieldy seat type parachute , If my memory is right( and I should not be the least surprised if someone finds that I am completely wrong.) Hope to be with you soon, Regle
SECOND THOUGHTS; I looked it up on Wik and there is a note that a pilot of a Spitfire died in a landing because of the severe strain of the central locking pin of his harness. Sutton evidently refers to the shoulder of any such restraint, Open to debate.

Spartacan
14th Apr 2009, 18:38
>> could you come in and answer a question on Merlin engines that I was asked on my final exams. I had much difficulty answering, but managed it in the end.<<

Let's get this straight: you can remember an exam question from over 65 years ago???

In the 1980's I went through Jet Provost training and I can't remember a darned thing about the JP except the downwind checks. The RAF had gone over to what they pleased to call the 'Systems Approach to Flying Training' or 'SAFT'. This seemed to be designed by accountants who enjoyed costing everything you did.

First you were given a booklet which would say:

'At the end of this booklet you will be able to state the components of the hydraulic system.'

Second, the intructor went through said components.

Third you got an exam which asked you to list the same components.

It was a jolly good way of 'proving' (on paper) that you knew about hydraulics, However, we called it 'learn and dump' because the next day you went on to soemthing else without having to digest what you had memorised for the exam.

By contrast, you guys received an education in aircraft systems that has stood the test of time.

Fascinating thread. There are lessons to be learned from the past for sure.

Schiller
15th Apr 2009, 09:22
Aas far as I remember, the Sutton Harness was the seat-belt/shoulder harness. However, it differed from the later harness in that the straps had eyelets in them through which a pin was placed to hold them all in position. The only way to tighten them was to take the pin out and refit the harness using different holes.

Wiley
15th Apr 2009, 11:38
I believe Schiller is correct. The holes in the harness were quite large, as was the central pin (and, I'd assume, with thick gauntlets on, was not particularly easy to undo, particularly in 'less than ideal conditions'). And then there was the headset lead, which back then, was large, and separate to the oxy mask lead and usually behind your head.

In having the Sutton harness, the Brits were ahead of some of their allies. I was surprised to find some of the US types of that vintage didn't have a shoulder harness, but just a lap strap, with not very reassuring double webbing 'poke in' securing points. This lack of a shoulder harness could lead to terrible face/head injuries on gunsights in forced landings in single engine types.

bravolima80
15th Apr 2009, 14:38
Also, the Americans did not have the quick release box on their parachutes which ours did so it involved three hooks to undo - one at each top of thigh and one across the chest. Carry on Cliffnemo. All very nostalgic!! Bravolima aka Ormeside!!!.

cliffnemo
16th Apr 2009, 14:03
Hi Spartican. < Can I remember a question from sixty five years ago ? > Yes I can.. Can I remember the answer ? That remains to be seen. When I answer, I will try to write from memory , with no reference to notes. I think that as it was a struggle to work out, and that I was so pleased that I got it right, that I remember. Regards your remarks about education on aircraft systems, I often thought we would never need a lot of the knowledge in flight, and the only answer any of us could come up with was that we were also being groomed for posting to the Far East, after V.E Day, where servicing facilities were not so well organised. For instance , we might use an airfield, with fully trained Halifax or B17 mechanics who knew every thing about their aircraft , but baffled by some of the systems on the Lancaster. (comments ?) I am sure that with their skill and our knowledge , we would have coped O.K.

Your reference to the course being designed by accountants reminded me of the saying that our webbing, big pack, etc was designed by Lady Astor (I think,) Well she did call the lads fighting their way up from Africa, D Day dodgers. Does any one remember ? I know it wasn’t Vera Lyn.


TRIVIA.

I’m elated, over the moon. Just read an article in yesterdays paper showing a note written by a well known politician. You see when I started this blog, I was concerned, ‘The moving finger having writ moves on, nor all thy piety and wit cannot remove half a word’ and all that Plus grammar , spelling mistakes, coupled with the fact, journalist I aint. I now know I am not the daftest writer in the country, and have scanned the article for your amusement. I swear I have not airbrushed the item below, and have done my best to enhance it. Sorry if it is a bit off thread, but do think it relates to some of my scans, well remotely.


http://i274.photobucket.com/albums/jj248/cliffordleach/POLITICIAN168.jpg
P.S Bottom right hand corner is the word 'nowlege' (very sic)

andyl999
16th Apr 2009, 15:23
The seat belts used on the Spitfire and other British aircraft of the era are often being referred to as the Sutton Harness. What exactly was the Sutton Harness?
The Sutton Harness used in single-seat fighters was a patented quick-release safety belt system introduced late during World War I. Over the years, several types of Sutton Harness were developed, covering both simple lap straps and four-point aerobatic harnesses. In the 1930s, the four-point Sutton harness was a broadly established standard in all RAF aircraft types, from de Havilland DH 82 Tiger Moth and Miles Magister to the Spitfire and Hurricane.
Sutton Harness

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v616/andyl999/reg/sutton1.gif
The Sutton Harness system in the Spitfire
The Sutton harness commonly used during the initial to mid-war period consisted of four straps about 2'' wide that had a row of grommets spaced about 1and 1/2 " apart.
The shoulder straps of the harness were attached at a single point to a transverse cable which was attached by brackets bolted to the ends of the fuselage longerons behind the pilot's head/shoulders. The length of the cable provided a degree of shock absorption upon impact. Also, the wire could be slackened by means of a lever in the cockpit to permit the pilot to lean forwards.
The lap straps were attached to the lower airframe.
The four straps met in front of the pilot's chest. On the free end of one of the lap straps there was a brass locking cone that had a hole near the top that passed laterally through the cone for the locking pin. The pilot put the remaining three straps over the cone and locked the straps together in the pilots lap. The distinctive-looking locking pin was secured to the cone strap with a leather thong.
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v616/andyl999/reg/sutton3.gif
Shoulder straps of the Sutton Harness
When the pilot wanted to release himself, he pulled on the thong which withdrew the locking pin from the cone, freeing all straps simultaneously. It was the first quick release device.
Due to the way the shoulder harness was attached to the fuselage structure, the part of the harness going through the armoured bulkhead behind the seat and continuing to to the rear was one of the clearly visible thingies inside the rear glazing of the Spitfire (and sadly, is one thing regularly overlooked by modellers).
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v616/andyl999/reg/sutton2.gif
The attachment cable of the Sutton harness visible under the rear glazing of the Spitfire.
The upper buckles are threaded through frame 11 (behind pilot) referred above and bolted to a bayonet coupling, connecting the shoulder straps to two wires going back over the antenna mounting frame, one each side of the mast foot, to an anchor point at frame 15. Another wire attached the bayonet coupling to the longitudinal frame under the rear glazing, probably to prevent the coupling from disappearing down into the fuselage when the straps were unfastened. The Y-shaped end of the shoulder straps went down behind the seat back, toward an anchor point on the seat mounting frame.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v616/andyl999/reg/sutton4.gif

This photograph illustrates how the pilot was strapped in the Sutton Harness. The locking pin was attached by a thread to one of the shoulder strap, and is often seen hanging along with the strap over the cockpit sill and down the fuselage side of aircraft on readiness. The pilot is Norwegian Kjell L'Abbee-Lund while serving with No. 611 Squadron.


With apologies to reg and Cliff for mentioning "fighters"!

regle
16th Apr 2009, 16:02
When the BEA Check flight was no more, we were given three months pay in lieu of notice and were let loose on a very overcrowded market. Luckily... and notice how many times in my life that word comes up... there were people in the Air Ministry that felt very badly about the treatment that we had been given. I, with one or two others of the late Check Flight were contacted and were put in touch with the newly emerging International sector of Air India. I sent them my c.v. and was offered an immediate job , based in Bombay, as it was still called. I was told that the job entailed training embryo Captains in flying the DC3's which the US Air Force had left all over India--and the world in fact-and also to train their senior pilots in the flying of the first British civil airliner to emerge after the war, the Vickers Viking. The fact that I had already flown the prototype whilst still at the EFS, had a lot to do with my successful application. At that time I remember being astonished at the plush seating... or so it seemed to me after years of flying warplanes... and the proper toilet instead of the old Elsan. I think that the lavish passenger layout impressed me more than the actual performance of the aircraft.
We had to leave our families to join us later and were due to leave the Uk in May 1948. This was just after the "partition" of India. I had been a fanatic supporter of Blackpool Football Club since my boyhood days , and had been lucky enough to form a very good friendship with several of the team that made Blackpool one of the strongest in the country,during the regionalised League Football in wartime Britain, due to Blackpool being the main centre of initial training for the RAF and thus able to call on many of the PT Instructors amongst whom were some of the biggest names in Football. Stanley Matthews had been a Corporal in my Father's Signal Centre and Stanley Mortenson, England's centre-forward, had been injured in a flying accident and was also in Blackpool. They and others, were always very kind when I met them whilst on leave and it was probably through them that I had actually been given two seats for the 1948 Cup Final between Blackpool and Manchester United but it was Dora and her brother-in-law who went to Wembley and saw Blackpool beaten by four goals to two in what was called the finest footballing Final to date. I was on my way, in a brand new Lockheed Constellation, to Bombay together with another ex-Check Pilot who had been taken on with me ,Jack Eshelby.
We had been promised free passage and good accommodation for our families but they would have to wait a short while before joining us. India was exciting. Apart from my training in the United States and passage through Canada , I had never been out of the UK before. India was exotic and totally different to anywhere that I had ever been. Jack and I had a week or two based in the Taj Mahal Hotel whilst we became acclimatised. I got on well with the Indian Pilots and
understood them when they referred to the "Wickers Wikings which were being delivered daily. In a very short time , Dora and our two children, Peter and Linda, together with Jack's wife, Hazel and their two children came to join us and examined the very nice accommodation that was being offered to us. Eventually we decided on a lovely, completely furnished, large bungalow, made of white marble, spacious and built for two families, practically on the beach at Juhu which was a tiny fishing village near to Santa Cruz, Bombay's airport. It looked wildly romantic but we were soon to be sadly disillusioned.
Our dining room overlooked the romantic beach, complete with coconut palms but when the tide went out, miles of smelly mud flats were revealed. Worse was to come as these mud flats served as the
communal toilets for the local villagers. First the men would come out and perform their toilets and ablutions and then it was the turn of the women. They each carried the obligatory circular Player's cigarette tin filled with water to use instead of toilet paper. All this was performed under our dining room windows.!
We had just about got used to this aspect of our daily lives when along came the saga of the pi-dogs. We had been pestered by these wretched half-wild packs of skeletal dogs rummaging into our waste bins so we called the local police to see if something could be done about it. This they certainly did ! I came back from the airport, one day and could smell a terrible odour from over a mile away. Our hysterical wives tried to explain that the police had been and had put lumps of raw meat down but did not tell them that the meat had been laced with strychnine. The pi-dogs had scoffed it and had promptly died a terrible death. The waiting kite hawks had swooped down to scavenge and had suffered the same fate. Then came the vultures.....The resulting carnage and smell was indescribable. I went post haste to the Police and, to give them their due, they immediately called the Sanitary services and three huge trucks filled with dozens of "coolies" were cleaning up as though it was a routine job...which it probably was.

Icare9
16th Apr 2009, 19:49
Apart from my training in the United States and passage through Canada , I had never been out of the UK before.
Ahem, I suppose Germany, France, Holland and Belgium etcetera didn't count as you didn't land!!!:)
Keep on the good works!!:ok:

regle
16th Apr 2009, 21:35
I did'nt even think of Canada and the U.S. as "Foreign". Thanks for the thought though. My son was in Berlin some time ago and was asked whether he had been there before. He answered "No, but my Father used to come here quite often. ". Just Kidding !

cockney steve
16th Apr 2009, 22:22
Cliff, not to spoil your tale, but could the answer to the problem, be as follows..... a lot of taxying on heat-soaked engines, especially if leaned-out, would be susceptible to pre-ignition....switch off mags, pull mixture back and an imperfect shutoff, combined with a slightly cracked throttle, would allow "dieseling".....In the late 1960's ,I took the keys from a new Transit van,after a 6 mile journey It continued to run,albeit lumpily, for over 5 minutes.....later cars and vans of virtually all makes introduced a solenoid air-valve to the inlet-manifold...switching the ignition off allowed the valve to open (spring loaded open, powerd shut) thus breaking the airflow over the carb. jets.......sorry about the thread drift!

I made the huge assumption that the Merlin had Carbs...the float-chambers must have been like kitchen sinks.

My mind still boggles at the vast expense in fuel, materials and time to fly a single mission.
Add in the number of man(and woman! ) -hours in support,planning and maintenance and the costs are awe-inspiring....then add in the cost in human life...truly a different world you lived in then.

Blacksheep
17th Apr 2009, 07:04
It was a rule drummed into us in training, never to walk through the prop arc of a piston engined aircraft. At Northolt the B17 and Lancaster arrived one day and crowds gathered to admire them as they parked. I stopped one WRAF Officer from walking under the B17 through a prop arc and just as she was about to give me the "Don't you shout at me Mr. BS!" treatment, there was a bang and the prop kicked over. She left in a hurry, presumably to change her underwear.

If I remember correctly, the Spitfire and Hurricane had a big button on the lower right side of the instrument panel for shutting down the engine. I suppose this worked as you describe, by opening the manifold and preventing the engine drawing in any fuel, so it would stop without any fuel charge left in the cylinders.

Old aeroplanes, like my Grandmother, have loads of character and they kick when you least expect it.

cliffnemo
17th Apr 2009, 16:22
`No need to apologise , Andy for mentioning the word fighter. I mentioned the word politician, and I’m still here. Very interesting the article on Sutton harness, brought it all back.

Spartacus. Still thinking about ‘remembering for sixty five years. Could it be remembering remembering remembering ?. That is discussing it with other engineers from time to time or having similar problems later in civvy street ?

Steve , Replies do not spoil the thread, If it wasn’t for the replies this thread would have stopped long ago, and are very welcome.. Good try Steve, but not dieseling ,sometimes called preignition, or running on, or due to heat soaked engines. We had very definite instructions that on reaching the dispersal, we must run all engines at fast revs for a few minutes to allow the engines to cool down. This also ensured that the sodium filled valves could cool off. Which some valves would not do, owing to being off their seats when stopped. After switching off the magnetos, we then switched off the four I.C.O switches which cut off the fuel completely to the carburettors, be they Solex fitted to the British Merlins or Strombergs fitted to the Canadian/ Packard Merlins. These switches can be seen , top right on my previous instrument panel drawing. My historic Beetle (71) also has an ALMOST similar I.C.O but they call it an electromagnetic cut off valve. It is the slight difference in the two designs that is part of the answer to my question.

