Gaining An R.A.F Pilots Brevet In WW II

[Smeagol]

Surely our Senior Member (Danny) must be a 'tuan besar'?

[Blacksheep]

'Datuk' would be my choice as an appropriate salutation.

[ancientaviator62]

I hesitated before calling Danny 'Datuk' but would not disagree with Blacksheep.

[Danny42C]

You've all got the advantage of me here - I never got further East than Burma (and don't know any Burmese for that matter), but on the assumption that you're being nice to me, thanks all round !

"besar" is phonetically not so far away from "burra" ("Great" or "Big" in Hindi) ?

This correspondence should now cease !

Danny.

[oxenos]

Tawau and the Membedai rang a few bells.
During Confrontation, 205, the resident Changi Shackleton Sqn. was reinforced by successive detachments from the U.K. Sqns. and so I was out there in March '66 on detachment from 206 (Kinloss).
To guard against infiltration with small boats, we flew night patrols in the Malacca Straits and in Kuching Bay, at the North end of the border in Borneo, from Changi. To cover the South end of the border, we detached to Labuan. Last time we moved house I came across a faded "chit" authorising me to drive Land Rovers and J2's on R A F Labuan air field and also on the public roads. The last bit was so that we could drive to the Membedai, where we were billeted.
We flew early evening around the Eastern end of Borneo, past Sandakan, presumably to show the flag, and then patrolled in Tawau Bay, liaising with the R.N. who usually had a Ton class minesweeper down there, and with patrol boats of the Royal Malaysian Navy. At that time, R/T comms were done by the non-flying pilot.
Fast forward to about '95, when my wife and I had a holiday in the Far East, which included a visit to Turtle Island, off Sandakan. There was a hostel on the island, and after supper we waited until one of the wardens radioed in to say there was a turtle laying. The chief Warden asked if I had been there before. I explained that I had flown past the place a few times about thirty years before. Turned out his father had been a radio operator on the R.M.N. patrol boats at that time, and I could well have been talking to him.

[Fareastdriver]

The object of the trial was to assess whether a night casevac could be carried out from the HQ clearing in the middle of primary jungle some 40 miles away. For the uninitiated this would be simple; fly on DR until overhead, look at some lights and land. However, this was to be under combat conditions so no lights to be carried and none on the ground.

The plot was to use an AAC Beaver, the one seen in the Tawau picture, who would position overhead using his army radio homer and when we were approaching he would fire off large illumination parachute flares which would, if the plan worked out, illuminate the area sufficiently for us to identify and carry out an approach and landing without landing lights; sounds easy. We also had to remember that this operation may have to be carried out by a pilot who may have less than 500 hrs total and no more than a dozen or so hours instrument flying on helicopters and possible none in the last month.

I was going to fly it and Ian was going to ride shotgun. The Beaver had flares that were designed to light up a battleground and apparently even when we were flying under them we were still virtually invisible in the night. We had our normal pair of Schemullies which we carried so as to illuminate the scene of our impending crash.

You have to remember that the clearing was about one hundred yards by fifty surrounded by 180 ft. trees. With the pad in the middle there is a 60 degree approach angle so one does not get a proper visual picture until one is virtually at the tree line and this had to be done and then the landing before the flare burned out. To return the Beaver would fire off another flare which would give us sufficient light to take off and establish a climb without hitting anything. The Beaver had four flares but it needed two for itself to illuminate its own crash site.

The Beaver launched and we took off about five minutes later. This would give him about fifteen minutes to establish his position overhead. He would be relying on his homer because there were no lights on the ground; combat conditions. It was pitch black; full cloud cover and being primary jungle not a glimmer of a light. It was straight on the instruments once settled on course. I flew the required track and distance and with two minutes to go asked for a quick flash from the Beaver’s navigation lights. They came up briefly ahead and above and we called for the flare.

POW!!!! AND LET THERE BE LIGHT.

The clearing was about half-a- mile at the 2 oclock. A descending S turn and we approached over the trees. We had just touched down and the flare went out; and so did our night vision. We could sense some activity around us so Ian held the stick whilst I taxed my memory climbing down the side. Somebody was bleating about wanting us to take the mail back so I told him to throw it in the back and climbed back up.

We were starting to make out a few things as our pupils started expanding and called for the second flare. Again the world lit up and we took off and climbed out. I had managed to point it in the right direction when the flare went out and we were on our own. This time we had avoided looking at the flare so we settled into the cruise.

I described on the posts about learning to fly helicopters that they are naturally unstable. With the Whirlwind there is no feel or even friction on the control stick so overcontrolling and disorientation comes naturally and this was one of the objects of the trial. I was coping quite comfortably because I was ex Vforce and had more instrument hours than some of the other pilots had total. Being on Tankers I was used to keeping an aeroplane precisely at a speed and height because an aircraft tanking off you needed that to engage properly. Because of this instrument flying on Whirlwinds presented no problems. Ian, however, felt that a first tourist may not be able to cope in the same way. In fact even he was not comfortable watching me fly it.

After about ten minutes the lights of Tauwau emerged from the gloom and we relaxed a bit. The washup brought a similar observation from the Beaver pilot as he didn’t particularly like flying over the jungle with one engine in the dark either. The subject was never brought up again.

Next: The Lumatan Incident

[MPN11]

Ewwwww ... scary trip!

Very enlightening in many ways.

[Danny42C]

Reminds me of the time I was flying past Birmingham (ALA) USA - and they took the lid off a blast furnace !

Everything lit up, night vision gone, sheer terror - until they put the lid back on again. Never forgot it.

Danny.

[Danny42C]

Fareastdriver (#9726),

Having a casual recap, came across your:
...Cigarettes were free! The brands were a bit of a mystery but they were the ones that Her Majesty’s Customs had relieved off entrants to the UK and they were sent out to the troops....
Spent all my final 13 years with HMC&E in VAT, but the Customs and Excise old-timers told me that all confiscated tobacco products were formally burned in the "Queen's Pipe" (whatever that was) under tight supervision, and all confiscated wines and spirits poured down the drain under even tighter (what a waste !)

Good to hear that some cigarettes went to a good home after all (but I bet a few were side-tracked into the local bazaar, just the same).

Danny.

[oxenos]

The King's pipe in Falmouth is still there.

[Warmtoast]

Danny & Fareastdriver

Re Confiscated cigarettes free for the troops.
I was in Rhodesia (5 FTS RAF Thornhill) 1951 - 1953 and certainly remember the free issue of customs confiscated cigarettes at Christmas. I wasn't a smoker at the time, but a DF Operator colleague did and he laid claim to as many Balkan Sobranie (Black Russian) cigarettes as he could get. Quite an exotic smell ISTR, not bad, but not good. Certainly in the confines of the VHF/DF Homer I assume the smoke and smell killed many pests lurking in the woodwork.

[Danny42C]

oxenos (#9761),

Google gives me:
In Falmouth fishing was a major industry. Fish Strand Quay was built in 1790. Another important industry in Cornwall in the 18th century and early 19th century was smuggling! The Kings Pipe is a brick chimney, which was used to burn tobacco taken from smugglers.
Danny.

[Geordie_Expat]

I seem to remember getting freebie ciggies in Muharraq in the late 60's, mainly Camel if memory serves. Customs seizures we were told (don't know from whence they came).

[Danny42C]

Warmtoast (#9762),

In my pipe-smoking days, was very partial to "Balkan Sobranie" tobacco. Very rich and aromatic. I smoked it cut 50% with a light Virginian tobacco called "Robin Hood" (Red and black pound tin), Dm4 (say 7/6 in old money) from nearest US PX.

Smokers of the (exotic) black and gold ciggies tended to be looked at askance, particularly if on the end of an elegant ivory holder (can't imagine why).

Danny.

[MPN11]

I have not dared to use my carved ivory/bone cigarette holder for MANY years :)

[Union Jack]

In my pipe-smoking days, was very partial to "Balkan Sobranie" tobacco. Very rich and aromatic. I smoked it cut 50% with a light Virginian tobacco called "Robin Hood" (Red and black pound tin), Dm4 (say 7/6 in old money) from nearest US PX. - Danny

In my lifelong non-smoking days, was very partial to carrying a pigskin cigarette case with gold corners with Balkan Sobranie Black Russian cigarettes on one side and Sobranie Cocktail cigarettes on the other, complemented by a gold Dunhill lighter.:cool: Very embarrassing on mature reflection, but altogether a very successful "run ashore" kit, perhaps unlike MPN11's cigarette holder.....:D

Jack

[MPN11]

I confess to using many cigarette cases at various times over the decades, as one could carry them whilst wearing No, 1 HD without spoiling the line of the jacket. Indeed, I still do! Still loyal to Zippo lighters, though ;)

My pipe mix was conjured up by a traditional tobacconist in Norwich, containing a variety of blends and including an aromatic Dutch one [whose name I forget].


(How on Earth did we get here on this Thread? Ah, yes, burning/not burning impounded tobacco.)

[Fareastdriver]

Back on Tack.

One of the biggest problems the Army has in jungle conditions is communications. Travel and living in that environment tends to be in the valleys alongside rivers. This creates difficulty in radio communications because VHF, the preferred system, tends to be line of sight. So it was with the Ghurkha company at Pensiangan, a village where they were based some thirty miles south west of Sepulot. Between the two there was a prominent hill called Lumatan, where from the top of one had a good view of the surrounding countryside. The summit and been loosely cleared and it was only an Ghurkha’s afternoon’s hike from Pensiangan to the top. The Ghurkhas established a rebro station there and everybody was happy.

The 51 Brigade of Ghurkhas decided to move their Battalion HQ to Sepulot. This involved a massive, for Borneo, amount of construction work for admin, barracks etc, all made out of saplings, baseboards and wrinkly tin. The area had to be cleared and this is where the Battalion Engineering Officer stepped in.

He was a South African, an ex mining engineer and what he didn’t know about explosives wasn’t worth knowing. None of this sawing trees down lark; two turns of Cordex and down it came. Thick heavy Teak trees took a bit more effort. They augured a few holes, filled them with plastic and then the two turns of Cordex. With the increase in personnel and effort came a sympathetic increase in radio traffic.

The rebro station couldn’t cope with both sites so the decision was made to enlarge it and send out in more personnel and bigger equipment. The equipment was too big to carry so it would have to be delivered by helicopter. The cleared area was suitable for winching but not for lifting in generators and suchlike. It was obvious that there had to be a helipad so the plan was put into effect.

The top of the hill was domed with a few rocks scattered about and one could almost see horizontally from the top. It would need to be levelled before a helipad could be built and this is where our man with the biltong came in. Being used to blowing rocks around underground he soon calculated how much OOMPH would be required to leave a nice flat top to the hill. Approval from Batt. HQ was sought and granted and the project went into gear.

We weren’t particularly enthusiastic about winching plastic explosive down to them so we were let off that bit. The trusty Twin Pins shuttled it out to us and we ferried it to Pensiangan. From there it was going to be carried up the hill. All we were required to do was to winch him out after he had lit the blue touch paper. Noting our reluctance this was changed to him leaving with the rest and having a longer fuse. It took a couple of days to position the copious amounts of explosive and fuses and then the great day came.

We wanted to fly around and watch it but we were warned that bits of rock etc. Could travel anywhere within visual range of Ground Zero. To this end we stayed put sheltered by a substantial ridge. We felt, and a lot later, heard the crump as it went off. A helicopter departed to Pensiangan to await him and fly him around his handiwork having a quick butchers at it before they arrived.

It was beautiful! It was as if somebody had cut of the top of an egg. There was, as far as one could see, a circle of rock about twenty feet across. Around it was a perfect fan of trees pointing outwards from the centre.. Landing on at Pensiangan before he arrived conversation with those who had shinned up an opposite hill to see the bang described it as like a volcano blowing its top. The great man arrived, we showed him his results which he seemed more than happy with and within a couple of days the helipad was fully operational.

The normal routine carried on and a couple on months later we had a warning that a detachment of the Royal Engineers were coming out to do a job. We had a general chat and it appeared that they from they from Field Survey. What they wanted to do was to go to the top of Lumatan to do some measurements.
“You will have to winch us down; that’s what they did the last time.”
“No problem; they’ve flattened the top and built a helipad there.”

???

??????


??????????


?????????????????

“They’ve done WHAAAT????????????”

Apparently Lumatan was their main trigonometrical reference point for the whole of Southern Sabah. What had been done was to lower the whole of Sabah by about as many feet as that had been blown off the top.

The next day we took them up there. They built a new marker out of the previous rocks that had been kicked around, resurveyed it and established its new height from the surrounding hills and then we dutifully amended our spot height by four feet.

Next Medivac to Jellystone.

[Stanwell]

Fascinating, FED.
Please keep them coming. :ok:


Just as a BTW to our earlier diversion..
A gent was asked why he had taken to using a twelve-inch long cigarette holder.
"My Doctor told me to stay away from cigarettes", was the reply.

[Union Jack]

I have not dared to use my carved ivory/bone cigarette holder for MANY years - MPN11

A gent was asked why he had taken to using a twelve-inch long cigarette holder. "My Doctor told me to stay away from cigarettes", was the reply. - Stanwell

Nice one, Stanwell - Looks like MPN11 now has clearance to start using his cigarette holder again....:D

Jack

[Fareastdriver]

My Doctor told me to cut down on wine.

http://i229.photobucket.com/albums/ee224/fareastdriver/ba41050095a65eb2b76ee8c4c4bd4d46_zpsdodddu6n.jpg (http://s229.photobucket.com/user/fareastdriver/media/ba41050095a65eb2b76ee8c4c4bd4d46_zpsdodddu6n.jpg.html)

I have actually got a wine glass that can take a half-bottle; I'm allowed to use it occasionally.

[Danny42C]

FED (#9769),

Was a spot height (Pt. 161 from memory), a hill in Arakan. Jap well dug-in on top. We removed all vegetaion, bunker and Jap with liberal doses of H.E. applied by Vengeance.

Hill now Pt. 155, bald as a coot on top, well known navigational landmarrk thereafter.

Danny.

[Fareastdriver]

I was off with my ex- Colonial Office friend to have a chat at a Longhouse about 500 yards short of the Indonesian border on the main North/South river. The sides were very steep and the longhouse was built one third of the way up the hill. The land was cleared for the helipad in the shape of a U. The two arms pointed towards the river and the pad was built on a bit of flattened ground in the middle. You approached the pad by flying between the trees at the hill, turned right and landed. Departure was straight ahead, right again an out.

They didn’t have many visits, primarily because we didn’t want to bring too much attention to them from the Indons who, if they were around, were in visual range. As a result the helipad was a bit tatty and I had to bounce the aeroplane a couple of times to make sure the ground was firm underwheels. I had a wander around (up and down actually) and my attention was brought to a young boy who had the most Godawful infection on his leg. It was blistered and swollen from his ankle to the knee and he was hobbling along on a primitive crutch.

I brought this to the attention of our Intelligence bod who had not seen it before. We thought about taking him to Pensiangan but the chief wasn’t happy with that. I then suggested that I fly to Pensiangan and see if I could persuade a doctor to come out there. He agreed with this so I climbed in, fired it up and flew off to Pensiangan.

On arrival I left the helicopter under the capable guard of the Ghurkhas and went into the village. Halfway down there was a big sign that said WHO (World Health Organisation). In I went and there was a Taiwanese doctor; this was when Taiwan was the official China in the United Nations. I explained what I had seen and to my surprise he jumped at the chance to go and have a look. We flew back to the longhouse; he didn’t comment about the thumping landing and had a look around.

Apart from a helicopter that strongest magnet for Borneo villagers is a doctor. Whilst he was looking at the boy there was a line forming outside all nursing some sickness or other. He diagnose was fairly rapid; he had Yaws, similar family to syphilis and infectious though not at this stage. He needed a concentrated course of penicillin and that could not be monitored in the longhouse. He asked whether it was possible to get him to hospital in Jessleton. It was up to me so I said I would. As the doctor had recommended it the chief was agreeable as long as he had somebody with him. An uncle was selected so both of them plus the tasked passengers got in and we flew to Pensiangan to drop the doctor off. Our man went up to the radio room whilst we were there and when we arrived at Sepulot everything was in hand.

Another pilot joined me who had the map and airfield information for Jessleton. There was no system of sending flight plans so when we called up Jessleton ATC we were surprised when they told us they were expecting us. They directed us to a corner of the apron where an ambulance was awaiting. We shutdown and led the now goggle eyed passengers to the ambulance parked there with open doors.

They wouldn’t get in!!! You could see them looking at the ambulance and then back to my helicopter. Suddenly it hit me. The ambulance didn’t have a rotor on top. The only forms of mechanical transportation they had ever known were helicopters. This vehicle cannot be any good because either it doesn’t work or it’s broken.

A combination of my and the ambulance crew reassured them and they were transported off to hospital. We had enough fuel to get back to Sepulot and we left. I filled in and SOR form when I got back to try and imprint some form of legality but there was no action taken.

It was all part of ‘Hearts and Minds’, a policy of being as friendly and helpful to the locals as possible without interfering with the task in hand. To this end if there was spare payload and any locals wanted a lift than they would be waved on board. A fifteen minute flight was worth a day’s walk. As I mentioned before we used to herd the empty fuel drums into the river and they would be picked up. Sometimes when a longhouse not on the barrel route did us a favour we would respond by loading four empty barrels, packets of salt, sugar and the favourite, chocolate and dropping them off for them. The doctor suggested that on these trips to the longhouses it would be a good idea if he came too. I didn’t give an answer because I thought that having UN personnel flying on what was effectively an operational intelligence flight could be a bit iffy.

I was told the result of the treatment. He was discharged after two weeks on the way to a full recovery. They were flown in a Twin Pin of Sabah Air to Sepulot and there they met up with their relatives. After that they had a two-day walk back to their longhouse. Not all in one go; there were a few longhouses en route to eat and to sleep.

Next: Back to Tawau

[Geriaviator]

Trained at RAF Cranwell in 1939, off to war in a Fairey Battle in 1940, shot down on his second sortie by German fighters and put into POW camp for five years, released to become one of the RAF’s youngest squadron leaders, taking command of 201 Squadron at RAF Pembroke Dock, then the world's biggest flying-boat base.

This is the story of Sqn Ldr Rupert Parkhouse, who flew Short Sunderland flying-boats on the Berlin Airlift, later becoming a military attaché in Washington DC and in Libya. Now 95 years old, he lives in a Bournemouth nursing home with his wife Rosemary, whom he married 70 years ago. In June 1995 he recorded his memoirs for the Imperial War Museum and these have been transcribed in November 2016.

Rupert Parkhouse served his country as did millions of others, and like so many brave men his wartime experiences would haunt him until they faded away into the mists of his memory. His son Richard, who has provided much information and the photographs for this account, told me his father regarded his flying career as a failure, but now that the memories have slipped away he has never been happier.

This is how a 19-year-old with only 218 flying hours in his log book went to war in an obsolete aircraft, was trapped in his cockpit after German fighters set it ablaze, and survived to spend perhaps the best days of his youth in a POW camp, constantly reproaching himself that he should have done more. His honest and brutally self-critical account is one of the most moving stories I have read.


Rupert Charles Langridge Parkhouse was born in Dulwich in 1921, the son of a trainee accountant who had joined Kitchener's Army in 1914 and served with the South Staffordshire Regiment on the front line in 1916.

Rupert recalled that when his father heard that there was an extra five shillings (25p) per day in flying pay, he joined the Royal Flying Corps and learned to fly at Netheravon. In 1917 he joined 5 Squadron, equipped with RE8 two-seat reconnaissance aircraft, and flew 30 sorties up to spring of the following year. After being shot up three times he transferred back to the infantry again, leaving the Service in 1920 and qualifying as an accountant in 1926.

Rupert said that from his father's experiences he formed an ambition to be a pilot. "A school friend's family took me to an RAF display in 1930, and I was greatly impressed. Seeing the pilots in their white overalls go out and climb into their cockpits gave me a romantic feeling, I suppose. And when I went to the Hendon display and saw two officers showing their rather glamorous girl friends along the line of beautiful silver biplanes, helping them up on the wing to see into the cockpit, I thought perhaps this was one way of getting your girl”.

Rupert entered the Army classes at Dulwich College with the aim of doing the RAF Cranwell entrance exams and in March 1939 he went before a board of 14 civil servants and RAF officers. “It was rather intimidating, and I stammered badly, but I passed 17th out of 20 candidates. The neighbours were very surprised and one even sent her daughter round to our house to ask if it was true.”

But true it was, and 18-year-old Rupert entered the Royal Air Force College at Cranwell on April 29, 1939. Just over a year later he would struggle to escape from his blazing Fairey Battle above the fields of northern France. From here on, Rupert will tell his story in his own words, recorded in 1995.

[Chugalug2]

Great intro to what promises to be a great story, Geriaviator. What is it about that generation? Were they force fed humble pie? How can anyone fated to fly a Fairey Battle consider his flying career a failure (because he was shot down on his second sortie)? The only failure was to have such an obsolete aircraft in front line service, which it rapidly left either by courtesy of the Luftwaffe or by pennies finally dropping in the Air Ministry.

I'm sure they would have realised they were vastly outclassed from the start yet still pressed on with their attacks. One can only imagine the cold courage that called for and respect it fervently. The pace was frenetic in 1939, phoney war or no, and he had completed his Service training, his flying training, and is operational for the Battle of France in the following year. That it all ended in a POW camp must have been a bitter pill for him, though a sweet one for his loved ones.

I can't help wondering if a third of a million men would have escaped the Dunkirk mayhem to fight again if those suicidal Battle missions against the bridges on the Albert Canal and the Meuse had not been flown. They didn't delay the Wehrmacht much, but they did affect the momentum of the German advance at least. We tend now to view it as a glorious but ineffective campaign. Perhaps one day it will be given some credit at least for the Dunkirk "miracle".

[Danny42C]

Geriaviator,

Let me second Chugalug's remarks. Rupert has nothing to reproach himself with: he did his best with what they gave him - and no man can do more. That what they gave him was nowhere good enough was no fault of his - but that of a country that had ignored for years Churchill's warnings and would not spend the money needed to equip itself properly for its own defence.

Of course, we wouldn't be so stupid today, would we ?

I think Garland and Gray's two VCs should stand for all who went out in their "Battles" in the face of (as they well knew) the much superior Me109. They "knew the score", they knew there was always a tiny chance that they might be able to destroy (say) a vital canal bridge or lock, but the near certainty that they would be shot down doing it.

I can understand his chagrin at being an unwilling non-combatant for the next five years, but "The Fortunes of War"..............old chap !

Danny42C.

