After years on Prune how could I have missed this thread on one of my favourite aircraft? Our affair began when a very much younger Geriaviator was pictured checking out his Hastings at the end of my father's two-yr posting to RAF Khormaksar, Aden. The Hastings would return us to Lyneham the following day for six months at the ghastly Croft transit camp near Warrington before another year or so at Leuchars.
The day before we left Aden in Feb 1953, the 30 passengers on the homeward flight had to report for weighing so weight and balance calculations could be carried out. Piston aircraft are much less tolerant of weight variations than today’s huge jets, even though people were lighter. There were only a couple of steps to the door of the tailwheel Hastings, but inside there was a steep slope due to the tail-down attitude. The seats were rear facing, a safety feature adopted by Transport Command after the war and continued to this day with results well proven in the Command'’s relatively few accidents.
As we boarded we were given a cardboard box containing sandwiches and a bar of chocolate, this being our inflight meal for the eight-hour flight. Tea was served from a couple of big urns kept in the tail beside the Elsan. My parents were placed amidships, but being only six stone I was delighted to be seated in the tail beside the loadmaster. The downside of this came later, when like thousands of rear gunners I discovered that the tail constantly wags from side to side; this, combined with the ups and downs of turbulence and scoffing my entire packet of Smarties, produced the inevitable result. Fortunately Their Airships had thoughtfully included a waxed paper bag in the lunch pack.
After a few hours there was great excitement when a pencil-filled form was passed row by row from the front. The Flight Report informed us that we were cruising at 180 mph and 8000 feet. Below the Ethiopian scenery was unchanged from two hours ago, a featureless brown plain devoid of vegetation or habitation. I wondered even then how anyone could live in such arid surroundings.
Khartoum offered a hearty breakfast at 6am, being porridge, greasy bacon and eggs ladled from two-foot square metal dishes familiar to Service diners. Boys wore shorts in those days and as we headed north I began to feel an icy blast across my legs. The double doors alongside were battered and I could see through the one-inch gap along the bottom. Dad said the Hastings had been used on the Berlin airlift and like the Dakotas and Yorks had taken a battering.
After a refuelling stop at (I think) Castel Benito we landed at Lyneham that evening, totally exhausted by the thunderous noise of the four Hercules. To communicate one had to shout into the recipient’'s ear and to this day I wonder how the Halifax crews withstood it night after night -- and the Merlins were even worse. For all that I wouldn'’t have missed it for the world, and 60 years later I can remember that flight as if it was yesterday.
Posted to 202 Sqn Aldergrove in 1954, my father and his colleagues were responsible for launching the Met Flight Hastings at 0800 every morning. These ‘Bismuth’ flights of up to eight hours would collect data for weather forecasting, and continued until 1964. The ground crews never failed to get their aircraft away on time, although a standby was always ready as the Bismuth was so important.
Aldergrove's 202 Sqn Met Flight crews aboard the Hastings for 8-10 hour flights out into the Atlantic dined on Banjo Rolls. The name came from the banjo union, a circular fitting used for components such as petrol feed to carburettors or oil drains from motorcycle valve gear. The crew took it in turns to fry bacon and eggs for insertion into a round bread loaf, known in Northern Ireland as a bap. Two captains used their rank to demand the fat from the pan poured over the delicacy, thereby boosting their cholesterol levels to undreamed-of heights, had they only known about such things. My father complained that the cockpit often became a greasy mess and had to be wiped down with petrol.
By 1956 we had acquired a 1936 Hillman Minx car, purchased for £30, rewired with cable from the B-29 Washingtons on Aldergrove'’s salvage dump, and with a section of B-29 bomb door just the right curvature for riveting over the boot, which had corroded clean through. The Hillman engine drank oil, but we had ample supplies of OMD-270 as used on the Bristol Hercules; if it was good enough for the Hastings, it was good enough for our Minx, which would rattle along with a trail of blue smoke just like the mighty sleeve-valve Hercs. I thought one of the Wright Cyclones from the scrap Washingtons would make it go even better but Dad drew the line at that.
When 202 Sqn was disbanded in 1964 I was overjoyed to be given a place on the final flypast. After takeoff Master Pilot Radina, who had escaped from Czechoslovakia in 1940 to become an instructor on Liberators, invited me up front where I was startled to see the lead Hastings tailplane gently rising and falling a few feet to the left of our nose. Radina was gently tweaking the throttles with right hand while holding the ponderous Hastings on station with his left, while a third Hastings formed the left side of the vic and a fourth brought up the tail.
We broke away at the Co. Down coast, leaving the leader to take the squadron standard to England, where 202 converted to helicopters and became an SAR squadron. This aircraft was flown by Flt Lt Kajestan (Iggy) Ignatowski, DFM, AFC, VM, who had escaped the advancing Germans in 1940 using a light aircraft which he somehow acquired to cross part of his way across Europe. Eventually he and hundreds of other Poles found their way to Britain, where he joined the newly formed 301 (Polish) Sqn to fly Wellington bombers against the Reich.
A few decades later I was touched to hear that Master Pilot Radina's ashes had been scattered over the North Sea from a 202 Sqn helicopter flown by Tony Harrison, who recalled that Mrs. Radina had been brought out to the aircraft, rotors turning, to hand over the urn for her husband's final flight..