You mention the costs of maintenance, one , never mentioned is the cost of all the back up tools and aircraft spares which were slowly moved up in trailers, as the front advanced into Germany. When I ‘Went redundant’ ( a phrase used by many aircrew), I finished up in charge of the mechanical stores at R.A.F Wunsdorf, (Near Hanover) and was amazed at the amount of stores still in trailers.

Blacksheep I wondered whether the Merlins on single engined aircraft had an I.C.O fitted, I would think so. Any Merlin mechs, flight engineers out there . If so OVER.

cockney steve
18th Apr 2009, 16:30
Cliff....I assume ICO = Idle Cut Off ? Yes, I've worked on many a car with that system, but certain models would still pull fuel from the main-jet, sufficient to maintain running...some designs had both the air-dump solenoid and the idle cutoff. the Fords sounded like an asthmatic, when you turned them off :}

Interesting to learn that Sodium filled valves were around then....it was quite a novelty in the 70's car repair business and, having been cautioned against cutting them, I often wondered what happened when a piston broke a head off when the timing went.....removed a few bent ones from Fiat twin-cams, but the heads stayed on :)

still awaiting the answer .....and this is still the best thread on proon
Thanks!

regle
18th Apr 2009, 21:37
Cliff, CockneySteve and others, I still feel humbled by the vast technical knowledge displayed, especially lately ,with the discourse on the "preignition" subject. I remember that my old Riley used to run on for what seemed like hours especially in warm weather. ( Does the name of Fredddy Dixon and Rileys mean anything to anyone ? No cheating via Wikking !) I feel out of place sometimes with my efforts but I have been encouraged by many and I agree that this Forum IS so interesting and I think that the change of subject is one of the things that I like about it so here goes; back to "The Jewel in the Crown."
Luckily, even with our experiences with the communal toilets and the pi-dogs, we had something that had never entered our lives before...servants. We found that we had entered the most rigid "Trade Union" that we had ever dreamed of, when we started to take on a very neccessary staff to run the household under the very different conditions that we were now faced with. It wasn't called a trade union; it was called the Caste System. I had a bearer who would only touch my clothes but not anything of my wife's; a cook who would cook but not prepare or serve food, a food preparer (potato peeler) who also cleaned the rooms but not the bathroom or toilet which were left to a poor little man from the "untouchables". There was also the Ayah who looked after the children (Very well, actually ) and considered herself above all the others. Thomas, the cook, would come to Dora every morning with a sheet of paper for the day's menu. After the rationing of the U.K. our imagination would run riot, especially the desserts, but, day after day, the prescribed sweet would not be served, with all sorts of different excuses from Thomas. We found out that the only dessert that Thomas knew was creme caramel. To this day the sight or name of creme caramel takes me instantly to India.

Although Air India had hired two of us as Instructors, not enough of the pilots were experienced enough to fly the routes and we were often pressed into service. Air India were fortunate in having as Chief, one of the most dynamic and likeable men that I have ever met in my life. His name was J.R.D. Tata, always known simply as J.R.D. He was already one of the richest men in India, through he and his family's textile mills and multitude of concerns ,but he, alone started Air India before the war. He was revered by all his employees and, I was told, taught himself to fly and I also believe that he held the first Indian Commercial Pilot's licence.
Flying, in India was different, to say the least. One of the first pupils that I had was a very young chap who had only flown small single-engined aircraft and he had to be converted to D.C.3's. His taxying was very erratic and we were fortunate in staying on the taxiway but we eventually lined up and I told him to take off. He took his feet off the brakes, opened up the port throttle and spun the aircraft around. "Ooh, yes, I clean forgot that we had two engines" he said. I eventually found out that his Father had been instrumental in getting his commercial licence "for my Birthday, you know" !
One day, coming in to land at Santa Cruz, we hit a buzzard on the approach . The authorities who had designed the airport had overlooked, or ignored the fact that there was a meat packing factory in line with the main runway and the resulting buzzards, ubiquitous "Kitehawks" and even vultures were a constant menace. This one broke one of the main legs of the extended undercarriage so I had to retract the other one and then fly around Bombay for a couple of hours to burn up fuel and then made a wheels up landing on the grass beside the runway. It was deemed safer to do this than land on the one good wheel. The monsoon helped in having made the grass nice and wet and we slid along for a long way , hotly pursued by what I thought was the safety equipment truck, but turned out to be a lorry loaded with coolies , who jumped on our aircraft, gaily waving to us through the windows and proceeded to paint out the logo, "Air India" with whitewash before it could be photographed by the Press. I had a photograph from "The Times of India" showing the D.C.3 on it's belly with the long white streak effectively hiding the logo but it has long since been lost in the numerous moves that we have made since then....1948 !

Icare9
19th Apr 2009, 18:00
Regle: and we all now know much more about Tata from the buyout (sellout) of British Steel by Blair and Co....
Tata also manufacture trucks, cars and practically everything they can use their steel in, so they have come a long way and very successfully.
How interesting that you know the man personally from the founding of Air India, and that the Tata Company success is due to hard work and enterprise, not sleaze.

regle
19th Apr 2009, 19:46
It was inevitable that we should have to move away from our lovely Bungalow as there was too much hassle with the village life of Juhu. It was a great pity as we had found a wonderful Montessorri School for the children . They were taught practical things , like tieing their shoe laces, as well as picking up the language so quickly and they loved it but ,sadly, we moved to Bombay.
We soon found a boarding house in Woodhouse Rd. right in the centre of the city. We had a large,ground floor room . The big block was run by an ex-army Major Grey and his Anglo-Indian friend, Miss Woods. Life there was certainly entertaining. The children were spoiled completely by the staff who, like all Indians, love all children. If I scolded Peter for something, one of the servants would get between me and him, saying "Don't beat him, Sahib; beat me instead" ; I would come back from the airport to find the pair of them squatting, Indian fashion, outside the building, on the pavement with the "Paperwallah" with his comics spread all over, reading to their heart's content.
There was a lift shaft running up the centre of the building and one day, entering the place, I saw what looked like a leg of lamb going up on a piece of rope. I ran up the stairs and found one of the bearers, on the third floor, pulling away. The explanation was that meat had to be purchased direct from the abattoirs at Bandra so each family would send their bearer who would get together with the others and purchase one good cut and the others , inferior ones. The one good cut was going the rounds of the apartments ,to be shown to the Memsahib and the cook would get the blame for the result of cooking the inferior ones,
We found evidence of rats in our larder,so I purchgased a trap. The only type that you could purchase was the cage type. One day I heard the trap go and called the bearer to take it outside and kill the rat. I found him in the garden with the trap open and the rat gone. "But Sahib, it could be my Ancestor" he protested. I told him what I would do to his Ancestor if I found him in the larder again. I was not popular !
I had bought a car very cheaply. It was a lovely 1939 Packard Convertible, a real Hollywood film star's car. It was a beautiful green and
had white side wall tyres, unfortunately not all four. Petrol was still strictly rationed and we had to rely on the surreptitious siphoning from the underwing drain valves of the Air India Dakotas. With our two children waving happily at everyone from the back seat we would drive, like royalty, to Breach Kandy, which even though the Brirish had left India for good, earlier in the year, was still very exclusive. There we would sit on the lush lawns and have our tea and sandwiches, being very careful as the kitehawks would swoop and snatch them from out of your hand as you were putting them in your mouth.. It was there that I bumped in to one of my old friends, Ralph Hollis and his wife, Pam. He had trained with me in the States in 1941 and I had not met him since. He was flying for Decca Airlines who were based at Hyderabad which was trying to maintain it's independence from the new India.
Several notorious people were involved with supplying arms to Hyderabad, gun running in fact. I met one of the pilots involved, at one of the bars in Bombay. He was an ex Aer Lingus, giant of a man, and told me that he had called in at Karachi to refuel a converted Lancaster on his way to Hyderabad with "medical supplies". Karachi was, of course, the Capital of the new state of Pakistan and was violently opposed to the breakaway state of Hyderabad. On takeoff, he told me, the Lancaster was so heavily loaded that it failed to get off the ground and slid on it's belly, crashing through the perimeter fence. In his own words "The trouble was all those medical supplies burst loose and there we were , the three of us, sitting among machine guns and rifles." They scrambled free and stopped a bus that was coming along, and made their way to Karachi docks and were on an England bound freigher less than three hours after crashing their aeroplane. I met the same chap later when I was on the Berlin Air Lift. He was flying for the same firm as me, Flight Refuelling ,and told me that he had qualified as a Dentist on getting back to Ireland. Tragically he was killed when returning to Tarrant Rushton, as a passenger in the only accident that the firm had when the aircraft hit a hillside in the vicinity of Tarrant.

regle
19th Apr 2009, 23:02
Icare9., As you will see later, I got to know JRD very well and he was always the same. Dynamic, charming and very, very likeable. It was the way of life that I had never encountered before and he was so totally different from any other Chief of an Airline, not only that but the man who had made it possible. As I found out quickly, India was so different. and what would have been furtive and clandestine in the U.K. of the Thirties and Forties , was taken for granted, and even expected, in the India of 1948....Don't forget that we, the British, had been the virtual rulers and lawmakers for time immemorial...Clive of India etc. I am not condoning the practices; I am just telling it as it was to a young man , 26 years old, married, two children and just out of the RAF, who had never been in business of any sort and had never...and still does not...want to. I think that there are many ex-servicemen and still more ex and current Airline Pilots who think exactly the same way, notwithstanding the exceptional exceptions. So I hope that you, and others, who read these threads will try and go back with me to times that were very different from now. I think that we all lost our innocence in those dreadful but stirring days.
I know that my contemporaries, like Cliff, will understand. Reg.

ancientaviator62
20th Apr 2009, 09:23
regle,
worry not what others may think in respect of your time in India or elsewhere. You have earned the right to tell it as it was . There is an unfortunate tendency for the past to be judged by todays so called 'standards'. I think I can speak for the others when I say how much we enjoy yours and cliffnemo's stories. Please keep them coming exactly the way they are. There are many of us of the 'gentlemen in England now abed' mind !
Best wishes

cliffnemo
20th Apr 2009, 16:29
I am bit annoyed, there is Reg lounging on his veranda with his punkawallah in attendance, while I am working my fingers to the bone. I shouldn’t have joined.

Reg, I am not sure the word humble is the correct one to use, Would mutual respect ;be more apt ?
I think that’s how it was in the war, regardless of rank or trade. ? I was very impressed by, and respected, our navigator, Paddy from Dublin. With his knowledge of H2S, Gee. Fishpond , bubble sextants etc, and remember one night returning to Hemswell, on the approach, we were advised there was a ‘clamp on’. We were told due to thick fog we should divert. We were at a thousand feet, and Paddy said to keep on course for the centre of the field when he would give a new course. As you know it is easier to look down through fog as distinct from looking horizontally. Paddy sitting in his cubicle called out “we are over the airfield --------------------now, and sure enough I looked down , and there was the airfield marker flashing H.W. Would he be using H.2 S or Gee, can’t remember.. Just thought what a cosmopolitan crew. Paddy from Dublin. Jock from Edinburgh, Speedy from Kent ,John a cockney. Taffy from Wales, Fred from Bristol, and me. Enough of this rambling ,Before I go onto the serious matter of I.C.O.s. Reg, please describe the duties of a punkawallah, they wouldn’t believe me. Just thought didn’t we have an astro dome, did any one ever use the sextant, seem to remember clockwork averaging device, artificial horizon, a few of the stars, that’s all. Also just wondering if you experienced the same problem with the Dakota as we did draining petrol form a Tiger Moth, as the main purpose of the pipe was to remove condensate. Another question Reg, Was the flying life of a rear gunner only fourteen hours at one point during the war, or am I dreaming again.?

COCKNEY STEVE, yes you are right I.C.Os on Merlins only control the the slow running jet, as on later vehicle engines. If a Merlin was running , say above eight hundred R.P.M it would still run with the slow running jets off, and would draw fuel from the progression jets and main jet. . Didn’t want to get too technical, as the S.U and Stromberg carbs were quite complicated. Whilst I am happy to discuss such things with any one interested, I had hoped my question re engine shut down would encourage at least one flight engineer to contribute. Wouldn’t it be great if we had an ex bomb aimer, navigator etc on here. Better still a full crew. Will wait a few more days , and then explain how a Merlin can refuse to shut down

regle
20th Apr 2009, 18:28
Cliff, As you well know, the Punkawallah was the poor man who used to sit or lie with a cord attached to one of his big toes , the other end to a large sheet of some sort of material, possibly bamboo, and pull on it so that it would sweep to and fro thus setting up a hopeful cooling breeze . More probably just moving the warm air around.!
No problem with the petrol from the DC3.. The Petrolwallah used to do it for me.
I have no idea on the life of an air gunner. Sounds very much on the low side to me. I forgot to mention that the Punkawallah was called that ,as that was what a fan was in Hindi or Urdu, a "Punka". Also, if it was after September 1943, it was possibly H2S. I finished my Ops at the end of Jan. 44 and had never used ,or had H2S on board but I am sure that the Lancs got it before the Hallybags.
P.S. My Welsh Navigator, Phil, used the astrodome as he always took shots when he could. Could match you with the cosmopolitan crew, Cliff, Bomb Aimer,Jackie, Epsom, Me ,Lancashire, F/E, Bill, Yorkshire,W/Op. Paddy,Belfast, Mid Upper A/G, Roy, Canada and Tail end Charlie, Tommy, Geordie, and all of them the salt of the Earth.

regle
21st Apr 2009, 06:25
Do you really feel accursed that you were not there ? India I mean, not Agincourt. It was good of you to reassure me and I took good note of your kind words. Oct 25th ? Reg.

BEagle
21st Apr 2009, 07:20
To this day, flight deck ventilation air outlets are known as 'punkah louvres'!

Union Jack
21st Apr 2009, 09:18
To this day, flight deck ventilation air outlets are known as 'punkah louvres'!