[Geriaviator]

A great story indeed, Danny and Chug, but Rupert's flying career did not end with his narrow escape in France. He will tell how he felt he should have done more to escape from POW camp, and post-war he was to be bitten by the Mosquito and have his moments with the Sunderland, as he will recall with ruthless honesty.
He and his comrades could have had no doubt about the dangers they faced. His adjutant did not want him to go because he was so young, and his own navigator had this to say:
Later Sgt Morris my navigator on 12 Sqn told me what a shaker it was when on May 14 he had entered the crew room and of the 22 navigators and gunners who had come out to France, only he and another man remained.Watch this space ...

[Dougie M]

I was on 105 Sqn on Argosies in the 60s and the squadron motto was Fortis in Proeliis. "Strong in Battles" The Fairey Battle was hopelessly underpowered and the mission to bomb the Dortmund Ems canal was a disaster from the start. The two posthumous V.C.s were earned by flyers who knew it was a suicide mission. So there I was on Argosies another underpowered aircraft where you had to squirt water methanol into the engines to get take off power in the heat.
As another link, there was an ex Sunderland siggy who would relate stories of the far east when the mighty Flying Boat would alight on estuaries in Borneo to visit Dyak communities by motoring up the rivers. The machine was moored and they headed off inland. On their return the beast was fired up and allowed to drift downriver using differential power till the water was suitably wide and straight to effect a take off. On one occasion after a storm whilst still moored on the swirling waters a tree trunk was spotted rounding the bend and heading toward the aircraft. The captain started up the starboard engines and with full rudder opened up the power and the wing rose sufficient to lift the starboard float above the tree as it went past. It was worth a few beers just to watch the graphic arm movements accompanying the story.
Guys who were there and can relate their experiences are few and must be cherished.

[Danny42C]

Geriaviator (#9778),
...Quote:
Later Sgt Morris my navigator on 12 Sqn told me what a shaker it was when on May 14 he had entered the crew room and of the 22 navigators and gunners who had come out to France, only he and another man remained....
I had a similar experience (Post in 2012):

...The more we are together, the happier we shall be.
The next stage was to get myself a crewman. Actually, it wasn't quite like that. I was told that at home, the drill was (on bomber crews) that the new nav was supposed to wait, like a wallflower at a dance, until a twin-wing prince came over and popped the question. If the deal was done, the pair then went round selecting the rest of their crew.
But that presupposed similar levels of experience all round. In our case, the ex-Blenheim navs and wop/ags were all battle-hardened veterans from shipping strikes over the Channel and the like, and the squadron had taken a fair hammering. They were not going to be picked over by this intake of sprogs fresh out of training !

So it was that Sgt Keith Stewart-Mobsby (Wop/Ag - and hereinafter "Stew") came over and said "You're my Pilot - any objection ?" It seemed that the deciding factor had been that he wanted a British pilot this time - being fed up with the Wild Colonial Boys he'd had before, As I was the only new one in town, it had been Hobson's choice for him. It worked out fine, and we stayed together, off and on, till the end...

Danny.

[Geriaviator]

The mighty Flying Boat would alight on estuaries in Borneo to visit Dyak communities by motoring up the rivers.... On their return the beast was fired up and allowed to drift downriver using differential power till the water was suitably wide and straight for take-off. In his post #9779 Dougie M paints a lovely picture of the Sunderland moving downstream using bursts of power to steer a zig-zag course. Gives a new meaning to the term “outboard motor” doesn't it?

In fact the Sunderland seems to have been a popular mode of transport when visiting primitive tribes in remote locations. In these fine photos from the Parkhouse collection, on September 14 1949 the majestic machine has alighted on the River Thames, taxied upstream and negotiated Tower Bridge on its outboard engines and is being secured to a buoy before visiting the Parliamentary tribe in their Great Longhouse farther up the river. I wouldn't fancy the bowman's job!

https://s14.postimg.org/w9iz4wbld/Sunderland_comes_under_Tower_Bridge_14th_Septemb.jpg
https://s20.postimg.org/7x6ndsbvx/Sunderland_in_Pool_of_London_14_18th_Sept_1949.jpg

[MPN11]

What sort of landing/take-off run would a Sunderland require, very broadly speaking? There's not a lot of straight Thames, unless you taxy well downriver from Tower Bridge, IIRC.

[Topcliffe Kid]

The mighty Flying Boat would alight on estuaries in Borneo to visit Dyak communities by motoring up the rivers.... On their return the beast was fired up and allowed to drift downriver using differential power till the water was suitably wide and straight for take-off.

Yes my dad has told of taxiing up the rivers of borneo in the early '50s 'swinging the lead' to check the depth of water with a wax layer on the bottom of the lead weight to see what the river bed consisted of. He was a signaller on 209 sqn. His skipper was the son of an RN officer and tried to run the aircraft as a ship. That didn't go down too well by all accounts!

[Warmtoast]

Topcliffe Kid
and tried to run the aircraft as a shipWhen I was at China Bay (Sri Lanka) in 1957 I had several flights in the detached from Seletar SAR 205-209 Sqn Sunderlands.
All the crews I knew called the Sunderlands galley with its cookers and seats "Wardrooms" and probably called the sea "Oggin"!


WT

[Topcliffe Kid]

Indeed that is correct.. I think the particular episode referred to was when the skipper wanted to be piped aboard. Needless to say it didn't happen! But yes when my dad first went onto Sunderlands there was a lot of seamanship training before they even got onto the aircraft.

[Chugalug2]

Abe Lincoln, of blessed memory, was on Sunderlands (before Shackletons, Trotters, and Hercs). He used to say that Flying Boat operation required Seamanship and Airmanship in equal amounts.

[jeffb]

Danny:
In your post of 9780, I guess it was the pilot who initiate the crewing up of Bomber Command. In Dad's case the Skipper approached Dad first ( as bomb aimer) then the 2 of them sought out a Navigator, on Dad's recommendation. I am not sure how the gunner and WOP joined the crew.
On their first trip at OTU Dad seriously wondered about his choice. The take off in the Whitley scared the daylights out of him. I don't know if that was standard procedure for the Whitley, but the take off involved advancing both throttles to about a quarter power. Then to Dad's absolute horror, the Skipper removed his hand from the starboard throttle, and advanced the port to full power. As they were going down the runway, to use Dad's words, he wondered 'just what kind of clown have I signed on with-he's trying a single engine take off!' Once the tail came up, and I presume the danger of a swing had passed, the starboard engine was brought up to full power and the take off proceeded normally from there. Each take off was the same, but nevertheless, it unnerved Dad each time

[Fareastdriver]

Differential throttle on the commencement of the take off was normal though your father may have exaggerated it a bit. My father (Halifaxs) told me that they would advance the throttles with No 1 leading to correct the torque swing from the engines. Some of us on this thread know how much a powerful radial can swing on opening up. Think what a handful of them can do.

[Geriaviator]

My dear friend and instructor Desmond flew Catalinas from Castle Archdale in Northern Ireland during WW2, and my close friend Bob Hume was flight engineer on Sunderlands at Pembroke Dock. These are their flying boat memories as they were told to me 50 years ago, so don't take them as gospel when you prepare for first solo in your Sunderland or whatever …

MPN, in calm conditions a Sunderland or Catalina at operational weights could take three miles to get airborne. Usually it was between one and two miles. Wind had most effect of course, but calm water increased suction on the hull due to the Bernoulli effect. In such conditions a couple of launches would zig-zag across the fairway to roughen it up, a task exciting to the boat crews and to the aircrew in the Sunderland thundering towards them at 60 knots.

The flying-boats began their run by 'ploughing' through the water with the stick fully back until the nose rose and the bow-wave began moving aft. In calm conditions it helped to pump the stick gently to encourage this. At this stage the stick was eased forward to encourage the hull to rise onto its step and begin planing at around 50 knots, so decreasing the water drag and enabling the craft to attain flying speed.

The Sunderland in the picture must have had had a long taxi up-river but apparently such visits were not unusual. Earlier that year, 1949, BOAC brought its new Solent up-river for its naming ceremony. Bob said it was nothing to taxi a couple of miles along Milford Haven before takeoff, while for certain wind conditions they used an area off Angle, several miles away, and were sometimes towed by boat to save fuel, adding an hour or more towage each way to a typical 8/9 hour sortie.

Desmond said the Sunderland was much roomier and quieter than the Cat, and rather easier to fly as its behaviour was viceless. The comfy wardroom with four bunks and double Primus stove in the galley was much envied, not to mention the flush toilet in the bow compartment. After a 10-hour exchange trip in Desmond's Catalina the Sunderland skipper said he preferred dogs to cats and the the trip certainly confirmed his view although he fancied the Pratt and Whitney Twin Wasps.

Bob's colleagues liked their Sunderlands although their Pegasus engines sometimes gave trouble because they were consistently overworked and had two-speed VP propellors. Later Peggies developed more power but the Sunderland V had Twin Wasps and constant-speed props as used in Catalina, Dakota and Liberator, enabling the big boat to maintain height on two engines. Another desirable item was a pair of .50 Brownings to replace the Vickers K-guns in the waist mountings, but they never managed to acquire these.

During their long patrols Bob's skipper encouraged his crew to interchange their duties in case of emergencies, making Bob one of the few pilots to transition to Tiger Moth after 20 hours ab-initio in the right seat of a Sunderland, and very well he managed it.

Despite hundreds of hours on Atlantic patrol, neither of my long-gone friends saw any action although in early 1944 Bob's crew did sight a Kurier snooping around a convoy about 100 miles out. “We were all dead keen to have a go, the skipper turned towards it and we opened the Peggies flat-out though we had no chance of catching it, maybe we thought we could sneak up on him. The nav was up in the astrodome giving a commentary: he's going left, no he's going right … dammit he's turning south, the ------'s running away! I don't blame him, said the skipper, first time I saw you lot forming up at OTU I felt like doing the same thing”.

[MPN11]

Thanks, Geriaviator ... that reinforced my feelings about a Sunderland at Tower Bridge. Either a very long taxi [watching the temperatures, I would guess] or a long tow up-river before firing up the outboards for a taxi to the buoy for the cameras!


In passing, my OH's father was a Sunderland Nav, as I have mentioned before, and apparently renowned for his galley skills :)

[Danny42C]

"Whereof you know nothing, thereof should you remain silent" (Wittgenstein) [Wiki] is, in general, good advice.

I know nothing about Flying Boats except for the tale I told long since about the naughty Flight Engineer, but I venture to add a few words to the learned discourse presently on Thread:

Topcliffe Kid (#9785) and Chugalug (#9786),

At Linton-on-Ouse ('62) the True Blue said: "Seamanship is only Airmanship at ten knots !"

jeffb (#9787) and FED (#9788),

Yes all the prop-driven tail-draggers I had to do with tried to do a dirty dive to the left * when power was applied. As you were ready for it, with full right rudder trim on and poised to boot on full right rudder and a bit of right brake if needed, you could keep the nose pointing down the runway (most times) until you got tailup and steerage way with rudder.

Multi engines could, as jeffb's Dad noted, get the same result with differential advancement of the throttles (wasn't the Whitley known as "The Flying Suitcase", btw ?

Either way, it was vital not to let the beast get away from you. More than 25°of swing and all was lost. If you chopped the power before then, you might be able to stop it before you ran off onto the grass. If you left it on, anything could happen. I remember a Beau which ended behind the spot it'd started takeoff from ! (Ground Loop to end all Ground Loops ?)

Note *: Except the Griffon-Spits, which swung to the right instead. Or rather, they "hopped" to the right across the runway - a sort of "Right Close March !" movement. Rather disconcerting, as at the same time, there was so much torque that the engine was trying to rotate the airframe round the prop ! Solution: feed the power in very gently indeed. Even so, would not like to try a formation takeoff !

Geriaviator (#9789),
...their Pegasus engines sometimes gave trouble because they were consistently overworked and had two-speed VP propellors...
Good Lord ! did we really go to war with 2-speed props in an operational aircraft ? Scandalous ! It means that the engine can only give of its best at two points, one in each "mode", instead of across the whole range of rpm.

Those of us who are deriving much amusement and entertainment from the T.C-T. saga, may recall the Arizona "incident" (in which the Stearman, "hot, high and heavy", manfully managed to lift-off and get up to 50 ft before "losing 300 rpm" with disastrous result (but happily without casualty).

This was first ascribed to "contaminated fuel" (but I understand that that cause has now been excluded), and I mused that it was exactly the result to be expected if the prop conrtol (which would be at "fine" pitch for takeoff and climb) had been inadvertently pulled back into "coarse".
...maybe we thought we could sneak up on him. !With a thing the size of a Sunderland ? Good thing they didn't catch up with him - with a 20mm cannon and 4x13mm guns, he'd blow them out of the sky before they got him in range of their peashooters !

...I don't blame him, said the skipper, first time I saw you lot forming up at OTU I felt like doing the same thing”...
A variant of the better known "I do not know what effect.....but by God they frighten me !"

Danny.

[Warmtoast]

Sunderlands - Long take-off runs


Don't remember Sunderlands at China Bay needing 2 -3 miles to get airborne and what about Seletar - was there 2-3 miles of straight water available for take-off there?
Photos below show the China Bay alighting area (just below the float on the wing), Four Sunderlands moored at CB and one alighting in the bay.

http://i145.photobucket.com/albums/r231/thawes/RAF%20China%20Bay/ChinaBay1957-SunderlandAlightingAre.jpg


http://i145.photobucket.com/albums/r231/thawes/RAF%20China%20Bay/ChinaBay-Sunderlands.jpg


http://i145.photobucket.com/albums/r231/thawes/RAF%20China%20Bay/ChinaBay1957-SunderlandWAlighting.jpg

[DHfan]

wasn't the Whitley known as "The Flying Suitcase", btw ?


I believe that was the Handley-Page Hampden, due to the extremely narrow fuselage. 3' IIRC, although that does sound ridiculously narrow.

Spitfires and Hurricanes still had 2-speed props at the beginning of the BofB. De Havilland rushed out conversion kits and they were converted to VP on-site at the squadrons.

There's an anecdote, I think in Jeffrey Quill's "A Test Pilot's Story", about a Wing Commander who turned up to collect his first Griffon-powered Spitfire.
Dismissing the sergeant who tried to explain with "I know how to fly a Spitfire", he applied a bootful of wrong rudder, opened the throttle and took off at 90° to his intended direction of flight, narrowly missing a hangar.

[Geriaviator]

Terrific pictures, Warmtoast, especially the one of the great boat coming off the step, just look at that flap area! Bob was very clear about three-mile runs on a calm day. He said his Sunderland was underpowered and overloaded with tanks filled to the brim for max endurance, hence the much resented hour-long tow to the takeoff point before starting up for an eight or nine-hour Atlantic patrol. They also carried over a ton of depth bombs and thousands of rounds of ammunition. Hence the Pegasus engines often had to be flogged at full throttle, causing wear problems if not failure.


Maybe your Seletar Sunderlands were Mk V with Twin Wasp engines producing at least 20% more power, and did they carry armament? Whatever the explanation we doff our helmets to those hardy folk who flew the wartime versions.

[oxenos]

In 1927, 4 Supermarine Southampton flying boats of the Far East Flight left the U.K. They flew in stages to Singapore, on around Australia and the South China Sea and back to Singapore. The aircraft did the whole trip as a foursome, and to a pre-planned schedule, and on only about 2 occasions did they slip from that schedule.
On arrival at Singapore the second time, in 1929, the Far East Flight disbanded and became No 205 Squadron. Group Captain Cave-Brown-Cave, who had been in command, returned home, and his deputy, Sqn. Ldr. Livock became the Squadron commander. 205 was the first R.A.F. Squadron in the Far East, and its motto "Pertama di Malaya" means first in Malaya. The Sqn was in Singapore from 1929 - 1941 (Southamptons/ Short Singapores/ Catalinas) and 1946- 1971 (Sunderlands/ Shackletons)
Livock wrote a book "To the Ends of the Air", telling his story from joining the Royal Naval Air Service in 1914 at the age of 17. It covers the story of the Far East Flight, but does not go into great detail about 205's early days in Singapore
However, in the Sqn Museum at Changi in the late '60s there was a typed copy of what I believe was to be a second book, covering that period. I can find no trace of it ever having been published, or what happened to that typed copy, so what follows is what I recall from reading it nearly 50 years ago.
The Squadron was much involved in surveying and anti piracy in Borneo. Fuel dumps would be positioned with planters beside the rivers. The boat would fly up river until a tennis court was spotted next to the river. That was the favoured sport of the time, and provided a good navigation aid. The boat would land, anchor, refuel, and the crew would stay the night with the planter
The planters were ex-officio local post masters, so they would send their letters home with the aircraft, and affix home made stamps, produced by carving lumps of rubber to print with. Many of them later presented the Sqn. with pieces of silver - apparently the Sqn silver was subsequently thrown off the end of a jetty at Seletar when the Japanese arrived, and never recovered.
As regards the straight stretch of river for take-off, apparently it was possible to make quite sharp turns during the take-off, once the boat was on the step. (This was the Southampton ) He recounted one incident where things were a bit tight, and he had to start the take off run while his co-pilot was still stowing the anchor. The co-pilot stuck his head out of the forward hatch "whereupon his solar topee blew off and went into one of the propellors. I told him the next time he stuck his topee into one of my propellors he could do it whilst wearing it."
He also told of ferrying troops to a spot on a river as part of an operation against pirates. On their return the troops were carrying a box containing two heads, They refused to leave them behind, as without the heads they could not claim the head money.
I wish I could recall more of his writings, but it is a long time since I read it all. Does anyone know what became of it after the Squadron dis-banded?

[Warmtoast]

Geriaviator
Maybe your Seletar Sunderlands were Mk V with Twin Wasp engines producing at least 20% more power, and did they carry armament?Mark V's in 1958. ISTR they carried no armament, but could if necessary carry bombs and did so when engaged in FIREDOG missions over the Malayan jungle.
Meanwhile below two IWM photos of Mark III's photographed at Gan in WWII.
WT
http://i145.photobucket.com/albums/r231/thawes/GAN/Gan%20from%20Booklet/Pages%20-%2011%20-%2018/Addu%20Atoll%201_zpszalfe7rl.jpg


http://i145.photobucket.com/albums/r231/thawes/GAN/Gan%20from%20Booklet/Pages%20-%2011%20-%2018/Addu%20Atoll%202_zpsi9gt7rlg.jpg

[Geriaviator]

https://s20.postimg.org/op407c9il/Avro_Tutor.jpg

The memoirs of Sqn Ldr Rupert Parkhouse, recorded in 1995 – Part 2
The first post in this series is #9775 on page 489 of this thread.

I entered Cranwell on April 29 1939 and I was very proud of my hat and uniform, I thought I was very handsome. Because we had all been in the OTC at public school we drifted easily into the drill routines of the cadet squadrons, which were commanded by a cadet under officer, a cadet sergeant and cadet corporals who kept us in line.

The great thing was that one began flying on the Avro Tutor straight away. One had ground school but on a hot, dozy summer's day in class there was the glorious thrill of knowing that in an hour or so one could be up flying.

I found flying rather difficult at first, and I had a bad-tempered Rhodesian instructor, and I didn't do terribly well with him. So they gave me to a very experienced Sergeant Pilot Booker, who eventually became Wing Commander Booker who was CFI at the Empire Central Flying School in about 1945. He had come into the RAF as an apprentice clerk and transferred to flying duties.

We got on extraordinarily well, he was a very quiet and tolerant chap who never lost his temper, and after my first three weeks at Cranwell and about nine hours dual Dermot Boyle the CFI – who eventually became Marshal of the Royal Air Force – took me for a flying test and after a little confab with Booker on the ground I was given another quick circuit and was sent off solo. That was a great thing.

As summer progressed I got my half-blue on the athletics team. I was completely surprised to be awarded a Viscount Wakefield scholarship for the sons of parents of limited means. The important thing is that my father had thought he had to pay £100 a year for tuition and £100 for uniform and books for my course even though he got reduced fees because he had been in the RFC. The scholarship covered the cost of tuition and so boys of moderate means could enter the RAF and have a fine career.

[Danny42C]

DHfan (#9793)

...Quote:
Originally Posted by Danny42C
wasn't the Whitley known as "The Flying Suitcase", btw ?
I believe that was the Handley-Page Hampden...

Touché ! (You're spot-on, of course !)

Danny.

[Geriaviator]

https://s20.postimg.org/a0kdo5b8t/Hart_trainer.jpg

The memoirs of Sqn Ldr Rupert Parkhouse, recorded in 1995 – Part 3. The first post in this series is #9775 on page 489 of this thread.

I HAVE always regretted that I only did one term at Cranwell, because at the end of July we had a passing-out parade before Viscount Gort; with the Enfield rifles and long bayonets and the Cranwell band it was a very fine sight.

When war broke out at the beginning of September we were called back, the whole of our academic syllabus was consigned to the waste paper basket and we were trained entirely as pilots. I heard Chamberlain's declaration of war. I remember my father was very upset over the treatment of Czechoslovakia.

It was obvious that this had been coming for a very long time. We were young, we were professional pilots; one realised that a life of adventure lay ahead and I think we were somewhat elated.

I remember one of the items we were equipped with was a rather fine slide rule and I remember some of the chaps tearing their slide rules to pieces and throwing them in the bin. Perhaps it was a foretaste of what was to come. I thought it was a great waste, having come from a frugal background where every penny was counted, and I still have mine.

Our training started immediately. I was hoping to go onto twin-engined aircraft but I was put onto Hawker Hart trainers. [Dual control version of the Hart light bomber with 525hp RR Kestrel V12, used for advanced training -- Ed.] We used to have crew rooms alongside the hangars but now we and the aircraft were sent to dispersal huts around the airfield.

I spent September 3 dressed in a gas cape because we were told to expect imminent gas attack, which shows the feeling at the time, and I had to taxi my Hart to the dispersal where it was picketed down. That evening we spent an uncomfortable two hours in the shelters, wondering if this was going to be a pattern in the wartime years.

https://s20.postimg.org/65gzlks31/RCL_Parkhouse_in_Hawker_Hind.jpg

[pzu]

Hope I'm not crossing boundaries etc. But am sure this link will be of interest to many followers of this thread

Undaunted > Vintage Wings of Canada (http://www.vintagewings.ca/VintageNews/Stories/tabid/116/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/580/Undaunted.aspx)

PZU - Out of Africa (Retired)

[Geriaviator]

No boundaries for stories like this! Thanks for the link, PZU, and interesting to read references to the Fairey Battle which features so prominently in the Parkhouse Memoirs to which you led us a few months back. I've just read Harry Hannah's story from start to finish, and I'm now in the doghouse for not putting down that d---- iPad for two hours.

Harry's grim POW experiences followed those of Rupert Parkhouse four long years before. Another chapter from Rupert's story later today ...

