Brian 48Nav: ref your 5916 concerning the Benghazi Hastings in 1950, this has interest in view of recent discussion here of pilots having to cope with lack of elevator control. In this case, I seem to recall that it was down to the no. 2 engine shedding a single blade which not only caused fatal injury to the copilot occupying a rest bunk, it also severed the elevator control rods (or cables?). The captain's task was made more difficult by (a) it being a pitch dark night, and (b) what was left of the no 2. prop had taken out the adjacent engine as it departed the aircraft – so, in view of the fact that most of the occupants survived the crash landing, he did a remarkably good job; sadly, he was not one of the survivors.
Danny & others: Here follows the penultimate part of my 1943-45 story, perhaps at an apposite moment in view of recent chat here about military gliders. For me, this plus the next stage (Glider pick-up) were without doubt the most interesting and involving parts of my long training, but also sufficient to make me glad I never had to do it again in face of the enemy!
PART 7---LEICESTER EAST.
Our course at Wymeswold successfully completed mid-February 1945, there followed a spell of leave after which my crew proceeded to the Transport Command Aircrew Holding Unit at Morecambe. So down to Loughborough station (Great Central) for the last time, a place from which so many weekend journeys had commenced, and as the inevitable "V2" hiccuped its way south at the head of our train I reflected on what the future might hold; for with the war in Europe plainly on its last lap, a posting to the Far Eastern theatre had to be considered as more than likely.
Morecambe proved a pleasant interlude. The holding unit HQ was situated on the promenade in the requisitioned Midland Hotel, a slightly futuristic art deco building of the thirties looking rather out of place given the town's Victorian/Edwardian ambience but nevertheless of pleasing appearance; however, with normal Service accommodation being unavailable, the numerous boarding houses that in happier times would have provided rooms for holidaymakers were now utilised for our benefit. This suited both parties, the landladies because they were provided with a source of income otherwise largely denied by the exigencies of war, and us because most of the minor irritations of life on normal RAF stations were thus absent; indeed as I recall we had no commitment to the Service whatsoever other than reporting daily to the Midland, plus an extra weekly visit to collect our pay. Inevitably a good deal of time was passed in pubs & bars, of which Morecambe possessed a great number of a distinctly superior nature. This was a source of some friction with our landlady and her downtrodden husband, who were worthy and active members of the Band of Hope; many fading photographs of local temperance branch meetings & outings bore witness to their zealotry, and contributed to a general air of disapprobation concerning our way of life.
After several weeks of indolence we (and a number of other crews) were warned for posting to No. 1333 Transport Support Conversion Unit at Leicester East, for training in various tactical tasks: supply dropping, delivery of paratroops, towing of gliders and so forth. The journey south on Good Friday was more than usually uncomfortable for, with an early end to the war (in Europe, at least) plainly imminent, following years of deprivation the general populus was determined to have a holiday of sorts despite strong official discouragement. Consequently the train was jam-packed from Leeds onwards, and so it was both impossible and antisocial to insist on any exclusive right to our supposedly reserved carriage, making arrival at Leicester more than usually welcome.
Not far from the village of Oadby, the airfield was situated on open country now probably swallowed by the adjacent city. Planned to last about six weeks, our course of instruction was fairly intensive; so, with memories thereof consisting more of general impressions rather than of any event in particular, an attempt will be made to describe the various techniques taught to us there rather than write a narrative.
Supply dropping took two forms, either by means of electrical release of containers carried on racks beneath the aircraft or the physical ejection of objects from the main door, in both cases the supplies travelling the remaining distance to the ground courtesy of parachutes. In both instances it was necessary to fly fairly low and slow, as I recall about 600ft at 110 mph, rendering one extremely vulnerable in face of any enemy (memories of D-Day & Arnhem, not to mention the Rhine crossing, being still fresh in everyone’s' minds). On my first container-dropping exercise the instructor cautioned me to be sure of the release switch's exact location, so as to be able to find it positively when the time came; "finger it now without looking up" he said while yet some distance from the dropping zone. Fumbling above my head while controlling the aircraft at the same time, I located a switch saying "is this it?" but inadvertently moved it too, so that four containers descended into the Leicestershire countryside far from the DZ. My instructor was not pleased but could say little, his poor teaching technique being to some extent responsible for this fiasco.