Not to mention those in countless warships, merchant ships, and railway carriages - and who can forget Rumzan, the punkah wallah in the TV series "It Ain't Half Hot Mum"!:)

My salaams and please keep it coming Regle and Cliff.:ok:

Jack

ancientaviator62
21st Apr 2009, 12:20
Regle,
I meant in my oblique way that many of a later generation will envy you your varied and interesting life having survived WW 2. I was lucky to serve when we still had far flung bases but the chaps serving today have only the delights of Iraq and Afganistan to look forward to.
Best wishes
Bill
PS It surprises many people when they realise how many Indian words have penetrated and enriched the English language.

andyl999
21st Apr 2009, 13:33
Reg has asked me to post this, it's a 39 Packard (not Panhard as I keep saying to Reg). He notes on the back of the picture that "The best car I ever had" and "Sold for £50 when I left India!"
http://i583.photobucket.com/albums/ss278/regle999/india/39Packard.jpg

Looks like a RH steering, I thought American cars were LH steering?

henry crun
21st Apr 2009, 21:40
Andy, A chap who lived quite close to me in Sussex at about the same time that photo was taken owned the same model Packard, and it was right hand drive.

cockney steve
21st Apr 2009, 22:17
Regle...far from being humbled,you should be proud that you have such an extensive and eclectic knowledge that has survived all these years.

You forget, perhaps, that I earned a living as a motor-mechanic (i liked to think I was a proper engineer, as opposed to a parts-changer :) )...I'd venture to suggest that your knowledge of things mechanical ,is vastly superior to mine ,on Aviation, met. nav. etc.
I find it quite amazing , just how much you had to absorb, in a very short space of time and then got slung in at the deep end....Indeed, I always said i would never volunteer for war-service an any sort of front-line role.

I have always abhored violence and always told those intent on joining the military, "remember, you are being employed to KILL...OR BE KILLED.

Sorry, I couldn't put my life in the hands of the incompetent people who were in charge.......it says a lot for your courage that you did and in spite of them you survived.

Andy, I think that several American motor-manufacturers made RHD versions for export, I have a full set of 1930's "Newnes" Motor-repair manuals, several USA and Continental makes were listed, together with the special procedures for each vehicles' non-standard design parameters......I astounded one vintage owner with , I think, a Buick, which ahd a starter that reverted to a generator...he didn't expect I'd have heard of such a device and was floored when I produced the book........the blighter still has it, 20-odd years later!

I really love the tales of India, their laid-back attitude to life and their (by western standards) eccentric behaviour.. the thought of a rat being an ancestor!...but what about chickens,fish ,goats and other meat that they'd happily eat?...



Cliff- Thanks for that explanation....It was the same in the motor-job,re-Strombergs and SU's....the constant-velocity SU was a very simple and elegant design, though the later ones had a biased needle which, being spring-loaded to one side of the jet, rapidly wore itself and the jet oval, lousing-up the mixture strength(but it was consistently rich :\ -unintended consequence of trying to cure mixture-variation due to needle-flutter. the Stromberg diaphragm used to get sloppy with damper-oil and wear through,causing air-leaks and no acceleration. easy job, once you knew the symptoms and cure.

I daresay your Merlin carbs would dwarf them in size and complexity.

andyl999
22nd Apr 2009, 11:04
Ah, I spent many (happy) hours trying to synchronise those little B**tards. I started with the brass topped ones and even remembered the later plastic top ones! There was something exciting (or even evocative) about opening my Morris Minor bonnet and seeing those two milk bottles!

Back to the forum though, you may have read that Reg sold his Packard for £50 when he left India?

Now look at this:-

carfarm : packard 2door clubman opera coupe1938 (http://www.pistonheads.com/sales/891334.htm)

Makes your eyes water :0)

Fareastdriver
22nd Apr 2009, 14:09
A large proportion of American cars were built in the States and overseas as RHD before about 1960 They were built in South Africa, Australia and assembled in Canada when I was young. It is surprising how many countries drove on the left hand side of the road before the WW II, Sweden, China, to name a couple.

regle
22nd Apr 2009, 15:22
I have an idea that they still do in China. In Sweden they changed overnight as they found hundreds of them were practising on the right hand side weeks before. Tongue in cheek, Regle.

NUFC1892
23rd Apr 2009, 08:48
Having spent a great portion of the last 30 years reading books on the RAF pre 1976 (when I joined), I have found both the RAF and social history elements of this thread fascinating. As someone who has always wished that I had been able to join 40 years earlier than I did the accounts of life portrayed on here have done nothing to dispel the desire.

Regle, Cliff and others of the same vintage. It is you and yours that set the level by which we who are still serving should be measured. I doubt that we shall see the need for such dedication, stoicism and good humour over such a long period ever again, but if we do I hope that I, and my fellow "erks" can live up to the legacy you have given us.

Thank you so much for sharing your memories, and keep it up.

My very best regards

regle
23rd Apr 2009, 11:04
Thank you for those encouraging words, It is when you realise that some of you are enjoying hearing of days gone by that ,perhaps , someone is listening to what we are saying and, dare I say it, even learning something from it, I.even at my advanced years, have learned a lot just reading Cliff's terrific threads and I am grateful for Andy,s constant helpfulness. I take it that you are still serving ? Lots of luck and thank you. Reg.

cliffnemo
24th Apr 2009, 16:09
THE MYSTERY OF THE UNSTOPPABLE MERLIN.

It seems as if there are no flight engineers or flight mechs out there to answer my question so will now explain why the Merlin engines on a Lanc can refuse to stop. The answer lies in the fact that wherever possible all services were designed to ‘fail safe’. Where a service was operated ,hydraulically, electrically or pneumatically. then when that source of supply failed , the service would automatically revert to the ‘landing’ position. For instance, the super charger had two speeds , M gear, and S gear. The engineer selected S gear above a certain height, if its electro/pneumatic power supply was interrupted it reverted automatically to M gear , ready for landing ( I hope I have got it right) . To finally stop the engines an Idle cut of switch (I.C.O) was switched off (see previous reference to preignition, or running on). However when shut down was required, the fuel was shut off by an electrical current, so, if the electrics were damaged then the I.C.O would remain open and still idle/run.. All the D.C circuits in a Lanc were supplied by four twelve volt batteries in series parallel , which gave an output of twenty four volts D.C ,and could be isolated by a ‘ground to flight switch. We had been told that in an emergency, if we had to lighten the aircraft as much as possible, the batteries and Elsan were the first things to go., and that the starboard inner engine would supply the twenty four volts through the automatic voltage and current controls. This was the knowledge required to answer the question, that was previously asked.

The answer is, that the ground to flight switch (the main electric switch) was accidentally in the off position, but the starboard inner, still running was supplying enough electricity to keep the I.C.Os closed. As the engine slowed down the voltage from the generator dropped at which point the automatic voltage regulator cut out opened . cutting off the electricity . With the electricity off, the I.C.Os opened again , the engine fired up, and then repeated the cycle , until some one switched on the ground to flight switch . I answered this one during my finals, with some difficulty, but got it right in the end. As Cockney Steve will know, on a vehicle the equivalent of an I.C.O is held open by electricity and if the supply is cut , the engine will not tick over.

Probably boring to some , but I wanted to demonstrate the flight engineers did have excellent training as did all other members of the crew. It again shows how efficient the R.A.F education system was, and I hope still is. Pity there are no education types on this site, to explain how they did it.

Just a pic of the Merlin S.U carb, not too complicated , until you consider it has to compensate for altitude, boost, a constant speed propeller., climbing , diving, and varying atmospheric pressure, etc.
http://i274.photobucket.com/albums/jj248/cliffordleach/SUCARB172.jpg

I was amused by Cockney Steve’s reference to the word ‘employed’ . He used the word correctly, but somehow I never felt employed, just a member of a very excellent club or association. I would appreciate the views of any other old aviators, on this one.





[

cockney steve
24th Apr 2009, 23:09
Cliff, - Thanks for yet another wonderfully clear and comprehensive discourse. :) The illustration is a real bonus.

As in any "team " situation, you all pull together to get the job done,as one would not like to let down the other members of one's team. -unfortunately, politicians will ruthlessly exploit this honourable trait, for their own ends.

once two nations (or more) are sucked into war by their political masters, there's no turning back until a great deal of death and misery has ensued.

Further to the life of a tail-gunner....I was told that the average life of a Recce pilot was 1 1/2 missions :eek:

Although unarmed, I was assured that they would outrun any fighter and my informant had the greatest respect for the bomber crews, whom he considered were sitting ducks, being not only slow, but lacking the element of surprise that a single, fast, low-flying aircraft was blessed with.

NUFC1892
27th Apr 2009, 09:31
Thank you for those encouraging words, It is when you realise that some of you are enjoying hearing of days gone by that ,perhaps , someone is listening to what we are saying and, dare I say it, even learning something from it, I.even at my advanced years, have learned a lot just reading Cliff's terrific threads and I am grateful for Andy,s constant helpfulness. I take it that you are still serving ? Lots of luck and thank you. Reg.

Yes, still serving Reg, 33 years done and exactly 5 left from today. Fortunate enough to currently be on a tour in the RAFs last sunny (non-warlike) outpost :cool:and counting my blessings every day.

regle
27th Apr 2009, 10:38
Come on !, you must have had some terrific experiences during that time. I don't think that it would be thread stretching too much to tell us about some of them. If you have already done so then please forgive me and tell me which threads ! Only five days to go ! What do you plan on doing? It will make a huge difference to your life. Lots of luck, Regle
Sorry, I thought that it was five days but , luckily, I re-read it and realise that it is years. You still have time to redirect your life. Sorry for the error, Reg.

NUFC1892
27th Apr 2009, 10:56
Fortunately Reg it is 5 Years to go, not 5 days! As for experiences, I have nothing that could begin to compare to what has gone before on this thread and others.

And what will I do when I finally, and reluctantly hand in my uniform? Well, I have told my good lady that standing at the entrance to B & Q greeting customers for a couple of afternoons a week when there is no Cricket to watch is a long held ambition of mine - alas she seems to have greater plans!

exscribbler
27th Apr 2009, 15:58
Retraining will be required; at B&Q they let you have the last one... :E

cliffnemo
28th Apr 2009, 16:02
You may remember at the beginning of this thread I told how three of us Hardie, Bill and I, became inseparable friends, whilst at Darr School. I have now come across a letter Hardie wrote to me in 1986 , I wondered if it would be of interest, and would be legible, so append below the first page. The letter does describe briefly on four pages his wartime career.
Would some one let me know if it is legible , and of interest. If it is I will scan the remaining pages.



On my windows/ vista/conputer clicking control plus does increase the print size.
http://i274.photobucket.com/albums/jj248/cliffordleach/HARDYLETTERLAST171.jpg
1986 AND HARDIE WON'T LET ME FORGER THAT GROUND LOOP.


In the past I have typed the word Halibag, then deleted it as I thought it would not be recognised. But now as Reg has used it , I realise it was not a figment of my imagination.

I have had a nice email from Tow1709 re a Typhoon pilot, named Peter Bret and he says he will join in the fun, and in conjunction with the Peter , will try to post some interesting articles.
See WW2 Hawker Typhoon pilot memoirs

Regle, any comments on 'Rice Paper' ?

Molemot
28th Apr 2009, 17:12
Cliff...please scan the rest of the letter!! You have a considerable audience out here who value everything you can give us...I check this thread every day, and I'm sure many others do too.

regle
28th Apr 2009, 18:24
Hear hear. I too and am sure others want to see the other pages, Cliff.
You have lost me with "rice paper" . Have I missed something ? Reg

cliffnemo
29th Apr 2009, 10:01
Thanks for the advice, Molemot. Will start scanning. Will first try to produce the newspaper article that after forty years or so, connected the three of us together.

Regle, not to worry about the rice paper. Talking to a friend it just flashed across my mind, and asked him if he could remember any thing about it. I could remembered it was edible, and could be written on. He seemed to think a crew member was given a piece with the 'letters of the day' (colours?) written on it, and in an emergency ate it. Another figment of my imagination ? Perhaps some one else will remember.

jim jeffrey
29th Apr 2009, 12:50
Cliff; at last you've tempted me to reply when you scanned that letter. The long arm of coincidence stretches out again.

My dad trained at 2BFTS, War Eagle Field, Lancaster, California on Stearman, Vultee Vibrator and Harvard.

One fine day, in the climb to exercise altitude in a Harvard, he decided to pass the time with a slow roll. The canopy was half open and he found himself inverted with his shoulders on its leading edge and his head in the slipstream. He couldn't reach the controls and had to kick the stick over until it rolled drunkenly upright. He had a parachute, of course, but was too scared of explaining himself (and the loss of an a/c) to the CFI to contemplate using it. I suppose the Harvard would have recovered itself over 6,000', but it made him sweat a bit.

Keep it all coming Cliff and Regle, the reason I have a PPL today is because I was brought up on little snippets, which you are bringing together beautifully.

andyl999
29th Apr 2009, 14:10
I finally just scanned in 11 more pictures into Reg's Photobucket account, Reg wanted me to post this picture.

The question is "what is the aircraft in the lower middle panel"?
http://i583.photobucket.com/albums/ss278/regle999/reg102.jpg

Reg has not told me what the prize is yet but I hope it's alcoholic?