[Geriaviator]

The memoirs of Sqn Ldr Rupert Parkhouse, recorded in 1995 – Part 4
The first post in this series is #9775 on page 489 of this thread.

https://s20.postimg.org/y086s8lyl/RCL_Parkhouse_in_flying_kit_Nov_26_1939.jpg

I didn't have any major difficulty in my flying training, nor in the ground subjects like navigation, signals and so on, but I had one or two unfortunate incidents. In November 1939 I landed downwind at Little Rissington.

Andrew Humphrey, who became Chief of the Defence Staff, had been put down into our term after being injured in the ritualistic first term boxing match and we had both been on cross country to South Cerney, he being about five minutes ahead. I watched him going in, I was careless about looking at the wind and didn't see him go round again and land in the correct direction.

I landed downwind about 10 minutes later and incredibly I bounced over a Hart which was coming towards me the other way. I can remember looking down over the side and seeing two terrified faces in the approaching trainer, while ahead of me the hangars were approaching very rapidly. I couldn't understand why until I saw the windsock out of the corner of my eye and thought oh God, I've landed downwind.

I opened up and went round again to land in the proper direction, to be met by a very irate and scathing duty pilot who told me to report immediately to the CFI. He tore me off a most imperial rocket and made me stay overnight, where I was an object of considerable derision to the short service officers who were under instruction there. They could identify us as Cranwell cadets because we wore grey working trousers with our RAF blue tunic.

About two years later I was in the prison camp talking to Captain Samuel Pepys of the Essex Regiment – he was a direct descendant of the great diarist – and he said that during his training at Little Rissington two Cranwell cadets had landed downwind and the second one had bounced over him when he was taking off. He said he would certainly like to meet that bastard and tell him what he thought of him, so I told him he could do so now as I was that chap, and I must have been as shaken as he was.

Eventually I got my wings in November 1939. We all went in to the Nottingham Empire and occupied the first two rows with boxes of chocolates which we handed around the orchestra, to the amusement of the audience.

Next post: Rupert's roommate is killed on his first night solo.

[Danny42C]

pzu, thank you for the link in #9800 !

Geriaviator (speaking as the voice of Harry Hannah),
...In 2012, Vintage Wings of Canada honoured Harry Hannah by dedicating our Boeing Stearman in his name...A suitable tribute to a tough old aircraft on which many of our wartime pilots started their training !
...all personnel were required to spend four hours a week belting ammunition. This was accomplished by having two nails on board and pushing a .303 bullet and casing through a clip to make a belt of 320 .303 shells which was measured by a gauge for accurate alignment. Pushing .303s through the clips, we developed very strong thumbs...
And bloody ones ! (extract from my earlier Post):

"But this paled into insignificance compared with the ammo. problem. You might suppose that machine-gun ammunition would come in belts ready for use. So it does, I suppose, for ground use when it is all one kind. But we had three "flavours" - ball, incendiary and tracer - and the "mix" was up to the user.

Our chosen sequence was ball-incendiary-ball-incendiary-tracer. This recipe had to be made up by hand - our hands - from single rounds. To complicate matters still further, we had two different calibres, .300 (US) rounds for the front guns and .303 (British) for the rear.

The stated reason for this was that the US .300 guns had been found so unreliable in service that they had to be replaced by UK .303s for our rear defence, where there was at least a possibility that they might have to be used. There was little chance of needing the front ones. Air combat in a VV was out of the question. Strafing was a possibility, I suppose, but the business of a dive bomber was to bomb and get away. The Hurricane and the Beaufighter were far better for ground attack work, in any case.

As to the reliability, it may not have been all the gun's fault. I suspect a lot of the .300 ammo would be WW1 stock; there would be a lot of duds in it; we could not cock the guns from the cockpit; so a dud round meant a stopped gun. In war films we've all seen cotton ammo belts jerking their way through the guns. There's no room for yards of empty belt in a wing gun bay.

Spring steel clips are the answer; when the guns are fired these go out with the spent cases. Each clip anchors one round to the next. You have to push the rounds into the clips by hand. It's a tight fit, the spring steel is sharp edged. Bloody fingers and thumbs were the order of the day (and we loaded 400 rounds per gun). Next you had to run the assembled belts through an aligning machine to ensure accuracy. One of our Indian (supposed) armourers put a .300 (fractionally longer than a .303) round into a .303 belt and forced it through the machine. (He bent the cartridge - luckily it didn't go off in his face!).
Curiously, a few months ago I saw on TV a clip of some RFC pilots in WW1. They sat in a companionable ring (like a sewing bee!), loading their Lewis drums with ammo. Nothing changes !"...
...Another recollection of the early Spits was that they were equipped with a hand pump to retract the undercarriage and on take-off, you could see the Spit bucking up and down as the pilot worked the pump...
"Ah yes - I remember it well (more rehashed old Post):

"...Some of our Mk.Is went so far back that they didn't even have an engine driven hydraulic pump. It wasn't just a matter of selecting wheels "up", you had to pump them up (and down) by hand.

Our tyro would have the stick in his left hand while he rowed away with his right on the pump handle. The Spit is highly sensitive in pitch. You can land one, or do a loop, with just the end of your little finger in the spade grip. So while our chap's right hand pumped, his left moved in sympathy. He couldn't help pushing and pulling a bit, a little goes a long way, and he'd porpoise away out of sight to the amusement of the bystanders. It wasn't the only aircraft of the day to rely on muscle power for the undercarriage. The early "Anson" was notorious for the 149 turns of a crank handle needed. Luckily, "Repetitive Strain Injury" hadn't yet been invented..."

Memories, memories...... Happy days ! (my regards to Harry when next you meet).

This is a wonderful story (how many more have gone to the grave with the teller ?)

Danny.

EDIT: For "Harry Hannah" above read "Rupert Parkhouse".

[Geriaviator]

The memoirs of Sqn Ldr Rupert Parkhouse, recorded in 1995 – Part 5
The first post in this series is #9775 on page 489 of this thread.

My flight commander in those days was called Garth Slater, later a wing commander. He was a very nice chap and I think without his help I might not have made the course. Looking back to July 1939 I had also landed downwind in the Tutor, I opened up again and roared over the hangars about 50ft above them. I remember looking down and seeing Flt Lt Sweeney, the RAF 100yd champion, looking up at me in horror. I have a feeling that I tried two attempts before realising I was downwind, and feeling very disconsolate as I taxied in.

After being torn off a major strip by Dermot Boyle I went to the crew room with my tail between my legs and Garth Slater said there had been a train derailment near Grantham, would I take him there for a look at it? So we flew there in the Tutor and saw the derailed trucks, and I've always thought what a kind gesture that was. I wrote to him later when I was training on Fairey Battles at Benson and he replied telling me what had been going on since I left. Unfortunately he was killed flying from Biggin Hill in 1942.

One of the great joys was flying with one's fellow cadets in the back seat and getting permission to enter the low flying area south of Cranwell, that was really a great thrill. There was a chap called Cholmondley from Rhodesia who hit wires and I went to see him in Cranwell Hospital. There was talk that he might not get his commission, but he must have got back into the swim as after the war I saw his name on the Battle of Britain memorial.

At the beginning of December we started night flying with four paraffin glim lamps in line and two more across the end to form the Tee, with a Chance floodlight on the area where we were supposed to put the aircraft down. I found it very exciting flying in the dark without the standard panel of instruments and I went solo after about three hours' dual. I did three solo circuits and I remember feeling immensely relieved but quite proud afterwards.

I went back to the Mess and was getting into bed when I heard a tremendous thump and immediately thought that someone had gone in. It was Flight Cadet Warren Smith, with whom I had shared a room in my first term, and that was a bit of a shaker. Next day we went out to see the wreckage, rather ghoulishly, and I remember the terrible smell of burnt metal.

We got over it fairly quickly, there was no counselling and in fact this modern craze for counselling strikes me as an undermining of morale because when things like this happen you have to get over it yourself, you have to sort out your fears and just go on.
NEXT POST: Mixed feelings and guffaws as Rupert is posted onto Fairey Battles: "people thought the indifferent pilots were going onto Battles where if they had a crash they wouldn't kill too many as well as themselves".

[Danny42C]

Geriaviator (your #9804, quoting Harry Hannah)
....We got over it fairly quickly, there was no counselling and in fact this modern craze for counselling strikes me as an undermining of morale because when things like this happen you have to get over it yourself, you have to sort out your fears and just go on. ..Few years back, I had a (cheap) lawnmower pinched from toolshed. Called the cops to get Crime Report No. for Insurance claim. They sent a policewoman to ask whether I wanted "counselling" !!

At Advanced School in the States seems they lost three from my Class 42C. No memory of them at all. No point in grief in war: Johnnie was here yesterday, he's gone today, he's forgotten tomorrow, c'ést la guerre.

Danny42C.

EDIT: For "Harry Hannah" above read "Rupert Parkhouse".

[Geriaviator]

The memoirs of Sqn Ldr Rupert Parkhouse, recorded in 1995 – Part 6
The first post in this series is #9775 on page 489 of this thread.
I WENT home for Christmas 1939 with my wings, feeling very proud, returning in January to join the advanced training squadron for bombing and gunnery, which was very enjoyable, firing the front gun and dropping 20lb practice bombs on the range. We didn't do any night ops on the advanced squadron, which seems very strange.

We flew up to West Freugh [near Stranraer] for armament training camp, there were more pilots than aircraft so some were flown up in a Vickers Valentia from the wireless school at Cranwell. We landed beside a burned-out Heyford on the airfield, which we wondered about, but it had been pilot error and nobody was killed.

There we were snowed up and could not fly for weeks, while I contracted a frightful cold so when the rest of the term went back to Cranwell I was kept in sick quarters at West Freugh, where the flight sergeant nurse regaled us with stories of his exploits in various bordellos in Egypt, Hong Kong and Singapore which I found quite interesting.

Eventually I got back to Cranwell where the list of postings went up with much laughter and guffaws when we found who was posted onto Fairey Battles, and who had got onto fighters or heavy bombers. People thought the indifferent pilots were going onto Battles where if they had a crash they wouldn't kill too many as well as themselves.

In fact the chaps who came onto Battles with me included Johnny Rothwell, a very reasonable pilot who was killed later on a torpedo bomber, Shirley Shuttleworth, a member of the famous family who survived the campaign in France but was shot down in 1941 in a Blenheim, and J. M. Dyer whom I last heard of as a squadron commander at the RAF College. NEXT POST: In a grim portent of events to come, Rupert has difficulty with instrument flying.

[FantomZorbin]

Johnnie was here yesterday, he's gone today, he's forgotten tomorrow, c'ést la guerre.
My father-in-law* would have none of this 'counselling' - "Honour the dead and march on" was his dictum. As a family, we follow his example.


* He joined-up in 1915 at the age of 15yrs. Life Guards and Machine Gun Corps for the remainder of the war.

[Geriaviator]

Johnnie was here yesterday, he's gone today, he's forgotten tomorrow, c'ést la guerre.Do not despair/For Johnny-head-in-air;
He sleeps as sound/As Johnny underground.
Fetch out no shroud/For Johnny-in-the-cloud;
And keep your tears/For him in after years.
Better by far/For Johnny-the-bright-star,
To keep your head,/And see his children fed.

This little poem was one of a series of poems written in 1941 by John Pudsey (1909 –1977) an RAF intelligence officer., and will be familiar to many readers from its use in the 1945 British film The Way to the Stars. The film title was derived from the RAF motto Per Ardua ad Astra (striving to the stars) which you may think is appropriate to the title of this thread.

[Danny42C]

Geriaviator,

How right - and how apposite !

Danny.

[Danny42C]

Geriaviator (pp Rupert Parkhouse) #9806,
...and dropping 20lb practice bombs on the range...
Never used (or even saw) one of those. Did they mark the spot with smoke (like the 11½ lb jobs) - or blow a small hole with H.E. ?
...where if they had a crash they wouldn't kill too many as well as themselves...
Well, it's something to take into consideration, when all's said and done - I've always thought: "If someone's going to kill me in an aircraft, I'd prefer it to be me !"

Danny.

[Geriaviator]

https://s20.postimg.org/pmmgr0iel/Link_Trainer_pic.jpg

The Link Trainer was a 1930s analogue flight simulator which moved in accordance with the cockpit controls. As it tilted to simulate movements, the aircraft progress was shown by the three-wheeled 'crab' which laid down a coloured track as it moved around the glass table overlaying a map. The instructor's repeater panel on the left duplicated the airspeed, altimeter, variometer (climb/descent) and radio compass (ADF) in the cockpit, and he and the pupil could talk via intercom.
This picture from Rupert's collection is captioned: Sgt Pilot Kenneth Perkin endeavouring to control Cadet Rupert Parkhouse on a Link Trainer at RAF Cranwell. It is believed that Cadet Parkhouse is about to go into a spin from which he never recovered his nerve. The caption is grimly prescient, for Rupert will blame his five years in captivity as the result of his “awful mistake” which led to loss of control in cloud.

The memoirs of Sqn Ldr Rupert Parkhouse, recorded in 1995 – Part 7. The first post in this series is #9775 on page 489 of this thread.

On March 8 I was commissioned, on the same day reporting for Fairey Battle training with 63 Sqn at RAF Benson. I was waiting for transport at the station when a chap in RAAF uniform offered me a lift. This was Alan Goole, who was the engineering officer at Benson and an extraordinarily pleasant Australian with a very easy manner, and we became firm friends.

We lived in the officers' quarters where I was roomed with Brian Moss, who had been on Cambridge UAS and was a member of the Moss family who were paint manufacturers in Chorley. All the brothers were aviators and two had designed a two-seat monoplane called the Mothcraft.

At 24 Brian was older than most of us and taught me a lot. I used to have difficulty on the Link Trainer blind flying simulator and he gave me a little lecture on the instruments. He said that what you must do is to regard the artificial horizon as your master instrument and other advice, following which I did an instrument cross-country under the blind flying hood with the flight commander, a Flt Lt James. I didn't get on terribly well with James because at our first interview he asked what kind of commission I had although he must have known I was ex-Cranwell and he was short service. I replied regular, which he took to mean that short service officers were irregular; of course I never meant that in any way. He took it rather badly and I was never his favourite pupil.

After about two hours under the hood on our triangular cross-country we were walking to the crew room when he said “You know, Parkhouse, those were the three best courses I have seen flown on instruments” which I was rather pleased about.

In those days there was no crewing up and we seemed to be crewed for our various sorties in a totally haphazard manner. Most of the navigators were bright young RAFVR sergeants, some considerably older than I was, and our little air gunners were extremely young chaps who were very proud of the 'flying bullet' on their arms.

We were told that the Battle force in France was going to adopt the low level role to attack industrial targets in the Ruhr. There was no mention of support for the Army. We had a sweet little Intelligence officer with RFC wings and Pip, Squeak and Wilfred medals from WW1 who would take us through pseudo-sorties on maps and photographs projected from a magic lantern. We would start off reading the map and then we were told we would see a river and we would be shown perhaps a river or bridge. Eventually we would be shown a power station and this is what we were supposed to attack. NEXT POST: Gaining confidence, Rupert goes wandering in his Battle and starts adding new airfields to his log book. Then the boss finds out ...

[Danny42C]

Geriaviator (p.p. Rupert Parkhouse, #9811),
...I used to have difficulty on the Link Trainer...
So did everybody else ! Its reactions to control movements are best described by Ogden Nash (?): "Tomato sauce, shake the bottle / None'll come - and then the lot'll !"
...We were told that the Battle force in France was going to adopt the low level role to attack industrial targets in the Ruhr...
What a hope ! What planet was our Intelligence living on ?
...officer with RFC wings and Pip, Squeak and Wilfred medals from WW1...
So had my Dad: No wings, but the 'Mons Star', and the War and Victory Medals. Named after three famous cartoon characters of the day.
... projected from a magic lantern...
That dates him ! - and me, I remember them well. I think they call them "Epidiascopes" now.

Danny.

[Geriaviator]

https://s20.postimg.org/ioe9e8obx/Fairey_Battle_K7650_63_sqn.jpg

Fairey Battle of 63 Sqn on which Rupert completed his operational training at RAF Benson in Oxfordshire. Whenever he saw this photograph he recalled that the Battle was always flown with canopy open because it was so difficult to open it when airborne. Within a few weeks this feature would come close to costing him his life.

The memoirs of Sqn Ldr Rupert Parkhouse, recorded in 1995 – Part 8. The first post in this series is #9775 on page 489 of this thread.

LOOKING back, it's incredible that we were not tasked to support the Army in any way, we were going to fly at 250ft with four 250lb bombs with 11-second delay and so we had a lot of low level training. In a Battle with its excellent view over the nose this was a great pleasure as most of our sorties were west of Exeter over the Devon countryside. We really had the most marvellous flying in March and April of 1940.

The weather was generally good but we encountered occasional poor conditions when neither my navigator nor myself knew where we were. I was glad because this gave me an excuse to land at a foreign airfield. I remember landing at St Eval and meeting Wing Cdr Revington, whom I knew from Cranwell. He gave me a warm welcome, I got a weather report from Benson and we took off again.

Once I was flying under low cloud and uncertain of position, so I went over the railway station at Holsworthy low enough to read the nameboard. On another occasion when we didn't know where we were, and rather naughtily hoping to get another airfield in my log book, I landed at Westland's airfield in Yeovil, which was regarded as particularly difficult because it was sloping with quite a dip down to the hangars. If you landed on the uphill part of the mound you were all right because you lost speed on the gradient, even so we slithered to a stop on the far downhill side and I got another name in my book.

I got the weather from Benson and took off for home, not knowing that the controller at Yeovil had phoned our base where my very irate flight commander had told him to 'hold the little so-and-so there, we will come and fetch him'. My commander and another instructor landed at Yeovil about an hour after I had taken off and I heard later that he hadn't made a very good approach and had skidded to a halt about 10ft from the hedge, which did not improve his temper even before he discovered that Parkhouse had taken off again.

I was sitting in the anteroom when two formidable officers took me outside and gave me an almighty strip. I think that ended my phase of landing out mainly to fill up the back page of my log book. Looking back it was a bit irresponsible but it was the most tremendous fun.
NEXT POST: Unwilling to part company with his friend Brian, 19-year-old Rupert pleads with his adjutant for a posting to France.

[Danny42C]

Geriaviator (pp Rupert Parkhouse RIP),
...I went over the railway station at Holsworthy low enough to read the nameboard...
After Dunkirk, all the station names were taken down (to confuse invaders). It also confused the hapless lone stranger on a stopping train, who had to rely on the porters, who bawled out the name of each place as the train pulled in, to hear his destination called.
...Unwilling to part company with his friend Brian, 19-year-old Rupert pleads with his adjutant for a posting to France...
Be careful what you wish for - you might get it !
Danny.

[BernieC]

re the excellent image of a Fairey Battle in post 9813:
Can anyone please explain the strange layout of the crew positions? It has always puzzled me. I assume the middle man is the navigator and the rear man the gunner. But why is the nav so far from the pilot? And what fills the gap between them. Naive questions, I know, but please ....

[Pom Pax]

After Dunkirk, all the station names were taken down (to confuse invaders). It also confused the hapless lone stranger on a stopping train, who had to rely on the porters, who bawled out the name of each place as the train pulled in, to hear his destination called.

Reminds me of a radio sketch, porter calls for passengers for a departing train.

"Anymore from here to there for this is it."

[Danny42C]

Pom Pax,

Or at the Booking Office window:

"Return, please"...."Where to ?"...."Back here, of course !"

[seafury45]

BernieC
This is all I could find (from Wiki)
"The Battle was furnished with a single cockpit to accommodate a crew of three, these typically being a pilot, observer/navigator and radio operator/air gunner.[14] The pilot and gunner were seated in a tandem arrangement in the cockpit, the pilot being located in the forwards position while the gunner was in the rear position where he could use the fixed .303 Browning machine gun; provisions for an alternative Vickers K machine gun were also present. The observers position, who served as the bomb aimer, was situated directly beneath the pilot's seat; sighting was performed in the prone position through a sliding panel in the floor of the fuselage using the Mk. VII Course Setting Bomb Sight.[14] Complete with a continuous glazed canopy, the cockpit of the Battle had several similarities to that of a large fighter rather than a bomber."

I found a cut away drawing but it onlt shows a 2 man crew and is not detailed enough for me to read the notations.

[Danny42C]

seafury45 (#9818),

I, too, had often wondered about the overlong glasshouse on the "Battle". Now I know - the nav had to have the room to stretch out on the floor !
... the gunner... could use the fixed .303 Browning machine gun...
"Fixed" ? How on earth could he aim it ? The Vickers K gun on a flexible mounting much bettter idea.

Danny42C.

[Geriaviator]

The memoirs of Sqn Ldr Rupert Parkhouse, recorded in 1995 – Part 9. The first post in this series is #9775 on page 489 of this thread.

THE NEXT big day was May 10 when the Blitzkrieg began. We were reinforcement crews for the Advanced Air Striking Force and on May 11 a list of postings to fly to France the following day appeared on the Mess notice board. My name was not on the list but my great friend Brian Moss was, so I went to the adjutant and said I wanted to go with him. He said I wasn't supposed to go yet because I was 19 and a half and one of the youngest on the list, but if I really wanted to go he would put me on. [It is not known whether Rupert was aware of the casualties, but the adjutant certainly was. On May 10 12 Sqn had despatched four Battles, only one came back; on May 12 they sent six Battles, one came back with tech trouble, the others were lost; on May 14 they sent six Battles, five were lost – Ed.]

So next day, May 12, we went by lorry from Benson to Hendon where we boarded an Imperial Airways four-engined airliner, crossed the Channel on a beautiful sunny day, and landed at Colombier in France where we were met by a very excited French officer who said we were fortunate not to have arrived 10 minutes previously when they had a visit from two Me110s. Without doubt we would have been shot down had we arrived sooner.

From Colombier we went by train to Nantes which was the base of 98 Sqn, the pool squadron where we did more cross-country training. We had bombing and gunnery practice, doing dive-bombing from 8000ft down to 3000ft which indicated a change in tactics. We weren't told about this change. Later my navigator on 12 Sqn told me what a shaker it was when on May 14 he had entered the crew room and of the 22 navigators and gunners who had come out to France, only he and another man remained.

The first batch of replacement aircrew went out about May 20 to make good the very heavy losses of the AASF during the first three days of blitzkrieg. The reason for the delay was that communications with the retreating squadrons had been lost, while the railways were in such chaos that our crews returned to Nantes after a few days. I remember Johnny Rothwell telling me what a frightening experience it had been, they had left the train and were lying on the side of an embankment as the bombs burst nearby. He said 'It really scared the s—t out of me, Rupert, and I'm just longing to return it in kind.'

