Gentlemen,
Thankyou so much for spending the time and effort to recount your tales here. This thread was unknown to me until yesterday, and I have spent the last two days reading it from start to finish. I cannot wait to hear the end of Cliff's story in particular.
I had a short military career myself, very short as it consisted of a year and a half at the Royal Australian Air Force Academy before I left, however it is interesting comparing my recollections of military training in 1985 with your own 40 odd years earlier.
At the RAAF Academy, one of my instructors, Professor Brearly, flew in the war. He once related a story of his ground attack gunnery training in which the group's instructor ("Whitey", an experienced fighter pilot) would challenge each of his trainees to beat his score, and bet a bottle of beer on the result. With his experience, this was just a thinly disguised method for him to enjoy the weekend on free beer.
Knowing he had little chance of winning and, resigned to purchasing his bottle of beer, prof. Brearly simply aimed directly at the target and pressed the trigger - only to find his guns jamming after a just a few rounds. He managed to see the rounds strike the ground ten feet left of the target before pulling up and returning to base. Back at the base, and sensing an opportunity, he insisted on a second run, it not being fair that his guns had jammed, and managed to get that approved.
On the second run, having already made a "sighting" run before, he let fly, and stated: "My only concern was that they wouldn't be able to score the run, as the target was being completely destroyed."
Apparently "Whitey" paid up like a lamb!
My ATPL theory was taught to me my Noel Lamont, who also flew fighters in the war. Noel was one of the smartest men I have ever met, with a PHD on "The Theory of Time". He had worked out most of the mathematics on flight planning and so on from first principles in order to teach his own set of short cuts and rules of thumb.
Flying off the coast of New Guinea in the war he saw his instrument panel explode in front of him, and that was the first he knew of the aircraft that shot him down. Some of the shrapnel had passed through his body on the way to destroying the panel. He managed to crash in the sea near an American ship and the sailors saved his life. Recovering back in Melbourne on crutches he lost his balance disembarking from a tram, and a lady behind him made a comment about "drunk soldiers". He said if that tram hadn't left, he would have swiped her over the head with his crutch!
Noel went on to fly for the airlines after the war, and one day his crew bus was struck by a drunk driver while travelling to the hotel. He was badly injured, and ended up with double vision which lost him his medical (the reason he was teaching theory.) He was a fiercely determined, and very funny man. Once, after a heart attack, he insisted on having his students come to the hospital so that he could finish their theory course from his hospital bed!
I recently blurted out some of my own memories, flying freight and airliners in Australia on the
http://www.pprune.org/jet-blast/3600...g-stories.html thread in Jetblast, so I know how pleasant it is to receive some feedback. To know that the stories you tell are really going out to an audience, and not simply dropping into a "black hole" in the internet somewhere. Given that, please let me tell you all that I, at least, are reading them - and enjoying every minute!
Thankyou again.