Jig Peter
29th Apr 2009, 15:07
Hesitating, hesitating, hesitating ...
I'll go for a Buckmaster ....
:confused:

johnfairr
29th Apr 2009, 15:16
Could be a Bristol Brigand, judging by the tailplane. Just a thought

regle
29th Apr 2009, 15:34
The "Bread and Butter" route in India was Bombay -Calcutta and Air India possessed the sole right to this route. The line concessions were renewed yearly by the Directorate of General Aviation (DGA) in Delhi. JRD, as Mr Tata was always known ,phoned me one evening to tell me that I was to take him to Delhi next day for the annual meeting for the renewal of the routes. I asked him if we were night stopping and he told me that we would be returning the same day . When we were going out to the plane I was surprised to see a large number of suitcases being loaded on to it. I said to JRD "I thought that we were only staying the day". He put his arm around my shoulders and gently said "You really don't know India do you, Reg ? " The suitcases were full of rupees and the one with the most suitcases came back with the best routes. We came back with "Bombay-Calcutta " intact.
I was sitting in the old DC3 one early morning , waiting to check the Captain on the Calcutta route when into the aircraft came JRD and politely requested the passengers to disembark. All 21, a full load, did so without demur. He then breezed into the cockpit and said "We're off to Poona to the races. You've just got time to get your Wives to come as Hostesses" and off we went to Poona.
Another time I was assigned to take the assassin of Mahatma Ghandhi to Delhi for his trial. I was not to appear in any photographs. The First Officer, duly promoted, was the one who appeared in the "Times of India".
The stewardesses in India were always from very good families, generally very beautiful, but with few exceptions, not very worldly. As in all airlines, new stewardesses were the subject of intensive leg pulling. One gag was for the First Officer to hide amongst the baggage which, on the Dakota, was always stowed behind the cockpit adjacent to a small cargo door on the left side near the nose. After take-off the Captain would call the poor girl to the cockpit and ask her to send the First Officer up. When she said that she could'nt find the F.O. in the back the Captain would tell her in no uncertain terms that it was her job to make sure that all the crew was aboard as well as the passengers and that now he would have to fly all the seven and a half hours to Calcutta by himself and that it was her fault.... At the destination the First Officer would quickly go out through the small luggage door, run round to the main door as the stewardess was opening it, collapse into her arms saying "It was a long run but I made it."
On another occasion the stewardess would come into the cockpit to take the two empty plastic coffee cups from the pilots. Unlike modern pressurised aircraft, the DC3's side windows could be and frequently were opened. Once as she leant across the Captain to open the window to throw the cups out, he knocked her hand away and shouted "Don't ever do that. Can't you see that the other window is open ? If you had opened my window there would have been a terrible vacuum and we would all have been sucked out of the cockpit " Later on, the Captain put the aircraft on "George" as the automatic pilot is affectionately called,
opened both the windows, pressed the stewardess call button then he and the First Officer, hid amongst the bags in the baggage just behind the cockpit. The poor girl came up to find an empty cockpit, both windows open and the aircraft flying serenely along on it's own . Hysterics were usually the outcome of that one.
Another favourite was the "Toilet Flush". Remember this was India were only "Untouchables" cleaned toilets. On her first flight the Captain would ask a new stewardess if she had been briefed on flushing the toilet. Absolutely horrified" she would answer "No" The Captain would point to a large lever across from the side of his seat. "Whenever a passenger comes out of the toilet, you must come up here and pump this lever twenty times to flush the toilet " he would gravely tell her and the unlucky girl would come up every ten minutes or so , blushing furiously, hiding her face and pump away at what was the hydraulic lever, used to boost the system and used for emergencies.
To end this I will tell you that quite a few years later, my eldest daughter, Linda, became a Stewardess with the late lamented British Caledonian. I was still flying and warned her of all the tricks that were liable to be played upon her but was not prepared for what actually happened. Her first flight was a night stop in Edinburgh, They duly arrived quite late and she went up to her allotted room and was very pleased to find that it was a very nice one. She was very tired and went straight to bed. She was woken a bit later by the phone and it was the Captain.. "I am so sorry to disturb you but they seem to have given you my room " he started to say when she interrupted him "My Father is an Airline Pilot and he warned me of this sort of thing "She said and slammed the phone down. Next morning when the crew met for breakfast the Captain went up to her " I trust that you had a good night's sleep " he said " I'd like to meet your Father ". In actual fact we did meet at Entebbe and had a good laugh about it. Reg.

regle
29th Apr 2009, 15:38
Vous avez raison; mon ami. C'est un Buckmaster ! Regle

cliffnemo
29th Apr 2009, 15:45
I thought I would start with a newspaper cutting that enabled Hardie, Bill and me to contact each other. However I cannot find the original article, so have had to scan a scan. The results are not very satisfactory, but can be enlarged . If I find the original I will reproduce it. The scan is from an album I created for my granddaughter, and included my complete history.

After the article appeared in the Hull Daily Mail, many people rang me , and John (ex aircraft apprentice) rang Bill Davies in Cardiff and gave him my telephone number. Bill rang me and gave me Hardie's address . After this I sent Hardie an audio tape that amongst other things explained what had happened to me. Unfortunately Hardie died shortly after I received his letter. I met Bill and his wife on two occasions, but last Christmas was sorry to be informed he had died in 2008.

The rest of the letter next.
http://i274.photobucket.com/albums/jj248/cliffordleach/WHEREAREYOUBUDDY174.jpg

Jig Peter
29th Apr 2009, 15:49
:ok: Wotta little spotter I woz in my yoof, Regle !!! I nearly went for a Brigand, but couldn't see the glasshouse it had, and rejected the Albemarle because of the tailwheel ...
(Just showing off [again] )
Merci mon ami !!! Bonne continuation à tous et à toutes ...
:)

Icare9
29th Apr 2009, 17:11
Another great day of interactive posts. I also nearly went for the Brigand but didn't look "warlike" enough and brain cells too slow to recall the Buckmaster name before, so beaten to it! I think Bristol went the twin fin route due to problems with a single rudder coping with the more powerful engines. Mossies and Hornets etc seemed to manage, so I wonder what the precise reason to switch to twin rudders might have been. Otherwise, there is still a distinct family resemblance back to the Blenheim.

Sorry to hear of your fellow students demise, that's why we get concerned that stories like these don't get lost! Somehow you have an uncanny knack of making what, from others, could be mundane come alive and enthralling. I wish I had your ability of expression! Keep on keeping on!!

Have we lost all other WW2 aircrew such as Navigators, W/Op and gunners?
Come on, there must be some left who could be coaxed into adding their reminiscences? Please.....????

cockney steve
30th Apr 2009, 01:38
Cliff, As far as I know,rice Paper is still available.
My earliest memories are of exotic golden brown disc-shaped comestibles with a piece of almond in the centre and a halo of white paper upon which they rested........ Displayed with the other exotic cakes,in the glass case in the local bakers.
the day came when i was actually treated to one of these delicious confections which, I was informed , was a Macaroon...a very exotic name, and scent to match (perhaps I connected it with "Cameroons" in my subconcious).....well, the taste lived up to the looks and smell,but the crispy base was stuck firmly to the paper.

I took a lot of convincing that it was actually edible,but hesitantly put a piece on my tongue -and of course it dissolved :) The base was soon just a warm memory!

* reminds self to see if local baker still has them! *

What a treat, this week , with more fascinating stories of bygone days,- I can almost transport myself there,such are your descriptions.

What with inverted flying sans harness, and "ragging" the poor ,innocent indian girls.....you men certainly lived to the full.

Keep it up ,please!.....oh, yes, the letter scan is A1 even through my milk-bottle Bin's. :}

Goosequill
30th Apr 2009, 07:33
Hi - I am a recent joiner who last night discovered, and read through, all thirty five pages of this thread since Cliff started it way back. I only have a PPL but have looked with interest at the Lanc (natch - and other wartime machines) for years. It has been fascinating to read your experiences, Cliff, and those of others (Regle - some fascinating stuff!), and to find out what really happened in the air as opposed to what the book said should happen.

Re. the unstoppable Merlin, it is of passing interest that at Lancaster Finishing School one of the drills practiced after engine start was for the pilot to explicitly tell the wireless operator to set the ground/flight switch to flight. Interesting to know what might prevent a WO from doing so at a time of low workload for him; and might he not have alerted the pilot if the pilot forgot to tell him?

Re. the empty emergency O2 bottle mentioned at one point, again LFS placed the responsibility for checking the supply in these (10 minutes min) firmly on the pilot and FE as they made their way up the fuselage on their way to the cockpit. They were also to check escape hatches closed, fire axes in position, emergency air pressure, hydraulic accumulator slack oil pressure, cat put out etc. etc.

So, looks like someone tried to cover every eventuality, but then Burns once mumbled something about mice and men...

So, thanks again to you Lanc crew - your memories are indeed a treasure!

Best regards,

Dave

andyl999
30th Apr 2009, 08:28
http://i583.photobucket.com/albums/ss278/regle999/india/reg110.jpg

You have to say what a beautiful airliner, now we have to get on Ryanair 737's and those &^%^&%* stewardesses!
http://i583.photobucket.com/albums/ss278/regle999/india/reg109.jpg

Must be an Indian Breathalyser test?

http://i583.photobucket.com/albums/ss278/regle999/india/reg108.jpg
http://i583.photobucket.com/albums/ss278/regle999/india/reg107.jpg
http://i583.photobucket.com/albums/ss278/regle999/india/reg106.jpg
http://i583.photobucket.com/albums/ss278/regle999/india/reg104.jpg
http://i583.photobucket.com/albums/ss278/regle999/india/reg103.jpg
http://i583.photobucket.com/albums/ss278/regle999/india/reg101.jpg

mustpost
30th Apr 2009, 09:12
The last pic is I believe the interior of a Farman Goliath..?

BEagle
30th Apr 2009, 09:50
No, it's one of Ryanair's latest ideas for its 737s.......

cliffnemo
30th Apr 2009, 10:10
another piece of Chinese rice paper. "It says there's a river two kilometers north of here. There'll be an old, heavyset Frenchman with a mustache and a beret, wearing wading boots and fishing in the river. We'll exchange the password and countersign, and get further instructions. Now eat this message quickly, Lieutenant."

ROLL ON THE BOAT

cliffnemo
30th Apr 2009, 10:28
Just googled rice paper and found another.

n Bomber Command Group. I was in the Signals office for the wireless operators air gunners. I used to type out the call signs for the beacons helped to guide them home. I used to type these codes on rice paper so that if the men were unfortunate to be captured, they could eat the papers to keep them out of enemy hands.

andyl999
30th Apr 2009, 11:25
BEagle, I must admit to believing your statement, as the seatbacks are fixed and are non-reclining, however on closer examination you can clearly see at least 36" legroom, we all know that Ryanair only allow 2" actual legroom.

Now for something completely different:-

A man was sitting in the bar at Heathrow Terminal 3 and noticed a
really beautiful woman sitting next to him. He thought to himself:
'Wow, she's so gorgeous she must be an air hostess. I wonder which
airline she works for. '

Hoping to pick her up, he leaned towards her and uttered the Delta
Airline slogan, 'Love to fly and it shows?'
She gave him a blank, confused stare and he immediately thought to
himself:'

Well, she obviously doesn't work for Delta.'

A moment later, another slogan popped into his head, so he leaned
towards her again and said, 'Something special in the air?'
She gave him the same confused look, and he mentally kicked himself,
while scratching Singapore Airlines off the list.

He thought 'Perhaps she works for Thai Airways...' and said, 'Smooth
as Silk?'

This time the woman turned on him and said, 'What the F*** do you want?'

The man smiled, slumped back in his chair, and said - 'Ahhhhh, Ryanair!'

Apoligies to Cliff for going off-subject :0)

regle
30th Apr 2009, 11:59
Reading downwards.
1. The Constellation in which I flew to Bombay. I was allowed to fly and land at Cairo. I am on the right.
2. Prospective First officer taking Breath test.
3. Dora at the entrance to our Bungalow at Juhu. My Bearer at right, Thomas, the Cook ,at left.
4. Peter and Linda in Bombay Harbour, visiting the famous caves. They are both Grandparents now !
5, In the gardens with my bearer.
6. We met up with Ralph Hollis, 42A ,and my very good friend, in Bombay. He was flying for Decca in Hyderabad. He later joined me in the Berlin Air Lift and then went to Brunei as the Sultan's Pilot. He died, sadly, on the Golf course in Brunei. His Wife, Pam, in dark glasses, Dora & chidren with their 1948 Xmas presents on the "Maidan" in Bombay.
7. Father Xmas in Bombay.1948
8. Found this amongst my "Muck". The reverse bears the inscriptions for filling in the card starting , In the air.... , date....192.. and Compagnie des Grand Express Aeriens. Any guesses as to the aircraft ?

Thank you Andy.. Regle

Icare9
30th Apr 2009, 17:34
I believe mustpost has it right. The F60 was operated by the Compagnie des Grands Express Aeriens from March 1920. It was one if not the first airliner conversions from a WW1 bomber design. Another less fortunate first was to be part of the first mid air collision. (Googled info, not original research).
Fascinating to see the space and what appears to be stairs down to a lower deck (which threw me at first, looking for early double deckers or Zeppelin!).
I think Ryanair would try to get up to 80 in there, not 8!!

boguing
30th Apr 2009, 21:20
Cliff, Regle.

Thanks you both, and also to everyone else who has contributed to what must be one of the most important records of human endeavour recorded on the interweb.

Rest assured that this is all being 'cached' all over the World, and no matter what happens to pprune, it's all saved for those who believe that History should prevent wars.

I gave my Dad a notebook to record his story into, a few months prior to some surgery which he didn't survive. Inspired by this "unputdownable" thread, I'll be paying for his RAF record tomorrow.

Keep it up.

And - if there's anything that pprune readers can do for you in the way of help (transport to anything, computer stuff, etc) just say so.

We're here to be able to pay you back.