On June 5 Brian Moss was again on a list of replacements and once again I asked the adjutant if I could go with him to 12 Sqn, which had carried out that very gallant raid on the Maastricht bridges. He said I was still too young to go but he reluctantly agreed, he gave me a little Serviceman's Bible, he shook my hand, and he wished me good luck.

We left Nantes by train on June 5 and arrived at Tours where we hung about in the park waiting for our transport to come the 26 miles from Souge. I remember seeing a beautiful French girl on a seat and thinking it would be wonderful if we could stay for another 48 hours.

NEXT POST: Rupert takes his first flight in a bombed-up Battle, to the great discomfiture of the flight sgt rigger who trustingly goes with him.

[seafury45]

Danny42C at #9819

I have looked at photos of various scale model Battles. None show the sliding panel on the underside and I have not found photos of this part of real aircraft.

It must have been immediately aft of the radiator/oil cooler fairing I think.

[Danny42C]

seafury45,

Might've been a perspex panel (like a Stuka) or even an open one (like a Vengeance), in each case you (pilot) would have to sight through it from your seated postion. Very inaccurate - and very draughty, too, with our bomb doors open !

Danny.

EDIT: Wiki says:

"4× 250 lb (110 kg) bombs internally", so must've been a bomb-bay, Sliding (?) panel would've been on roof of bay, not visible with bomb doors shut.

[Stanwell]

Seafury,
There is what appears to be a Perspex panel immediately to the rear of the radiator outlet.
Have a look at .. IPMSStockholm.org .. Magazine .. Fairey Battle in detail .. the last photo on that page.


Danny,
The same series of photos shows the bomb bays (two in each wing).

[Reader123]

"Fixed" ? How on earth could he aim it ? The Vickers K gun on a flexible mounting much bettter idea.

Quite. But maybe the RAF wasn't quite so silly - don't believe everything you read in Wikipedia... The fixed Browning was in the starboard wing and under the pilot's control; the gunner had a K with which he could do what he fancied. (According to several sources on the 'net which of course are no more reliable than Wikipedia, but at least they make sense.)

[Geriaviator]

The sliding panel for the bombsight was under the pilot's seat, the obs/nav crawling forward through the fuselage to take aim. The Battle canopy was normally kept open because it was so difficult to release, and when the bomb-aiming panel was opened a 200mph wind blasted upwards through the fuselage and made aiming impossible. This had terrible repercussions for Rupert and his crew, as we shall see shortly. Fairey could have used two canopies as in the contemporary Vickers Wellesley but they chose one extended canopy with solid decking between pilot and crew. I knew this only from seeing a Battle at the long-closed Strathallen Aviation Museum about 1980.

On the subject of crew accommodation Danny mentioned the Hampden 'flying suitcase' with all four crew seated together in the forward fuselage which was only 3ft wide. Apparently the Luftwaffe assessed captured aircraft and concluded the Hampden was the best because its crew were close together like Dornier 17 and Ju88. They did not rate the Blenheim, Whitley, and Wellington. Eventually the Hampden was withdrawn, a major factor being crew fatigue in such a small space.

[DHfan]

I don't know the reason for the crew locations in the Battle but it would seem logical that it's to put them behind the wing for keeping a lookout.

[seafury45]

Slight thread drift and random questions that popped into my head.
How was CG affected by fuel burn, bomb dropping, and crew movement in various WW II aircraft? Did any require special care in managing CG?

[seafury45]

Geriaviator #9825
It is hard to believe that crews went into battle with such equipment, but use use what you have I suppose.

[Reader123]

Seafury45 #9828 It's astonishing we had anybody left alive by the end of 1940.

In 1938 the Navy ordered the carrier HMS Implacable, which was limited to 23,000 tonnes, thanks to the Washington Treaty. Needless to say the Italians and Japanese had long since abandoned their commitment to the treaty. etc. etc. etc. She was commissioned in 1944 (albeit rather over-weight) so even by then we were still hobbled. (According to Wikipedia anyway.)

But then it was an obsolete naval plane that enabled the Bismark to be sunk.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-38297099

[Danny42C]

Reader123,

And the same obsolete naval plane crippled the Italian Fleet at Taranto.

Danny.

"There is many a good tune played on an old fiddle"

[ian16th]

and it outlived its successor!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fairey_Albacorehttp://

[OffshoreSLF]

ian16th

try this link-
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fairey_Albacore

[ricardian]

Apologies for the intrusion, this item from Facebook would appear to be appropriate to this group. William Fredrick Chapman had prewar RAF VR number 754772, on commissioning he became number 159320. Danny42C may even know him!

My wife's friend has contacted the RAF to see if they can send someone down to a family funeral for a veteran and they have declined. Would there be anyone able to attend as there is no military presence what so ever and this guys family are very upset. Details below. Thank you for your time.
William Fredrick Chapman
The two main Squadrons he was in on operational flights were 75(NZ) and 57. He was a VR enterant to th RAF before the war no 754772 and became a Sgnt pilot at the outbrake of war. He did not take his commision until after his ops by which time he was ranked Warrent Officer first class. Once he took his commision his no was 159320 and he was finally discharged as a F/Lt in May 1946 when he was in Air Traffic Control and worked in the Ministery of Air Traffic Control.
The venue for the funeral is Bournemouth Crem Strounden Avenue, Charminster, Bournemouth, Dorset, BH8 9HX, on the 21.12.16 at 1400hrs.

[MPN11]

How sad. I can do nothing right now, as I'm abroad, but could a note to the RAF ATC Element at Swanwick be an option?

[Geriaviator]

The memoirs of Sqn Ldr Rupert Parkhouse, recorded in 1995 – Part 10. The first post in this series is #9775 on page 489 of this thread.

https://s20.postimg.org/gi2i3ip7x/12sqn_may12_examifontaine.jpg

Rupert recalls that “when we arrived I thought the old hands were rather subdued”. They had good reason: this is Battle P2332 PH-F of 12 Sqn, shot down by flak while attacking the Maastricht bridges on May 12 1940, the raid on which two crewmen won VCs. The pilot, Flying Officer Norman Thomas, and his two-man crew survived and spent the rest of the war in captivity, ending up like Rupert in Stalag Luft 3. All the attacking aircraft were shot down.

WE JOINED 12 Sqn just as the news came through of the two VCs for Flying Officer Garland and his observer Sgt Tom Gray, who were killed on May 12 while attacking a bridge over the Albert Canal in Belgium. Pilot Officer Davy was the only pilot survivor. His Battle was set on fire, his observer and gunner baled out, and he managed to fly the aircraft back after the fire went out. One other pilot shot down became a POW, he was Pilot Officer Digger McIntosh and I later met him in the prison camp.

When we arrived on that Saturday I thought the old hands were rather subdued. We were billeted with an emaciated old widow and Brian Moss and I shared a double bed with an enormous feather mattress but not the widow, I hasten to add.

Next day we were stood down so we aircrew took some bread and tins of pilchards and sat in the sun on the side of a river, and on the Monday I was interviewed by Wing Commander Thackeray in his caravan parked in the farmyard. I can't remember what he said but he seemed a little bit shattered, as I suppose all the old hands were, by what had happened. Then I went to see Sqn Ldr Lowe, the OC Flying, and my flight commander, a chap called Drinkwater who was wearing a Cambridge Blue tie which I thought a little unusual. He took me to the crew room, which was the dining room of a rather fly-blown estaminet in the village. It had a telephone connecting us with the ops room and the flights.

Next morning I went down to the dispersal points and was surprised when a rather wizened flight sergeant wearing WW1 medals and RFC wings came up and asked me if I would air-test a Battle for him. Well, I was dying to get back in the air again so I walked to the machine with my parachute and was amazed when he came along with a flying helmet and jumped into the back, a remarkable show of confidence in this greenhorn pilot.

I had never flown a Battle with bombs on before, and I guessed that its takeoff run would be longer, so I taxied to the far end of the field, opened up and cleared the far hedge with height to spare and climbed to 5000ft, where I tried one or two manoeuvres including a half-hearted stall turn. I hadn't made any allowance for the extra 1000lb weight of the bombs and I was amazed when the aircraft flicked over onto its back. I recovered quite quickly, took the aircraft back in to land, misjudged the approach and had to come in with an awful lot of engine on. What the poor flight sergeant in the back thought of all this I was to find out later. Anyway we landed with a thump, the brakes were good and we stopped before the line of aircraft at the other end of the field.

I got out and signed the authorisation book in the flight commander's tent where I couldn't help overhearing the flight sergeant in the maintenance tent alongside. He was expostulating about 'That bloody Pilot Officer Parkhouse, I'm never going to fly with that bugger again!' and frankly I didn't blame him because the ammunition pan for the Vickers machine-gun had come off and hit him on the head.
NEXT POST: Rupert goes to war at last. All he has to do is to find the Germans ...

[Danny42C]

ricardian,

Sorry, name doesn't ring a bell, have not been on the squadrons mentioned. Commissioned some time after me (I was 156***).

I think it was the Ministry of Civil Aviation. Hope someone can rally round (nearest RAF Association?)

Danny.

[Chugalug2]

A bit of nostalgia, one of those excellent Aeroplane drawings by J H Clark showing the Fairey Battle. It tells us that the internal bomb stowage was not in a bomb bay but in four bomb compartments set in the wings, one per bomb. It also shows the Bomb Sighting Sliding Panel in the Well below the pilot where the Nav lay prone for aiming.

http://i184.photobucket.com/albums/x199/chugalug2/battle-2_zpsvdndpzfh.gif

Geriaviator, thank you for this continuing tale of Rupert Parkhouse. He gives some idea of the terrible losses that were sustained in those obsolescent Battles, and the effects it had on the survivors. Keep it coming please.

[Danny42C]

Chugalug,

Thanks ! - all is now made plain. Were there any other cases of bombs carried internally in the wings ? Externally, they surely would not incur much more drag (at "Battle" speeds) ? And the inside wing space could be used for fuel.

Always thought it a well proportioned, graceful aircraft.

Danny42C.

[Bob Wyer]

Both the Short Stirling and the HP Halifax had wing bomb bays, must have been others.

[Buster11]

I believe the IL-2 also had internal bays for small bombs in the wing roots.

[oxenos]

Early Ansons

[Geriaviator]

https://s27.postimg.org/z0rj7318z/Battle_bombaimer.jpg

Using his Course Setting Bomb Sight designed in 1916, a Battle bomber takes aim through sliding window in the belly. Sadly few of them reached this stage before they were shot down by flak and fighters.
Thanks Chugalug, plenty more posts to come, Rupert's story will keep us reading until next year.

[Danny42C]

Bob Wyer, Buster11 and oxenos,

Thanks - you learn something new every day !

Danny.

[Geriaviator]

The memoirs of Sqn Ldr Rupert Parkhouse, recorded in 1995 – Part 11 . First post in this series is #9775 on page 489 of this thread.

NEXT DAY, Tuesday June 11, we stood by in the estaminet all day, the phone ringing occasionally and sending shivers through us. After afternoon tea and we began to hope we would not operate that day but about 5pm the phone rang and we were called to the ops room.

We were briefed to attack German tanks which were approaching Le Havre from 8000ft. I was supposed to fly No. 2 to a New Zealander called Hayden but after takeoff I could not find him so I flew off to Le Havre on a beautiful day. We had no trouble finding Le Havre, there was a great pall of smoke coming from the port. I didn't see any other Battle aircraft at all, nor a single thing on the road. I wondered vaguely whether I should go down and find something to strafe but I dissuaded myself from that rather foolhardy course of action and we landed back at Souge at about 7.30pm.

On the way back I was wondering whether I was the only one who had not dropped any bombs and that put me in a state because I thought I'm going to be the butt if I was the only one to bring my bombs back. The other aircraft had landed and it was with intense relief that I saw their bombs doors opening and their bomb racks coming down and every one had bombs on.

I've never forgotten the joy of the ground crews as we stopped at dispersal, they leapt up onto the wing and undid our straps for us. I must say there was an intense feeling of joy that one had got the first operation over, and one hoped that the trepidation before takeoff would not be quite so bad the next time.

At 10.30 that evening I was detailed as Flarepath Charlie so I went out and watched six Battles take off to bomb targets at night. At that time it was the flying pattern that the experienced crews would do the night sorties while we youngsters would fly by day. About midnight they all came back safely which was a great relief.

During this time I made a special friend of Davy who had survived the Maastricht raid. He was always quoting poetry, one of his great poems being Say not the Struggle Nought Availeth. He pulled my leg because I was Cranwell and he was short service, but we had the same background and we got on extremely well. It has always been a great sadness to me that he was killed later in the Battle of Britain.

Next day there were no operations, we hung around in the crewroom all day waiting for the phone to ring and having our meals, which were bully beef and potatoes with some kind of tinned vegetables. NEXT POST: With only 218 hours in his log book, Rupert takes off on his second and final mission and finds himself trapped in his blazing aircraft.

[Danny42C]

Geriaviator (pp Rupert Parkhouse RIP),
...German tanks which were approaching Le Havre from 8000ft...
Hope they were on Quadrantals !
...I thought I'm going to be the butt if I was the only one to bring my bombs back...
We worried about our Fusing Links. Again an excerpt from my earlier Posts:

...but it brings us to the point. If you return the bomb switches to "safe" after dropping your bombs, the solenoids withdraw, the links fall out and are lost. Why should that matter?
Because, if you come back with no links, there is at least a possibility (worse, even suspicion) that you have stupidly "bombed safe". With your links "all present and correct", you're in the clear. Also, you don't need new links for the next lot of bombs (there may even have been a shortage of links - it's exactly the sort of small, cheap, insignificant thing we would be short of), and it's one less job for the armourers. Leave the links in (and bomb switches "live")...

but that could have serious consequences......(another story, not relevant).
...I must say there was an intense feeling of joy that one had got the first operation over...
My thoughts ("Brevet" page 134 #2663):
...Climbing down, I felt a tinge of self-satisfaction. I'd done my first "op". I'd struck a blow for King and country in return for their two years' investment in my training. From now on it would be payback time...
Keep 'em coming, Geriaviator !

Danny.

PS: For those who have not seen it, and who want a good laugh, read Geriaviator's Post p.178 #3558:

"THE CHURCH PARADE: or the innocents wronged"
(Best to read: p.176 #3518 " With approval of our CO (and born survivor^^) Danny ... chocks away for Aden 1951! " - as a lead-in to the above).

and

on p.169 #3370, more pictures: 142 Sqn (Battles) in France, 1939.

D.

[BernieC]

re post 9845
Another naive question, if I may be permitted:

Bomb links and solenoids, etc: how "exactly" were things connected? Or where can one look for such information?

[zetec2]

Further to the Fairey Battle pictures earlier, couple shows a partly enclosed middle section to the canopy and a scrapyard with a lot of Battle fuselages.
http://i3.photobucket.com/albums/y94/zetec2/th_tumblr_ogsrbvvVMC1u87v54o1_1280_zpslgp6s50e.jpg (http://s3.photobucket.com/user/zetec2/media/tumblr_ogsrbvvVMC1u87v54o1_1280_zpslgp6s50e.jpg.html)
http://i3.photobucket.com/albums/y94/zetec2/th_BATTLE_zpspetci3ja.jpg (http://s3.photobucket.com/user/zetec2/media/BATTLE_zpspetci3ja.jpg.html)

[Chugalug2]

Interesting pictures, Zetec. It would seem that what little daylight was available to the Nav in his subterranean office came through 4 apertures in the decking enclosed by the glazing connecting the pilot and air gunner canopies. Presumably he had to forego this when said glazing was overpainted as in the pic that you posted. Would it be a mod to cut down reflections from this veritable flying Kew Gardens that could attract some unwelcome attention?

The other pic is so sad. Is there anything more likely to depress someone who has flown a particular aircraft type (civil or military) than such a scene? All that ingenuity, all that danger, all those memories, and all ending up in an untidy heap awaiting final execution.

Geriaviator, your man is uncommonly self effacing. He loses his leader but nevertheless presses on to the target area. Problem is there are no targets so he returns full of angst as well as bombs. At least he has a crew to back up his claim. I've always wondered how a lone pilot (fighters usually, but other roles as well) could justify their lack of success in a similar situation. It must have been a common enough experience. The tales of wingmen losing their leader, section, flight, or squadron in the melee, indeed losing sight of all other aircraft entirely and emerging from the battle into clear blue sky are legendary. Were they consoled, lectured, or simply ignored by those who had learned how to hang on to both leader and to life?

[esa-aardvark]

BernieC, a long time ago (1960 ish) I took a boat out onto the salt marshes and retrieved a bomb release from a crashed bomber, no idea
what it was , but it had some very convincing bullet holes through it's propellers. the hook was just a 'thing' 6*6" or so with a hook and an electric coil.

[Danny42C]

Chugalug (#9848),
...The other pic is so sad. Is there anything more likely to depress someone who has flown a particular aircraft type (civil or military) than such a scene? All that ingenuity, all that danger, all those memories, and all ending up in an untidy heap awaiting final execution...
There are harrowing stories. Here is an extract (you may remember it) from my Page 160, #3200.

Predictably, nobody wanted a Vegeance. 225 Group took the last option and ordered me to burn my aircraft where they stood . I was appalled. It would be a disgusting thing to leave three piles of blackened scrap on the town maidan as a last memento of our occupancy.

And what would be the likely effect on my airmen's morale? They'd worked tirelessly on their aircraft for two years: we'd never had to cancel a single Trial for unservicability. Was I now supposed to order them to chop them up and put them to the torch ? These were the times of the large scale mutinies in the northern cities (among disaffected troops kicking their heels, waiting to get home). I didn't want a mutiny on my hands, and protested vigorously.

Group's first reaction was pig-headed. They ordered me to do as I was told or face Court Martial. Still I remained obdurate, and after further exchanges of acrimonious signals, wiser counsels prevailed and the SASO relented. I was allowed to fly my aircraft to a M.U. at Nagpur for scrapping. There the dark deed would be done, but at least by somebody else out of sight of my chaps.

The day came in March 1946 when FB986 and I had to part. We'd come to the end of the road. I had to move quickly before Group changed its mind. On March 4th I paid my last visit to Yelahanka "pour prendre congé" from the SASO, did airtests in the next few days and on the 12th my log reads simply "Hakimpet - Nagpur.......4hr 15min". It would be the last entry in it for more than three years.

A forlorn little armada set off. Hakimpet was of course a refuelling stop. I had faithful Sgt Williams in the back with all the paperwork, and the other two VVs with me. We were cruising around 10,000 ft and as Nagpur came over the horizon ahead I toyed for a few moments with the mad idea of doing a dive down on them as my swan song.

Of course I put it out of mind immediately; the Cholaveram reaction was reason enough, and neither of the other two pilots had ever done a dive; they were non-operational (on VVs, that is); we'd never dived at Cannanore - there was no reason to. I suppose I could have said: "just follow me down and do what I do", but that risked making a profound impression (or even two !) on Nagpur.

(As a matter of interest, Nagpur is reckoned to be in the exact mathematical centre of the Indian subcontinent - just thought you'd like to know).

We trailed in, parked, handed over the aircraft documents, patted the aircraft, :{ lugged our parachutes over to the parachute section, left them there and that was that. It was the end of the Vultee Vengeance story (well, not quite yet)...
Ckeers, Danny.

[Danny42C]

BernieC (#9846),
Welcome aboard !

Can't quote you official chapter and verse, but this lengthy extract from my Post (Page No.134. #2680) may cast a little light on the subject.

I'm surprised that no one has already jumped in with an answer to this, as AFAIK, this was the standard safety mechanism for all medium sized H.E. bombs during the war. Never was in Bomber Command myself, but I understand that the 4,000 lb "cookie" was too fat for any safety device, so they were "live" from the moment the fuses were fitted until the armourers removed them after landing.

Any ex-armourer within earshot ?

...Hang-ups are rare, but can be very dangerous. If you have one, you try to get rid of it safely by chucking the aircraft about over water or open country. If it still refuses to budge, you have a difficult decision. In theory, if the switches are "safe", the thing should be harmless and you can land with it - or even crash with it, (as I proved the following year}. But it ain't necessarily so.

Shortly after I left Khumbirgram on posting to 8 Sqdn. a crew was killed there when a wing hang-up dropped on landing and exploded when it hit the runway. I think 8 Sqdn. were still "working up" far back in Bengal at the time, so details of the affair were sketchy and took some time to reach us.

It is difficult to imagine how this came to happen. Did the pilot not know he had a hang up? Impossible, you'd say, from what I've been telling you about the hang-up check a few posts ago.

Confession is good for the soul ! The whole of my tale about the jail sortie is perfectly true. But it's actually a composite of my first VV strikes (where in truth we just formed up and went home after bombing) and later ones when this mandatory check had been introduced. (It seemed neater for me to tell the two parts of story in one piece, as it were, as I didn't intend to tell it again - mea culpa!)

So in the early days, not only did we not do any checks, but a practice had sprung up whereby the bomb switches were left "live" after we'd bombed until landing and switch-off. There was some method in this madness.

When a bomb drops, a loop in a wire "fusing link" is held back in the rack by a solenoid bolt which closes when the rack is switched to "live". The other (two) ends of this wire "link" run through holes in a sort of "safety cap", and locks this onto the end of the bomb fuse on which it is loosely threaded. (Same way as a split-pin locks a nut).

This cap protects the detonator inside from accidental impact, (but not from idiots with hammers and chisels!). Incidentally, there are two fuses to a bomb, nose and tail.
It is amazing what blows this cap can survive and still do its job. If a bomb is dropped "safe", the solenoid bolt stays open, the fusing link goes off with the bomb, so the cap stays on the fuse, still held by the wire. It can now go down 20,000 ft into the ground and (should) not go off.

But if the bomb has gone "live", the wire is held back in the rack; the cap has lost its locking. "Windmill" vanes are machined round its circumference, it is loose on the thread, the airflow spins it off in a moment, away we go.

That is rather a cumbersome explanation, but it brings us to the point. If you return the switches to "safe" after dropping your bombs, the solenoids withdraw, the links fall out and are lost. Why should that matter?

Because, if you come back with no links, there is at least a possibility (worse, even suspicion) that you have stupidly "bombed safe". With your links "all present and correct", you're in the clear. Also, you don't need new links for the next lot of bombs (there may even have been a shortage of links - it's exactly the sort of small, cheap, insignificant thing we would be short of), and it's one less job for the armourers. Leave the links in (switches "live").

Good idea? So we thought. And now we can see what might happen. Suppose you have an unnoticed hang-up, it falls off as you land. That's it ! How could it come to be unnoticed on a wing when the pilot rejoined the formation? Only if he were the last man, and it was on an outside wing, it might be possible that no other pilot would notice it. But then, couldn't a gunner on an aircraft ahead, looking back, spot it?
Supposing he did know, he would certainly have done his best to get rid of it, failed and concluded that a landing was safe - it wasn't!

