What Danny Found when he Got There.
Of course, the younger generation were not yet coming in to the Officers' and Sergeants' Messes, although National Service airmen were no longer a novelty. We were all wartime pilots, flying (mostly) wartime aircraft and living in typical wartime conditions. The old spirit lived on, tho' it was to fade out slowly over the next years (it would be the '60s before I had a mild surprise on seeing my first S/Ldr pilot with no war ribbons under his wings). This change was inevitable, of course, but there was a tinge of regret all the same.
"Boss" was S/Ldr Alex Hindley, and you couldn't have a nicer one. The Flight Commanders were "Willie" Hewlett (also the PMC) and "Red" Dunningham. I seem to have started in "B" Flight, then tranferred to "A" Flight, but "Willie" signs as my Flt. Commander throughout. I think that "A" Flight was supposed to have the Spitfires and "B" the Vampires, but everybody seemed to be flying both types.
The lone Beau was nominally on "B" Flight, but it was the sole preserve of two refugees from Communist oppression: Master Pilots "Joe" Halkiew (Pole) and "Zed-Zed" Zmitrowitz (Czech), although the Boss and Willie (and maybe others) were checked out on it. (I'm sorry to say that I never even looked into the cockpit !)
One of "B" Flight's pilots was Niel Ker (yes, that's how he spelt it). He had been appointed to (ie lumbered with) the task of Squadron Adjutant. There was quite a lot of paperwork, and as I, an ex-Civil Servant and ex-C.O. of my own small Unit, had some experience in fighting the Good Paper Fight, I was co-opted to assist. I could fly in the mornings, while he polished the office seat, after lunch we changed over, and vice versa the following week, and of course the show kept running when one of us was on leave, and that was handy.
We got along very well in double harness. He was a former Indian Army officer who'd transferred, first into the Indian Air Force (he was actually on No.8 Sqdn, on Spit XIVs, but long after my time), and then into the RAF on Independence. Two old Sahibs, we naturally had plenty to talk about. We kept in touch through the years: he died two years ago.
The bane of our lives was the Squadron Aircraft Inventory. You might suppose that an aircraft came (Stores-wise) as one complete unit. No such luck. First you had (say) a Spitfire XVI airframe number so-an-so. This came in under its unique Stores Reference. Then came a Merlin Mk. 266 engine serial number whatever, with its own Stores Ref. We're there now ? Not a bit of it ! As cherry on the cake, we also had 24 spark plugs (God knows what Stores Ref.) to account for. Why, of all the hundreds of parts in an aero engine, this one item should be singled out, is beyond me. Perhaps it was the easiest of all to take out and get lost.
If a complete aircraft came (raise Demand Voucher on Stores) or went (raise Return Voucher), it was relatively simple, although you had to be careful to list all the serial and reference numbers correctly, and not forget the plugs, and enter all the details of the copy Voucher in the Inventory when (if) it came back from Stores . But then there were engine changes, where only the engine details needed amendment, but the plugs had to booked-out and in like everything else. And these, IIRC, could be swapped (Exchange Voucher) from Stores when they got coked-up or whatever. And copy vouchers can easily get lost, or get entered up wrongly.
You'd need a clerk of saintly assiduity to keep up with this. We had a succession of National servicemen of very variable quality. The Inventory became a nightmare. On paper, we had twin engined Spitfires with an astronomical number of plugs, a single-engined Beaufighter with none at all, and - to cap it all - one whole Spitfire went missing (on paper, at least !) It reminded me of Burma, where rumour had it that a certain W/Cdr Chater had worked the system so well that he had at his disposal a personal Harvard and a Tiger Moth that no longer (officially) existed.
Next time we're going flying again.
Goodnight, chaps,
Danny42C.
The Old Order Changeth.............