Seeing as I started this thread I thought readers may be interested in the following story.
The date was 31 May 1959 and a new Commanding Officer was scheduled for his first dual conversion trip with Flight Lieutenant Centaurus at Townsville. Cent was the squadron QFI (Qualified Flying Instructor) and the aircraft was the Lincoln four engine bomber, similar to the wartime Lancaster except bigger. The new CO was Wing Commander Cy Greenwood OBE AFC. His previous posting was in USA as a staff officer on exchange duties with the United States Air Force which included flying military DC4 Skymasters. Like the Avro Lincoln, the DC4 was a four engine type. Unbeknown to me he was used to checklists in DC4’s. Before that he held various posts in RAAF staff jobs and in 1945 became the CO of the RAAF Contingent during the Berlin Airlift. Google these terms if you don’t know what they mean.
During WW2 he flew Beaufighter fighter bombers against Japanese forces in Timor.
On his last raid he had attacked a line of Rufe Jap Zero floatplanes sitting in the water and shot them up with his Beaufighter’s four 20mm cannon and six machine guns. That was real fire power. In the process, he was shot down by a couple of Rufes he didn’t see and with both engines out of action had no choice but to ditch a few hundred yards from the Timor coast. His navigator was killed in the attack.
As Cy swam away from his sinking Beaufighter the Rufe pilots machine-gunned him in the water but fortunately didn’t hit him because he kept ducking under the water when they came in. Local natives rescued him but a traitorous native later dobbed him in to searching Jap soldiers and he was captured. He spent time in various POW camps including the notorious Changi prison on Singapore Island until repatriated after the war. Cy was a direct man and stood no nonsense from anyone. As it turned out, that included me. He had a fierce looking moustache too.
We didn’t use checklists in RAAF aircraft – simply did a left to right scan and a generic pre-take off check with additional items included dependant on the type of aircraft you were flying. It worked well on Tiger Moths and Wirraways right through to Mustangs, Meteors and Vampires. I still use it for GA types.
Now we all know that Townsville is in the tropics and hot. The Lincoln had no air-conditioning and was a sweat box on the tarmac. Pilots were issued with a booklet called Pilot’s Notes and Flight Engineer’s Notes for Lincoln. There were 52 pages covering basic engineering systems and how to fly the aircraft. The first page said “Pilot’s checklist” and started with “Dinghy external release….Secure” The list covered the walk around as well as numerous other items and culminated in item No 158 “Pitot Heat….Cover on” It was meant for aircrew to study but considered far too lengthy to use on the ground and in the air. As I said before, in those days we scanned left to right.
Now Commanding Officers are busy people what with holding parades, charging airmen for disorderly conduct like being smashed out of their mind when on duty, entertaining big brass from Headquarters and all the other responsibilities pertaining to running a squadron of aeroplanes. Most CO’s don’t get time to read Pilots Notes and to sit in a 50 degree C hot cockpit learning left to right scans is simply not on. The aim is to get airborne as soon as practicable and cool down with the windows open at low level. That was for the Lincoln, anyway.
So after I had walked the new CO around the external inspection of the Lincoln, we hauled our parachutes and Mae Wests (google it) up the long ladder that went up to the escape hatch in the nose and I asked Big Julie to take the pilot’s seat. I should have explained about the expression Big Julie – sorry about that. The call-sign of each Lincoln was JC plus another letter. Hence our aircraft was Juliet Charlie Sierra. The CO had a slight speech impediment in that he tended to slur the word `Juliet` and it came out as Julie. It was a no-brainer that he was soon given the nickname of “Big Julie” - behind his back of course. Anyway, by the time he took his seat and worked out where the park brake and bomb door lever were located it was not long before the tropical sun shining through the glass-house cockpit area had our flying suits, flying helmets and underwear running with sweat and no amount of deodorant could disguise the whiff of hairy underarms. I used to wonder why the Brits were called Pongo’s and now I knew. British designed aircraft had that certain odour. I preferred the hydraulic oil smell of a Dakota cockpit.
I started my instructor spiel with “Now sir, we start with a left to right scan.” Big Julie arced up – his moustache bristling. “Where’s the check list, Flight Lieutenant”?
“Check List, Sir?” I replied. “We don’t use a checklist in Lincolns – it’s all up here” I said, pointing to my head with one finger. Jeez -the old bugger is dead serious, I thought. Big Julie unstrapped and said “This squadron is grounded until you have a checklist.” He had been used to reading checklists in the USAF and couldn’t believe that an aircraft as big as a Lincoln didn’t have a checklist. With that, we all (that included the radio operator) clambered back down the ladder to the hot tarmac while I went away to dream up a checklist.
I had never used a checklist before, let alone design one, so quickly went through the Pilot’s Notes Lincoln and copied out on a sheet of paper all the checklist items that were in the first three pages. There were 158 items. The next day, after I had spent hours on the ancient roneo machine copying checklist pages for all squadron pilots (22 of them), I knocked on the door of Big Julie’s office and suggested we go flying with the new checklist. I didn’t tell him that the squadron pilots were giving me dark looks after reading the 158 challenge and response checklist items.
My log book shows that on 8 June 1959, Wing Commander Cy Greenwood (aka Big Julie) CO of No 10 (Maritime Reconnaissance) Squadron, and Flt Lt QFI Centaurus, strapped in to Lincoln A73-66 and prepared for dual familiarisation Conversion Exercise 1. It was a typical hot and humid Townsville day. I started to read from my laboriously typed three page checklist. Admittedly, the first 36 items consisted of the pre-flight walk around so I skipped that. Then I started the cockpit checklist at item 107 which was ignition switches off and waited for Big Julie to respond to my challenge. He glared at me and asked what the hell was he supposed to reply. I said you respond by saying “Ignition switches…Off”, SIR. Although I was the instructor, one always addressed a senior officer as Sir. By now I could sense the temperature was rising in the cockpit and it wasn’t just the sun shining through the glasshouse. A couple of minutes later, I had just read out item Number 123 which said “Adjust head-set and check with crew” when the Old Man said “STOP. Throw away that bloody checklist and show me the left to right scan”
Much to the relief of the other squadron pilots the remainder of the Lincoln checklists were consigned to the rubbish bin and the subject was never raised again.