John

Chugalug2
30th Apr 2009, 22:50
Reg, your tale of the panting FO meeting the aircraft on arrival reminded me of another practical joker, on Hastings, who for the sake of the DPA we'll simply call "Frosty". Although he was the aircraft captain, he would follow the passengers onto the aircraft wearing an Air Movements Officer armband. Briefly he would tell them the flight time to their destination, the Captain's (ie, his) name and wish them a pleasant flight. He then disembarked, the door closing behind him, but would now nip under the wing unseen to enter by the crew hatch via a forward ladder. At the destination the procedure was reversed, the same "AMO" greeting the passengers on arrival. Problem was no-one would notice, one AMO looking much like any other! His other japes included positioning a crate of empty Gin bottles on the flight deck and once every hour opening the door and rolling one out into the cabin. The most contrived was the old favourite of tying off two strings, one to the LH control wheel, the other to the RH one and paying them out as he made his way aft to the loo. Towards the rear of the cabin he would hand the two strings to a lucky recipient asking him if he could ensure that the aircraft remained on course while he attended to a call of nature, explaining that if it started turning left to pull this one and likewise the other if it turned right. Though the Flight Deck door obviously remained open, the Co-Pilot crouched low in his seat out of sight. His Auto Pilot heading control was conveniently mounted to his right side and he could thus start a turn going until the appropriate string tightened when he resumed heading. This would go on until sufficient fun was deemed to have been had, when Frosty would emerge refreshed and retrieve the strings from a relieved and perspiring passenger. Sometimes though fate would take its revenge. When instructing at 242 OCU, Thorney Island, one night he took control as usual on a roller landing when a car entered the Runway ahead of them, crossing right to left. A public road crossed the runway there controlled by lights and barriers but obviously they had not been activated on this occasion. Frosty fed in full power and pulled back, managing to stagger into the air in time and thus avoid disaster. He made the next landing a full stop, shut down the aircraft and then made his way to the Mess for two stiff Scotches. Eventually he arrived home, where his wife demanded to know why he was so late. He apologised to her and began to explain that he had had an alarming experience and had to steady himself with a drink when she cut him short. "Never mind your alarming experience, what about mine? I was nearly run down by an aircraft earlier!", she complained.

andyl999
1st May 2009, 08:49
Reg put me onto a great Mosquito book called Mosquito at war, here is a picture from it, your job is to spot Reg, no clues yet!
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v616/andyl999/reg/105.jpg

I've just noticed the guy 2/3rds over from the left (or port) seems to be on his mobile phone?

regle
1st May 2009, 14:18
What a heartwarming message from you. I , and I am sure Cliff too, thank you for taking the trouble to let us know that the experiences that we have been recalling have been so well received. It is curious but I have been watching quite a few of the wartime series , figuring the "Resistance "or being an "agent" shown on various SKY channels and I have been saying to myself "I could never have done that ." or seeing the ways and means that were used by the enemy to gain information, I am sure that I would have been to s... scared to even step foot in an aeroplane. Yet who knows what one will do until the time that you are called upon to do it? Thank you sincerely, Reg

regle
1st May 2009, 14:45
Andy, The book that the picture was taken from was "Mosquito at War" and was by the great Aviation author,Chaz Bowyer. The occasion was the revealing of the first R.A.F. Squadron to get the Mosquito. It was 105 Sqdn., based at Horsham St. Faith at the time but soon to move to Marham. We were all gathering to go to our aircraft and then take off and drop eleven and a half lb. practice bombs on a tent erected in the centre of the grass airfield. We swept down in formation at fifty feet and let the bombs go. Unfortunately we were flying towards the massed photographers who were snapping furiously but were soon flat on the ground as the fragments and, sometimes the bombs themselves ,came hurtling towards them. I am sure that Barnes Wallis was present and didn't forget the effect when he cane to design his Dambuster Bouncer.
I won't divulge where I am in the picture but I am not far away from my Observer, Les Hogan, who looks as though he is going to have his head sliced off by the tailplane of the Mossie GB-A in the front of the picture. The picture in my book is clearer and the "Bod" has not got the first Mobile phone. He is simply picking his nose.

cliffnemo
1st May 2009, 15:06
;BOGUING. Much appreciated, but the only thing i am short of is enthusiasm . However when people 'talk to' me my enthusiasm returns. I intended to work on the Beetle today, but as soon as I had every thing ready it started to rain,( the beach buggy is in the garage) ,so will work on Photobucket and remain dry. I intend to try and crop the newspaper cutting and enhance Hardie's letter.
http://i274.photobucket.com/albums/jj248/cliffordleach/BBSPORT180.jpg A pic of an aeroplane. honest.

http://i274.photobucket.com/albums/jj248/cliffordleach/WHEREAREYOUBUDDY2a176.jpg

http://i274.photobucket.com/albums/jj248/cliffordleach/WHEREAREYOUBUDDY1a175.jpg

http://i274.photobucket.com/albums/jj248/cliffordleach/hardiep2177.jpg
http://i274.photobucket.com/albums/jj248/cliffordleach/hardiep3178.jpg
Last two lines Read. During the next two years, I spent delivering aircraft to various

http://i274.photobucket.com/albums/jj248/cliffordleach/hardiep4179.jpg Unfortunately Hardie didn't write again or send a tape. I do have a letter from Bill, which I will search for and if relevent, publish.

Icare9
1st May 2009, 16:56
C'mon, knowing your impish sense of humour, that's you doing your Hitler impersonation in the middle!!

tow1709
1st May 2009, 18:36
A week or so back, I offered to post the memoirs of F/Lt Peter Brett who flew Hawker Typhoons during WW2. Peter typed these up about 10 years ago, when he still had reasonably good eyesight. They got stored on floppy disks and forgotten about until recently when they were found again and I volunteered to help get them more widely read. Peter, now 86 years old, can now only use a computer with difficult owing to his deteriorating eyesight, but I am more than happy to relay any questions to him.
Cliffnemo has very kindly invited me to join his thread, so here is the first instalment of Peter's work. There are some photo's too, which I will include as soon as I find out how!

TOW



First steps

What follows happened over sixty years ago but some of the memories are as vivid today as they ever were. Other memories were triggered by the act of writing about those days and these triggered even further recollections. All in all, it has been a nostalgic journey into the past for me and I can only hope that the reader will enjoy the voyage.

I have always been interested in flight and aircraft. As a small boy, I made innumerable flying models, mostly gliders, from balsa wood and experimented with unusual configurations. My most successful, as far as I can remember, were 'Flying Wings' with only a 'pod' instead of a full fuselage, with highly swept back wings and vertical 'tailplanes' at the wingtips.

I can also remember attending practically every annual London Air Display from 1933 until the outbreak of war. These were held at Hendon airfield which is now the site of the RAF Museum. There was of course no 'Red Arrows' aerobatic team then, but I recall formation aerobatics by three Hawker 'Fury' biplane fighters, and seeing the original DeHavilland 'Comet' - not the airliner but the twin engined, two seater, low wing monoplane which held the England/Australia record.

As soon as I was old enough, I joined what was the forerunner of the Air Training Corps (ATC). This was the Air Defence Cadet Corps (ADCC) sponsored by the 'Air League of the British Empire' a privately supported organisation.. This was in 1935 when I was twelve years old. I lived in Rayners Lane in Harrow, Middlesex and the nearest squadron to my home at this time was some 8 km away - Number 14(F), for ‘founder’, at the RAF station at Uxbridge.

The parades were on Sunday afternoons and a friend and I used to cycle there every Sunday after lunch to attend. The parades consisted of basic drilling, physical training and lectures on RAF-related subjects including the theory of flight and even things like stripping and reassembling Lewis and Vickers guns that dated back to the 1914/18 war. We also, very occasionally, had the opportunity to be taken up for flights from Northolt airfield.

I remember that my first ever flight was in a 'Percival Proctor' aircraft. It was flown by no less a rank than a Group Captain. I cannot now recall his name but I do remember that he was a surprisingly small man. I was very tall for my age and found it rather odd that, when I had to spring smartly to attention and salute, I found that I was looking well over his head!

The authorities also found us useful for a variety of duties connected with aircraft and the RAF, and I can recall acting as a sort of decorative 'guard' for a 'Miles Master II' aircraft at an Air show held at the Fairey Aircraft Company's airfield at Hayes. As a souvenir of the occasion we each received a copy of the programme signed by the Air Minister of the time Sir Kingsley Wood. Thus I can date this show to be sometime in 1937.

It was just about this time that the Air Training Corps was formed and the ADCC was incorporated into the new organisation. A squadron, number 101, was formed at Wealdstone near Harrow, and my friend and I transferred to this unit. Then followed probably the fastest promotions on record. Since, by then, both my friend and I were well versed in drill, Morse code signalling, and various other useful attributes, we were both promoted - the first week to Corporal, the second week to Sergeant, and the third week to Flight Sergeant. I must have done fairly well during the next two years, as I was selected to go on one of the first glider pilots courses to be organised for the ATC. Unfortunately this was now 1939 and the outbreak of war put paid to my chances of learning to fly a glider at that time.

At 16 years old I was of course too young to join up, and I was studying at Acton Technical College (later to become part of Brunel University) with the intention of eventually becoming an Associate Member of the Institute Aeronautical Engineers (AMIAeE). Unfortunately, the college was evacuated from London and my father, who was either unable or unwilling to meet the extra costs, withdrew me from the college and I became a trainee draftsman with the Marconi - Osram Valve Company (M-OV), at Hammersmith in North London.

However, as soon as I was old enough (17¼ ) I volunteered for service with the RAF and, after attending a medical examination, which was spread over three days, I was accepted for aircrew training and told that I would be called up when I was 17¾. My father was rather annoyed since, as a draftsman, I was in a 'reserved occupation' and was therefore not liable to be drafted. I cannot honestly say that I was motivated by any sense of patriotism. The object was to get my hands on an aeroplane and learn to fly it!

During the year or so that I was with Osram, I continued to attend ATC parades at weekends and also joined the Local Defence Volunteers, later to become the Home Guard. Thus I was in London during the "Battle of Britain" and the "Blitz". I can recall seeing the vapour trails of the aircraft during the "Battle of Britain" and also seeing London burning from the Osram factory roof during the "Blitz".

The one time that the Osram factory was hit by a bomb I was not on duty, but came in the next day to find that the building in which the drawing office was housed had only three walls remaining. The floor was sagging at an angle of perhaps twenty to thirty degrees. I managed to persuade some workmen to let me down on a rope to rescue my precious drawing instruments from my bench, which was teetering over a three floor drop! For the remainder of my stay with the company, I had a drawing board and desk stuck in between a sintering furnace and a multi-headed glass blowing machine. This was fine in cold weather, since factory heating was not considered an essential war service, but not conducive to neat drawings in hot weather when the temperature at my desk soared to over 100 degrees Fahrenheit.

Eventually, in September 1941, I received my call-up papers and was told to report to Lords Cricket Ground in London on the 20th of October !
More soon...

cliffnemo
2nd May 2009, 10:18
TOW When you are ready P.M me and I will endeavor to set out the procedure for posting picks on Pprune. It is a bit complicated. Scan to say Picasa. then load to Photobucket (or similar) then copy to Pprune. Time consuming,but certainly enhances the post. If you are on skype, you could ring me, free ,think my Skype name is again cliffnemo (will check). Sit at your computer, and I might be able to lead you through the procedure, which would certainly be the easiest way.

Chugalug2
2nd May 2009, 10:55
TOW, a brilliant start to Peter's story that promises to be as captivating as Cliff's and Reg's. There seems to be so many similarities to these early stages, but the individual details say so much. ADCC, ATC, LDV, reserve occupation, volunteer for RAF service, yet....
I cannot honestly say that I was motivated by any sense of patriotism. The object was to get my hands on an aeroplane and learn to fly it!

You could have fooled me, Peter! Your modesty is shared by Cliff and Reg, and I would suggest by most of your remarkable generation. Cometh the hour, cometh the Men and Women, thank God!
How good to see Cliff taking on the role of IT mentor! Now see what you've started Cliff, truly the best PPRuNe thread ever and of a significance that will outlast us all. Well done to all of you who add to our knowledge of those dangerous and vital times and thank you.

S'land
2nd May 2009, 14:14
Another excellent contribution to a younger generation's understanding of what actually happened before some of us were born. thank you TOW for contributing Peter's story. As Chugalug2 says, or implies, it is the slightly different details that make this thread so interesting.

Well done all, keep up the good work.

Icare9
2nd May 2009, 15:32
TOW1709: I'm in London W4, so Acton, Harrow, Hammersmith are on my doorstep. If there is anything needed in the neighbourhood to help with Peter's reminiscences, let me know. I spread my wings and keep my promise
As a taster, not bad, not only were your generation brave but also well educated to a standard that many now would find hard to match!

Great now that we have 3 sources, hope that we can keep you bouncing memories back and forth to further enrich this thread!

tow1709
2nd May 2009, 15:55
Many thanks to all who are responding positively to this. Peter will be so pleased when I tell him of the interest shown. His story continues...

Eventually, in September 1941, I received my call-up papers and was told to report to Lords Cricket Ground in London on the 20th of October !

I remember debating with myself if I should wear my ATC uniform but decided against it, as I did not want to appear to 'line-shoot'. At the cricket ground there were several hundred of us, and it took most of the day to call our names and divide us into squads of, I think, thirty. Each squad was under the command of a corporal.

We were then billeted in what had been luxury flats in St.John's Wood. These had been stripped of all furniture but the carpets were left down, so we were sleeping on relatively soft floors! This was No.1 ACRC (Air Crew Reception Centre). Two weeks were spent here being inducted into the system. This involved being issued with uniforms and kit, having all the necessary innoculations and injections for overseas service, being taught basic drill, and having lectures about service life. When we had the multiple injections and innoculations, we were given 24 hours off, and most of the chaps spent the time feeling very sorry for themselves and experiencing all the symptoms of all the diseases for which we were being immunised!

One odd thing about this centre was that the mess, or dining hall, was the restaurant of the London Zoo which had been closed on the outbreak of war. Most of the animals had been sent away to Whipsnade Zoo in Buckinghamshire but a lot of the primates were still in residence and for many years afterwards, the hooting of the monkeys at meal times was the 'call sign' of anyone who had attended No.1 ACRC.

After just over two weeks here we were sent off to our ITW (Initial Training Wing). I was posted to No 5 ITW at Torquay in Devon, arriving on the 8th of November. Our 'barracks' was the 'Majestic' hotel which had been taken over by the RAF. Even in its heyday I doubt if the 'Majestic' lived up to its name, and when I knew it, it had obviously seen better days. For the next ten weeks we did intensive basic training in foot drill, Morse code signalling, physical training and general aircrew induction lectures. One of the more odd exercises which we did, ostensibly to prepare us for landing by parachute if we ever had to bail out, was to jump off the tailboard of a lorry which was being driven at about 15 mph. We did this facing both forwards and backwards and, on hitting the ground, did either a forward or backward roll. Later on, when we were actually flying and being given advice as to how to land from a parachute jump, we were told never to roll since this would tangle us up in the parachute rigging and make a quick getaway impossible.

It was at the ITW that I had my first, and only, experience of a route march. We marched out in the morning on a circular tour of the hinterland behind Torquay. After about fifteen miles we were re-entering Torquay and looking forward to relaxing only to find that we went straight through and did a further five or six miles before finishing. We were accompanied by transport which picked up the remarkably few casualties, and were encouraged to sing marching songs to help us along. It sounds silly now but these songs did help us to keep going. The few casualties were nearly all as a result of blisters caused by ill-fitting boots. Those of us who were not affected were feeling very superior to the poor blokes who had to be driven back. Also whilst we were here we had all the booster and back-up injections for our immunisation. This time however, instead of being given time off, we were taken on a three or four mile run up and down the hills of Devon. Consequently none of us felt the slightest reaction from the injections since the drugs were circulated and absorbed by the violent exercise.

