Group Captain Brian "Blackjack" Walker DSO was interviewed by representative of the Australian War Museum many years ago. I googled his name and a ton of information appeared including the recorded extracts both text and visual came up. Among many other types Brian Walker flew were Spitfires, Beaufighters and Hudsons.
The Beaufort had a bad reputation for mysterious crashes. Read now below for Brian Walkers description of his very close shave and the superb airmanship required to get his Beaufort back on the ground:
Also read the incredibly brave gesture of one of the passengers in Walker's Beaufort who gave up his own parachute to a young passenger who did not have a parachute and at a time when the Beaufort was getting out of control and was near to crashing.
"Flying a Beaufort.
Oh well, there is an old song about 'Beauforts don't worry me'. No, that's about Wirraways, Ithink. Anyhow, much later, I think it was '43, it must have been - yes, it was November '43, itwas quite a considerable time later,
I was in another Beaufort and by this time the Beaufort didn't have a very good name because a lot of them had suddenly - well, they'd disappeared -
they'd gone out and hadn't come back and one or two of them had been seen to suddenly just dive into the deck.
I was flying this Beaufort from Tocumwal to Sydney and unbeknown to me, somebody had hopped on board at the last moment but that had nothing to do with this problem and I noticed we were flying along at about 8,000 feet and I noticed that the control column started to move backwards and forwards, not very much, but I thought, there's something going on here and I can remember I had a fellow named Jaggs, who'd applied for a flying course with me. I said, 'Jaggs, check the tailplane, there's something happening to this aeroplane', because I can remember looking out and thinking, well, there's not enough turbulence to cause this'. At that moment the control column suddenly jerked violently forward and I thought, ah ah, this is the 'Beaufort bogey' and I thought, right, it's not going to get me.
You never think in terms of other than survival, especially at this stage because I'd been on operations and had survived. So I remember, I put my feet up on the dash and I pulled the throttles right off and I hauled that stick back as hard as I could and I must have been really lucky because unbeknown to me - I knew that something had happened to the tail rim - I must have pulled the two ends of the tail trim which had come together - which had come undone - and I must have butted them together and by keeping heavy back pressure, I kept them together and I wasn't going to let go.
I can remember thinking, I can hold this aeroplane perhaps for five minutes because it was so nose heavy. I just leant forward and just touched the trim and sure enough it was locked. I touched it very gently because I didn't want to disturb anything. I thought, I've got some measure of control.
And then after the panic had subsided I realised that the aeroplane was dual and here was this dual seat alongside me and my tail was just about off the seat through holding that wretched aeroplane. And so I yelled out, I said, 'Jaggs'.
'Yes Sir.'
'You applied for a flying course.'
'Yes Sir.'
I said, 'Right, your flying course is starting right now. Get into that seat and see if you can help me hold this thing.'
We were near Crookwell and at about this stage I thought, well, even the pair of us won't be able to hold it for too long. I said, 'Right' - I yelled out to my shoulder to the crew -'I'm going to fly you clear of the Blue Mountains and then I'm going to bail you out and then I will turn the aeroplane over on its back and with the trim the way it is, it will bunt'. Just shows you I didn't know what was really wrong with it.
At that moment my Chief Ground Instructor was with me and he said, 'Sir, we've got somebody here without a parachute'. I said, 'Who's that?'. He said, 'Well, he hopped in just before you moved off. I let him in, Sir.' I turned around and here was this fellow standing on my right shoulder. He couldn't have been any more than about nineteen, fair, slim youth. I mean, it's very well to talk about it now and I can still remember his name, it was Potter.
I said, 'Well, Potter, you're going to look very silly when we wave you goodbye, aren't you?'. I think, if I remember correctly, a tear slowly came, and he didn't say anything, but a tear came out from underneath one of his eyes and at that stage my Chief Ground Instructor gave me a long hard look. He said, 'I think you've got it under control, Sir'.
I said, 'We have at the moment. We'll give it a go. We'll see if we can get it to Bankstown but if this comes undone, Jaggs, I'll curse you all the way down.' I can remember it. Anyhow, well do I remember that approach on Bankstown. We flew this wretched thing for must have been forty-five, close on fifty minutes, like this and I had to keep on yelling at Jaggs to make him help me hold it because he'd relax occasionally and I'd say, 'Hang on to it' - a lot of other language, too, I think.
Anyhow, we had about ten or eleven people on board that aeroplane although there is some doubt as to how many we had now.
But I can still remember that from about 800 feet I made that final approach from over Prospect aerodrome towards Bankstown and with the aid of much screaming and yelling at Jaggs and everything, we got it slowly - lost height - down to just over the fence and I wasn't going to put the wheels down or the flaps down or touch anything for the simple reason, it would have made it more nose heavy than it was and we could just hold it, the pair of us, as it was.
We were just floating across Bankstown aerodrome and I could feel the props were just about touching and I said, 'Right, let it go'. And we let it go and it slid in on its belly. Both props came off but fortunately neither of them penetrated the fuselage and we came to rest in the middle of Bankstown aerodrome and out we got. I can remember that as we got out I noticed that Potter had a parachute harness on and that this wonderful Chief Ground Instructor of mine didn't have one so it didn't take long to put two and two together. I thought, well, that' man's got a lot of guts. I tore straight round the back and, of course, sure enough here was the tail trim just hanging - disconnected - and that's what happened to the Beauforts, I can assure you.
At the same time that this was happening, I believe, I understood from subsequent conversations, that Bill Garing was the OC, Officer Commanding, Sale and they were testing a Beaufort to the point of destruction to find out the same thing and they had come to the same conclusion that it was this tail trim because I remember, I rang up my unit and I said, 'Send me an aeroplane. The one that I've got is broken.' They said, 'We'll send you another Beaufort'.
I said, 'No way, send a Beaufighter. It's got a irreversible screw jack.' When I went back to Tocumwal there was the corporal ready to meet me who had signed that aeroplane out that morning and his name was Corporal Blake. He said, 'Sir, I signed that aeroplane out but I want you to come and have a look at this.' And he had the complete tail trim of a Beaufort laid out on the bench. He said, 'Have a look at it. What do you think of it?' So I had a look at it and it looked absolutely secure to me. He went to the fork end - and that went up to the tab itself - and just spun it between the two palms of his hands and the whole lot came undone.
They had two rods going into the one ferrule and by some odd chance the thing - they had a tab on each one, on each rod - and it was an adjustment, I believe. It was called the 'briese' control. I can remember the name of it. I said, 'Well, that's the problem so let's ground them all'. So I rang up Air Board and said ground them and they didn't. They just made it a
mandatory inspection the next morning. You know, two months later, Charles Learmonth was flying one in formation and he said, 'I'm having trouble. I'm having trouble holding this.' The chap on his right said, 'I can see. Your elevator trim tab is flapping up and down.' And shortly afterwards, Charles said, 'I can't hold it any longer' and he just went straight in.
There's an airfield named after him in Western Australia and it's still there, Learmonth. They tell me that afterwards that there was a signal sent out to all units operating Beauforts and it had been fouled up in the system somewhere and it was actually on Charles's desk later that day. They thought it was carbon monoxide poisoning at one stage, didn't they?
That was just a heap of crap. That fellow published a couple of - he published an article in some paper. And I can remember, I read it and recognised it as a heap of crap and I published the story as I have told you in reply and we heard no more from that gentleman. I can still remember, I think, his name was Taylor. He was some sort of forensic scientist. Where they got this crap from about carbon monoxide poisoning, I'm buggered if I know.
Read all the interview extracts at:
https://www.awm.gov.au/collection/S01645/