That story of the female ferry pilot ground looping her Mustang after she landed on a slippery runway, I thought was so funny. Which is why I posted it. Her frightening experience reminded me of the time I found myself in a similar situation albeit the runway was dry. In those days with only 220 hours under my belt I didn’t have many clues. Rather like today’s cadets going straight into the RH seat of airliners.
On this occasion at RAAF Williamtown, I was No 2 to a very experienced Mustang pilot called Flight Lieutenant Peter Middleton DFC. Some older readers in Victoria may remember Pete Middlelton as a DCA Examiner of Airmen at Moorabbin in the Seventies. Peter was tall imposing character and an impatient by nature. The Mustang was built for six footers and I was a bit over 5ft 4” give or take a few millimetres and I had real problems taxiing the Mustang. The seat was only adjustable vertically. The rudder pedals not adjustable. Tall pilots had no problems, short pilots did.
I could taxi with the seat full down and get just enough stretch to obtain full rudder pedal movement with the tips of my flying boots just touching the top of the rudder pedals and lucky enough to obtain partial brakes. Or I could lift the seat higher to get a better view over the nose of the Mustang at the expense of rudder and brake control.
Pete Middlelton started his Mustang and waited impatiently for me to start my engine and run through after start checks. He wore a bone dome and used to raise his seat right up to get a better view – so much so, his head was higher than the bullet proof windscreen. With his dark sunglasses, Errol Flynn moustache and blue and white bone-dome, he looked every inch a real fighter pilot - which he was, of course.
We taxied to the duty runway with him leading as the No 1 in the formation and me following behind careful not to chew his tail with my prop. When taxiing the Mustang you had to weave the nose left and right to see what was ahead. This was my first formation trip in a Mustang. Being short meant I couldn’t see much ahead unless I weaved like crazy so I decided to jack up my seat to get a better view at the expense of rudder control.
Now to jack up the seat while taxiing was a bit like a one arm paper hangar in action. I needed one hand to operate the seat raising lever, one hand on the throttle on the left side of the fuselage and the other hand on the control column pushing it forward to give free tail-wheel operation. Pulling the stick back locked the tail-wheel. Three hands needed and I had two. During one of the weaves I was startled to see the No 1 had stopped on the taxiway and I was too close for safety. I hurriedly released the seat lever – the seat bottomed, leaving me with no forward vision because the Gyro gun-sight blocked the view. I hit full rudder which did nothing because I had inadvertently pulled back on the stick and locking the tail-wheel. Tried hard braking on one pedal causing the Mustang to whip through 45 degrees in a flash.
By sheer good luck I missed hitting Pete’s wingtip and stopped almost parallel to his Mustang. Pete nodded approvingly through his canopy as we had stopped in formation which apparently was a Good Thing with fighter pilots in those days. Of course he never knew the truth that I had nearly cleaned him up in the semi-ground loop. Now perhaps you can see why I identified with the female Mustang ferry pilot who 10 years earlier ground-looped her machine on the snow covered runway during the landing run…