The whole of Torquay and Paignton were taken over as ITW's and the towns were geared to service life. There were several service mens clubs run by different organisations including not only the NAAFI but the ubiquitous Salvation Army (The Sally Ann), the Red Cross, the Womens Voluntary Services, the YMCA, and even one run by an enterprising evangelistic group. This latter was known as 'Holy Joe's' and you had to be prepared to be prayed over and to sing hymns in order to get an evening snack. A lot of us went there because they had a very good cook who managed to produce tasty meals. I don't know if this club made many converts but they certainly had good publicity from practically every RAF type who went through Torquay or Paignton. We were of course lucky that our particular courses extended over the Christmas period and we had special treatment at the clubs during the Christmas break.

At the end of the training period, providing that you had passed, you were promoted to LAC (Leading Aircraftman) and issued with a white 'flash' to be worn in the forage cap to denote an aircrew trainee. I can recall a kindly lady at the WVS canteen sewing the 'propellor' badges on the sleeves of my uniform for me.
From ITW, my next posting was, at last, to a Flying Training School. This was number 18 EFTS at Booker in Buckinghamshire.
This however was not to teach me to fly but merely to assess the possibility that I could be taught and thus avoid wasting valuable time if I proved unsuitable. It would seem that this scheme was very successful as it reduced drastically the number of pupil pilots who 'washed out' very much later in their training.

More soon...

tow1709
2nd May 2009, 18:00
The flying bits come soon! In Part 1 Peter wrote that his first ever flight was in a Percival Proctor, but as the prototype of that aircraft did not fly until October 1939, (source Wikipedia) I think Peter is mistaken - or else he is telling his story out of sequence. I will check this out next time I speak to him. Anyway, here is Part 3.

In the next three weeks I was given seven hours and five minutes dual instruction in a DeHavilland 'Tiger Moth' aircraft. This was mostly in short trips of about 20 minutes or so, and was, in effect, the first few instructional exercises of a full pilot's course. The most advanced thing, which I only did once at this time, was 'spinning'. It is something which every pilot had to do, usually on every aircraft he flew, except of course larger multi-engined types. The first spin is a frightening experience although, in comparison with most of the other aircraft I flew, the Tiger Moth was very gentle. Very much later, after the war when I became an instructor on Tiger Moths myself, I came to really enjoy spinning them and being able to pull out of the spin in a pre-determined direction. That was the trouble with the Tiger Moth, it was too safe. Unless you applied full rudder, the aircraft merely gently dipped a wing and went into a spiral dive. In fact, if you made it spin and then let go of the controls the aircraft pulled itself out of the spin. It then went into a dive until the airspeed built up, when it then also began to pull out of the dive too. At the time I did not, of course, have much familiarity with the behaviour of the aircraft and did not particularly enjoy the experience. However, after doing my seven hours dual, the powers that be evidently decided that it was worth the risk of trying to train me as a pilot and gave me 7 days leave prior to posting me on.

The posting-on was to ACDC Heaton Park, Manchester. I think ACDC stood for Air Crew Dispersal Centre. Arriving there on the 21st February 1942, I then spent three weeks doing practically nothing except listen to the innumerable rumours which were circulating. It was pretty certain that we were going to be sent abroad for training and the possibilities ranged from Canada and America, via Rhodesia and South Africa to Australia! When the time came and we were shipped out we were still not told our destination. We were first sent by train, at night, for what seemed a long journey with many stops, and we hadn’t a clue where we were. At daybreak found ourselves in a large seaport. It didn't take long for some of the lads to recognise their home town of Liverpool.

The train had pulled into a siding in the docks and we were shephered up a gangway to board a ship flying the American flag. This was one of the new, all-welded construction, 'Liberty’ ships. She was called the "George F.Elliott". This vessel was fitted out as a troopship with bunks in every available space below decks. My bunk was right up forward and four decks down so it was probably below the waterline. It was so far forward in the bows that the deck space was triangular. The bunks were three high and quite comfortable. The dining area was off the main deck and was a stand-up area where the 'tables' were long shelves with vertical tubular supports from deck to 'ceiling' at intervals. The food, which was excellent, was served onto stainless steel compartmented trays, the first time most of us had seen this. Also the fact that at least once a day we had ice-cream made us realise that this was not England any more! Some of us were detailed for kitchen duty and, at first we thought we were hard done by. However, after the first day we realised how lucky we were. Washing-up gave us our first introduction to an automated dishwasher, unheard of in the U.K. at that time, and we were even more impressed with the duty of 'spud bashing' since this was performed with the aid of a large potato peeling machine !

The American crew were very friendly and there was much good natured joshing by them at our weird accents. We were part of a large convoy, and we could see usually about seven or eight other merchant ships, plus a couple of escort destroyers, whenever it was possible to see any distance at all from the deck. The weather was filthy: it rained and there were strong winds most of the time and the sea was very rough. Even the ship’s crew admitted that it was 'not very calm'. On the few occasions we were allowed on deck it was somewhat frightening, but at the same time exhilarating, to realise that you were having to look UP at quite an angle to see the sea. The next moment you were looking down from what seemed to be three or four floors height to the trough of the wave. The ship did not roll too much but the pitching was really violent. The bows were often swamped and we were forbidden to go up on the forecastle, since anyone would have been swept overboard from there. The effect of this violent pitching, up in the bows where I was situated, was that, as the bows dropped into the trough of the wave, you felt as though you were about to float off the floor. This was followed by a booming sound, as the bows struck the next swell followed by a sudden increase in weight which made your knees buckle if you were not prepared for it.

Luckily I have always been a good sailor and have never suffered from any form of travel sickness, but this continual movement was obviously not good for those who were poor sailors amongst us, and consequently the toilets were no place for the squeamish. These were 'open plan', consisting of a long trough with seats at intervals, under which was pumped a constant flow of sea water. The practical jokers soon found that floating a piece of lighted newspaper down the trough caused a very satisfactory outburst of profanity.

It took thirteen days to cross the Atlantic. It was not until we were quite close in to land that we suddenly recognised the skyline that a lot of us had seen in books and films – New York!

More soon...

Icare9
2nd May 2009, 18:54
If you're going to pick up on the Proctor, then there is also something wrong about the Liberty ship. The George F Elliott was not a Liberty ship and was in fact sunk by the Japanese near Suvo Bay in 1941.
Liberty ships were only first launched in late 1941, so for one to be in Liverpool in the February would be unusual. However, I'm not wanting to disrupt these memories, suffice it to say he was on a troopship in Feb 42, that's good enough for me.
I don't need names and packdrill, let's get on with the story!!

Ahem! Red face..... THERE was a George F Elliott, but not a Liberty ship. She was the SS Delbrasil operated by the Mississippi Shipping Company from May 1941. The ship was then taken over by the US Navy as the George F Elliott in August 1943 (See Wikipedia [URL="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_George_F._Elliott_(AP-105)[/URL]
My apologies for drifting this off thread....

tow1709
2nd May 2009, 19:40
Hi Icare9

Yes, I agree George F Elliott (the original one, AP13) was not a Liberty ship, but was launched in 1918.

She was sunk at Guadalcanal on 8 August 1942 according to my Googling.

The ex-Delbrasil that you refer to in the edited version of your post was the second US ship to bear the name USS George F Elliott (AP105).

I can't explain why Peter thought AP13 was a Liberty Ship. Maybe he was told so by a fellow passenger and always believed it. Another thing to check up on!

Best regards. TOW

cliffnemo
3rd May 2009, 11:32
Maybe he saw the cracks in the welding.

tow1709
3rd May 2009, 12:58
The story continues...

As we sailed past the Statue Of Liberty into New York harbour, the rumour grapevine was as active as ever - we were going to train in the USA; we were only calling in to refuel and would then go to Argentina, and various even more unlikely scenarios.
What happened next was completely unexpected and a perfect example of the bureaucratic mind at work. We were paraded on deck and then marched down the gangway. At the bottom of the gangway was a strip of coconut matting which led off towards a train drawn up on the quayside. This matting was lined each side by American Marines, and we were warned not to try to step off the sides. The train turned out to be Canadian, and thus we did not in fact step on to American soil at any time. The reason apparently was to allow us to circumvent the American customs and immigration controls.

By the time we were all aboard the train it was midday. Our destination was Montreal in Canada, some 350 miles directly north. The scenery, especially during the late evening, as we travelled through the Adirondack Mountains, was magnificent.

Most of us slept on and off and we were a very untidy and bleary eyed lot when we arrived at Montreal. We had, of course, been sleeping in our uniforms whilst on board ship. We were taken by bus to Lachine just outside Montreal where we were allocated barracks and told that we could sleep in the next morning as we would not be paraded until midday. Breakfast would be optional at 0800 hours!
Next day we paraded at midday, a sad looking bunch, in very creased uniforms and unpolished boots. We were greeted by an RCAF WO2 (Warrant Officer 2nd class), a rank which did not exist in the RAF which only had one class of WO. His badge of rank was a cloth crown on the sleeve where an RAF WO would wear his 'Coat of Arms' badge. He surveyed us in silence for a few moments and then, in a strong Scottish accent said, "You're a scruffy lot. Is there anyone here from Dumbartonshire?" Since there was nobody from that locality with us we never found out any more about him.

The next stage in our welcome to Canada was to be completely re-equipped with Canadian uniforms and flying gear. This included light summer weight uniforms in khaki as well as two sets of flying coveralls, summer and winter weight underwear and shoes as well as boots. The uniforms were even complete with the LAC propeller badges which indicated that the powers that be were really 'on the ball' in their reception. Even the kit bag was bigger than the equivalent RAF type. We were told to go and change into our new gear, pack up our RAF uniforms, label them with our names and numbers and hand them in. We naturally thought that this was the last we would see of them until we returned to UK, but no, next day they were all returned having been dry-cleaned and pressed!

During the next two weeks, no doubt whilst all our paperwork was being processed, we had a few sessions on drill and orientation lectures which gave many of us our first real ideas about Canada. A lot of the lads did not even know that Quebec was mainly French speaking and had assumed that Canada was a sort of English USA. One thing that really impressed us with the size of Canada was that there were some Canadians on the camp from Vancouver who were even further from home than we were! They told of a five day train journey of which it seemed that two or three days was travelling across the same wheat field!

My next posting however was much nearer Montreal, to No.4 E.F.T.S. at Windsor Mills in Quebec, about 80 miles west. The actual location of the airfield was outside the village of St.Francois Xavier de Brompton. This is a large name for a very small village consisting of a few houses and, in common with most of Quebec, a large church. Windsor Mills itself was not much more than a large village but had a very large paper mill, hence its name. The one thing that anybody who has ever been there will remember is the 'wet cardboard' smell. This was so strong you could smell it even when flying overhead at several thousand feet. The nearest town of any consequence was Sherbrooke, about ten miles away.

The setup here was somewhat unusual. It was not a normal RCAF station but a civilian flying school. The weekly totals in my log book were stamped with 'Windsor Mills Flying Training School Limited'. The administration was by RCAF personnel but the instructors were civilians. They wore a uniform that looked more appropriate to a civilian airline. They also had the courtesy title of Sergeant. Most of them were, to our 18 year old eyes, quite old! My instructor, Sgt. Farrell, was about 43 and had been flying for years as a 'bush pilot' in Northern Canada. However we did not start our course straight away since it was the end of winter and the airfield was snow-covered. The course previous to us was coming to an end and the aircraft were fitted with skis instead of wheels. It was decided that we would wait until the 'break', which is when the snow disappeared, so that we could start our course on aircraft fitted with wheels. Consequently, although we arrived on the 13th April, I did not get my first flight until the 28th.

The aircraft were not Tiger Moths but were Canadian made 'Fleet Finch II's. These were larger and heavier than the Tiger Moth with covered, sliding hood cockpits, and a five cylinder radial engine. As soon as the snow had cleared sufficiently, the skis were removed and the aircraft fitted with wheels. Almost at once the reason that our course had been delayed was made obvious. Landing an aircraft on skis is similar to landing on wheels but with one important difference - drift! With skis it is not necessary to make sure that the aircraft touches “straight” since the skis will slide sideways to take up any misalignment. The pupil pilots who had thus far only landed on skis very quickly found out about the difference. I witnessed at least three 'ground loops' where the aircraft touched down and immediately swung viciously to one side. In all the cases the tip of one bottom wing was damaged and in one case the aircraft finished up on its nose with a broken propeller. Fortunately no one was injured, but it gave us a salutary lesson on landing with drift.

More soon.

TommyOv
4th May 2009, 20:54
"floating a piece of lighted newspaper down the trough caused a very satisfactory outburst of profanity"

Haha, that is absolutely brilliant. What a way to pass the time.

It's great that we now have another contributer to this fantastic thread. I wonder how many other WW2 types can be persuaded to add more to the story?

Keep it up chaps!

regle
4th May 2009, 21:52
Tommy, I will be 87 years of age on May 8th, in a few days, in fact. I volunteered for the RAF, when I was just 18 , in June of 1940 and got my wings ,RAF and US, on the 3rd. Jan. 1942. I flew my first "Op" in October 1942 and my last one on Jan.28th.1944. I flew from 1941 until 1981 and finished with 25,100 hours which, my calculator tells me means that I spent, as near as dammit, three of those years in the air. Work it out, Tommy. I was probably one of the youngest, as you had to be eighteen and not over twenty, to volunteer, otherwise you would be conscripted to go wherever the powers that be decided, even down the mines ! There can't be many of us left and that is why we are, indeed ,fortunate to have these invaluable "threads". Thread is a very good term because that is what life is... a precious, fragile thread. Carpe Diem. Regle.

