Danny gets ready to put to sea.
Tommy,
Thank you - your wish is my command ! (bis dat qui cito dat).
My three summer months with the Spitfires came to an end. I count myself lucky to have had the chance to fly them, and even more to have flown the earliest (and therefore lightest) Marks of that incomparable aircraft. They were not as fast, or could not fly so high, or were not so heavily armed as later Marks, but they were nicer. The "Spit" was simply the most enjoyable aircraft to fly of all time. In memory I liken it to riding (or rather freewheeling) a bike in three dimensions. You just had to think about going round a corner, and round you went!
In later years I would put in around 140 hours on the Mk XVI (which was basically a Mk IX with the US "Packard" Merlin, and no worse for that), and another dozen on the Mks XIV and XXII. These last two I disliked, but no doubt, with more time, I may have learned to love. The Spitfire remained in Squadron service at least till 1951.
But:-"They never could recapture / That first fine careless rapture".
A notice was pinned up "The following have been included in the October quota for India". Three names followed: one was mine. I didn't like the choice of words. As a boy, I'd read the legend of Theseus and the Minotaur. For the monster's food the Cretans had to sacrifice "an annual quota of their youths and maidens". The parallel seemed too close for comfort!
We three "volunteers" (you, you and you!) were none too happy about it. The general opinion at home was that the Japs would come through India like a hot knife through butter (as they had through Singapore, Malaya and Burma); our fate was to be certain death or capture. As sacrificial goats, we came in for a lot of sympathy. In the event, we three came through the war more or less unscathed (one got a DFC, the second an AFC, and then there was me) As for the rest of my Hawarden Flight, I never came across a single survivor in later years. I believe that a lot of single-engine trained people were later converted onto twos and fours to help replace the losses in Bomber Command.
I packed my kit and went round with my Clearance Certificate. Sadly, I was never to fly the Spitfire operationally (there were none in India till a year after I got there), and would not see the inside of one again for seven years. But Hawarden had been well worth while. I wouldn't have missed it for the world.
I seem to have had a month's Embarkation leave, followed by a week at 9 PRC in Blackpool. Here I must have been issued with tropical kit, but cannot be as sure about the items as I've been about my first issue on joining. We would certainly have got a khaki drill No. 1 set (tunic and slacks), and two or three sets of khaki drill shorts and cellular ("Aertex" style) collar-attached long sleeve shirts. I don't think any bush jackets were included in the UK issue. Two pairs of knee-length stockngs and a comical large sun helmet ("Bombay bowler"), that was about it. (Underwear ? Forget it !)
A point worth a mention is that the brass buttons on the khaki tunic were not sewn on, but fitted through tiny buttonholes, to be retained by a small brass split-pin. In this way they could be taken off before washing the tunic. Your wings would be on press-studs, your stripes just sewn-on white tape.
I'm very hazy about my blue uniform and the flying kit. I know that I had my battledress out there, for we often wore the jacket over shirt and shorts in the winter days up North. And I cannot remember having (and certainly not needing) my UK flying kit out there. I think it, and my blues, must have been handed in at Blackpool. So how did I come to have my Morland "Glastonburys" still with me on demob? At Blackpool I'd been "in" for eighteen months and must have learned a thing or two about how to make kit vanish inexplicably!
They doubled-up on vaccination and on every "jab" I'd ever had, plus yellow fever. This last may explain a strange visit to RAF Padgate, where I spent a night or two in a twelve-man bell tent (exactly like the one on the Camp Coffee bottle label - but no liveried "bearer" to serve coffee to me on my camp chair!) I can only guess that the yellow fever "jab" was on tap there, but not in Blackpool. (I might be quite wrong as to the purpose of the visit, can anyone confirm?)
Towards the end of October, I was embarked at Liverpool in the Stirling Castle, a 25,000 ton Castle liner requisitioned as a troopship. In peace she would have been mostly on the Cape Town run, so this would be a "busman's holiday" for the crew. From the deck I looked down on the Landing Stage where she was berthed. Every inch of that Stage was perfectly familiar; as a small boy my Dad and I had walked it from end to end hundreds of times. It was our favourite spot, I'd known off by heart every funnel colour, every house flag, every shipping line, and most of the names of the bigger ships that plied the Mersey. Now I was not to see it again for almost four years.
Cheers, eveyone,
Danny42C
Stand still !
Last edited by Danny42C; 18th Apr 2012 at 22:56.