My Father's story continues with his posting to Montrose in Scotland. To answer a question about the location of the Officers' Mess dad believes it was a house in Rosemount to the NE of the airfield.
"So I was back in Scotland to my new role as an instructor of instructors. At times this was particularly difficult with operational pilots, some with decorations beneath their wings and with experience of battle who were your pupils, having been taken off operations and posted to learn a totally different role.
I remained on the staff of 2FIS flying until the early part of winter 1944/5. I was off flying for 5 months having broken bones in my right hand following a tackle whilst playing rugby for the Station’s rugby team and ending up in hospital for quite some time. I remember my first return to the mess, my arm in a plaster and a sling, to the somewhat ribald comments of my colleagues!
Before returning to flying in January 1945, I had gained an insight into the admin side of flying training when I came out of hospital and spent time in the Flying Wing Adjutant’s office.
I was to remain at 2 FIS until July 1945 when I was posted back to Flying Instruction duties teaching young French cadets at RAF 7SFTS (Service Flying Training School) at Sutton Bridge in Norfolk. It was here on 29 November 1945 that serious damage was done to one of His Majesty’s Oxford aeroplanes! I was putting young French cadet through a pre-Wings test. We had been on a cross country flight during which I checked his navigation and then quite some miles from the airfield I cut one of the engines by closing the throttle. This was quite a normal pre-wings check. The cadet was quite unaware that this was going to happen but his reactions were quite good and we arrived back over the airfield. It was a very windy day, with strong gusts. In the circuit on his downwind leg I could sense he was having a little difficulty and was a little apprehensive. He went a little too far downwind as he turned - still on one engine of course - with the strong wind pushing him further away from the airfield. He was allowing himself little leeway to make a good approach without careful use of throttle - on one engine remember. I sensed he did not realise he was going to find it difficult to maintain height. As we approached the runway I knew I had left it too late to takeover. I knocked his hand off the throttle and opened up the throttle of the ‘dead’ engine - but too late! As we came over the boundary the aircraft stalled, the port wing dropped and hit the runway. I remember cutting the mag switches and then all hell broke loose! The aircraft disintegrated but luckily the cabin and cockpit remained fairly whole. The Red VERY Lights flashed and the fire tenders rushed over and the rescue crews hauled us out. The aircraft was a bit of a mess but we both escaped with shock and minor injuries. We were taken to the medical centre and checked out. After all the routine enquiries were made it was almost teatime and then came perhaps the most embarrassing moment of all. As I walked into the Officers’ Mess Ante Room for tea - the tea urn being at the far end of the room - a silence descended on all those colleagues in the room. So in total silence I had to walk the full length of the room - without a word from anyone - then as I poured the tea into my cup the noise started and I was given a real ribald welcome and was congratulated on having survived a really nasty accident! I dare not repeat some of the comments made!! It was definitely a moment I never forgot!
There was, of course, an enquiry and I had to be rechecked by the CFI. I passed fit to carry on, thank goodness. Routine returned and I carried on teaching the French cadets to fly and then my final posting to RAF Kirton Lindsey, still instructing the French cadets until demobilisation.
One trip I will always remember whilst at Kirton Lindsey. A mess dinner was being arranged. The Chief Flying Instructor, knowing that my last station was RAF Sutton Bridge in Norfolk, requested my presence in his office. I wondered what ‘offence’ I had committed. He referred to the forthcoming mess dinner and asked me whether I knew any farmers in the area of Sutton Bridge - an area of fruit farming. It just so happened that the owners of a transport company in the area, and who also owned a petrol station and where I used to fill up my car to travel home to Leeds, became very good friends to me. I telephoned my friends to explain that we were having a mess dinner at Kirton and could he put us in touch with farmers growing strawberries? The answer was ‘Yes, what can we do to help?’. Arrangements were made and the CFI said ‘Right, take another aircraft with you on a training run cross-country’ - and so to Sutton Bridge we flew. My log book tells me that on 15 May 1946 that the surname of my pupil was Lebomin. We filled both aircraft with punnets of strawberries and back we flew to Kirton Lindsey. The mess dinner was a huge success and the C.O. complimented us on a cross-country exercise well performed!
And so my final flight with the Royal Air Force took place on 9 July 1946.
I left Kirton Lindsey by train for Uxbridge, London, when on 18 July 1946 I finally ‘retired’ from the Royal Air Fore, changing my RAF uniform into my ‘demob suit’. I was handed my first class single travel warrant to Leeds and from the secure environment of the RAF I stepped out into an uncertain world that I had not known for almost 5½ years."
He did tell me a story that at the end of the war with no students to teach he was relaxing in the OM after lunch with the other instructors when the Stn Commander came in, a "regular career officer", and berated them for not being at work - difficult with no students
This confirmed his decision not to remain in the RAF post war - though he did miss the flying.
It was also good to see that the use of training trips in his day was the same as mine - seafood from N Ireland for mess functions was a favourite load in the back of a Wessex
HF
(more photos to follow)