Icare9
5th May 2009, 07:51
So that's what all the celebrations were in 1945!!
Someone told me that it was VE Day, must have meant RE_glee day!!!
I do hope you have a very Happy Birthday, I'm sure from all of us, a well deserved glass of what does you good will be raised to you!

cliffnemo
5th May 2009, 16:00
TOW 1709 Excellent, keep going. Reading your posts brings back many memories , such as A.C.R.C No 1 at St Johns Wood. Our mess was about half a mile from the billets, not at Regents Park, but elsewhere in a large basement. Wakey, Wakey, wash and shave, fall in out side ‘free fick you silly little men ’ and march the half mile. Pitch black morning, pouring with rain, every thing ‘blacked out’ wearing capes (ground sheets), an airman in the front carrying a white hurricane lamp (paraffin) , the last man with a red hurricane lamp. Oh happy days.
Speakers corner on a Sunday morning, listening to such things as one gentleman trying to persuade us to storm the Cumberland Hotel ,opposite and drag a Mr Churchill out and string him up.

I have found a letter I must have written and sent to my home from Canada, so produce below to show how we kept in touch with our folk. We were given a form, which when completed was converted to microfilm and on reaching the U.K was presumably printed on the form below. (Can any one remember the name of this form ?)
http://i274.photobucket.com/albums/jj248/cliffordleach/MICROFILM184.jpg




TOW1709
A picture of a Canadian Tiger Moth showing the added perspex canopy. Not a Fleet Finch, but may show the type of canopy the Canadians added for the comfort of the pupils, or was it for instructors ?
http://i274.photobucket.com/albums/jj248/cliffordleach/CANADIANTIGERMOTH183.jpg

AL R sent me a P.M re his ex father-in-law, John, who was a rear gunner D.F.M ? . He flew a tour and a bit on Wimpeys, Sterlings, and Lancs: He could possibly tell us if the flying life of a rear gunner was about fourteen hours in the early part of the war. I seem to remember that the rear gunners on Wimpeys were ’potted off’’ first leaving the aircraft virtually defenseless . I asked him to contribute but haven’t heard any thing yet. Try and persuade him to join in Al , we are all waiting.(see ICARE’S request for more ‘trades’ to help us keep this going. He also mentioned he was high tone deaf, who isn’t?

rmventuri
5th May 2009, 20:44
Regle,
I have just jointed the form and started reading this fascinating thread. I am hoping this thread is still active. My father, George Milliken and his twin brother Douglas were both RAF/RCAF. My father recently passed away which has motivated the children to research their lives especially during there service. My father was a pilot and flew HP hampdens from 1941 to 43 (in the end with coastal command sqn 415) returning home in mid '44 to train pilots. Doug was a Halifax rear gunner KIA on the Leipzig raid. I have added all the crew member names at the bottom of this note in case you knwe any of them. The entire crew of HR732 was lost without trace and are memorialized at Runnymede. To date there has been no crash site identified and the bodies have not been found. We are quite sure they crashed over land because three years after the war ended the wedding ring of the pilot (Arthur Salvage) was returned to the widow. It was in a severly blackened condition suggesting fire however she was able to identify it. The historians at the sqn 51 website are faboulous - they have given me a tremdous amount of information including contact information for decendants of five of the seven crew members. One thing we are trying to do is gather more information about the Leipzig raid. If you remember any details of that raid I would very much appreciate if you could share your story. I am mostly interested in your personal experience such as the events during the day (before taking off), the weather, flight plan, any significant event during the raid and any other details you may recall. We have unconfirmed information that initially this raid was intended for Berlin however changed at the last minute (possibly due to weather conditions)? There were 527 aircraft on this raid (220 halifaxes and 307 lanc) - 15 halifaxes and 9 lancs were downed. Two of the downed halifaxes were from sqn 51. One was Dougs the other (HR782) was downed just north of Frankfurt nearing the Belguim boarder - do you know why they would be so far south of Leipzig on the home leg? We have one report the weather was fair and another high winds with driving rain. Your recollection of this raid would be most appreciated.
Thanks!

HR732 crew
P.O. A. J. Salvage Captain
SGT. W.W.B. Hamilton Flight Engineer
P.O. F.J. Baker Navigator
F/S I.G. Davies Bomb Aimer
SGT. M.Hampson Wireless Operator
SGT R.J. Edwards Air Gunner
SGT D. W. Milliken (RCAF) Air Gunner

tow1709
5th May 2009, 20:48
The deliberate mistake in part 4 was that the town of Windsor Mills (it is just called Windsor now) is actually to the east of Montreal, and not the west. You can see the remains of the old airfield on Google Earth.

Cliff, thanks for posting the picture of the "hooded" Tiger Moth. I hope to be able to post a picture of the Fleet Finches soon.

Pete's story continues...

After my initial couple of flights I found that I had a serious problem. I could not keep the aircraft straight on takeoff. The machine would start to swing off to one side and I would correct with the rudder, only to find that I had overcorrected and we were now swinging the other way! I did not seem to be able to overcome this. Fortunately Sgt. Farrell was a very good instructor and came up with the answer. On arriving at the flight line for my third or fourth flight he told me to take my boots off and leave them on the ground beside the plane. I was somewhat confused by this, but, being a dutiful airman I did as I was told. Lo and behold, when I took off with just socks on my feet I kept dead straight! It was obvious to him that I could not feel the rudder bar through my thick soled issue boots. From then on I flew in plimsoles at first, then shoes and later back into boots. I never had trouble again keeping straight on take off, even much later when I was flying aircraft with very powerful engines which gave very marked swing on takeoff.

Finally, on May 7th 1942, after 7 hours and 40 minutes dual instruction I made my first solo flight. Any pilot will tell you that there is no other feeling quite like it. The thrill of opening up the throttle with no familiar head showing in the front cockpit and the exhilaration of becoming airborne, knowing that you were in sole charge of this machine, was tempered by the slight apprehension at the knowledge that you still have to get the thing safely back on the ground again! Fortunately my landing was very good. Later on I found that this was not unusual for a first solo when one is keyed up and concentrating hard. It is a few hours flying time later on that the bumpy and sloppy landings occur, when the pilot feels that he knows it all and becomes over confident.
We worked a more or less straight eight hour day finishing at 5 pm unless night flying was scheduled. This meant that we had plenty of free time to enjoy the Canadian hospitality. This was rather odd in that we were in the middle of Quebec which was mainly French speaking. Due partly to the fact that the French section of the community felt that they had been let down by the British, and partly due to some internal politics which we found hard to understand, there was a certain amount of anti-British feeling so we found that we were totally ignored in the local village, treated politely but distantly in Windsor Mills, but were warmly welcomed in Sherbrooke.

On the camp there was a services canteen run by local Sherbrooke volunteers and three of us became friendly with one of the girls who worked there who was the daughter of a Sherbrooke bank manager. We met her family and the three of us became more or less their adopted sons whilst we were in Canada. Even after we left and were posted to St.Hubert just outside Montreal, we would travel down to spend the weekends with them. Mr and Mrs Mutchler certainly made us royally welcome and I remember that, when I left Canada, I wrote them a letter and signed it 'Your erstwhile protégé'. The only ways of getting to Sherbrooke were either by train, very much a local line with few trains and many stops, or by taxi. Usually six of us would club together to take a taxi and thus we got to know some of the local taxi drivers quite well. I remember one who drove a large Buick with an eight note horn on which he played tunes as we roared through the countryside. His favourite being 'D'ye ken John Peel'.

It was during this free time that most of us discovered how different Canada, especially Quebec, was from the U.K. The most noticeable from our point of view were the beer bars. Women were not allowed in, the 'counter' looked more like a bank than a bar, with a wire grille along the front, and there were a few tables, each with a shaker of sugar which was used to 'de-gassify' the very fizzy beer. We were a bit young to have a nostalgic feeling for the good old English pub! This was in 1942 when most of us had never been abroad before, did not know how to drive a car, and were, by present day standards, extremely unsophisticated. Some of the food was also unfamiliar. For instance, it was the first time most of us had seen sweet corn. Some of the lads from country environments refused to eat it since they looked on it as chicken food! None of us had ever seen a Juke Box before although these soon became familiar and we spent hours listening to the latest records - the most popular being the Glenn Miller orchestra. One tune in particular still brings back those memories when I hear it. It is still played quite often even today, and that is 'String of Pearls'. I think we must have worn out several copies of that particular record.
Even the English language had different meanings! What we called the pavement was called the sidewalk and the word pavement meant the road surface. I recall one chap making a very bad 'faux pas' when he said to a young lady, whom he had arranged to meet early in the morning for a day together, that he would "knock her up" at 7.30. It was, he quickly found out, slang for something very different!! However the Canadians were very tolerant of our weird behavior and, all in all, we were treated most kindly. In common with most service men abroad in a strange environment for the first time, we tended to drink too much and sometimes behave irresponsibly. Luckily Leigh Woodbridge, my friend from 'civvy' days, and I, were taken under the wing of the Mutchlers and always knew we had a welcome there so we had no need to seek out other entertainment which might have landed us in trouble.

More soon...

regle
6th May 2009, 23:13
Your very poignant thread came as quite a surprise to me as your Uncle must have been operating from Snaith, near Selby, in Yorkshire on the same Squadron as myself at we certainly both took part in his ill fated attack on Leipzig on the night of Dec. 3rd. 1943.
I have only a very sketchy report of the trip in my log book but I was flying in Halifax LK (51 Sqdn) 'K' 899 and reported that I bombed from 16,000 ft. and that there were many fighters over the target. The whole round trip was 8hrs25 all night flying, although I noted that we landed back at Snaith in daylight. That would put the actual attack over Leipzig in the very early hours of Dec.4th. The long trip indicates that we would have been routed back to England by a course that would avoid the very dangerous Flak, Searchlight and Fighter boxes that existed all the way down from Northern Holland to the lower end of the Ruhr (Happy Valley !) and that is possibly why he would be south of Leipzig when he was shot down. I am sorry that my memory of the actual route, weather and takeoff conditions is non existent but I would always note anything that differed from the normal in my log book and there is nothing there to signify anything abnormal. There is one very significant detail and that is that the name of the Captain rang some sort bell in my memory and I am sure that I knew him and, thus quite possibly , the rest of the crew. I was also a P/O and would have shared the Officer's Mess with him ; Can you find out if he was a member of C Flight as that was the Flight that I was in under the leadership of Sqdn. Ldr. Charlie Porter, who was not a Pilot but a Navigator/Bomb Aimer and flew with all his Flight, irrespective of the rank of the Captain? He, unfortunately , died ,a few years ago. Another clue is that my own mid-upper Gunner, Roy Burch, was also a Canadian and in the R.C.A.F. and would certainly know your Uncle as a fellow member of the Sgt's Mess. Once again, unfortunately, he was the only member of my crew to volunteer to stay on after I had finished my tour and was shot down and killed in March of 1944.
I am so sorry that I cannot remember anything more but I am afraid that the Grim Reaper is the main factor in there not being more people around to help you in what is a very fine cause and one that makes me feel proud that there are people around ,like yourself who still care about their ancestry to try and find out some more about it. You can be very proud of it and I am sure that you are. I hope that you find solace that there were people around him that must have enjoyed his company and respected him for what he was doing as we all were. My very best wishes to you , Reg.

Icare9
7th May 2009, 09:19
Hi rmventuri and thanks for making contact. Sorry to hear of your father and uncle's deaths.
There is a website Lost bombers and it shows that HR732 took off at 0009 on 4th December from Snaith. That ties in with Regle's report of landing back in daylight, even for early December which would therefore be at about 0830 after approx 8 and a half hours flight (I can never remember the key strokes for the half sign).
It is a pity that the mystery as to how PO Salvages wedding ring got returned as that would indicate his body at least was found, yet there appears to be no burial attributed to him. I don't know if there was a name or other specific identification on the ring, as the only other way would be for a PoW or International Red Cross to pass it on. It may be that the crew have been buried in an unidentified grave(s) as perhaps no identification available.
There may be German records on aircraft crash sites that might help locate where bombers crashed and who may have claimed it on the 4th Dec 1943 which could help locate what happened.
I'm sure all on here will do what they can, there are a number of RAF and WW2 websites where you might get further help. I'll see what I can do, but hope that's a start.

regle
7th May 2009, 12:16
You have chsen a very apt pseudonym. Thank you so much Reg.

Icare9
7th May 2009, 17:41
Thanks, but that's just the colour of my car!!
I don't think HR732 (MH-Y) was a C Flight aircraft as C Flight had a different code of LK or C6 before becoming 578 Sqdn.

rmventuri
7th May 2009, 21:21
Reg,
Thank you for your kind words. Yes, Doug was stationed at Snaith with sqn 51. I will check to see if the crew was part of Flight C under Charlie Porter. Sadly this was the 30th operation for Doug, Arthur and possibly more of the crew members. I don’t know when Doug started at Snaith – probably something like mid ’42 I’m guessing. My oldest brother, named after Doug, has his log book and we hope to get is scanned soon. Reg, I do appreciate you checking your log book for any information on the raid - actually every scrap of information is both useful and interesting because it is forever part of the crew’s and their respective families ancestry. You never know what it may uncover. It gave me goose bumps to hear it from you first hand. Sounds like the weather was uneventful if you would normally have noted something like that in your log book. Also sounds like the home leg did take you on a long and circuitous route to avoid the enemy. I would assume the outbound leg and home leg would normally be different routes – also would the stream typically stay together on the home leg? I have been in contact with Howard “Doc” Bondett (RCAF Halifax gunner) who was part of the crew of HR782 and now lives in Canada. They were shot down by flak – five parachuted to “safety” and taken POW while the other two did not survive. I have only talked to him once (he is not on email) and to his recollection there was nothing unusual about the logistics of that raid although he did witness another aircraft hit by flak twice and basically explode. Possibly this was HR732 (they took off three minutes apart if I’m reading the times correctly). Now that I know more I will be calling him back soon – we do know that only two of the 24 aircraft downed in that raid where lost without trace. The other was a Lanc which I expect would be flying up around 22,000 – 23,000 ft out of Howard’s sight. Note that Howard had transferred from another squadron so this was only his third raid from Snaith and sqn 51. When I spoke with Howard he told me the same story you posted on this thread about the recently discovered crash site and aircraft found in the bog. Howard was a friend of one of the crew members. In a future post I will attach a crew photo to see if you recognize anyone (we have not been able positively identify everyone in the picture yet). Also if you don’t mind I am going to inform the other crew member descendants about this thread as they may want to chime in.