The switches would have gone back to safe, of course, but the trouble with a hang-up is that you never know just how things are in the rack. The bolt may have jammed in the closed position (rear door in my very old car jammed a few months ago, very similar mechanism; main agent estimate £500 [ouch!]; friendly auto-elec chap down road: 3hrs @ £20 = £60 - fixed). And how securely is the claw still holding your bomb? You don't know.

In this way we lost two good men. In fact, it was a risk too far (my log tells me I've done it myself on one occasion, I was lucky). Really, the only sensible thing to do was to bale out and let the aircraft go - there were plenty more where it came from, and a crew is worth more than an aircraft.

I believe that it was in consequence of this accident that hang-up checks became the rule.

One curious little thing: the front fuse cap spun off well clear of the aircraft and was lost (I can see some museum director in the future trying to puzzle out what this little round thing, dug up by a treasure-hunter, might be).

But the tail fuse safety device took the shape of a little sheet-metal butterfly-shaped thing (I've no idea how it worked). On quite a few occasions, an aircraft would come back with this thing embedded in a flap. It was too small to do any real damage, but the flap had to be patched after you pulled it out. It was a nuisance....

Cheers, Danny42C.

[Geriaviator]

https://s20.postimg.cc/kfexi3fhp/Battle_L5156.jpghttps://s20.postimg.org/kfexi3fhp/Battle_L5156.jpg

Fairey Battle used for training in Australia, photo courtesy the RAAF. Four x 250lb bombs were loaded inside the wing on racks which were hydraulically lowered for loading and for dive-bombing. More could be carried on external racks, just visible. Armed with a single forward-firing Browning and a hand-held Vickers K-gun for the rear gunner, visible here with his canopy tilted as a windshield, the Battle was easy prey for the German Me109, at least 100 mph faster and armed with a 20mm cannon and two 50 cal machine-guns.

The memoirs of Sqn Ldr Rupert Parkhouse, recorded in 1995 – Part 12. The first post in this series is #9775 on page 489 of this thread. Note: when he took off in Battle L5580 on his second and final sortie, Rupert had only 218 flying hours in his log book.

THURSDAY, June 13, was another long day and it wasn't until 5.30 that we were called to the ops room and briefed to attack German tanks which were supposed to be laagered up in the Foret de Gault in the Ardennes near the town of Sezanne, NE of Paris.

Once again I could not find Hayden after takeoff but flew over quite easily to the target where I could not see any military activity on the ground at all. This rather mystified me because my father used to talk of seeing the line, but of course the two wars were completely different.

I saw the target ahead, it was an enormous wood, then we entered cloud and I thought I would pop out after three minutes and drop my bombs.

Unfortunately my airspeed indicator pitot head must have iced up and I saw my ASI unwinding at alarming speed. In my trepidation of the initial stages of attack I did not check my artificial horizon and I dived out at about 350mph, the aircraft's never-exceed speed in a dive, so I decided on a dive-bombing attack, which I did.

If only I had thought … what I should have done was to carry on low and returned at very low level. Unfortunately I was the last aircraft on the target and as I was climbing back up to the cloud at our 8000ft operating level my gunner, a little Scotsman called Duncan MacDonald, piped up with ENEMY FIGHTERS ASTAIRRRN, SIRRR! Calling me sir at a time like that … Just as he spoke there was a hell of a bang of cracking metal and I thought for a moment the engine had exploded, so loud was the noise.

I had always decided that immediately upon an attack I would turn to port and as my starboard wing came up I saw a great torch of flame coming from it. I levelled out and told the crew to bale out, but they did not reply and I waited for perhaps 10 seconds before starting to abandon the aircraft myself.

I had to get the hood back and I knew this would be difficult, though on operations I had decided I would never fly with the hood closed. Unfortunately on the runup to target my observer Sgt Morris had gone forward to use the bombsight and had asked me to close my hood because of the rush of air when he slid back his bomb-aiming panel. I immediately complied only to find 15 minutes later that I was in a burning aircraft and could not get the hood back however much I tried. NEXT POST: Rupert describes his desperate struggle to open his canopy and escape from his burning Battle – but in vain. Then the deadly yellow-nosed Me109s of JG26 arrive to inspect their kill.

[BernieC]

Danny42C

Thank you so much for honouring me with an understandable answer to my childish question. I am too young to have been anywhere near a bombed-up aircraft so as to see what the arrangements are, and have missed any previous detailed account.

But not too young to have been straddled by bombs in the London Blitz!

And my military service was in the Rape and Murder Corps. Interesting, but less so than aviation.

[Danny42C]

To anyone who's interested:

Idly roaming around on Key Publishing Co., came across this Link put in by "jagan" (who is well knowh to us from BHARAT RAKSHAK):

<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b8RqlK1d1_k>

This is a string of YouTubes, the first showing the IAF and their VVs (I loved the shot of the little capuchin monkey vainly trying to get up the u/c leg to get up on the wing [pilots used the same way - right foot on wheel, left in the "stirrup", quick scramble, and you're on top], and later (the monkey, that is) gambolling all over the aircraft.

Third youtube is a history of the Vultee aircraft by Pat Macha (?): there's only a bit about the VVs from 25.00 to 27.20 (out of a whole hour !), but plenty about the BT-13, but let's just say that opinions vary about that aircraft !

Of course, the best bit of video about the VV is still the well known "Vlad" compendium of shots.

Danny42C.

[Danny42C]

Geriaviator (pp Rupert Parkhouse RIP).
...I was in a burning aircraft and could not get the hood back however much I tried...Not an enviable position !

In the Spit we had a "jemmy" clipped inside the door, the idea was to smasn your way out through the perspex.
EDIT: ....Unfortunately my airspeed indicator pitot head must have iced up and I saw my ASI unwinding at alarming speed. In my trepidation of the initial stages of attack I did not check my artificial horizon and I dived out at about 350mph...
A similar chain of circumstaces were to lead to the loss of AF447 in the S. Atlantic with 300+ souls on board 70 plus years later.

Still think it a lovely aircraft.

Danny.

[Geriaviator]

Danny: Rupert Parkhouse is still alive, we shall post his picture shortly, but he is no longer able to remember these events. He mentions his stammer in our first post #9775 when he recalls Cranwell entry:
“It was rather intimidating, and I stammered badly, but I passed” and while transcribing the recordings I found it quite moving to hear his stammer returning when he recalls stressful events 45 years later, such as the terrifying experience of being trapped in a burning aircraft.

I too thought of AF447 when Rupert described his ASI icing up, until I remembered his photo of the Link Trainer and his later description of his “awful mistake” which seems to have blighted his flying career. The summer of 1940 was very warm as he will recall when he describes his escape attempts following his belly-landing, say at least 22 deg C. Given a lapse rate of 2deg per 1000ft, the temperature at 8000ft would have been around 6deg so icing was unlikely. Remember that he had only 218 hours' experience; in the stress of his first attack I think he became disorientated in cloud, failed to check his horizon and stalled his loaded aircraft.

For those who wish to hear the account of a very brave and honest man, his recordings can be heard at Parkhouse, Rupert Charles Langridge (Oral history) (15476) (http://www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/object/80015010)
More tomorrow.

[Danny42C]

Geriaviator,

My profound apologies to Sqn Ldr Rupert Parkhouse ! It would seem that, like Mark Twain, "reports of his death have been greatly exaggerated".

Thanks for the link, but my meagre skills prevented me from hearing the spoken word.

No matter, we are all agog for the next instalment. How does our hero escape ?

Danny.

[Chugalug2]

Geriaviator, many thanks for the link to the IWM recording of Sqn Ldr Parkhouse, telling his story as transcribed by you. What comes across most is the incredible modesty of this man. He is for ever describing other cadets, fellow officers, etc, with brief anecdotes of their deeds, their famous fathers or families, with his own story being one of downwind approaches, difficulties with instrument flying, and so on. The truth is he was one of a very select band of pre-war Cranwell Cadets, even gaining a scholarship there. Only occasionally do we get an insight into the self motivation and inner drive that lay behind his apparent self effacement. Everyone else throws away their slide rules on graduation, but not he! In fact he still has his to this day! That was the real man, very aware of his humble background with an anathema for waste, and a determination to succeed at his chosen career. Perhaps this also explains his feelings of failure, blaming himself for being shot down on his second daylight raid flying a Fairey Battle in the AASF. I suspect few others who suffered that fate in that one sided battle blamed themselves. Perhaps his real angst is the fact that he survived and so many of his colleagues did not. A well known syndrome, I believe.

PS, I intend to follow your written account before his spoken one; so holding at reel 3 for now.

PPS. Danny, if you click on Geriaviator's link, you should be taken to a page on the IWM site with a black square facing you. That black square should change to a grey one with a loud speaker icon in the centre. If you click on the red square on that with your mouse/ pad you should see the a whirring icon and then hear the sound track of Reel 1. Reel two, etc, can be selected in turn.

[jeffb]

Danny:
Re your 9851:
Yes you are right, the 4,000 pound cookies did not have any method of being dropped safe, as was illustrated by Dad's emergency jettison of the entire bomb load of their Lanc following the second engine failure. As he put it, once you dropped the thing, it was going to go bang. They dropped it from just under 5,000 feet, did a sharp turn away, yet the aircraft was severely shaken up by the detonation. It did give them pause to think what happened over the target.
As far as the pins/lanyards, if the bombs were dropped normally, they would return with a bomb bay full of them. However, reading several books on Bomber Command, it was not an uncommon practise for the Skipper to operate the jettison bar ( a lever in the cockpit of Lancasters) after the bomb aimer had called bombs gone, and they were waiting the dreaded 30 seconds for the much hated bomb picture. This to ensure that there were no hang ups, but would result in all the lanyards being dropped. I have no idea if that was something Dad's crew did, but in the books nobody seemed to call the practise into question
Jeff

[Fareastdriver]

but would result in all the lanyards being dropped

Maybe they were hoping they would strangle the AA gunners.

[Geriaviator]

The memoirs of Sqn Ldr Rupert Parkhouse, recorded in 1995 – Part 13
The first post in this series is #9775 on page 489 of this thread.

THE FAIREY Battle hood was badly designed in that it had two handles, so you had to use both hands, and there was also a clip beside the seat which you had to release before you could grasp the handles. Normally one would hold the stick between one's legs and pull the hood back as the speed decreased, but I was in considerable panic to be quite frank. I had the aircraft trimmed slightly nose high so I put the stick between my legs but as I tried to pull the nose kept rising and as I neared the stall I had to let go the hood and push the stick forward again.

After about 30 seconds of frantic pulling I concluded that I was not going to get the hood back. I was worried about the fire spreading so I decided to crash-land. I put the flaps down, went into fine pitch, found the largest field I could see and put the aircraft down with quite a heavy thump. The blades of the airscrew folded over in quick succession as we sliced across a tree-lined road with great efficiency and slithered to a halt.

Despite slight distortion to the airframe from the crash I was able to pull the hood back, to my intense relief, I undid my straps and nipped out very quickly before remembering that I hadn't got a map. I was about to get back into the cockpit when the front gun ammunition began exploding and the fire was taking hold, so I desisted. Strangely enough, I was so elated at surviving that I think I danced round the aircraft twice in a sort of mad war-dance.

Then I was quite disconcerted when a dozen Me109 fighters began circling around me. First I waved to them, thinking of the Biggles stories I suppose, the chivalry of air combat in World War One, then I wondered if they would shoot at me so I ran over and lay down in a ditch. After one circuit these superb looking aircraft flew off, it was really quite a sight to see them with their yellow noses and black crosses flying around me at about 50 feet.

NEXT POST: Having survived his terrifying experience, and worried for his crew, Rupert tries to make his way back to his base at Souge.

[Danny42C]

Geriaviator (#9858),

Thanks for the detailed instruction: only got a pale blue "IWM", clicked on that, got a black square which did nothing, wandered about a bit and found 'Oral Records', got no joy and retired hurt in full 'Christopher Columbus' mood. He (as you'll recall): "Didn't know where he was going when he set off; didn't know where he was when he got there; and didn't know where he'd been when he got back".

That describes me exactly with any IT problem ! Give up ! I am beyond human aid ! - but thanks for trying, all the same.

Now I must apologise for my #9854, in which I airily refer to the 'Vlad' video without attributing it to you as the first, AFAIK, to bring it to our notice. "I'll look your Post up, and give the reference", I thought. Could I find it again ? - I could not. Tried "Search This Thread" (predictably as much use as a sick headache, although must admit it can find "Amapola" all right). Useless ! (Even Google professed total ignorance).

Now this Thread is "just like old times", isn't it ? - with hares running all over the place and people chipping in with helpful scraps of information. So, one at a time, here is my two cent's worth.


jeffb (#9859) and FED (#9860),

Now the "lanyard" has popped up in the discussion (first time I've heard of them being used for this purpose, but had no experience in Bomber Command). Clearly a good idea (why waste soft iron wire when glorified string will do the job ?). In which case, why not not just get longer bits of string to reach the "cookie" fuses ? (plus added peace of mind to the poor devils sitting on 'em).

Yes, some blast ! I understand that the idea was that the "cookie" would blow all the tiles/slates off for ¼ mile around, then the Stirlings would come along with a load of incendiaries for the now roofless buildings and get a good fire going in no time (most incendiaries bounced off our slates). Didn't the Germans use a parachute "Land Mine" on us for the same purpose ? (it was reputed to be the size of a pillar-box; it was a bit of a facer if you took down the blackout in the morning and saw an unexploded one of these sitting in your front garden).
...to operate the jettison bar...... after the bomb aimer had called bombs gone...... This to ensure that there were no hang ups...
Could you be sure? Only if the whole rack plus hung-up bomb was dumped (but that would be terribly expensive ?) Otherwise the thing would still stick to the rack because of the defect which had caused it to hang-up in the first place. Don't know, are there any armourer or bomber heroes (and they were all heroes IMHO) on frequency ?


Chugalug (#9858),
...What comes across most is the incredible modesty of this man...Kipling said it for all of us:

"Greater the deed, greater the need
Lightly to laugh it away.
Shall be the mark of the English breed
Until the Judgment Day".

In the (unlikely) case I pop my clogs in the meantime, a Happy Christmas and a prosperous New Year to PPRuNe and all who sail in her !

Danny.

[Geriaviator]

In the (unlikely) case I pop my clogs in the meantimeHeaven forfend, Danny, you still have to make post #10000 which is now on the far horizon! I'm sure all readers of this enthralling thread will join in returning your Christmas and New Year wishes.

As to cookies, reclamation work sometime in the early 1960s uncovered a number of metal objects along the Belfast Lough mudflats. Most were happily hauled away by the local scrap men but a couple proved too heavy to move. It dawned on someone that some debris might be German in origin, as the city, its shipyards and Shorts aircraft factory only a mile away had been heavily bombed in 1941 with the loss of more than 900 lives.

The bomb disposal team was summoned from England, for in those happier times Northern Ireland did not need one. The ATO examined a series of corroded oil drums and marine scrap before deciding that one big corroded, weed-encrusted drum was suspect, and that the area should be cleared while he placed a small disruptive charge. There followed a colossal explosion which was heard in Bangor and Carrickfergus 14 miles away, the windows were blown out from Mount Vernon flats over a mile away, and premises half a mile away were showered with stinking mud. This proved that the suspicious object was indeed a Luftwaffe landmine which had slumbered beneath the tides for 22 years.

[Danny42C]

Chugalug,

I must apologise for addressing my Post #9862 to Geriaviator (when it should clearly have been to you), as if #9548 was from him and not from you. We Seniors easily become confused ! Mea Maxima Culpa! (and I haven't had a drop of the hard stuff all day !)

So as to to be perfectly clear, I was answering you when I wrote:

...Thanks for the detailed instruction: only got a pale blue "IWM", clicked on that, got a black square which did nothing, wandered about a bit and found 'Oral Records', got no joy and retired hurt in full 'Christopher Columbus' mood. He (as you'll recall): "Didn't know where he was going when he set off; didn't know where he was when he got there; and didn't know where he'd been when he got back".
That describes me exactly with any IT problem ! Give up ! I am beyond human aid ! - but thanks for trying, all the same.
Now I must apologise for my #9854, in which I airily refer to the 'Vlad' video without attributing it to you as the first, AFAIK, to bring it to our notice. "I'll look your Post up, and give the reference", I thought. Could I find it again ? - I could not *. Tried "Search This Thread" (predictably as much use as a sick headache, although must admit it can find "Amapola" all right). Useless ! (Even Google professed total ignorance).
Now this Thread is "just like old times", isn't it ? - with hares running all over the place and people chipping in with helpful scraps of information. So, one at a time, here is my two cent's worth...


I hope you two gentlemen (and anyone else who was puzzled) will forgive me.

Danny.

[MPN11]

Taking but a brief moment to interject on the Christmas aspect ... I wish you all here the very best of the Festive Season, and a safe and healthy 2017.

I have nothing else to add, except my awe-struck reading of the experiences of my elders, who had such amazing experiences. Thank you all for posting. My Service life was incredibly dull.

[Union Jack]

My Service life was incredibly dull by comparison

I would dare to suggest, MPN11.:ok:

Jack

[Danny42C]

Geriaviator (pp Rupert Parkhouse #9861),
...After about 30 seconds of frantic pulling I concluded that I was not going to get the hood back...
Recalls my experience with a Spitfire at Hawarden:

...My goggles (pushed up on my head) flew off. Held by the band which is buckled to the back of the helmet, they fluttered madly about in the slipstream. I slammed the canopy forward. It shut - with the goggles still outside, but now with the band jammed in the frame, and consequently with me pinned to the top of it by the scruff of the neck! My head was so close to the canopy catch that I couldn't get my hands behind to open it.

Now what? I could see by squinting sideways, and reach the spadegrip at full stretch. I could still fly, but I certainly couldn't land. Not the brightest pebble on the beach, it took me a few seconds to realise what to do. Take your helmet off, idiot! Done, now to retrieve the goggles. It would be a bit of a struggle with the canopy catch as the band was jammed in it...

And in my case, I didn't have a gaggle of Me109s (of whatever nose colour) buzzing round me !

Danny.

[MPN11]

:D Danny ... ergonomics was never a strong point in those days!

[Danny42C]

MPN11 (#9868),

Strangely, the Spitfire cockpit was the most ergonomic one I ever flew in (the result, I suppose, of its having been designed by one man [and he a genius] instead of by a gaggle of know-alls in A.M).

But canopies were always a source of trouble (I well remember the sense of luxury I felt when meeting my first electrically powered one - a P-47 Thunderbolt). What happened when the power failed ? Dunno.

IIRC, the Vampire's canopy frame was locked to the structure by explosive bolts; in extremis you pressed a button somewhere and the whole lot blew off. Or have I just dreamt that ? (Hard to tell these days !)

Supposing that to be true, it is a pity that the Lancaster's enormous "glasshouse" hadn't (AFAIK) a means of jettisoning when 'abandoning ship', as the enormous main spar made it hard for the four occupants of the front office, encumbered by their flying kit and with the aircraft going every which way, to get to the exits in time. But I speak with scant knowledge of this, never having flown in one.

Now my diary tells me "winter begins". Oh, woe !

Danny.

[Danny42C]

Looks as though this, the Finest Thread Ever in Military Aviation Forum is to be pipped at the 10,000 Post Point by "F-35 cancelled - then what ?" We must content ourselves with the fact that our Hit:Post ratio (always the best indicator of popularity IMHO) is 240:1 against the rival 170:1.

Even "Caption Competition" (which you would imagine to be a runaway winner) can only muster 140:1.

Considering only Threads with 1,000 + Posts (to allow the Law of Large Numbers to take effect), and excluding Stickies, can anyone find a higher ratio than ours ?

Disappointed Danny.

[spekesoftly]

Now my diary tells me "winter begins". Oh, woe !
Danny,
Looking on the bright side, tomorrow the days start getting longer ! :ok:

[Chugalug2]

Danny 42C:-
I must apologise for addressing my Post #9862 to Geriaviator (when it should clearly have been to you), as if #9548 was from him and not from you.
Worry not Danny. The attribution was merely for blatant plagiarising of a Googled YouTube post anyway, and to be confused with Geriaviator is mere flattery! :ok:

As to:-
We Seniors easily become confused !
Pull the other one Sir! Your ability to refer back by hundreds of posts on this thread to illustrate a point is well known and, as Geriaviator rightly says, the 10,000th post looms on the horizon and should be rightly reserved for you, the thread Mentor and Senior Pilot of our Cyber Crewroom!

Interesting that you cite the good ergonomics of the Spitfire cockpit. I always understood that, excellent as the aircraft was, its internal arrangements accorded with standard UK practice of "find a space and bolt whatever right there". Could not the U/C and Flap controls be confused in a hurry, being close together, or was that an entirely different aircraft that I'm thinking of?

I remember that on first acquaintance the Hercules layout as being very impressive compared with the seemingly random disposition of radios etc in the Hastings. Was not the Mustang also supposedly impressive in regard to its ergonomics?

Finally many thanks for your Season's Wishes which I return in full by saying a Happy Christmas and a Prosperous New Year to you, and to all who share this shabby but extremely warm hearted Crew Room! :D

[Geriaviator]

Chugalug, you're making me blush :O

[Wander00]

Slightly off topic, but Danny I am sure you will be in the thoughts of many of us on Christmas Day. I for one will raise a glass....

[Geriaviator]

The memoirs of Sqn Ldr Rupert Parkhouse, recorded in 1995 – Part 14. The first post in this series is #9775 on page 489 of this thread.
I GOT UP from the ditch and was vaguely aware of movement in the surrounding fields. Very soon a company of scruffy French infantrymen came up and covered me with rifles and were distinctly unfriendly, I think they must have taken me as a German pilot and I was relieved that I was not wearing my normal black flying suit.

I always carried a French dictionary and told them 'Je suis aviateur Anglais' but they did not seem very convinced until the corporal approached, saw my wings and said 'RAF' at which they all put down their rifles and embraced me. They said they would take me back to their HQ and when asked they said they had seen two parachutes leave the aeroplane and pointed in the direction of these parachutes.

They had a small Citroen with a very pale wounded man in the back seat, whom they were taking back for medical help, but they agreed to drive past where they had seen the parachutes. We had a bumpy ride across fields with me standing on the running-board for a better view, and to my horror I saw German tanks going along a road but they didn't take any notice of us.

Then I spotted the two parachutes on the side of a little hillock, with a line of footmarks through the greenery which I followed into a cornfield where I saw two figures in RAF blue. I ran after them shouting and we had a very emotional embrace, as they escaped by parachute they had seen our aircraft going down on fire and had thought I was probably killed in the crash.

