Now might be a time to pause and recall a few details. First, what about the poor devil in the back? He had to go down "with his back to the engine", as he might be called on to man the guns as soon as we pullled out from the dive, should an "Oscar" bounce us - none ever did in fact, but you had to be ready for them all the same.
Half a mo' - you said
your canopy was closed? If his was, too, the guns wouldn't be much use, would they? This difficulty had been foreseen (on all the front- line Squadrons), and dealt with by an unofficial "mod". (It was wonderful what you could get away with in those days; you didn't have to seek Higher Approval if you wanted to do a bit of DIY on your aircraft).
The last (curved) section of the canopy was a nuisance. When folded forward to free the guns, the gunner lost most of the room over the nav table, and it wasn't as easy for him and his pilot to shout at one another with that thing in the way (we didn't bother with the intercom much). It wasn't as if he was left out in the cold, as it were, for he still had the straight section of canopy over his head to keep the rain off.
So take the curved bit out and dump it! If you look at almost any pic of a "fighting" VV, you'll see that that bit is missing - it was "parade wear". (The OTU may have kept them in, but not sure). Were they ever put back? I suppose you would have to when the monsoon came, otherwise the guns would get wet (and the back of the VV fill with water!)
Another example, Vultee was worried that a pilot might close the throttle on landing with the mixture control well forward (leaned out) . Accordingly they fitted a one-way catch on the mixture control which enabled the throttle to push past it on opening, but would pull it back (into rich mixture) on closing.
Of course the thing was a damn nuisance in formation, for as luck would have it the best mixture setting was just at the point on the quadrant where your throttle was being jiggled to and fro. It was always getting in the way, and you had to keep resetting your mixture. Find a file, get rid of it!
Now what about the back seat man? At least he couldn't see his altimeter on the way down: he just had to trust his pilot and hope for the best. He had another problem in the early days. The guns were pivoted on a mounting, but the attachment wasn't quite strong enough in shear (with the whole load downward). Curiously, we had trouble with the front gun fixings too, but that is a story for another day.
In a dive, the pivot sometimes gave way and the twin guns fell into the gunner's lap. The weight pinioned him to his seat, garlanded with ammo belts, till they got down and somebody could release him.. I don't think any of them suffered much worse than a bruising (the armourers soon beefed the attachments up).
While not suffering much harm, it must have been rather uncomfortable (and just think what the effect might be, should you come to a sudden stop (crash landing, say), if it happened. 200 lb of steel battering ram a foot or so away level with your head wasn't a pleasant prospect.
From Wiki I read that the IAF believed that there
had to be someone in the back seat on every dive, as otherwise the C of G would move forward and make the pull-out harder. Some straight-in accidents were ascribed to this. All I can say is that I never heard of it - but then IIRC I never dived solo myself. A good handful of trim should have sorted it out.
Talking of trims, I recall that, on one or two occasions, half way down in the dive, I spotted, out of the corner of my eye, the elevator trim wheel (the size of a dinner plate, easy enough to see) slowly winding forward (nose-heavy!) of its own volition. I grabbed it and hauled it back. It was just what you didn't need, midway in the dive.
Other people had had this experience, too, and it only seemed to happen when you were carrying a full load. But as it was very rare, and no one knew what it was or what to do about it, it was decided not to bother, but just put the word round as a case of a "watch it, chaps!" Perhaps something like that might account for the OTU "stoods" tent-pegging in (Did we warn them? Might have done.
AFAIK, they'd only use practice bombs, anyway, so the problem shouldn't arise).
As a compensation for these minor inconveniences, the rear seat occupant didn't really have much to do. In formation, he would waggle his guns about a bit from time to time to show willing. Stew started off by testing his guns (as they'd taught him at gunnery school), by firing a burst into the side of the dispersal pen when we started up.
As this scared all the groundcrew witless (and me!), meant that he'd have to clean the guns himself when he got back, and was of no value at all (what was he going to do now if they
were u/s? - we'd be rolling in a few minutes), he was ordered to desist.
On a sortie, everyone in the back had to act as a gunner, irrespective of rank or aircrew trade. And as all the pilots were in formation, the only one navigating was the leader. Although we'd all been to the briefing and tried to remember whatever jaw-cracking name of the place was that we were supposed to attack, in practice we were all in the invidious position of Christopher Columbus, who: "
Didn't know where he was going when he set out, didn't know where he was when he got there, and didn't know where he'd been when he got back." (But Christopher made out all right, and so did we).
Next time we'll talk about hang-ups,
Evenin' all,
Danny42C.
I thought
you had control.