Danny Puts his Foot in It - right royally ! (Part 1)
It was a Sunday afternoon in late '52. I was strolling back from lunch to my office when the howling of Goblins indicated that 608's first detail of interceptions was getting into the air. "Sooner 'em than me", I thought.
For it was "a dull, dark and soundless day in the autumn of the year" (E.A. Poe : The Fall of the House of Usher" ). This was one of them. Weathermen call it "Anticyclonic Gloom". A huge high-pressure system was anchored over the UK. There was little or no wind; over all Teeside lay a thick blanket of haze from ICI, the blast furnaces and coke ovens, together with the chimney smoke from hundreds of thousands of coal fires. In those days the Environment hadn't been invented, and nobody would have cared a jot for it if it had.
Slant visibility was very poor, but it is a feature of this smog that you can see straight down through it fairly well. And it usually goes up only 1500-2500 feet into an "inversion", which effectively traps it into a layer above which all is (more or less) clear and blue.
I'd settled back into the regular routine of the day; everything was running smoothly in the Unit, and my afternoon tea and biscuit had just arrived at my desk. The phone rang. It was John Newboult over on the squadron. "Look", he said "we've got a Vampire just in off routine inspection. The Boss wants it on the line ASAP, but it needs an airtest. I'm up to my eyes in it here, and Mike's in the air with the Auxiliaries. Could you possibly...?"
You do not look gift horses in the mouth. Stifling a suggestion that his Boss might get off his rump and do the airtest himself, I agreed (well, you've got to help a mate, haven't you), collected my kit, hopped on the bike, and went over to Flights. It was now mid-afternoon and the light was starting to fade.
I went straight up through this stuff into the clear air above. The Vampire seemed sound in wind and limb, my last check was to take it up to 35,000 to make sure that the "Minimum Burner Pressure" light didn't flicker at max continuous - (I never heard of a Goblin flaming-out, did anyone else ?)
Now I was up high with not much else to do. I did a few rolls to keep my hand in, which entailed a bit of mental arithmetic at the end. A Vampire has a group of five fuel gauges: you have to tot-up the five readings to get the total. That isn't too hard if the fuel stayed in its own tank, but if the aircraft is thrown about a bit, it all goes walkabout. A tank which previously showed full is now half empty, another which showed empty is now half full. One which was three-quarter is down to a quarter. You have to do the sum all over again.
Then I thought, I'll do a nice big loop. Going down was fine, gentle pull up with full throttle fine, over the top with just enough "G" to keep me comfortably in my seat, throttle closed and start on down. We hadn't got all that far when the old "snatching" and "thumping" started, and I realised that I was well on my way to my first (and last !) supersonic Vampire. Idiot ! I slammed the dive brakes out, hoping that the structure would hold together (yes, I know that the book says you can put them out at any speed, but............) This brought us up "all standing", but the wings were, thankfully, still in position when I looked out. I started to breathe again and we reached equilibrium once more.
Now it has always been my practice that, once you have tried the patience of Providence and got away with it, not to do anything silly again on the same flight. It would be S&L and gentle turns from now on. I'll do a Controlled Descent. It'll give the Auxiliary Controller a bit of practice, and save me having to scratch about in this murk trying to find the field. If it works OK, and I have fuel, might do another one.
As the squadron was still out on exercise, I was the only customer and the QGH should be "straight out of the book". I was soon overhead. All the QGHs I'd done there before had been done on a NE >SW Safety Lane. This brings you in over Tees mouth, and there are plenty of landmarks from then on, culminating in Thornaby cemetery (the many white military headstones show up a treat) acting as a sort of Inner Marker for the 22 threshold.
But today he sent me out SW>NE. I didn't even know they had a second safety lane, but you learn something every day. I thought he was a bit slow letting me down outbound, but no matter - it would give me more time to settle down inbound. Check Height 2,500, and I'm skimming over a sea of mushroom soup. "Descend to Visual - call field in sight". Down into the clag I go, at 1,500 I can see a circle of ground perhaps half a mile wide below me, but nothing further out. But not to worry, the steers are 040-045-040, I'm right "in the groove", the field must appear any moment.
But things are not always what they seem.
Have a good weekend, gentlemen (Part 2 on Sunday, D.V.)
Danny42C.
It is better to travel hopefully than to arrive.