Memoirs of a WW-II Typhoon pilot - Part 17
Peter Brett's story continues...
I was two weeks at Fairwood Common and accumulated about 8 hours flying doing camera-gun dummy attacks on other aircraft and live round air-to-air firing against a towed drogue target. Unfortunately, I found that my performance as an air-to-air gunner was abysmal. Later on I was to develop good accuracy at dive bombing and later still became very accurate with rocket projectiles and cannons against ground targets. However my scores on the drogue were very low. Each drogue was used for attacks by four or five different aircraft. Each aircraft had the tips of its cannon ammunition dipped in a different colour paint prior to loading and this left a coloured ring around any holes made in the drogue target to enable the accuracy of each aircraft to be assessed.
Only two things stand out in my memory of this course. The first was our reception by the station commander. We were an assorted crew of new and also some experienced operational pilots flying both Typhoons and Spitfires. We were assembled in the main lecture/briefing room for our introductory lecture. A very smartly turned out officer then marched on to the platform, regarded us with a jaundiced eye and announced. "My name is Vale, Squadron Leader Vale, I am also known as Vale the Bastard!"
I cannot recall anything else about our introductory talk but at least Sqn Ldr Vale got our attention at the beginning!
The second memorable thing was towards the end of the course when I was fed up with getting low scores on the target and decided to really press home my attack. I approached the drogue from the opposite direction, peeled over in a more than vertical bank, came round and judged it just right as the drogue passed across in front of me as I was in a vertical bank to allow me to pull on the correct deflection. I concentrated on the gun site, pulling the dot through the drogue from tail to nose and then pulling the turn tighter to get the dot at the required amount in front of the target. The dot on the gun sight moved ahead of the drogue and then I suddenly realized that the drogue had disappeared under my nose. I was obviously too close. Looking up I could see the towing aircraft at my twelve o'clock position and, since I was still in a vertical bank, this meant that I must have passed the drogue somehow. I quickly straightened up and looked around. There was the drogue gently extending and collapsing like a concertina as it drifted down into the Bristol Channel. I had cut the towing wire with my propeller!
The only effect on my aircraft was a small shiny spot on one of the prop blades. The effect on the towing aircraft however was a very sudden increase in airspeed followed by a loud bang as the released towing wire whipped forward and caught up with the towing machine. Luckily it only caused minor damage to the cable guide at the rear of the aircraft. The towing pilot however had a few nasty moments as he was presented with a perfect head-on view of a Typhoon exactly at his 6 o'clock position, catching him up fast, and not knowing whether this Typhoon was about to open fire! The net result, as far as I was concerned was that my next flight was in a Miles Master doing dual attacks, although this did not seem to have much effect since I never did manage to get a large score on the drogue. Also I noted in my log book that out of ten air-to-air firing missions, in six cases one of the two loaded cannons jammed after a few rounds. Strangely, on operations when all four cannon were loaded I never suffered a jam again. Perhaps the armourers on the operational squadrons were more motivated to make sure the ammunition belts were perfect. All in all this fortnight was somewhat of a waste of time as far as I was concerned since I never again had occasion to fire a deflection shot in anger at another aircraft! However, on the completion the course I did not return to Perranporth but rejoined the squadron at Predannack which was right down on Lizard Point in Cornwall, and it was from here that I, at last, started operational flying.
More soon - TOW