Much time was devoted to open-door drops; not only was this a more flexible method of delivery, the army crews responsible for pushing the stuff out were also under training and, as there seemed to be more of them than us, we were kept fairly busy. Communication was by a system of coloured lights plus bell, ejection commencing or ceasing according to the pilot's signals. For them it was hard and dangerous work, today's roller conveyors, ball mats and side guidance rails being far into the future so that everything had to be manhandled to the door and then physically ejected - no safety strops or belts provided, real care had to be taken not to follow the goods out, while keeping one's footing in turbulent conditions at low level could be difficult given the added risk that air sickness might adversely affect judgment and concentration. For us at the sharp end it was an altogether more rewarding exercise; not only was it satisfying to deliver the goods accurately, as an additional bonus one could usually manage some semi-legal low flying on return from the DZ.
Dropping of live paratroops followed similar lines, except that this usually took place from a slightly greater height; and since it was live cargo being launched into space, extra care was taken in timing, assessment of drift & so on to ensure that it had the best possible chance of arrival within DZ boundaries. Considering they were all volunteers, to me none of them appeared over-enthusiastic prior to jumping, on the other hand I don't recall any refusals; and although I have always regarded parachuting as a form of mental aberration (after all, one got paid far more for staying in an aeroplane than for jumping out!), at the same time I have a sneaking admiration for anyone bold (or foolish) enough to do so.
Glider towing was also on the agenda. Many of the glider pilots were trainees like ourselves, so a good deal of time was expended hauling the large Horsa gliders round both circuit and countryside. As a towing pilot, one's job was fairly straightforward and largely a matter of remembering that the glider pilot was utterly dependent on your ability or lack of it. On gliding days, the Horsas would be lined up in single file on one side of the runway, tow ropes laid out ready in front of them, a similar line of Dakotas waiting engines-running on the other. A batsman would wave the lead aircraft into position ahead of the corresponding glider, halting it while the rope was attached to its rear tow hook; he would then wave the "slow ahead" signal to take up slack, then "Go" once the rope was taut. Takeoff usually followed immediately, the tug pilot having already obtained clearance from the tower. Full power was applied as soon as possible, this somewhat facilitated by a reduced tendency to swing owing to the glider's drag having a stabilising effect; nevertheless, time & distance to airborne was markedly longer than usual and on a warm, still day could be rather nail-biting. Although weight limits were doubtless laid down in some order book, we had none of today's performance data, ODM's or the like and so it was all rather hit & miss
Having a relatively light wing loading the glider inevitably became airborne first, but had to be kept down to a height of about 15-20 ft or otherwise the tug pilot would be unable to attain a correct flight attitude. Once he did so and was climbing away satisfactorily it was normal for the glider to remain in the "high tow" position, this being a more comfortable option for both him and tug. An intercom cable was incorporated into the rope so that in theory the pilots might speak to each other, but the system was hopelessly unreliable; the plugs usually fell out at one end or the other, so that the rest of the flight was conducted incommunicado.
This mattered less than one might think; the glider had to follow willy-nilly, its pilots doomed to place implicit faith in the tug pilot’s ability - and integrity, for he always had the option of pulling the emergency release knob. Mostly army SNCO's, the glider pilots’ ultimate unenviable destiny was to deliver their loads into some battlefield LZ, probably through a hail of shot & shell; following which, if surviving this ordeal, they were supposed to assist in leading the payload into battle. Some of them were surplus RAF pilots diverted into the Army's Glider Pilot Regiment, and occasionally I wondered by what small margin I had possibly escaped a similar fate.