Best Regards,
Rodger

rmventuri
7th May 2009, 21:48
Hi Icare9. Thanks for helping out. There was identifying information on the ring (something like initials and wedding date). I also thought this would yield more information on the crash site or grave site however it has not. It is not clear how or where the ring was discovered - I'm told that the locals would loot a crash site until the authorities got there and a ring would be scooped up quickly. There is conflicting information on whether it was mailed to her from Germany or the US. Sometime after Arthur's widow identified the ring she sent it to his parents as he was an only child. By the way the widow, Constance, is still alive and when the sqn 51 historians called her to see if she remembered the "twins from Canada" she responded "that would be Doug Milliken, he was the best man at our wedding". Small world. I guess there is a group active in Germany today that still tries to identify crash sites and unmarked graves - the sqn 51 historians have been in contact with them to see if they have uncovered any new information recently. I have a copy of a page from the Snaith Operations Log book showing the entries for HR732 and HR782. The entries are next to one another – oddly it does not have at takeoff time for HR782. It is documented from other sources as 0012. As I am finding out there is a wealth of information on the web however it is such a forensic investigation to weed thru it.

Thanks again,
Rodger

S'land
7th May 2009, 22:09
I know that it is not yet the 8th of May in the UK, but it is here. Therefore, HAPPY BIRTHDAY REGLE.

NUFC1892
8th May 2009, 03:58
Yes, the day has dawned here in Cyprus too so, Happy Birthday Reg and may you continue to share your memories with us for many more years to come.

Icare9
8th May 2009, 07:10
I raised a glass as promised, and to Roy, Doug and all the others who never made it back.
I don't know if this is much of a present, and you may already know of this website, but as several buildings are captioned as "unidentified" then you might be able to help. I hope the memories are not painful....
Yorkshire. RAF Snaith. (http://www.oldairfields.fotopic.net/c202352.html)

Rodger: I hope the following early answers are of assistance. Mention is made that only family relatives are usually given access to these records, so I will leave it to you to decide to take it down these routes. If you need help getting email addresses, shout, either by PM or on this thread, as no doubt others can help.
=================================================
Icare9 Join Date: May 2009 Location: London W4 Posts: 1
Help 51 Sqdn Halifax HR732 loss

Hello, my first post, trying to help find any details regarding the loss of Halifax HR732 on early morning of 4th December 1943.

Background: I'm a participant on the PPRuNe website and one thread has a WW2 contributor from 51 Sqdn C Flight. He's now been contacted by the nephew of Sgt D W Milliken RCAF, the rear gunner. Sgt Milliken's twin brother has recently died so the family are trying to piece together their wartime service history. The HR732 crew have no known graves and are on the Runnymede Memorial.

The reason why I'm posting is that the widow of the pilot, P.O. AJ Salvage had his wedding ring returned 3 years after the war ended. That implies that his remains were found with sufficient identification to enable the ring to be returned (blackened but still recognisable).

The implication therefore is that this crew may be buried "somewhere" as unknown, but if the report of the aircraft crew that may have claimed the Halifax that early morning could be discovered, then the crash site might be traced and hopefully the crew remains might be able to be located.

Sorry it's long, but I hope you can help after all these years uncover what happened that day and help the families have somewhere to visit.

Thanks in advance, check out the site if you think you can help.
http://www.pprune.org/military-aircr...t-ww11-37.html

#2 7th May 2009, 23:57 Andy Saunders Posts: 427

There will be a Casualty File still held by the Ministry of Defence on each man and this may well hold vital clues that could, today, be followed up. These files are held in a central repository at Hayes, Middlesex but are "closed". Details will, sometimes, be extracted via the Air Historical Branch on request - but not always - and whatever comes back will probably be quite limited. However, a glimmer of hope here is that Doug Milliken is a Canadian. His casualty file will (probably) have been copied to Canada and the Canadians are much more likely to provide copies - as do the Australians, for example.

A good read is Stuart Hadaway's "Missing Believed Killed" (Pen & Sword) which details the work of the Missing Research & Enquiry Unit in their postwar searches. This crew will have been one of the MREU cases, but it clearly went unsolved and the case left open. I wouldn't mind betting that there will be some glimmer of a clue, somewhere, as to what happened to this crew.

If you wish to PM me I can probably help further.

#3 8th May 2009, 08:40 Chris Goss Posts: 2,141

To add to what Andy says, you will have to be related to the deceased to have any chance of help from the AHB-casual queries are not encouraged. If the file exists, they might have something on the loss, as on a number of occasions, the Casualty Files have proven that an aircraft listed as missing was in fact discovered. For example, a friend's uncle was listed as missing but the Bomber Command Loss Card gave a location and the Cas File stated that his Uncle's body and that of the pilot had been discovered but the location of the cemetery was lost as it, and the records, were in Berlin and destroyed during the Soviet offensive. Hence he is missing
===============================================
If I get any more relevant responses I'll post, but don't want to distract from this thread, so will PM unless you (and the Moderators) say it's OK.

My comment about HR782 would be a guess that as they were shown one after the other, then that is probably the sequence in which they took off. I would imagine that 3 minutes gap would be sensible just in case the one in front crashed on take off, but reg will no doubt add the definitive answer.

Cliff: I think you may be your usual discreet self and not "intruding" but it's been more than 3 days without a posting - are you there, mother??!!!

And see Nightbomber an hour long video on Aviation History & Nostalgia sub forum - RAF Hemswell .....
Readers: Am I spoiling the thread with this info, if so I'll update by PM, and my apologies...
Edited to curekt speelin and link to Nightbomber...

cliffnemo
8th May 2009, 09:33
HAPPY BIRTHDAY, REG ,and as they would say in Snaith
'an many on em'.

CLIFF.

cockney steve
8th May 2009, 09:46
Happy birthday Reg :D :ok: may you have many more!

Jobza Guddun
8th May 2009, 12:47
Happy Birthday Reg, and thanks for all your contributions :ok:

cliffnemo
8th May 2009, 16:08
Hi Icare.
Thanks for your concern, but am fine, the thread is progressing well, with plenty of posts which gives me time to prepare my Beetle for M.O.T next Tuesday, followed by M.O.T for my Beach Buggy later.

You just keep going until some one complains, why should they, it's 'all grist that comes to this mill'

P.S the saying is "Can you hear me mother".

Night Bomber is available at
Night Bombers [VHS] [1981]: Brian Johnson, David Savile: Amazon.co.uk: Video (http://www.amazon.co.uk/Night-Bombers-VHS-Brian-Johnson/dp/B00004CJMU) .
Or google night bomber video

Chugalug2
8th May 2009, 22:36
Just time to get my best wishes in Reg before the day is gone. Thank you for all your posts. The amazing recall that you, Cliff and Peter possess implies that Lesley Welsh (sp?) was not so unique after all! More please. :ok:

rmventuri
9th May 2009, 03:01
Reg Happy birthday from a newbie to this forum. My Dad and his twin were also born in '22. You vets are all heros in my book. Look forward to more discussion.

Rodger

regle
9th May 2009, 10:04
I was completely overwhelmed at the kindness and thoughtfulness of all your Birthday greetings and realise now what a wonderful comradeship this Forum has fostered. I had a lovely day and was treated to the joy of having all my four children with me ,they having come from as far as Jerusalem and Belgium to surprise me. The day before, Andy and his lovely wife , Lynne, took me up to Old Buckenham where I had the delight of clambering in to the cockpit of my first aeroplane. A gleaming, pristine Stearman PT 17 which ,I was told, belonged to Martin Shaw, who could not be with the "Arnold" reunion because of pressing work obligations. I felt so at home ,immediately, in that cockpit and would have cheerfully taken off if the engine had been switched on but I had to be content to witness some lovely aerobatics from the Stearman Pilots that were young enough to get in the aeroplane without a step ladder.
I was further surprised by having three of my Grandchildren with me over the two days and then to, come back to the Forum and find all those wonderful greetings, has made me a very happy and thankful person.


Thank you, everybody, and long may this "esprit de corps" reign amongst us all. A very grateful Reg.

Icare9
9th May 2009, 11:52
Andy, that's just brilliant and I think that was as perfect a birthday treat as Reg deserves.
As far as tracing what happened to Halifax HR732, I wonder if we could approach this from another direction.

1) We know how many aircraft were lost on that raid.

2) We know which were Lancs and which were Hally's. It seems that all bar 2 aircraft and crew have been located, so leaves just 1 Hally and 1 Lanc unaccounted for.

3) Some of the crew of the other 51 Sqdn Halifax HR782 which took off just after HR732 and therefore might have been close together in the bomber stream, saw a bomber hit twice by flak and explode.

4) Assuming that a Lanc flew at a higher altitude, then this other bomber would have crashed further back up the bomber stream than them, and they were shot down north of Frankfurt near the Belgian border. I'm sure that if a gunner said an aircraft was hit twice by flak, he would know the difference between that and a nightfighter attack.

5) Had it crashed outside of Germany, I'm sure the locals would have provided information, and any personal effects would have been returned earlier than 3 years after the War.

6) The pilots ring was returned from either Germany or the US. That also indicates the crash site was in Germany, as either it was returned by a German (who would have to have other personal effects to have been able to return it) or "traded" to a US serviceman (again with sufficient info to return it).

7) Sometimes crew parachuted out so not all would be killed (5 getting out of HR782 for example) and even if killed, their bodies would in most cases carry enough to identify them, therefore for no records of the crew to have been found so far indicates that they never got out. It probably also explains why no nightfighter claimed them, as we have no combat report or location to help.

8) The Pilots wedding ring was returned, so they must have crashed on land, not in the North Sea.

So, with all this, can someone help in producing a plot where all the bombers lost that night crashed and which ones are identified, leaving just those untraced (should just be 2!). Whilst all the crew would initially be buried nearby, there may be records in the CWGC about post war concentration of graves of unidentified airmen. I knew a WO2 who was involved in reburials, so where possible the identity of exhumed remains were checked. In the case of this crew, that was not possible for any of the 7 bodies. That may be because any identifying personal effects had already been retrieved and subsequently lost.

My gut feeling is that there is a force acting here since Dougs twin brother died to identify the remains of him and his crew.

If so, then there was a higher purpose in Cliff starting this thread 11 months ago. All it needs is for Rodger to say that the 5th June was an significant date for his father and I'll cue the spooky music...
Edited as lost count!

rmventuri
10th May 2009, 19:28
Icare9,
You have sprung into action to a far greater degree than I would have ever imagined. Thank you for taking your time, which looks substantial, to dig in and analyze the clues as well as reach out to your other contacts. It is clear "many hands make light work". The Canadian library and archives lists the archival reference and vol numbers for Canadian service men/women who died (at least 20 years ago) while serving. Doug's file was listed as "Yet to be processed". Right. Its only been 65 years. I checked two other RCAF vets KIA in '41 and '43 (friends of Doug's) and their files were complete. I was able to contact one of the librarians who was a bit puzzled so I feared the file had been lost. To make a long story short she did some research and claims the file is actually complete so I have ordered it (about two weeks ago). Typically if takes 30 days but can take up to six months. Would the RAF file on Doug be the same? Given the difficulty in getting these types of files out of the UK I'm not sure it even makes sense to try if the files are the same. However if anyone has knowledge that the RAF records may be different then I will go after that as well. The next of kin may be a problem as Doug still has an older brother (90 years old - served in the Navy) and younger sister so I may need their permission? The great nephew of HR732 crew member William Hamilton is a lawyer in Scotland - he is already attempting to get Wullie's file.

Icare9, I will send you more information about the ring via PM as that is probably getting too off thread.

When I spoke to Howard Bondett who witnessed a bomber being shot down I assumed it was too much of a long shot that what he witnessed HR732. Now that we know only two a/c were lost without trace - the other being a Lanc and the 3 minute lag between takeoffs I will be calling up Howard again to find out everything he can remember.

June 5th has no significance I am aware of - I'll check with my mother

Regards
Rodger

Icare9
10th May 2009, 20:00
Rodger, you have private message. If you can't access, please email me: [EMAIL="[email protected]"][email protected][/EMAILl
There are many great people that are offering help, and I think you'd like to read their info.
It's not taking us further yet, but it shows what a wonderful community the military and aviation buffs really are. Puts the bad news on TV in perspective.
Nothing to do with nations, just one person helping another. If I can be part of that chain, it goes a very small way to repaying the debt we younger generations owe to those of your uncle and thousands like him who gave up their chance of sharing it with us...........
The Canadian archives are actually recommended as the MREU records were usually copied for Commonwealth service folk. The MREU records here are either missing or inaccessible, so you probably have a greater chance of success than over here.
It really needs a way in to German archives, Luftwaffe, flak batteries and even local newspapers where the destruction of an English terror bomber would probably be recorded.
On the 4th December HR782 fell near Weiler (not Weyer) not far from Boppard near Mainz. They noted a bomber hit TWICE by flak and explode. The only other aircraft I could plot in the vicinity was LW313 which crashed on a bridge at Bad Munster am Stein. That MAY have been the aircraft seen by HR782 but perhaps we can unearth the times that these 2 crashed. LW313 is a bit South of HR782 and was shot down by a nightfighter, not mid air explosion, but I don't know if HR782 had then turned North and been near enough to see it go down. If the time and location prove incompatible, then HR732 would likely be East of Weiler at the time of the explosion..... just where though is the snag!! I doubt it was a great distance away but we'd need to ask a man what happened 65 and change years ago, and whether ahead, abeam or behind them..... It might even be the same flak battery, getting HR732 first then HR782...... What was the effective height of flak and why were they in range?
Aircrew must know the difference between a fighter attack and flak, especially two hits, and I'd expect there to be some return fire from the bomber if a fighter attacked with tracer rounds going both ways.
Well, I'm afraid I've laid a great deal on your shoulders to take the attack to the Archives!! I assume you are also keeping the crew relatives informed?
Sounds like a job for the entire clan Milliken!!
Fantastic to hear of yet another older brother. Yes I'm sure you'd need to have him authorise the search...... What about his parents, don't tell me their still going!!!

andyl999
12th May 2009, 11:45
Then & Now

http://i583.photobucket.com/albums/ss278/regle999/recent/beforeafter.jpg

Smile looks the same? We had to take the keys away in case he flew off

http://i583.photobucket.com/albums/ss278/regle999/recent/beforeafter2.jpg

2009 1941