My memoirs
Chapter 12
Miami Oklahoma
The Spartan School of Aeronautics.
This was it!! What we had all been waiting for...Flying. But of course there was the dreaded drill and the Physical Training and the Ground School. But first of all the School itself. This was a civilian flying training establishment, offering training at a certain cost to the RAF with the agreement of the American Government. It was known as No. 3 BFTS. (British Flying Training School). We had a Wing Commander C.O. and some RAF Officers and one Corporal PTI. The Flying instruction was carried out by American pilots.
The accommodation was excellent, far better than we had been used to in the UK. The main surprise though was the layout of the toilets for the junior courses. If you can visualise the arrangement. A large room with two rows of about eight wash basins back to back in the centre of the room. Then behind each of these rows was a line of toilets (Sit downers with no partitions) each backing on to the wall, again about eight to a row. Got the picture? Whilst you are sitting you look at the back of the chap who is washing in front of you and the other side of the room is a mirror image...Eight squatting and eight washing each side of the room!! And of course the queue waiting. Well I was always rather shy and you can imagine my horror at the thought of performing in front of an audience. But like all things, one got used to it and it became the norm to wait one's turn for a squat with the daily paper after breakfast or sometimes just chatting with one's neighbor on either side. Of course sometimes the conversation became a little strained. It is odd how you become accustomed to situations though; I remember on my first leave, when in the Hotel Loo for the first time, I couldn't perform because I felt too lonely.
The course was divided up into Flights each Flight having a Cadet in charge. One half of the course would be carrying out flying instruction whilst the other half was doing ground school work. The flying began on Fairchild PT19's. Small low wing monoplanes with open cockpits, mostly the instructor was in the rear. After Primary Instruction we went on to Advance flying in Harvard’s. Again low wing monoplanes but having retractable undercarriages and closing hoods. The difference between the two aircraft seemed enormous to me at the time...I recall looking into the cockpit of the Harvard for the first time and thinking it looked so complicated I would never master it.
There is little point in going too deeply into the ground school side of the course, to most it would just be a bore. The same applies to the PT and drill. Suffice to say that we had a lot of it and at times it was pretty exacting. There were periodic tests and these had to be passed or you were up for the CHOP. You can imagine how humiliating that would have been.
The interesting part for us was the flying. That always made the adrenaline flow, sometimes a bit too fast, but it was always exciting. My first Instructor on Primary was a Mr. Koepnick. He was a bit older than most of the instructors and said he had been an Airline Pilot at one time. I remember only too well my first trip with him. He inverted the plane and said "Are you holding on tight" Well, I was holding so tight I thought the sides of the plane would cave in. Then he said "Put your left hand up in the air" My left hand shot up and back down again to its handhold so fast I hardly lost my grip. He made me do the same with my right hand. Then he said “Right now put both hands up and keep them there" It took all my courage to hang there on the straps, but hang I did. And that's how he made me trust in the straps. It was a good lesson.
I had my old problem with landings and it took me a long time to go solo I'm sure I must have been considered for the CHOP during this period but the God's were kind to me and eventually the day came when he climbed out of the plane and said "Right off you go, one circuit and back to me here." Talk about being scared silly I couldn't believe it. You can imagine my feelings on the final approach I could see polished oak and flowers all the way down. But it worked; she planted herself on the grass like a real lady. I'm sure some other hand was on the Pushenpullenschtik it certainly could not have been Der Dumpkoff Mit Der Pushenpullenschtic.
As we progressed the training intensified with solo Aerobatics - Spinning- Formation Flying among many other exercises and then on to Night Flying. Unlike car driving when you start night flying it is like starting all over from the beginning. You must have attained a high standard of Instrument flying and nothing seems the same at night as in the day. It requires a lot of practice to become comfortable. One night, during the early part of night flying training, I had just left the plane having done my stint; Koepnic had installed my co-student Hill aboard for his turn. Now, we were using the secondary airfield which was just a large square of grass having a single line of Paraffin Flares down the middle to light up a landing path and about three flares at right angles to give a lead in. Well, Hill, after settling in, opened up the throttle and trundled off into the distance. I thought his direction was a little odd so I hesitantly pointed this out to Keopnic who promptly blew his top and yelled for the 'Bloodwagon'. They chased off after Hill who had tried to take off at 90 degrees to the correct take off path. When they got to him he was stationary, very close to the field boundary. He said very calmly “I ran out of lights and thought something was wrong so I stopped” That was Hill.
