Night flying perils

[Padhist]

, The perils of night flying

At this time I was an instructor giving primary flying instruction to mainly Fleet Air Arm students at RAF Syerston in Nottinghamshire.
Although not part of the conspiracy myself, I learned later just what happened! The wife of one of the instructors had expressed a desire to see the airfield and the married quarter site, from an aircraft, by night. The plan was to take advantage of the fact, that during night flying circuit and landing tuition, it was quite common for an instructor to halt the aircraft at the end of one particular runway whilst he or his student nipped out to spend a penny against a nearby wartime shelter.
The plan was that the wife would wait by this shelter, suitable dressed in flying gear including helmet and her husband, having colluded with his student, would send him out to clear the way for the wife to take his place. Then, having carried out one circuit, the exchange was to be reversed and success achieved?????
Would that all plans were successful.
What happened in fact was, another instructor carried out the act allowing his student to go spend a penny and the student having arrived at the shelter was surprised to find another ‘student’ waiting! He went straight into the palaver of searching through layers of flying clothing for a cold willy whilst remarking on the chill of the night in the vernacular of the crew room... Needless to say the wife remained silent.
She did however get to see the sights!

[Tim Mills]

Was this in late 59, early 60? I was up the road at Swinderby at the time, and I remember we had a couple of RN courses who for some reason hadn't gone to Linton on Ouse for Vampire training, as they usually did.
Great story, didn't hear of any of that sort of thing being tried while I was there. Mind you, it was difficult enough for two average sized blokes to squeeze into a T11 by day, so the thought of trying to infiltrate someone not entirely au fait with strapping into a bang seat, at night, and in a hurry, no matter how small she was, is difficult to imagine. But I did know a chap who told me he had taken his wife for a tour of the low flying routes in Scotland in a Canberra, when he was on the staff of the OCU!
Thoroughly enjoyed your other thread, blind landings at LHR; 200ft and 600metres off a manual ILS quite exciting enough for me in my Falcon 20 and HS125 days! Luckily it didn't happen very often.