Danny puts up a Black.
There was nothing in the RAF's accumulated stock of wisdom about dive bombing, and we'd had to work it all out for ourselves. There was a story (for which I cannot vouch), that late in '42 one of the other squadrons had been visited by a couple of types who had done a dive-bombing course with the US Navy in Pensacola. They intended to go round all the Squadrons to lighten our darkness with their "gen"; they preached the nose-over method and brought along some form of tubular (telescopic ?) bombsight which they had been given in the US.
A sceptical audience of 82 Sqdn ? - (I believe they got their VVs first, in late '42) - heard them out. "Show us", they said. They gave one of the "experts" a VV and he rigged up his patent sight in it.
Unfamiliar with a VV and concentrating on his bombsight, he forgot to open the dive brakes. His attentive class gloomily surveyed the smoking hole and decided that it might be better to do it their way. Wing-overs are much more comfortable than push-overs and the yellow line was all the bombsight we needed (the other "expert" being rather discredited, retired hurt).
Having said that, I believe that the "Stuka" was nosed-over (not so bad if you're only diving 60-70 degrees), and Wiki tells me that they had some kind of window in the cockpit floor through which they sighted their target.
I cannot see the point of this, the area you can see on the ground through a window on the floor has to be relatively small compared with that (say 25 square miles or more) at 10,000 ft, which is blanked off by the mass of aircraft you're sitting on. And what about the 500 kg bomb which was carried right in your line of sight ? The only way to do it would have been to fly nearly up to the target, turn sharply on to it, hope it pops up in the window and nose dive on it. And were you trying to fly formation and gawping through this window at the same time ?
As I have said, we had decided that on operations we would always fly in box-of-six formation, and we did trips to Calcutta (Dum-Dum) for fighter affiliation exercises with the Hurricanes from Alipore.
Our gunners aimed at the Hurricanes as they came in on their mock attacks, they both had no end of fun. We pilots sweated like pigs, hauling our lumbering monsters round in steep turns. The first exercise finished right on top of Alipore; the last Hurricane gave us a bravura display, putting his aircraft into a spin and holding it in all the way down to his circuit.
We were to land at Dum-Dum to refuel before going back to Madhaiganj. Unfamiliar with the airfield, I committed an embarrassing faux-pas, being the last man to land. The layout was the usual runway with a parallel taxi track to the side. But there was a lot of work in progress and there was more than one parallel track. Not expecting this, I'd not taken any particular note of where the man in front of me had turned.
To cut a long story short, I turned off, missed the first (proper) track, which looked small and insignificant, and took the next. When that looped round, heading off the airfield, the penny dropped. I was on a contractor's access road. I stopped, stuck.
There was no room to turn round and the VV had no reverse gear. I shut down and sent (mutinously muttering) "Stew" back on foot to confess. He didn't have far to walk: my absence had been noted. "Where's Danny?" - "He landed behind me", said Number Five, "so he must be on the field somewhere". The Flight truck raced back up the taxiway and found us
They had to fetch a tractor and towing dolly to haul me out, ignominiously, tail-first back down the track to the flight line. The Boss was not well pleased, time had been lost, the word "idiot" may have been used. Others chuckled that, as a rule, aircraft got lost in the air - not on the ground !
As a change from bombing practice, formation and these fighter affiliation exercises, we had occasional training cross-countries, usually to Calcutta where we could combine them with shopping trips (and a night at the "Grand"). One fine morning we had a change in the shape of a special navigation exercise.
Our Engineer Officer wanted one aircraft flown intensively, so as to build up flying hours to intermediate inspection time (which I think was 110 hours). This would give him a foretaste of the troubles he might expect when the rest came along in turn.
Accordingly, each dawn one crew was sent off to fly this aircraft some 200 miles North to the foothills of the Himalayas on the borders of Nepal. At the appointed spot (Lake Supauli) we would be about 80 miles South of Everest, and at a cruising height of 10,000 ft , would see the range of Himalayan giants from 20,000 ft upwards over the horizon, given clear weather.
We were ordered not to fly any closer over the border into Nepal, as the Gurkhas believed that their Gods would be offended thereby, and upsetting a Gurkha is not a good idea.
We were lucky on our day (5th Feb), the weather was perfect. Stew was issued with a RAF camera and threatened with painful death if he should drop it over the side. The trip was uneventful, couldn't find the lake (nor could anyone else - must have dried up), but I was sure of my position and we flew W-E while Stew took several good shots. I have a very small print in my logbook (printing paper was scarce) , as a memento of the only time I saw Everest in almost four years in India - and I never went to see the Taj Mahal. Missed opportunity !
Bit more soon,
Goodnight, all,
Danny 42C
Never mind.
Last edited by Danny42C; 24th May 2012 at 00:43.