To understand their point of view, one day I took a short flight in a glider. The relative silence and lack of vibration was noteworthy, as was also the hard work involved; control forces appeared heavy, which allied to occasional encounters with the tug's slipstream soon had both pilots sweating. However, what really hit home was just how much a misnomer was the term glider as applied to the Horsa, this becoming apparent when its captain pulled the tow release; as the rope whipped away, airspeed decayed with alarming rapidity and with 45 degrees of flap lowered we hurtled towards the ground at what appeared a suicidal angle. But touchdown was smooth, and with the hard braking permitted by a fixed nose wheel undercarriage we halted in very short order, a convincing demonstration of the Horsa's short-field landing capability.
It was my misfortune one day to be allocated for a cross-country towing exercise, an aircraft notoriously below par performance-wise; no reason for the deficiency was ever ascertained, but it was known to require greater expenditure of engine power than its companions for maintenance of any given speed or rate of climb. Further degradation of performance was guaranteed by the unusually warm weather, for after half an hour's struggle at max. continuous power we had barely attained 2000ft agl, by which time (with the cylinder head temperature gauge needles approaching the limit) I decided to call it a day and levelled off. However, during the climb the glider captain's distant voice had already been complaining scratchily down the intercom that his load of ATC cadets were going rather green about the gills, and now I was regaled with lurid accounts of their general malaise. I responded with anxious concern about my overworked engines, but eventually was forced to yield to his entreaties for a higher cruising altitude; to little avail however, as the engines soon started overheating again in return for only a marginal climb rate, and anyway the hot, turbulent air obviously extended way above any attainable level. There then followed a flow of increasingly caustic comments from behind, but fortunately one of the intercom plugs fell out and so the remainder of the flight was relatively peaceful.
A late highlight of the course was introduction to the SEAC Drop technique, still in use today for the airborne unloading of supplies at very low level when conventional methods are either impractical or too risky. Accompanied by instructors, several of us set off for Derbyshire's Peak District, where in line astern we proceeded to fly a triangular pattern at very low level. This was real low flying, hugging contours along valley sides, scraping over ridges at the end and dropping down again the other side; somewhere along the way dummy supplies were ejected at each brief passage over a designated DZ, the whole exercise intended to simulate the reality of forward supply in Burma's mountainous terrain. It was fairly demanding and enormous fun, although I doubt very much whether our euphoria was shared by the inhabitants of a picturesque village whose chimney pots were close-shaved each time round; but then, the War was still on (if only just), and such activity received much greater tolerance than today.
In fact hostilities in Europe finally ended during our course's last week, and a general "48" was declared for all; official recognition of the inevitable, for the whole country erupted into a bibulous, happy bacchanalia of a nature unthinkable in this day & age. All pubs were filled to bursting, endless groups of laughing people sang and danced in the streets all day and most of the night, while vast quantities of flags and bunting appeared from nowhere to festoon buildings large & small. After several hours of celebration in Leicester's bars and streets, long after midnight I boarded an Oxford-bound mail train to be dumped in a grey dawn a couple of hours later; where, after a short rest at home, I joined further celebrations in the city centre. All this might appear silly or even childish today, yet it is impossible to convey to those not alive at the time just what the War's ending meant to all; for after almost six long years of deprivation and (for many) much worse, for the second time in a generation and at most enormous cost in life, money and material, the evil of German hegemonism had been seen off in a most decisive manner. True, Japan remained defiant, but even though I for one knew that this might well concern me personally, I was not downcast; rather the reverse in fact, for with Germany now out of the way surely Japan could not long survive the Allies' undivided attentions.
A week or so after VE day my crew (which by this stage had acquired a co-pilot) plus a few others were notified of posting to RAF Ibsley, home of a small unit offering training in the esoteric art of plucking stationary gliders off the ground; a sure indication that our eventual destination was South East Asia, for it was with that theatre in mind that this technique had been developed. Boarding our train at Leicester’s familiar but now long-vanished Central station, my all-NCO crew found ourselves allocated a rather old-fashioned but immensely comfortable first class compartment, much to the rage of a party of officers in an adjoining, distinctly tatty third. Life looked good; the sun shone warmly, the war was over (mostly, anyway), our "V2" roared away lustily as it hustled the train up towards Rugby & points south, and we looked forward to the next two weeks at what was reputedly a remote and rustic little airfield situated in the midst of Arcady.