We boarded the little car and drove unto a metalled road with a sign saying Troyes 13km, and Sgt Morris said 'Why don't we leave these Froggies now and make our way to Troyes on our own?' He had been in France since September 1939 and did not trust the French, but I said it would be a better bet if they took us to their HQ and gave us transport back to Souge. He demurred at that, but in view of what happened I've always regretted that I did not take his advice and take that road to Troyes. But there you are, that's how life pans out.
NEXT POST: At last, Rupert and his crew find the German tanks they had been sent to attack. Unfortunately they no longer have the means to do so, and the result is inevitable ...

[ElectroVlasic]

Thanks, Geriaviator, for your on-going efforts. I'm really enjoying the series! Wishing you and everyone else reading this thread a joyous holiday season!

[Danny42C]

Chugalug (#9872),

Thank you for the kind words, Sir ! I would hesitate to describe myself as any kind of mentor to this, or any other Thread, but am in no doubt that you were (and are) my first and most revered mentor, who, five long years ago guided my early, faltering steps in this minefield which is the internet .

Now the Spitfire could not have had the u/c and flap controls more widely apart. High on the LH panel, there was a smart, chrome plated, key-shaped lever, hinged at the top. Normally it was in the up position (and may even have had the word "Up" engraved on it).

When you needed it for landing, you swung this little lever over to 'down', there was a sharp hiss of compressed air (which we said came from the "flap gremlin" who lived behind the panel) - and the flaps came down with a rush, and you had your full 60° in a second or so.

If reasonably level, there would be a sharp nose-up change of trim, but if you were doing a "Spitfire Approach", you would be half-way round the corner with your Spit "on its left ear", and the result was most gratifying, your aircraft spun round on its left wingtip like an old black cab in a narrow street and stopped in an easy position to make a curving round out and a nice at three-pointer TM fashion !

There was no intermediate flap position, but if part-flap were essential for take off (eg for a carrier take-off to land in Malta), the flaps were first lowered, then a suitable block of wood held against the wing space, then the flaps raised again, but this time with the block trapped in the middle. So you now had 20° (say) for take off, over the sea you lowered, the block fell out, and you lifted the flaps again.

The undercarriage (hydraulic) handle was low down on the RH side, it was conventional, the nice little white porcelain grip familiar from the 'smallest room' in most homes.

The flight instruments were the standard "Sperry panel" and the arrangement of engine and auxiliary dials on the RH side no worse than most other service aircraft.

What made the Spitfire so nice to fly was that the positioning of the throttle quadrant, the (articulated) stick with its spade grip, the two-level rudder foot "stirrups" and the seat, were such that everything came easily to hand, and you felt "at one" with the thing at once. It was said that you got in or onto most aircraft, but you 'put a Spitfire on like an old glove'.

Many other types (the Master, for one), used hydraulics for both wheels and flaps, the controls were side by side, and raising the u/c in mistake for the flaps a constant danger.

Enough to be going on with - Season's Greetings to all of Good Will,

Danny.

[CoodaShooda]

And Season's Greetings to All from the Southern Antipodes.

I have been an avid follower of this thread since clifffnemo first put finger to keypad. Its personal reflections have fleshed out the many, many stories of military flying that I pored over as a child (and later :O ) .

Over the past six years, I have also followed, in parallel with this thread, my youngest son's journey towards becoming a modern day air force pilot.

While the equipment and tactics may have changed over time, there appears to be much commonality between the past and present in attitude and focus.

This Christmas, he is en route to his first operational fighter squadron.

At this time where we reflect on thoughts of Peace and Goodwill, my hope is that his story will not come to be entitled "Gaining an RAAF Pilots Brevet In Time For WW III."

[FantomZorbin]

the Finest Thread Ever in Military Aviation Forum is to be pipped at the 10,000 Post Point by "F-35 cancelled - then what ?"


But, surely, none cover such a myriad of topics that come from the congenial/affable members of our 'crewroom' ... and for that we must be grateful to our Mods.


May I wish each and every one of you a Happy Christmas and a good New Year.
FZ

[Wander00]

Cooda - good luck to your son

[Chugalug2]

Danny, I apologise for even suggesting that the Spitfire internals could be any less well done than the universally acknowledged externals. Porcelain handles? How very upmarket! Obviously it was the single exception to the default UK response of "We don't do ergonomics, mate!". Though not having been a single engined member of the two wing master race myself, I can appreciate that such attention to detail could be the difference between success and failure, triumph or defeat.

Your description of the simple yet effective means by which Spitfires (as against Seafires) could be launched from our carriers, in order to reinforce Malta during its siege, is an excellent example of the historical value of this thread. I now know that the Spitfire's flaps had but two positions, 0 and 60 degrees, but that military ingenuity provided for any once off intermediate position for Take Off merely by whittling wood blocks to the desired amount. Now a lot of people didn't know that (self included!), but they do now. Thanks Danny!

PS. CS, may I too echo Wander00's best wishes for your son's RAAF career. May it be long and very fulfilling! :ok:

[Geordie_Expat]

But, surely, none cover such a myriad of topics that come from the congenial/affable members of our 'crewroom' ... and for that we must be grateful to our Mods.

And this number of posts has been achieved without argument and bickering which would boost the number, and for which we are all eternally grateful.


All he very best to all.

[Reader123]

"Now a lot of people didn't know that (self included!), but they do now. Thanks Danny!"

Surprisingly it's actually quite well known and I was reading about it only a week or two ago in the context of Malta. It's even on the Spitfire's Wikipedia page.

(Which also tells us that if fitted with a 170 gallon drop tank, a Spitfire could fly the thousand miles from Gibraltar to Malta and that twelve of them did.)

This made me laugh (Malta again): “On one occasion all our fighter aircraft were grounded in order to try to increase serviceability. The Hun bombers came over in force with quite a large fighter escort. It happened that there were several fighter pilots with me in the Operations Room, one of whom was a Canadian with an unmistakable voice. I put him at the microphone at a stand-by radio set and proceeded to give him dummy orders. He replied just as if he was flying his fighter. This, we suspected, caused a cry of ‘Achtung! Spitfeuer!’ to go over the German radio. In any case, two 109s enthusiastically shot each other down without any British aircraft being airborne. This knowledge that the Germans intercepted our orders stood us in good stead. We claimed that Pilot Officer ‘Humgufery’ shot down the two Huns.” P/O Woodhall

And sorry for the thread drift but this is another fascinating fact: in two months the Axis powers dropped more bombs on Malta than London received during the blitz.

[Danny42C]

Geordie Expat (#9882),

Hear, Hear ! The saintly forebearance of our Moderators (give them a big hand :D) has always been matched by (and is contingent on): the unspoken understanding that "no harsh word be spoken" on our part. As the denizens of this Thread are, to a man (and to a woman), "Gentlefolk", it has been the roaring success that it has been since Clifford Leach (RIP) first had the wonderful idea.

I raise a glass of "the dark waters of the Liffey" (WiKi tells me that two of its tributaries are the Rivers Dodder and Poddle - and I can see why).

Once again, a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to all PPRuNers !

Danny.

[Geriaviator]

The memoirs of Sqn Ldr Rupert Parkhouse, recorded in 1995 – Part 14. The first post in this series is #9775 on page 489 of this thread.

WE APPROACHED the outskirts of Sezanne and there was an odd silence about the place which I found very disconcerting. We turned into the main street and to our horror there was a line of German tanks. The crews had jumped down and were rifling the shops on both sides but they swiftly grasped their weapons and laughingly took us prisoner.

A medical man put a dressing on Sgt Morris's chest, which had been hit by pieces of cannon shell. They took his revolver and gave us a quick search but they didn't find the compass which my father had given me. They then took us to a large four-storey house which was full of French prisoners, with a guard on the front. Upstairs we found a crowd of French poilus who were cooking meat and drinking wine, they were very happy. I can't remember if they gave us anything to eat or not.

As darkness fell we went to the top floor and saw no guard at the back, so we slid down a drainpipe, walked out the back garden, and gingerly went to the main street which was once again deserted.

We found a tin of rusks and a tin of peas in a grocer's shop and set off cross-country in SW direction on my little compass, although we had no maps. We walked all that night until 5am with a rest among a field of corn stooks, but as we crossed a road mid-morning we hid when we saw a German infantry column of bronzed warriors singing a magnificent marching song and led by an officer on a horse and followed by a line of horse transport, it was a very impressive sight which took half an hour to pass.

We then continued but after crossing another road we saw a German recce vehicle about 75 yards away and its crew shouted at us but didn't point their guns. We agreed to run at 45-degree angles and meet up in the woods ahead and on the word 'GO' we ran like rabbits and evaded the Germans. We walked all that night but my crew were having difficulty because their feet were very swollen in their fleece lined flying boots, while I had my officer issue boots for the first time.

Along a railway line we came across a French battery which had obviously been bombed, the horses were lying all over the place and the guns were mangled. I suppose it was the first time we had seen dead men so we did not rifle their pockets for maps and chocolate, somehow it seemed wrong. NEXT POST: Rupert reproaches himself for his crew's predicament: “Since I had landed them in this mess through my instrument flying error I felt very guilty about the whole thing.”

[Chugalug2]

RP (c/o Geriaviator) :-
I can't remember if they gave us anything to eat or not.


Having read, and now listened to, quite a lot of Sqn Ldr Parkhouse's account of both his and others' actions, I think we may take that as a "not". :)

This man is self effacing and uncritical of others to an almost painful degree, and certainly in complete contrast to the defaults of these days. I would think that even by the standards that prevailed in the 30's (when he was still growing up) he was exceptionally modest in his style and demeanour.

To my mind this well illustrates the value of this thread and of accounts being delivered by those who were there rather than by those who merely recount the lives of others. By having RP's story told by the man himself, Geriaviator puts us in direct contact with that man. We have to constantly remember that he comes from that far off place of which we may know very little, ie the past!

[Captain Dart]

'The past is foreign country; they do things differently there'. L. P. Hartley.

A favourite quote of mine and very appropriate to this fascinating thread.

[Geriaviator]

The memoirs of Sqn Ldr Rupert Parkhouse, recorded in 1995 – Part 15. First post in this series is #9775 on page 489 of this thread.

EVENTUALLY we came to a deserted village and my crew said we really must rest overnight, so we found some eggs, climbed into a hayloft and slept fitfully until the morning when I woke to Morris snoring and guttural German voices. A supply column had moved in overnight and soon we were prisoners once again.

They were very good-humoured and took my crew to their field kitchen for coffee and black bread, while they took me to their command car where the Hauptmann [major] said in perfect English: “What a pity our two nations are fighting again because I have an English wife at home. For you the war is over”. He beckoned to his batman who produced a couple of chairs, black bread with jam, and coffee while we talked for half an hour. He told me that his wife came from Devon, which he knew very well, then he apologised for having to send us to the POW collecting point.

On arrival I was put among a group of French officers while my crew were put among the French poilus, although I tried to argue they were warrant officers and should stay with me. We slept in four cottages surrounded by barbed wire and were fed from a French kitchen for about four days, then marched out in a long column. My crew had very bad dysentery and were put on the medical cart, and though I was constantly aware of my duty to escape somehow I just couldn't leave them. Since I had landed them in this mess through my instrument flying error I felt very guilty about the whole thing.

When we reached Meaux I was placed in the civil prison while my crew were put in the infantry barracks. My gunner MacDonald had become really ill and was placed in the hospital where I was able to visit him but I was very shocked by his condition, I just hoped he would not die.

I remained in prison for about three weeks and was able to give a letter to my parents to a French war correspondent who was due for release. It reached them eventually via the American Embassy. I was very worried at the effect of my capture would have on my parents as my brother had been an invalid from birth and I was in effect their only son.

NEXT POST: Rupert tries vainly to find another way to escape, reproaching himself when he is unable to do so.

[Danny42C]

Geriaviator (pp Rupert Parkhouse),
...What a pity our two nations are fighting again...Curiously enough, my Dad said almost the same of WWI: "We were fighting the wrong people !"

Really, Rupert must stop blaming himself for the fact that they were where they were. The Fortunes of War, old chap ! They were alive, weren't they ? Many were not. What had they to moan about ?

Nice to hear the chivalrous way their captors treated them. (But that Major's * wife must've had a hard time).

EDIT: * Hauptmann = Captain (3 pips), I think, Rupert

Compliments of the Season to all PPRuNers !

Danny.

[mikehallam]

All the Best to you Danny & all the other essential contributors here.

Merry Christmas,

mike hallam

[MPN11]

Merry Christmas to you all, and thanks to all those who have made this the "Must Read" Thread every morning. I wish you all the very best of health and good fortune for 2017.

We are not having a Christmas this year, due to assorted sickness and other issues in the family here [too complicated to relate] but we will have one privately later when it can be properly enjoyed. :(

Flexibility is our watchword :)

[FantomZorbin]

Unfortunately the "flexibility" only extends to the thought process ... it gets lost in transmission to the rest of the body.


A very Merry Christmas to all on this Thread of Threads.

[Octane]

Hello Danny,

Do you have any WW2 Christmas experiences you would care to share with us?!

Cheers and Merry Christmas,

Octane

[Wander00]

MPN11 hope all works out ok. Happy Christmas nevertheless. W

[jerryh99]

Merry Christmas all, and especially to Danny.


A photo album has turned up containing photos from my Great Uncles time in Asia in 1944/5/6, which I will see later today. They are apparently dated, so likely will be possible to tie in with his log to have a guess as to where were taken. I am told they mostly seem to be taken during off duty times or on leave, but one appears to be a squadron photo taken with a very large single engine aircraft in the background - I'm hoping its a Vengeance of course, but prepared that it may be a Harvard, there is a mention that the squadron, 110 (H), had one.


I watched the you tube video of Vengeances the other day - not the most beautiful of aircraft, but they look surprisingly graceful in the dive. Must have been disconcerting for the gunner facing backwards with little to do.


Anyway, watch this space!


Jerry.

[Geriaviator]

https://s20.postimg.org/pyemfztwt/Rupert_as_single_pow.jpg

The memoirs of Sqn Ldr Rupert Parkhouse, recorded in 1995 – Part 16. The first post in this series is #9775 on page 489 of this thread.
ABOUT August 8 we were taken by German truck to the prison at Drancy, the place that became infamous later, but at that time it consisted of several tower blocks where the lifts were working and we lived in fairly civilised conditions.

A week or so later a couple of French officers told me they had discovered an underground passage for the heating system and invited me to join them in an escape. So in my naïve way I went back to my companions and asked to borrow a French uniform. They were extremely worried because it would mean them wearing my RAF uniform and being implicated in the escape. They told me I did not speak proper French and would be a drag on the others, and they didn't think I ought to go.

Rather shamefacedly I told my friends what I had been told, and I have regretted it ever since. They escaped next day and when it was discovered we were asked to sign parole not to escape, which I could not do and so I was consigned to the other ranks quarters which were half-completed concrete shells. We lay on bare boards and I got lice and very bad diarrhoea until I got some medicine.
I tried vainly to think of a means of escape but it wouldn't come. I met a sergeant air gunner and we endlessly discussed escape without success; looking back I think this was the result of the emotional experiences we had been through, post-operational stress they call it now. But that's not totally convincing because several gallant chaps escaped from France.

On September 10 I was reunited with the French officers and we were taken by train to Germany. At the Belgian stations the people would come and give us fruit and things. Once again nobody thought about jumping the train for the plan just wouldn't come. Eventually we arrived at a place called Liebnitz in Silesia and were marched to a prison camp called Oflag VIIF which was the old Saxon cadet school which was surrounded with barbed wire.

We actually lived the kind of life that the cadets would have lived; we had quite smart parades in the morning, the German commandant was a typical Prussian who came out wearing a picklehauber and a sword, we were counted and then we could walk around the perimeter. At night we would sleep treble bunked in the school with an enormous coal stove in the centre, and my French friends had great amusement from telling me bawdy stories in French and getting them to repeat them in my bad French accent.

Such was the efficiency of the German railways and the Red Cross that a whole consignment of musical instruments arrived at the camp after the first month. There were many talented players among the thousand French officers and we would sit down to lunch, a pretty sparse bowl of soup and bread, and listen to the orchestra playing. On the walls around us were the honours boards with names picked out in gold of the cadets who had fallen in the Franco-Austrian war of 1866, the Franco-Prussian war of 1870, and of course an enormous list from the First World War.

NEXT POST: Rupert is reunited with RAF officers in the Dulag Luft camp, among them Roger Bushell the famous escaper.

May I wish a Merry Christmas and Peaceful New Year to all our fellow Pruners, particularly to Danny in his crewroom seat of honour, and most of all to all British Service personnel and their families, wherever they may be.

[Brian 48nav]

May I echo Geriaviator's words by wishing all Pruners here a merry Christmas and a Happy New Year and most particularly our 'senior man' Danny - 10,000 posts getting nearer!

[Danny42C]

Octane (#9893),

Strangely enough, not really. Christmas 1940, I spent at home, having just enlisted and been sent home on "deferred service".

Christmas, 1941, I was in the US, it was just after Pearl Harbor, they were still so shell-shocked that they had little heart for celebrations, it was very quiet. Log shows three flights on 24th, then two on 27th, so something must've happened in between, but I can't remember what.

Christmas, 1942, I was at Worli (Transit Camp): vivid memory, as a Sergeant, of serving Christmas dinner to airmen while under violent air attack from every sh***hawk in Bombay.

Christmas, 1943, now an officer, flew an 'op' on morning of 24th, then an "admin" flight in afternoon, then nothing till another "admin" flight on 27th. Again the tantalising gap, but as 1941, no memory. Had recently been shanghaid onto 8 (IAF) Sqn, most of the incumbents were Moslems, or Sikhs, or various other Hindus, so a Christian celebration seems unlikely.

Christmas, 1944, out of a job in Yelahanka, very few in Mess, quiet.

Christmas, 1945, up in the snows of Kashmir on RAF Ski School, having basely deserted my "squeeze" in Cannanore (she got her own back in spades when I returned !) Too cold and too exhausted to bother with Christmas Day.

1946, back home a civvie again.

All recorded in detail somewhere on this (and other) Threads. Will try and find references if you want (and if PPRuNe "Search this Thread" will work) - but don't hold your breath !

Not much of a story, really. Cheers and Happy New Year ! Danny.

PS: We appear to be on opposite sides of the argument in Another Place, but then: "Quot homines, Tot sententiae". D.

[Danny42C]

jerryh99 (#9895), Geriaviator (#9896), and Brian 48nav (#9897),

Now, spare an old man's blushes ! What you see is what you get - no more ! Yet am grateful for the seat by the fire in the "snug" (or the stove in our cybercrewroom), old chaps feel the cold - our blood gets thin.

Brian 48nav: the Vengeance was a lousy aircraft, but a fine dive-bomber !

Geriaviator (pp Rupert Parkhouse). More, more, please !

Happy New Year to all PPRuNers. Lang may their lums reek !

Danny.

[Geriaviator]

The memoirs of Sqn Ldr Rupert Parkhouse, recorded in 1995 – Part 17. First post in this series is #9775 on page 489 of this thread.
ABOUT the end of October I sent my family some POW letters which reached them, and in mid-November I was transferred to the famous Luftwaffe camp at Dulag Luft [near Frankfurt] where after a very perfunctory interrogation – after all my information was four months old – I can't really describe my delight at being among RAF officers again. The Red Cross parcels had arrived and there was plenty of chocolate and supplies and new clothes, so it was a completely different environment which caused me great joy.

There were permanent staff there, among them Wing Commander Day, Roger Bushell the famous escaper who would be shot by the Germans after the escape from Stalag Luft III, Bob Stark, a New Zealand navigator, Lt Cdr Jimmy Buckley who would drown in a Danish lake after escaping, Alistair Panton who had just come out of hospital in Belgium after being badly burned when he was shot down, and Woolloomooloo Baird who came from a town of that name in New Zealand. An indication of stress levels was perfectly indicated by Alistair Panton who had been shot down three times and who had frightful nightmares every night, he would bale out of bed and we had to put him back and calm him down.

About November 10 I was sent by train to Stalag Luft I at Barth on the Baltic coast, a compound near a flak school and with two large barracks each holding 120 chaps, a dining hall, and another block being built to the east.

Once again we were rather short of food and I remember particularly Christmas 1940, when we had a special piece of pork and we were entertained by the NCO batmen with a selection of RAF songs containing quite a few lewd passages which amused us all greatly. I still like to remember them now but they're not suitable for this occasion.
NEXT POST: Rupert joins the tunnelling teams and has yet another narrow escape.

[Fareastdriver]

we were entertained by the NCO batmen

Batmen! Oh how I remembered those. Uniforms pressed, laundry hung correctly and two cups of tea in the morning when you put your shoes outside the door.

[Danny42C]

"Oh, my Batman awoke me from my bed -
I'd had a good night and I'd got a thick head,
So I said to myself, to myself I said -
'You haven't got a hope in the Mor-ning !"

(RFC lyric)

[MPN11]

My first batman had an artificial arm, with a range of attachments for different aspects of his duties. It was amazing watching Les pressing trousers, then changing the attachment to make the beds.

[Geriaviator]

https://s28.postimg.org/4hb5251cd/Rupert_as_Po_W.jpg

The memoirs of Sqn Ldr Rupert Parkhouse, recorded in 1995 – Part 18. First post in this series is #9775 on page 489 of this thread.

THE NEW block at Barth was completed about March 1941 and I moved there with Alistair Panton, John Bushell who eventually became our ambassador to Vietnam, and Robin Beaufair who was one of the strongest men I ever met. He and Panton had been together at Bedford School and as soon as we went to that block, which was about 20ft from the wire, we started digging tunnels. I think Wally Floody, the Canadian mining engineer and Spitfire pilot who engineered the three famous tunnels from Stalag Luft III in 1943, had joined us and was directing digging operations by three teams in three tunnels.

We had a very elementary trapdoor over the gap of about one foot between the hut floor and the ground level. It was bitterly cold, but we used to go down naked except for a loincloth and as well as digging I was in charge of the fat lamps by which we were able to see. These consisted of a little Marmite tin filled with fat and a wick, the outside being a glass bottle with the top and bottom cut off, topped by a wooden top and a handle. We used to dig in 30 to 45 minute stints, I can't remember the tools but I think we used knives and we put the spoil into the aluminium bowls which we used to wash in. Eventually the tunnel progressed beyond the wire and about May it was ready to break.

I was drawn number 7 to go out with a chap called Newman. We had been saving up food for the journey and we had rudimentary maps copied from various atlases. It was a great night, the tunnel broke and I think the first out was Sqn Ldr Lockett who had commanded 226 Battle squadron. The fourth man was discovered and shots rang out. Four got away I think, five and six came back and the first thing I knew was when ammunition boots hit my head and we all did a smart retreat along the tunnel calling 'Back-back-back' and covered it up. Then we ate all the food we had saved, we had a grand meal for 20 minutes until the Germans arrived and ordered us out of the block so they could search it.

