Very early one morning in 1956 I was awakened by some disturbance before I heard our old car departing at about 5am. Like any dutiful teenager I turned over and went back to sleep, awakening at a more sensible hour after 1030 or so. Many years later my father told me what had happened.
Posted to 202 Sqn Aldergrove in 1954, my father and his colleagues were responsible for launching a Hastings at 0800 every morning. These ‘Bismuth’ flights of up to eight hours would collect data for weather forecasting, and continued until 1964. The ground crews never failed to get their aircraft away on time, although a standby was always ready as the Bismuth was so important.
By 1956 we had acquired a 1936 Hillman Minx car, purchased for £30, rewired with cable from the B-29 Washingtons on Aldergrove’s salvage dump, and with a section of B-29 bomb door just the right curvature for riveting over the boot, which had corroded clean through. The Hillman engine drank oil, but we had ample supplies of OMD-270 as used on the Bristol Hercules; if it was good enough for the Hastings, it was good enough for our Minx, which would rattle along with a trail of blue smoke just like the mighty sleeve-valve Hercs. I thought one of the Wright Cyclones from the scrap Washingtons would make it go even better but Dad drew the line at that.
On the morning in question my father dreamed he was in his office when he heard the dreaded roar of engines and the dull thump of disaster. He ran onto the airfield and saw one of his airmen coming back from the vast pall of black smoke and flame calling ‘crossed controls’. My mother remembered being awakened about 3am by my father shouting ‘Crossed controls, crossed controls’. He was very distressed and left for Aldergrove at once.
My father normally took the bus to work as it was cheaper and more reliable than the Minx, but the first bus would not leave until 6am. Fortunately the old Minx performed that morning, and he arrived long before anyone else. The Hastings was ready to go and all was in order, but he found to his horror that the elevator controls on the standby machine were reversed, the cables having been crossed during the check which had just been completed.
My father said the assembly had been done by two of his most reliable fitters and presumably he had signed it off without checking it himself, though I can’t imagine he or any other engineer would do so. More likely he did inspect it but did not notice the deadly error, perhaps an early senior moment, but fortunately his subconscious did notice and reminded him in dramatic fashion.
I’ve often wondered if the heart attack he suffered a few years later resulted from the stress and responsibilities of the aero engineer. It certainly did for my Uncle John, who in 1953 became one of BEA’s first Viscount engineers and was under constant pressure to keep the glamorous girls on schedule. Many years later, when I qualified myself and signed off many a log, I would realise the loads carried by those who had gone before.