Danny and the Link Trainer (can't say you haven't been warned!)
First see Cliff's excellent pic (#2338 p117). A picture is worth a thousand words.
We are still at Castle Combe. In one hut dwelt the Link Trainer and its keeper, a Flight Sergeant pilot who doubled as Navigation Instructor and check rider on our final nav exercises. The Link is a forgotten instrument of torture, so I shall describe it at some length. It was the first realistic attempt at an aircraft simulator, and quite advanced in the technology of its time.
A stubby representation of of a fuselage had a cockpit with full flight instruments and a throttle, stick and rudder bar. A hinged top covered the occupant, so that he had only his instruments to "fly" on. Modern multi-million pound simulators can roll and pitch on computer controlled hydraulic rams (I read). The Link could too, but teetered on compressed air bags or "bellows". Movement of the controls actuated air valves, and the Link would lurch (anything but smoothly) in the desired direction. That was the idea, anyway.
It was also able to turn complete circles on its own axis. This is more than today's simulators can do (in the real world), and I don't know how the Link managed it without screwing up its cable runs. Perhaps they had slip-ring connectors. This might explain the jerky controls, for slip rings oxidise and get dirty (like the volume controls on your old radio and TV). Whatever, control operation called to mind Ogden Nash's immortal words:
Tomato sauce, shake the bottle.
None'll come - and then the lot'll!
That's exactly how the Link stick and rudder behaved. It "flew" like no aircraft that ever was or ever will be, and trying to follow any Air Traffic procedure or flight path was a nightmare. Nevertheless, it had great value as a procedural trainer, for it fixed in your mind what you were supposed to do, and in what order, so that it would come naturally to you later in the air.
While you struggled in this sweat-box, your mentor sat at his desk outside. He had an intercom and dual instruments. On his (glass or perspex covered) table (over a map of the surroundings) crawled a "crab". This electric toy tricycle faithfully followed your movements. A little marker wheel left a trail of red ink, so your errors were plain to see. The besetting sin of Link instructors was to forget to switch this "crab" off, for although moving only at a snail's pace, it had no sense of self-preservation and, if not watched, would crawl off the table to self-destruct on the floor.
As if your erratic controls were not bad enough, your instructor could input drift and rough air into the system to make your task even harder. All things considered, it was not surprising that accumulated stress convinced some people that they were actually in an aircraft. We'd all heard about one poor chap who was supposed to have got his Link into a spin. Unable to recover, and unnerved by the unwinding altimeter, he'd flung the top open and hurled himself out. Grabbing for a (non-existent) ripcord handle, he'd landed heavily on the linoleum several feet below. His injuries were not life-threatening.
It's quite credible, the Link could spin very realistically. It could rotate quite fast, and with the inner "wing" down there'd be a real "G" effect inside; with the T&B in textbook spin display, imagination could easily do the rest. I've read that, even in modern simulators, a pilot's heart-rate speeds up in the final stages of a "landing", just as it does for real, even though he knows it's all make-believe.
I can't recall any Links in the US, but I think they had one on every flying school in the RAF. You were supposed to log Link time in your logbook, and I seem to have run up 46 hours, but it was all in "fits and starts" as the Link was the fill-in on non-flying days for weather or whatever. What did I do? Can't remember.
Before I leave Hullavington, I must mention one or two things. I must have been issued with a battledress (and, no doubt, the whistle) there, for I distinctly remember wearing it when I suffered a sad loss. It seems that the Air Ministry had asked the War Office to provide troops at airfields to defend them in case of parachute or glider attack. Lord knows, the Army had enough people doing nothing. Churchill got to hear of this, and bristled. "Why should one lot of able-bodied men need another lot to defend them? Let them defend themselves!" So Station Defence Days became the bane of our lives.
Hullavington had one when I was there. I was flat down, hurling half-bricks ("Mills bombs") at Bren Gun carriers ("Tanks"). Wriggling about, I lost my fountain pen from the top pocket of my battledress "blouse" (official name). I'd had the pen for years. It cost the princely sum of 2/3d (and two "Typhoo" tea packet tops). For that I got a 14k gold nib; it suited my hand better than anything before or since, I'd really "run it in". I mourned the loss for ages.
In those days you could buy a perfectly good iridium-tipped gold nib fountain pen for half-a-crown - Waterman, Swan and Conway Stewart were well known brands. That's £5 today. What's the chance of getting a gold nib for a fiver now?
All good things come to an end. I packed my kit and said "Goodbye" to Hullavington. That was not a simple matter. You had to trail round all the sections of a Station with a Clearance Certificate, and get a signature from each one, to certify that you were not making off with any item of their (official) property. This could take all day in some cases. (There was a comparable Arrivals procedure; a story told of one bright airman on a new Station somewhere , who booked in with the Barrack Warden - so that he got his biscuits, blankets and pillow, and with Accounts - so he got paid, but nowhere else. All he then had to do was eat his meals, turn up on Pay Parade to draw his pay, but do no work. Apparently he got away with it for quite some time, before somebody totted up, and noticed a discrepancy).
But that pales in comparison with the true story of a National Service Accounts clerk who called into existence a whole squad of phantom airmen, and collected the pay for the whole lot. It was very skilfully done, his creations went on leave and came back, went into SSQ with 'flu and came out, got remustered and in due course discharged, and so on. I believe this genius was actually discharged at the end of his 18 months, having carefully arranged for all the members of his "squad" to be discharged before him. A few weeks later, Records raised a perfectly innocent query about one of them, and the balloon went up.
Next stop for me would not be the Transit Camp I expected, but direct to Hawarden, near Chester, to No. 57 Operational Training Unit - the end of the training line. Thankfully, it wasn't a Hurricane OTU, but a Spitfire one. The pinnacle of every young wartime pilot's ambition was at last within grasp.
That's enough to be going on with,
Goodnight, all,
Danny42C
I thought it might be a Hurricane, so I only gave it a short burst (Combat Report)
Last edited by Danny42C; 19th Mar 2012 at 23:34.