A Spitfire Pilot. Part 10.
It wasn’t all hard work at Hawarden, we managed to get the odd afternoon off and used to go into Chester, go to Blossoms and have a meal, visit the pubs. It was all quite pleasant. And the people were nice, even though we used to scare the daylights out of them, I think, sometimes, with our flying.
We had a few Australian pilots on the course with us and they were a nice bunch, and I kept in touch with one of them, Roy (?) for quite some time during the war. An invitation to join him for a few quiet drinks was not to be taken lightly. They always seemed to be the same sort of round whoever the bar-tender used to be.
We still had the odd ground lecture and on one occasion we were told that we’d have a talk on how to bale out of an aircraft and that was given by a Flying Officer Jim Bill Oliver, who became a flight commander with 111 Sqn in North Africa. He was a nice chap, but although he’d been in the B of B, he wasn’t operational, so he hadn’t done anything, and neither, as he pointed out, had he ever baled out of an aircraft. Consequently, we were as much in the dark after the lecture had finished, as we had been before it started.
We got to the end of the course and the postings came up and we found out that none of us were being posted to 11 Group, but four of us were being kept back to go with the next flight and be used as sort of semi-instructors, to get more time in. Now of the top four in our course, I’m pleased to say that each one had trained on Oxfords not Masters, so we felt quite chuffed over that. The best pilot we had was an Irishman by the name of Pat Lust and he was absolutely terrific in a Spitfire. Even the instructors were quite staggered when he went up and dog-fought them. After we left Hawarden I never saw Lust again, but when I went up to have an interview for my commission in 1942, I was speaking to one of the chaps in the squadron he’d joined, 222, and heard that a wing had come off a Spit when he was diving and the thing had gone straight into the ground and he had been killed, which seemed a great pity. Had he managed to get out I’m sure he would have made quite a score.
Whilst on the extended part of the course at Hawarden, we did a lot more aerobatics and formation flying and on one occasion I was teaching one of the Australians formation flying. We’d been going round for some time, the weather wasn’t too good, but he wasn’t awfully good himself. If I asked him to come in close, he’d either come tearing up behind me or slide in and put his wing through my cockpit. On one occasion were doing a turn in formation and he came in far too close, so I pulled up to get away from him and disappeared into cloud. Not wishing to come back and collide with him, I carried on up and out the other side and all I could see was 10/10ths cloud all over the place. So I came down rather gingerly, got through the cloud, or most of it and I couldn’t see very much. Suddenly it seemed as though the grass was running vertically from top to bottom instead of alongside, so I gave the stick a hell of a yank and there was a crunch and I continued on. I wasn’t very happy about it, but eventually the cloud cleared and the engine still ran smoothly, the aircraft seemed to be alright, so I trundled on down and found myself off the coast. So I just turned right and followed the coast at nought feet all the way round, got up to the Dee, came along the canal, which was a good pointer and the visibility by this time had become a lot better, so I climbed up to about 10,000’, slowed down and tried the wheels and flaps. Everything seemed to work alright, so I took the wheels and flaps up, flew back to Hawarden, still very high, and called up dispersal and told them I’d hit a hill, and I’d tried everything and everything seemed to work and what should I do? Come in with the wheels down and hope for the best or come in on a belly-landing?
There was some deliberation down below and eventually xxxx, who was one of the instructors there at the time, said, well if everything works, come in and try a normal landing. So I came down lower and by this time they’d got an ambulance out and a fire-engine and they were all sitting on the runway as I came in very gingerly. Of course there were quite a number of people standing around watching, because they’d all heard what had happened. Anyway, I landed alright and taxied back to the dispersal and got out very relieved. When we inspected the aircraft, we found that the radiator had been smashed and flattened into the underside of the starboard wing, although the prop wasn’t damaged and there was no other damage to the aircraft at all. Everyone reckoned I’d been fairly lucky and I had to agree, but nothing more was said.
Ginger Lacey was the Flight Commander at the time and he thought it was quite a joke, but a number of people didn’t believe that I’d hit the top of a hill, but the evidence was there and I was all in one piece and so again, I was quite happy.