Eventually we passed out from Primary training and became Senior Cadets ready to begin our Advanced Training on Harvard’s. These were considered to be 'Hot Rods' compared to the Primary Trainers. There were many occasions when I frightened myself on these aircraft. But I suppose the worst time was when I set off on my first solo night flying cross country. The Met report had been good with no mention of cloud. The course was a simple triangle around the local area. After take off I climbed to my planned height and found myself in cloud. I decided that it couldn't be extensive and that I would continue on instruments. I was still in cloud when I reached my first turning point where I carried out the usual standard turn onto my next course still on instruments. This continued round the course until I decided I had to descend to identify my position. I was lost...I could recognise nothing. I searched around for lights which would mean something to me when I came across a grass airfield with just boundary lights. There was no control tower. I decided to make an emergency landing. I could see that the field was very short so I came in with nose up and plenty of power. As I approached I saw in my landing light some power cables this frightened me silly. At the same time my landing gear horn blasted me, indicating I had left my wheels up!! Go round again. All I wanted was to get on to Terra Firmer. I had to make three approaches before I got it right. I landed and came to a halt close to the far side boundary. I taxied to where I saw an office lit up. Shut the engine down and went in to introduce myself. Inside was a very lovely looking young lady who turned out to be the Meteorologist. The airfield I had chosen was a Met Centre having an emergency landing field attached, anyway after asking her to phone my base to report my location I just lay on the floor and flaked out. (Always my answer to crisis). After a short nap I was talking to her and she told me that an aircraft had nosed dived into a road somewhere close. We looked at the map and I realised that it must be one of our chaps. I learned later it was Walter Elliot one of our flight. He must have become disorientated in cloud and spun in. I always think I owed my survival to old Koepnic who insisted on a high degree of instrument flying. My efforts could not have been too bad because I did not get a wigging and I detected that the instructors who came to get me thought I did a good job of getting into that field at night. There were fifteen students killed during the total period of the school's war time training.
I did break one Harvard on landing. A classic ground loop. This I think was due, apart from my stupidity and inexperience, to the difficulty of controlling the rudders with such short legs... Stop laughing. Many of us had handicaps. I remember Graham an ex Special Branch Policeman, he was sick every time he flew and had to take a bag up with him, frequently having to clean out the cockpit. Short hairy legs were plentiful, it was the smooth feminine one’s in short supply.
The flying area around the base was quite unique. The land was completely flat save for the man made hills from the debris of the Zinc Mines at Pitcher, a small mining town close by. This part of America had been 'donated' to the Indians by the generosity of the American People. That was before they realised there was OIL. Then they could hardly take it back so they had to pay the Indians Royalties from the Oil revenues. The land was almost desert so they brought in engineers to create roads running true North and South, East and West, dividing the land up into one mile square sections. These were sold off at give away prices to Homesteaders in order to get the area inhabited. How this little bit of history affected us was that it created a grid of roads over which we could navigate almost without the use of a compass. This navigational benefit was splendid until we came to carry out cross country flying away from our area, then we were forced to rely on normal compass Navigation. The most exciting moment for us was when at the end of the course we went on our final, long cross country. Unfortunately for us we missed out on the Texas one and we went to De Moines via Wichita. At the time this seemed an enormous trek taking about eight hours flying in all, but it was a good test of our flying and navigation ability. At this time we all had about 180Hrs flying experience.
I had my final handling check with the Deputy Chief flying Instructor on 27. November.1943. and was duly presented with my wings, at a parade soon after, by an American General......... .I WAS A PILOT