I don't think there were any successful tunnels from that block and the four were all recaptured. The Germans found sand on my clothing and I was given 10 days' solitary confinement, which I looked upon as an intense relief. One was quiet, one could read and one's comrades sent over special cottage pies and things to eat.

There's an interesting corollary in this one which shows the differences in morale and determination between various people. I was quite happy really to stay there, I didn't think of escaping from the cooler because I considered it escape-proof. The odd thing is that the next chap in the cooler was Flt Lt Harry Burton who had also been caught with sand, and over the next 10 days he unscrewed the bars, scooped his way under the wire, made his way to the harbour, boarded a Swedish boat and got home, to be awarded the DSO. I can't help feeling that I was a bit wet, but there you are, one has to live with it, but he was older and more experienced than I was.

NEXT POST: Rupert is sent to Stalag Luft III, where grim experiences and prison life boil over when the Germans murder 50 RAF officers following the Great Escape.

[Danny42C]

MPN11 (#9903),

Not a patch on a good Indian "bearer", though ! (24/7 service). One chap could wet-shave his Sanib without waking him up.

Thik hai, Sahib !

Danny.

[Danny42C]

Geriaviator (pp Rupert Parkhouse #9903),

At Shawbury, 1964, one of my fellow instructors on the ATC School was a Bill Panton. He was a perfect double for Sean Connery (the first "Bond"). All the WRAF on the Station lusted after him. We said that the correct answer to the final examination question: "Define a 'Danger Area' was - "Bill Panton's bedspace !"

Rupert mentions one such at Barth. It is an uncommon name. The dates would fit. Could it be the same man ? (Don't worry about the name, we all answered to whatever name we were called in the RAF (I am not 'Daniel').

We had several ex-POWs in the postwar ATC world. One had got as far as Sweden, but stopped where he was (in fairly comfortable internment) till the war's end. He may have missed out on a DSO, but he spent his time (as was crudely said): "stabbing Swedish women".

That's quite enough of that !

Danny.

[Geriaviator]

Sorry Danny, this Panton was definitely an Alistair who had been shot down like all the attacking Battles on the Maastricht bridges raid. Rupert says in a future post:
I wanted to get to Alistair Panton and a lot of other POWs who were now flying Mosquitos at Benson.As you will guess by now, things did not work out for Rupert when he gets to Benson, and as usual he does not spare himself ...

By the way, I have tried listening to Rupert's IWM recordings on several PCs and iPads and they work fine although sometimes the tape is slow to download. Anyone having difficulty, check that speaker/headphone audio is turned on [Control panel -- sound] as sometimes Windows 7 turns speakers off. If anyone wants the link to the original recording:
Parkhouse, Rupert Charles Langridge (Oral history) (15476) (http://www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/object/80015010)

[JW411]

Geriaviator:

I think your Alistair Panton is F/O A D Panton DFC of 53 Squadron which was based at Poix in 1940 flying Blenheim Mk.IVs. He was first shot down on 11 May 1940 (from my book about 53 Squadron).

"P/O Panton DFC and crew set off on their second survey flight of the day in L9459/B at 1455. They were shot down by 5 Bf109s in Belgium. All three were wounded, however P/O Panton and Sgt J Christie (obs) were able to evade capture and escaped back to England. The gunner, AC2 R W Bence, was captured in hospital and was sadly to lose a leg. He was taken to Stalag XII but was repatriated later in the war".

"Six aircraft took off (from Detling) at 2135 on 14 July 1940 to bomb oil storage tanks near Ghent. F/O Panton in N3551/E got caught in the searchlights and was shot down by flak. He and his observer, Sgt A E Farrow, were captured. Sgt L H Stride, wop/ag, was killed. (Panton ended up eventually in Stalag Luft III). After his release from Stalag Luft III at the end of the war, F/O Panton went on to become Air Commodore Panton CB OBE DFC and was to put his new found skills to good use when he commanded the RAF Police!".

P/O S G L Pepys was also 53 Squadron. Shot down in Blenheim R3691 on 23 May 1940 and also ended up in Stalag Luft III.

Air Commodore Panton sadly died about 10 years ago. I hope that helps.

[Molemot]

Air Commodore Panton wrote a book, which was discovered posthumously by his granddaughter, who put it together for publication. The story of the discovery is here...

Victoria shares story of grandfather?s war - News - Diss Mercury (http://www.dissmercury.co.uk/news/victoria_shares_story_of_grandfather_s_war_1_3688197)

The book is available from the usual sources.

[JW411]

All POWs were interviewed when they eventually got back to UK at the end of the war. I have in front of me the statement made by Alistair Panton on 18th September 1945. I thought some of you out there might find it of interest.

SECRET STATEMENT BY

33331 F/Lt. Alistair Dyson PANTON, D.F.C., 53 Squadron, Army Co-op Cmd.
Attached Coastal Command, R.A.F.

Captured: Nr. Ghent, 15 July 40. Liberated: LUCKENWALDE 22 Apr. 45.
Date of Birth: 2 Nov. 16. Peacetime profession: R.A.F.
R.A.F. Service: Since Jan. 36. Private address: xxxxxxxxx, Bedford.

1. Capture.
We took off from DETLING in a Blenheim aircraft at 21.30 hours on 14 Jul. 40 to bomb oil storage tanks in the SCHELDT CANAL. On the return journey the aircraft was hit by flak and I crash-landed in a clearing among woods.
The aircraft was burning so we burnt our parachutes in the fire, and started to walk through the woods towards the coast. My observer and I walked all that night but, both of us being injured, we sat down by the side of a road in the early hours of the morning, and were picked up by Luftwaffe personnel.
I was taken to a Military Hospital in BRUSSELS, where I stayed for about a fortnight and was then taken to MALINES. There I was put in a barrack which was being used as a Hospital. I remained there for most of August. I was then sent by truck with a party of French soldiers to a place near AACHEN, where I was placed in a shed. I escaped during the night.
I was recaptured the following day and after spending that night in a cell I was taken by train to DORTMUND and HAEMER, where I was kept in solitary confinement for about a month. At that time I was taken by train to DULAG LUFT (OBERURSEL), where I arrived on 15 Oct.
After spending one night in a cell, I was interrogated and transferred to the Main Camp.
2. CAMP IN WHICH IMPRISONED
DULAG LUFT (OBERURSEL) 15 Oct - Dec.40
STALAG LUFT I (BARTH) Dec.40 - March 42
STALAG LUFT III (SAGAN - East Compound) March - Sept.42
OFLAG XXIB (SCHUBIN) Sept.42 - Apr.43
STALAG LUFT III (SAGAN - East Compound) Apr.43 - 27 Jan.45
STALAG IIIA (LUCKENWALDE) 2 Feb. - 22 Apr.45

More to come:

[Buster11]

JW
I was interested to read the PoW statement you quote. Is there a now accessible source where these secret statements might be found? My father was captured in Crete and spent most of his time in Stalag Luft III, and I was unaware that all PoWs made such recorded statements on their return. I'd certainly be glad to read his and to post here.

A Happ(ier) New Year to you and to all PPRuNers.

[Wander00]

One of the most memorable events of my life was to be organising the wake at our Yacht Club of the late Lt Cdr Alastair Easton, who had been incarcerated in Stalag Luft III, with in the "congregation" three other former inmates. I also had a member who was a widow of one of the 50 officers murdered. Hair standing up on the back of your neck stuff

[JW411]

Alistair Panton (Part 2)

3. ATTEMPTED ESCAPE.
About the end of August 40, I crawled out of the hut in which I had been placed for the night with French POWs near AACHEN. I walked Southwest for about 12 hours, when I was stopped by a policeman. I was handed over to German Army personnel and placed in a cell until the following day, when I was taken to HAEMER via DORTMUND.
4. ESCAPE ACTIVITIES.
At STALAG LUFT I (BARTH) from Dec.40 until March 42, I assisted in digging about fifteen tunnels, one of which was successful. During Aug. 41 this tunnel was used and S/Ldr. McCOLM, S/Ldr. LOCKETT and F/Lt. NEWMAN escaped. I was to have escaped from this tunnel, but the third man was seen getting out and the rest of us had to give up.
At STALAG LUFT III (SAGAN), from March to September 42 I was engaged on tunnels all the time, but none were successful.
I assisted in the escape of F/Lt. LAMOND, F/Lt. BEST and F/Lt. GOLDFINCH, during July 42, when they dug themselves out of a "molehill". We had dug a small tunnel first for them to put the earth in, when they dug their way out.
During August 1942 I tried to get out of the camp in a laundry basket but was caught at the gate. I was wearing a white coat, R.A.F. trousers and jackboots, and had maps, compasses, identity papers, money and food with me. I served 21 days in cells for this attempt.
At OFLAG XXIB (SCHUBIN) I worked on four tunnels between Setember 42 and March 43, but none of these were successful. When the big tunnel break was made about 10 March 43, I hid with S/Ldr. GERICKE, Lt. RUFFEL S.A.A.F., F/Lt. LUSH R.C.A.F., F/Lt. LUMSDEN, F/Lt. R EDGE, F/Lt. MacKAY and F/Lt. D.W. FOSTER, in order to escape when the Camp was emptied, as we knew a move was pending. We were caught the day before the move was to take place and served about 10 days in the cells.
At STALAG LUFT III (SAGAN) I assisted in digging two or three more tunnels all of which were discovered before completion. W/Cdr. KAYLL was in charge of these.
During December 43, Lt. RUFFELL, F/Lt. CRAWLEY, Lt. LUBBOCK R.N., and I had a plan to cause diversion in one of the blocks and we were to hide down by the gate, so that when the Germans came in to see what was the matter, we would march out in the confusion, two dressed as guards and two intended to be POWs caught in a tunnel. This failed as the Germans only sent in three or four soldiers instead of a truckload, as expected.
5. LIBERATION
I was liberated at LUCKENWALDE on 22 April 1945 by the Russian Army. I remained there for about five weeks and was then sent by truck to HALLE. I was flown from there to BRUSSELS and from BRUSSELS to the U.K. 0n 26th May.

[JW411]

Buster 11:

You need to start in The National Archives (used to be the Public Records Office) at Kew. Some of their records can now be downloaded so you might not even have to go there. I last used the service a couple of years ago when I was researching the demise of my grandfather at the Battle of Aubers Ridge in 1915. I was able to download all of the relevant War Diaries at a cost of something like £3.10 per download.

So, to get you started you need to go to:

[url]www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/

Select the National Archives 'Discovery' option.

To get you moving in the right direction, type WO 344 into the search bar.

That should take you to the section which holds the General Questionnaires For British/American Ex-Prisoners of War.

You might find some further information in the WO 208 section.

Secret Statements etc can be found in AIR40/1533
Commendations in AIR40/1491
Special Notations in Personal Records in AIR40/268

Happy Hunting.

[Buster11]

JW
Very many thanks for what look like some pretty useful steers, even for the barely computerate. I'll get stuck in and look forward to some interesting discoveries.

[Geriaviator]

I am constantly amazed by the information that emerges from this thread. Thanks to JW411 we now know that Alistair Panton was a Blenheim pilot who also spent most of the war in captivity after a remarkable if brief career. Yet like his fellow POW Rupert he also considered his flying career as a failure, as his granddaughter says in her excellent book Six Weeks of Blenheim Summer:
... shot down a fourth time, captured and made a prisoner of war, Panton describes Six Weeks of Blenheim Summer as a story of failure. Whilst he survived, so many of his friends and comrades did not, and this grief never left him.It's an excellent book and tribute to those who gave so much for their country, and will be enjoyed by anyone who follows this thread.

[JW411]

I didn't get to 53 Squadron until 1972 and I was immediately taken by the squadron spirit. Even in those days we had loads of WWII survivors coming to our reunions and could even manage to muster a few WWI survivors. I was given the job of squadron historian and I resolved to write it all down. It took me over 20 years to do it and, in the process, I met and made some amazing friends. It would be fair to say that several of them who had survived times when the attrition rate was pretty high, expressed something akin to guilt at having survived when so many of their friends had died.

Going back to the wonderful photographs taken at Stalag Luft I that Geriaviator kindly posted, perhaps an explanation of Captain S Pepys (The Essex Regiment) might be in order?

53 Squadron was a Corps squadron flying Be2s/RE8s in WWI. When the squadron re-formed at Farnborough in 1937 equipped with Hawker Hectors it was as an Army Cooperation squadron within 22 Group. Unusually, the Commanding Officer was an Army chap by the name of Major A P C "Pat" Hannay MC (Queen's Own Cameron Highlanders). I think he was the first Army officer to command an RAF squadron. It would be fair to say that Pat Hannay was one of the finest gentlemen that I ever did meet and his after dinner speeches were quite wonderful.

O.C. "B" Flight was Lt E D Joyce (Royal Artillery) and O.C. "C" Flight was Capt K J McIntyre (Royal Tank Corps). Most of the squadron pilots were from the RAF (like Alistair Panton - who joined the squadron in 1938) but the Army were well represented; Ian Bartlett was Durham Light Infantry and Brian Daly was a Lancashire Fusilier.

53 Sqn was the very first squadron to be equipped with the Blenheim IV and they went immediately to France when war was declared, finally settling into Poix de Picardie alongside 59 Squadron (also Blenheims). They were not part of the AASF (Advanced Air Striking Force) but were part of the Air Component of the British Army Field Force.

The name of the game was to carry out reconnaissance flights over Germany in daylight, a highly risky occupation, which soon attracted a lot of casualties. The plan was changed so that the aircraft did not go straight back to Poix (if they survived the outbound leg they would be unlikely to survive going back the same way) but went across the North Sea to a UK airfield.

Alistair Panton's DFC was awarded on 06.03.40 and I think it was for such a flight that he flew on 08.10.39 in Blenheim L4847/D. He encountered heavy flak and when he was photographing a railway line near Bremen he saw nine Bf109s taking off from Stuhr aerodrome with him as the apparent target. He stuffed the nose down and flew out to sea at 10 feet eventually landing safely at Mildenhall.

Which takes me back to Capt Pepys. Halfway through 1940 an edict was issued that the Army officers could either carry on flying as normal but they would have to join the RAF or else return to Regimental Duties. Most of them stayed flying which explains why we still had a Capt S Pepys (The Essex Regiment) when he was also P/O S G L Pepys RAF!

[Geriaviator]

Thanks JW411, I had wondered how Rupert had met an Army captain -- almost fatally. Rupert's story of how he almost obliterated Captain Samuel Pepys of the Essex Regiment, a direct descendant of the great diarist, is in #9802 on page 491.

[Danny42C]

For those of us who had a "soft" war (we said that the greatest danger we were in was of spraining an ankle when jumping down after a sortie !), it ia humbling to read of the courage and the powers of endurance shown by Rupert and his friends during the long years of captivity. They never gave up heart.

I salute them.

Danny.

[Geriaviator]

The memoirs of Sqn Ldr Rupert Parkhouse, recorded in 1995 – Part 19. First post in this series is #9775 on page 489 of this thread.IN MARCH 1942 I was transferred to the new Stalag Luft III at Sagan. We started digging tunnels again of course and in September we were moved to a place called Schubin where we were under the German army. One or two tunnels were made but a couple of frightful incidents took place.

I remember one Battle pilot with whom I was quite friendly went quite round the bend and was shot in the stomach by a guard when he started to climb the wire. He fell down between the wire and the tripwire and we were desperate to go and get him but the German outside was shouting that he would shoot if we went beyond the tripwire. They allowed the doctor to attend to him but up to 200 prisoners had gathered in the most fearful mood and the Germans had to push us back with their machine pistols. It was a tense situation.

I was in a room with Tony Russell, a South African who was a very keen escaper who produced a plan for cutting through the wire. We were going to follow after him but one night I had a terrible nightmare that I was caught in the wire and was screaming, alerting the guards and causing Tony to be shot. After that I decided not to go and I think I became slightly tainted among my companions who were keen to escape and while I carried out sentry duties I was never directly asked to take part in tunnelling operations. In retrospect I feel ashamed of that, it shows I was developing into a very bad mental state.

We returned from Schubin in May 1943 and I stayed at Stalag Luft III for the rest of the war. When I got to Sagan I was recruited to the Cody [escape] organisation and after long conversations with other Regular officers we decided that our careers would be very much blighted, so about September 1943 I decided to leave the RAF at the end of the war and go to university. I started to study history, German and other subjects, I used to imagine myself at university and I lived for a time in a dream world.

I was jolted out of that in March 1944 when the 50 officers were shot and escaping activity ceased. We were in the east compound at that time and the escapers were in the north, so we were really on the side. I think we had one tunnel going very well but it was stopped after the news of the shootings was received.

The winter of 1944 became a bit grim because with the deteriorating communications in the Reich the parcels supply wasn't exactly drying up but we certainly had less food. I do remember that at Christmas 1944 various brands of hooch were made by fermenting tinned raisins and things from Canadian parcels. We mixed this almost pure alcohol with orange drinks for a three-day bender, we were all as drunk as lords.
NEXT POST: The prisoners march west through the snow towards liberation by the advancing Russians, and return home after their years of captivity. Then Rupert asks to return to flying despite his fears.

[Danny42C]

Geriaviator (pp Rupert Parkhouse #9920),

Rupert really does too much self-introspection. His first and best duty to his country is to stay alive (a dead hero is no use to anyone). And, frankly, some of these escape schemes seem hare-brained in the extreme. But, then again, he was there, and I wasn't.

I applaud his decision:
...I started to study history, German and other subjects...
With the time he'd spent in POW camp, and with cigarettes as a sweetener to get the co-operation of the 'goons', he should have been able to get a good working grasp of colloquial German by now. And (from a position of complete ignorance), I should have thought that getting out of camp was the easy bit. What follows next ?

The "Captain of Kopernick" hoax shows what can be done with a German officer's uniform and a knowledge of the language. My limited observation of the German temperament (during 2½ years there 50+ years ago) leads me to think that not that much has changed.

Any chance of asking Rupert about this ?

Danny.

[JW411]

Whilst I am on the subject of Army officers flying with 53 Squadron, I would like to finish off by telling you about my all-time favourite. Lt W S G "Dick" Maydwell (Somerset Light Infantry) was posted in to fly Hawker Hectors in 1937. He was a very keen photographer and owned one of the very first Contax 35mm cameras and rapidly built up a large collection of beautiful air-to-air photographs, not just of squadron aircraft, but also flights of Hawker Furies, early Spitfires and Hurricanes, the prototype Wellington and God knows what else.

He converted on to the Blenheim and went off to France with everyone else in 1939. It so happened that he and his crew were on leave in UK when the Germans invaded the Low Countries on 10 May 1940. On his way back to join the squadron, he was commandeered in the resulting chaos to run a refuelling and rearming unit near Rouen which looked after Hurricane squadrons being sent over from UK on a daily basis. They fell back through Dreux, Dinard and St Malo to Jersey. There it was when Flt Lt Ian Bartlett found him when he landed during a sortie on 18 June and took him back to Gatwick. On arrival, Dick was immediately promoted to Flt Lt and became OC "A" Flight.

He served with 53 (now part of Coastal Command) through a particularly dangerous period attacking the Dutch coast and the Channel ports until he was promoted to Sqn Ldr at the end of 1940. He found himself in Egypt in charge of a small photo reconnaisance unit equipped with Martin Marylands. However, he very soon became OC 14 Squadron equipped originally with Blenheims but then the new Martin Marauder came on the scene. It came with a bit of a reputation but Dick reckoned that they soon got the measure of it. He was the sort of boss who believed in leading from the front and he and his crew managed to shoot down an Italian SM82 (3-engine transport), a Junkers 90 (4-engine transport) and then they encountered a Me 323 Gigant (6-engine transport) off Corsica. The Me 323 pilot threw it on to a beach. Dick landed at an airfield nearby and went to inspect his enormous prize. He sawed the three propeller tips off one engine.

He was promoted out of his job and became a Gp Capt in charge of 325 Wing at Trapani. He did not like being on the ground and after a while he went to HQ (now in Naples) to try and negotiate a return to flying. He was returning in the dark from the meeting driving a Jeep over a level crossing when he was struck by several railway wagons which had not been secured properly. This resulted in him losing his right leg. It took him a long time to recover but he did manage to fly the Meteor and the Vampire after the war.

He finally retired to a cottage out in the countryside not a million miles from Wincanton. I always used to call in on my way down to Cornwall. He was a bit of a country squire and sported a full-set beard. He used a large wooden staff with a fork at the top to help him walk and he looked for all the world like a smaller version of Moses.

Dick was a very keen sportsman and he was an excellent shot. In his gun room he had hundreds of deer skulls mounted on the wall, all with a caption of "what, where, when etc" in beautiful copperplate writing. In the middle was a large tiger's head ("Simla, old boy, not Somerset"). When I last saw him he was 85 years old and he was still shooting (he used the fork on the top of his wooden staff to balance his rifle) but he did admit that he was finding it a bit of a struggle, what with his wooden leg and all that, dragging the deer out of the forest!

In pride of place on the mantelpiece in the lounge was a mounted propeller tip from his Me 323. In 1982 he made contact with the captain of the Me 323 and went over to stay with him in Germany and to reunite him with one of the other propeller tips. They started a friendship which was to last for over 20 years.

My favourite memory was our first visit to his local pub. I naturally called him "Sir" but after about half an hour he said "You may call me Dick". It was like getting a medal! Gp Capt "Dick" Maydwell DSO DFC died in 2006 aged 92. I shall never forget him.

[Danny42C]

JW411 (#9922),
...Whilst I am on the subject of Army officers flying with 53 Squadron, I would like to finish off by telling you about my all-time favourite. Lt W S G "Dick" Maydwell (Somerset Light Infantry)......
What a man ! They don't make 'em like that any more, more's the pity (but maybe they do).
...("Simla, old boy, not Somerset").. .
At last ! When did that interloper "Shimla" creep in ? Same time as "Calcutta" became "Kolkata", I suppose.

Salaam, Burra-Sahib Maydwell !

Danny.

[Geriaviator]

Danny, Rupert Parkhouse has dementia and his memory has almost disappeared, at long last taking away the ghosts that seem to have trailed him for so many years. His son told me that his father is now happier than he had been for a long time, and is very content.

The story so far is sad enough, but there is worse to come as Rupert struggles to return to flying. We think that our WW2 warriors were iron men who simply rolled up their sleeves and got on with it, but I wonder how many suffered to conceal the dark experiences of the past for the rest of their lives.

JW411, great stories of those Army officers who grew wings, thank you!

[JW411]

Danny:

I'm still trying to work out how you get Chennai out of Madras!

