Basic School
GUNTER FIELD, MONTGOMERY, ALABAMA.
"And stars fell in Ala-bama...that night" (popular song of the day)
Stars didn't fall in Alabama while we were there. Snow did, and it caused just as much of a shock. The white stuff hadn't been seen for a long time so far south. There wasn't enough of it to stop us flying, but it made a nice change after the heat of Florida. We'd come up here at the beginning of November for the second (Basic) stage of our flying training. Sixty hours on the Stearman at Primary School, seventy hours here on the Vultee BT-13 ("Valiant"), and a final seventy on the North American AT-6A ("Harvard") at Craig Field, Selma (also Alabama); that was our training with the US Army Air Corps in the States.
It totalled 200 hours in the air. At that time the RAF's curriculum (at all the Empire flying schools) was only 120 hours to Wings standard. (EDIT: This is questionable, we've had various opinions about this in recent Posts, shall we guess at an average of 150?) Which begs the question; what did the US get for the extra third of time and money it was putting in? The answer seems to be - not a lot.
We furnished ideal guines-pigs for a direct comparison. Starting with the same raw material, both syllabi finished with identical products, as far as anyone could see. It was never claimed that the USAAC-trained pilot was any better than his RAF-trained counterpart. Our Operational Training Units, which took our training on to its final stage, found no difference in the material with which they had to work. So where was the slack in the USAAC system? Here, at Basic School! The RAF (and later BFTS in the US) simply did without a "Basic" intermediate stage. They had an Elementary Flying Training School, which equated with the US "Primary", and a "Service Flying Training School" corresponding to their "Advanced", but no "Basic". At the time I wondered what point there was in Basic School at all, other than in finding a use for a training aircraft which was best forgotten (and largely has been). It might have been designed to show the student how cross-grained an aircraft can be, and yet fly.
It was a metal low-winged monoplane with fixed undercarriage and a Wasp Junior 450 hp engine driving a two-speed propeller. It had flaps, but these had to be wound down by hand. We had R/T and intercom. Instructor and student's cockpits, in tandem, had a "glasshouse" canopy to protect them from the elements. I'm sure that it was the same canopy that Vultee fitted on their "Vengeance" a year later. These two aircraft shared another family resemblance in the outline of the fin and rudder.
The BT-13 was very awkward in the air. You started a turn to the left with a bit of left stick and ease back. The thing skidded and you had to use rudder to bring the nose round. Then the nose would drop, and you had to take off bank to avoid losing height. It left you with crossed controls (left rudder and right stick), crabbing round uncomfortably. And in right turns, vice versa. This aircraft should never have gone into production. I have never flown anything with worse harmonised controls. It had a lot of dihedral and a big fin, so it was stable enough. Straight and level flight was fine. Turns were the problem.
In Florida, they'd never trusted us out of sight of the field, but here they started us on practical navigation, doing cross-country runs. Map-reading our there was easy. Weather was usually perfect, roads and railways were far apart, and you could always be sure that you had the right one in sight. Not like the UK, where you could fly over three railways in as many minutes, pick what you hoped was the right one to follow, then see it vanish into a tunnel!
From Gunter we were sent on triangular cross-countries, one of the turning points sticks in memory
- Chattanooga, Tennessee, of the "Choo-choo" song. On these trips, the long straight "legs" could be boring, and one of our chaps thought he would enliven a (solo) exercise. Following a long, straight country road, he dropped down onto it and roared along with his wheels on the tarmac. He could shoot off into the air if he saw anything coming, so it wasn't really dangerous. And he would have got away with it too, if there hadn't been a telephone linesman up a pole. He was justifiably shaken by the sight of this thing flying past beneath him, took its number and reported it. Our friend was on the next train back to Canada, sadder and wiser.
We started night flying, and night cross-countries. I've already mentioned the "Radio Ranges", which airliners (mostly DC-3s) used for navigation between towns (but we didn't have the radio frequencies to be able to use them). But the tracks of these "beams" were the forerunners of today's airways, and extra help was laid on at night. Every 15 miles along the track of the beam was a light beacon. On a clear night you could see 30 miles ahead from 5,000 ft, and have two of these beacons in sight all the time. You couldn't go wrong, it was just like driving down the High Street!
My final night flying session ended with the one (and only) false entry in my Log Book. I needed only another twenty minutes to complete the total night hours for the Gunter part of the Course. Taxying out for take-off, I reached the end of the runway, but the Tower told me to hold. It seemed that bad weather was moving in; there was discussion among the instructors as to whether night flying should continue. They cancelled. I taxied down the runway back to the flight line. "Hell", said my instructor, "Put in twenty minutes flight time!" So I did.
That raises a question, which has never officially been answered - as far as I know, up to the time I finished flying (1954). How should flying time be measured? The obvious answer is the time between take-off and landing, when you're actually in the air. That's the only time you're flying, isn't it? Wee-ell, yes, I suppose so. But what about the time spent taxying out and in? That can add up to quite a bit on a busy airfield when there's a lot of holding. Taxying often needs more care and skill from the pilot than flying straight and level. It's not like driving down a motorway. In some cases (eg Spitfire) a particular technique has to be learned. And spare a thought for the captain of your 747 Jumbo, rounding corners on a narrow taxyway, worrying what his sixteen main wheels (a long way behind him) are doing.
To my mind, there is a clincher - at least as far as the RAF was concerned. Have an accident when you're taxying, and you'll soon see whether you were flying or not! A taxying accident was treated just the same as a flying one, reported on the same form (F765C), investigated with the same rigour, and punished with the same severity. So most people logged their time "chock to chock", ie from the time they left the flight line until they parked again. It makes sense to book all the time that you're wholly responsible for an aircraft moving under its own power, and I always did so.
Goodnight, all.
Danny
Gravity never lets up.
Last edited by Danny42C; 27th Feb 2012 at 20:00.