[Brian 48nav]

I lived in the same village as Dick Maydwell for a number of years and it was quite some time before I found that our bearded fairly scruffy man people turned to for deer culling was in fact a retired RAF pilot, a Group Captain in fact. He was affectionately known, not to his face of course, as 'peg leg'.

An acquaintance of mine, being a keen birdwatcher, was often out and about at dawn near Stourhead Forest and one morning he heard a cry for help. Climbing over a gate and into a field he found Dick lying on the ground which in fact was really slippery grass. His wooden leg had come off because the strap had unfastened and Dick was unable to find his balance sufficiently well enough to pull his leg back on and refasten it. David was instructed to pull Dick up and then he was able to hold on to him while the leg was put back in its rightful place!

Dick then continued dragging his dead quarry back to the gate and his car.

Something about the area must have attracted these WW2 heroes. In addition to Dick we had Sqn Ldr Gerry Fray who as a Fg Off PR Spitfire pilot took the before and after photographs of the dams targeted by Gibson's 617 Sqn - sadly by the time we got to meet his wife, Gerry was suffering from dementia.

We also had Mike Vlasto who as a Fg Off Dakota pilot with 31 Sqn did the first jungle take off in Burma with wounded Chindits. Sadly he died a week or two after we bought our cottage at the top of his lane.

Another one was Peter Lilywhite who had flown Spitfires, just too late for the BofB, and then Hurricanes in the Battle of Malta.

Both Vlasto and Lillywhite, IIRC, returned to their civilian occupations at the end of WW2.

I believe Dick's wife died a couple of years after him and their 'colonial' style bungalow was sold on and modernised. A little while ago it was on Prime Location for sale and not 'flying out of the door', I guess because of its proximity to the noisy A303.

[zetec2]

Apologies for dragging on about the Fairey Battle but come up with another.
http://i3.photobucket.com/albums/y94/zetec2/th_battle.8bsz79c63aww0wwcgw0o04kw.ejcuplo1l0oo0sk8c40s8osc4 .th_zpskvswzwde.jpeg (http://s3.photobucket.com/user/zetec2/media/battle.8bsz79c63aww0wwcgw0o04kw.ejcuplo1l0oo0sk8c40s8osc4.th _zpskvswzwde.jpeg.html)

[JW411]

Brian48nav:

Dick's wife Sylvia was quite a character in her own right. It is my understanding that she was a Sqn Off nursing sister in the WAAF and it was she who was largely responsible for rebuilding Dick after his accident. The pair of them were pretty adept at recycling dead deer. Dick disposed of the insides and Sylvia made things out of the hides. I can remember one day being offered a haunch of venison but, sadly, I was headed in the wrong direction!

[jerryh99]

Hello Danny et al,


Not sure if this will work, but here are the aircrew of 110 (H) Squadron in front of a Vengeance on the 15th of September 1944 at Kalyan. Unfortunately the photo is very small and even scanned and blown up I cant recognise anyone in it. Presumably there would have been a larger print for the Squadron archive and the smaller ones handed out to the crews?


Happy New Year!


Jerry.


1484

[Danny42C]

zetec2 (#9927),

Not at all - seems the "Battle" is the background to the present story on "Pilot's Brevet", just another example of the wonderful tales which have been told (and remain to be told) on this matchless Thread.

Blew your picture up, got out magnifying glass. Questions and Remarks:

What are the strange structures hanging down behind the wheels ? For scraping off mud or snow before they retract up into the u/c bay ?

How come they're mounting from the wrong side of the horse ? Could the pic by any chance be reversed ?

Never knew they had a drop-down cockpit flap (same as the Spit) - but no "jemmy" (if Rupert's canopy had been still stuck when he crash-landed, burning, one might've saved his life).

What is the bright thing on the collar of the officer helping the pilot in ? Whistle ? (I like the cap - Mr "Bates" ?)

Thing has had a hard life by the look of it ! Could do with a respray.

Why didn't they put a spinner over the prop boss to make an already elegant aircraft even more so ?

Sadly, there is probably no living soul (#9924, thank you, Geriaviator) left to answer some of these.

Happy New Year to all, Danny.

[Danny42C]

zetec2 (#9927),

Not at all - seems the "Battle" is the background to the present story on "Pilot's Brevet", just another example of the wonderful tales which have been told (and remain to be told) on this matchless Thread.

Blew your picture up, got out magnifying glass. Questions and Remarks:

What are the strange structures hanging down behind the wheels ? For scraping off mud or snow before they retract up into the u/c bay ?

How come they're mounting from the wrong side of the horse ? Could the pic by any chance be reversed ?

Never knew they had a drop-down cockpit flap (same as the Spit) - but no "jemmy" (if Rupert's canopy had been still stuck when he crash-landed, burning, one might've saved his life).

What is the bright thing on the collar of the officer helping the pilot in ? Whistle ? (I like the cap - "Bates" ?)

Thing has had a hard life by the look of it ! Could do with a respray.

Why didn't they put a spinner over the prop boss to make an altready elegant aircraft even more so ?

Sadly, there is probably no living soul (#9924, thank you, Geriaviator) left to answer some of these.

Happy New Year to all, Danny.

[zetec2]

Good afternoon Danny, re the Battle picture I am investigating , will advise more when I get some answers, but I am intrigued by the flag/pennant flying from the rear cockpit, looks almost Germanic in style, will try and advise later, rgds, PH.

[Danny42C]

JW411 (#9925),

As I said long since: "The good folk of Bombay can call it what they like in Marathi, and we don't mind. Why should it bother them what we call it in English ?"

Same goes for Madras (Wiki says language is Tamil, would've thought it too far north for that. But at Cannanore (sorry, "Kannur" now), I suppose Tamil was the "official" language, but they all spoke Malayalee. Some Portugese. Some English.

All part of Throwing Off the Last Vestiges of Colonial Rule, of course. Yet the Park Lane of Calcutta/Kolkata, formerly "Chowringhee" (which you would have thought good enough for them) is now "Sir Jawaharlal Nehru Road" (or was the last time I looked) - they may have ditched the "Sir" by now.

(Between Chowringhee and the Hooghli river, and parallel to it through the Maidan [riverside park], runs "Indira Gandhi Sarari". We called it "Red Road", and they flew Hurricanes off it).

Far as I'm concerned, it'll always be "Bombay", "Calcutta", "Madras" and "Cannanore" for me. Too old to change now !

Danny.

[Geriaviator]

The memoirs of Sqn Ldr Rupert Parkhouse, recorded in 1995 – Part 20. First post in this series is #9775 on page 489 of this thread.

IN JANUARY 1945 we began to hear the sound of Russian guns to the east and we were told that we were going to march west the next day. We spent the whole of that night preparing food and making sledges and trekked in the snow for about four days until we reached a place called Muscau where we lodged in a glass factory and became warm for the first time.

On one occasion we had slept in a German church and I can vividly remember the priest rushing in to remove the Cross and candles and one of our chaps lay down on the altar. We had no hesitation in demolishing the graveyard fence for a fire outside to keep ourselves warm, while we slept together in bunches like lemmings in the pews and on the floor.

When we got to Muscau we were split up, some people going north to Lubeck where they were liberated by the Germans, while my party went to Luckenwilde camp occupied by the Norwegians and some French. We stayed there in primitive conditions until Russian tanks and armoured cars arrived on April 22. They kept us as hostages until about May 10 when they took us to the Elbe in 6x6 trucks supplied by the Americans.

We crossed over an American pontoon bridge and I don't think I have ever been so relieved as to walk into the American lines where of course they gave us a good meal. Eventually we were flown to Brussels, where we stayed about six hours and on May 28 we flew from Brussels to Dunsfold, continuing by train to Cosford where we arrived very late.

The POW reception unit was extremely efficient and in the morning they gave us battledress, sewed on our insignia and our medals, and sent us by train to arrive about 5pm at Paddington. I travelled with an ex-Hampden pilot called Roger Tench whose wife was meeting him on the platform, we gave them time before we got out.

I was with a chap called Elvin Pennington, we both lived in Dulwich and the taxi driver wouldn't accept any fare which was nice, and soon I was reunited with my family. My father had taken the day off and we had a joyful tea to end my POW days. Except that I went to the POW centre for medical tests and I was sent to what we used to call the Umdeecha Hospital, [laughing] which was the round-the-bend hospital at Cleveleys [Hotel] in Blackpool for chaps who were mentally disturbed. We didn't have any psychiatric help there, we were just fed well and left to fend for ourselves and I saw VE Day in at Blackpool.

NEXT POST: Rupert asks to return to flying: “I realised that if I did not do so then I would never lay the ghost of that awful mistake, which I think engendered a basic underlying fear of flying.” But he experiences a shattering introduction on arrival for his refresher course.

[Danny42C]

jerryh99 (#9929),

Nor can I identify anybody; I left in November '43, they would have been pulled off 'ops' at the outbreak of the '44 monsoon (along with all the others), God knows where to at first. Kalyan is right over on W.Coast.

This is little more than a Flight, certainly not a Squadron. Strange thing, I can see (or think I see) far more of the underside of the wings than in other VV pics from this angle.

Wild Guess: these are Mk.IVs (with a 4° AoI), and a Detachment of the Squadron (only ones to get the IVs), which were going to go over to Takoradi to do anti-malaria spray trials, this may be it. Know nowt about it. ORB would have all the details.

Curiously, about November, '45, we were similarly tasked at Cannanore (by CDRE). We cleaned out the mustard gas spray tanks and started spraying DDT (think in kerosene solution). Memory a bit hazy at this point, I was pleasantly distracted in a big way (another story, it's on here, but you'll have to dig for it).

Happy New Year,

Danny.

[Danny42C]

zetec2 (#9932),

If you can trace the Squadron Number, look up the badge. Might match the pennant.

Danny.

[Chugalug2]

zetec2, the same pennant I think features in a Wikki pic on its Battle page:-

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Vickers_K_cockpit.jpg

which claims it was 103 Sqn and taken in France, May 1940.

JWW411, Dick Maydwell appears to have been well named, despite the loss of one leg! The joie de vivre that he exuded, and it seems shared by his wife, no doubt was enhanced by his varied and glittering Services career, both Army and RAF. In a world where individuality was cherished he obviously blossomed. The climate, or the water, of the South West seems to have prolonged the effect, and done so for those others mentioned by Brian48Nav. Such "Characters" were the lifeblood of the Air Force I joined in 1959, but seemed to be fast disappearing by the time I left in 1973. Little room now for their ilk in these more po-faced days I fear...

[ian16th]

Does this help?

http://i818.photobucket.com/albums/zz108/ian16th/Vengeance.jpg?t=1483127590

[Danny42C]

ian16th,

Nice pic, but no, I'm afraid. Anybody ?

Danny.

[esa-aardvark]

Hello Danny,
now I am back home & reunited with my fathers records I
have taken a look at them. I can see that he 'qualified' on Vultee Vengeance & Cyclone in 1943.
The records I have are more or less unreadable as to dates, but I can see that he was at 301 MU on 24/7/42 - renamed 'SE Asia' 16/11/43.
Then BHQ Calcutta in 1944 and 82 SQDN same year.
The Burma Star is mentioned in his records, but difficult to decode when he was there or squadron.
I no longer have, but am sure he wrote some stuff for the Burma Star magazine.
On a different note, looking at this stuff, I recall a story of his about dropping leaflets over Germany
whilst serving at Leuchars at the end of the mission they landed wheels up.
That part was somehow covered up, and the aircraft repaired without consequences.

I do recall him telling me that they assembled the Vengeance
without proper documentation, and had to adjust the Cyclone
engines without the test equipment which he had just trained
on in USA.

Best wishes, John

[MPN11]

Re: The Fairey Battle photo ... that pennant appears to me to be a Polish design.

A Google of Polish Fairy Battle Squadrons, and then a click in "Images" turned up this photo. Also in the Wiki for "Fairey Battle" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fairey_Battle)

Annoyingly, I can't correlate that pennant with any of the Sqn insignia for Nos. 300, 301, 304 or 305.

Over to you guys!! :)

[Chugalug2]

MPN11, see my Post #9937. Same picture but fuller attribution given here:-

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Vickers_K_cockpit.jpg

103 Sqn France May 1940. The Pennant supposedly represented both Flight and Sqn. Made up presumably before things got busy...

(Think that it's supposed to be a Black Swan)

[MPN11]

oops, sorry Chugalug2 ... I'd missed that post :(

[JW411]

Chugalug2:

We probably know one another. I joined in 1960 and left at the end of 1978. Judging by your callsign, you went to Dan? I went to Laker.

[jerryh99]

Hello Danny (#9935)


Thanks for that - Arthur was in "B" flight at this time, so this is presumably B flight O.C. S/Ldr Joel, who must be one of the gentlemen in the front row. W/Cdr Saunders was C/O so is likely there as well. Next move was to Kolar and then Yelahanka, when he joined "A" flight O.C. S/Ldr Sutherland DFC. Joel was later acting C/O after the loss of Saunders and Sutherland. He logged his last flight in a Vengeance in December '44 and first in a Mosquito in Feb '45, then to 1672 CU also at Yelahanka.


The album also has a photo taken during a mountain climb - survival training? Looks like it was pretty arduous, some of the men look distinctly "browned off."

[Chugalug2]

JW411, PM sent.

MPN11, no problem. I must admit that my first thought was Polish as well, but like you I saw the same pic in the Wiki Battle page and simply opened it up to its own page (as can be done with all Wiki pics). My bet would be that the Flt Cdr's wife was a dab hand at needlework...

Danny, you may not be able to recognise any of those posing in front of the VV, but you can spot a Mk4 when you see one. :ok:

As to mounting Battles from the wrong side, I think that the right side was the Right Side, if you see what I mean?

Oh, and the gubbins hanging down behind the mainwheels are the retraction jacks (see the cutaway Aeroplane drawing previously posted @ 9837)

[JW411]

I thought you might like to see a sample of Dick Maydwell's camera work. Hawker Hector K9703/D.

[JW411]

And Blenheim IV L4843/J.

[MPN11]

Nice! Thanks for that.

[Geriaviator]

The superb Hector photo reveals two rows of exhaust stubs -- it's the H24 Napier Dagger, which had 24 cylinders, with 24 spark plugs and 48 valves, all of which required frequent maintenance. Designer Frank Halford learned from the Dagger to produce the mighty Napier Sabre for the Typhoon and Tempest, and by 1946 it was the world's most powerful aero-engine certified at 5000bhp for civil use. But by then we had entered the jet age.

On another subject, please note that I posted #9900 on Boxing Day, this is #9950. Danny, stand by for post #10000 even if you post a few lines to fill #9998/9, other personnel please prepare to stand clear for this historic occasion :D

[Brian 48nav]

I'm sure everyone feels the same as me - it HAS TO BE Danny who makes the milestone post!

[Brian 48nav]

I'm sure you have established this fact by PM already, but it struck me straightaway, that though you may have never met, you are linked by being mates of Dave Carter.
Almost 9 years since he left us so early - Anne ( Mrs B48N ) and I still miss the old bu**er!

[zetec2]

Just another Battle, serial : K9234, B HA, apparently part of the British Expeditionary Force, hope interesting.
http://i3.photobucket.com/albums/y94/zetec2/th_Fairey_Battle_-_The_British_Expeditionary_Force_bef_in_France_1939-1940_C284_zpsdsvqzokd.jpg (http://s3.photobucket.com/user/zetec2/media/Fairey_Battle_-_The_British_Expeditionary_Force_bef_in_France_1939-1940_C284_zpsdsvqzokd.jpg.html)

[Danny42C]

Geriaviator (pp Rupert Parkhouse, #9934),
...which was the round-the-bend hospital at Cleveleys [Hotel]...Almost certainly the one formerly known as the "Norbreck Hydro"; in Rupert's time (and in my schooldays). Now the Norbreck Castle Hotel [Wiki]. Think the Ministry of Pensions (now DWP) had it at some time.

A bit hard, after all he'd gone through ! But then again, perhaps the psychiatrists (behind the scenes) were on to something. For:
...“I realised that if I did not do so then I would never lay the ghost of that awful mistake, which I think engendered a basic underlying fear of flying.”...This is not healthy. We all make mistakes - the man who never made a mistake never made anything. But what is done is done, and cannot be undone. Learn from them - but don't let them prey on your mind.

I myself made a howling mistake that February day when I reduced my VV to scrap in the Arakan - my gunner and I survived only by a miracle; if we both had died, it would have been my fault. But I don't let that worry me.
.........................................................

esa-aardvark (#9940),
...whilst serving at Leuchars at the end of the mission they landed wheels up...
I assume he would be the Flight Engineer ? Was he the Engineer Officer of 82 ?.
...I do recall him telling me that they assembled the Vengeance without proper documentation, and had to adjust the Cycloneengines without the test equipment which he had just trainedon in USA...
This is pure gold to me ! For the very first time in almost five years I have support for the widely believed story that the first VVs were assembled as jigsaw puzzles (needs simple home assembly...!), all the paperwork having been lost in transit. If you have any more on this, please Post it, so's we can all enjoy it !

............................................................ .........

Chugalug (#9946},
...but you can spot a Mk4 when you see one...Don't be too sure ! Camera angles can be deceptive. You've seen plenty of head=on Is, IIs and IIIs, what do you reckon ?
...As to mounting 'Battles' from the wrong side, I think that the right side was the Right Side, if you see what I mean?...Frankly, no I don't. my revered young Mentor ! Are you saying that the stbd side was the correct side for any aircraft cockpit of this kind (of course the heavies had doors all over the place). What would a horse think ? You can't be serious ! (to coin a phrase).
...Oh, and the gubbins hanging down behind the mainwheels are the retraction jacks (see the cutaway Aeroplane drawing previously posted @ 9837)...
I read with difficulty with magnifying glass (having a Bad Eye Day doesn't help): "ACTUATING RODS & RAMS" . Still foxed. In all the retraction systems I know, the hydrauics are hidden up in the wheelwells. How would this rig work ?

Running a bit behind schedule tonight, consequence of enjoying myself hugely on "Capcom". What a pic ! This could run and run. Wouldn't like to judge it though."Wer die Wahl hat, hat der Qual" (Choosing hurts).

A Happy New Year to all our readers !

Danny.

[Chugalug2]

Brian48Nav, you are right on all counts. The RAF was large enough in those days to avoid someone if you set about it wisely, and JW411 wisely succeeded in avoiding me! As to Dave Carter, I had no idea that we lived so close until I found out from you. Too late though. Another good man gone, and far too soon.

Danny:-
What would a horse think ? You can't be serious !

My Lord, I offer in evidence this link to a photograph of a Fairey Battle in the process of restoration. Your Lordship will no doubt notice that the driver enters it from the right hand side. I apologise to Your Lordship for the caption not being in English. Frankly it's all Double Dutch to me!

https://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fairey_Battle#/media/File:Fairey_Battle_nl.jpg

As to the process by which the undercarriage was extended and retracted by means of the "Actuating Rods and Rams", it was clearly enabled by a suitable system of levers and linkages, as with all such arrangements. The engineering chappies will know the specifics, that's what they're there for after all. Anyone for Tennis?

As to the mark VV in the group photo, if you say that it's a Mark 4 then it's a Mark 4 in my book. There is definite incidence to the fuselage, and I have it on excellent authority that discounts all other marks. QED!

Finally I hope that you've had a great Christmas and that the next one will be equally enjoyable for you. Happy New Year, Danny!

[Chugalug2]

In seeking absolution for my outrageously flippant attitude so flagrantly displayed above, I offer this picture that claims to show the Main Gear retraction arrangements of the Fairey Battle. Hopefully it can be understood and explained by those more technically able than I:-

http://i184.photobucket.com/albums/x199/chugalug2/Fairey%20Battle%20Gear%20photo_zpsl9ayrwek.jpg

[Geriaviator]

https://s28.postimg.org/qptk8crr1/Roth.jpg

Another view of the Battle u/c: the retraction rams folded backwards with the wheels, which themselves remained mostly below the wing to give protection in a belly landing, and because the wing was not deep enough to house them. Exterior bomb racks are also visible. (Plt Off M H Roth of 142 Sqn formates on my father’s aircraft, Andover 1938. Roth was shot down on May 10 1940 while attacking German columns and taken POW, ending up in Stalag Luft III with Rupert Parkhouse.)

[Danny42C]

Chugalug (#9955),
... My Lord, I offer in evidence this link to a photograph of a Fairey Battle in the process of restoration. Your Lordship will no doubt notice that the driver enters it from the right hand side. I apologise to Your Lordship for the caption not being in English. Frankly it's all Double Dutch to me! <https://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fairey>Battle_nl.jpg (https://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fairey%3EBattle_nl.jpg)>...
Counsel for the Defendant sits down with victorious flourish; Counsel for the Complainant rises in abject misery and throws in the towel. Resolves to treble his Fee to his idiot Client for putting him up with such a ridiculous case, kicks himself for ever accepting the Brief (but then his wife had been going on and on about a Christmas Break in Gstaad).

My Lord looks at him sourly over pince-nez, says will refer case to Bar Council to have this Clown unfrocked.

''''''''''''''''''''
You are right, Chugalug - it's a fair cop ! Internet Explorer turned up its nose at your Link, but Google Chrome would play. "Ha !", I thought, "the negative has been reversed - I know the Merlin runs the prop clockwise as viewed from the cockpit, let's have a look at the blades !" Oh woe, oh willowy waley ! Picture is kosher. Must retire in confusion.

All is not lost, it was not double-dutch, but Norwegian. What a glorious find !Henceforth I shall descibe myself as an (ex) dive-bommenwerper. Priceless !
...There is definite incidence to the fuselage...The wing, acherly ! (slip of the pen, of course),

Yours in the Dunce's Cap, Danny.

............................................................ ..

Chugalug and Geriaviator (#9956-7),

All clear as crystal now - thanks ! (but the little red "X" had beaten me to your pic, Geriaviator) EDIT: Pic has come back ! But why, oh why, not put a spinner on to complete the picture ?

The Dak and the Anson had the same protruding wheels (good idea). Was a wartime case of an Anson chap who lost both (donks) at height over airfield. Had plenty of time on way down to crank-up wheels and then use starter motors to set both props E-W. Dead-sticked on runway, nil damage. Good Show ! :ok:

All the best for 2017 !

Danny.

[Geriaviator]

The memoirs of Sqn Ldr Rupert Parkhouse, recorded in 1995 – Part 21. First post in this series is #9775 on page 489 of this thread.

https://s20.postimg.org/p31fm9bn1/PARKHOUSE_anniv_pic.jpg

“I went to the OCU at Benson for 14 days' ground school and was able to get home every weekend, which was a great bonus”, says Rupert. It was indeed a bonus, for he wooed and married Rosemary, the sister of an old school friend. The couple are pictured on their wedding day in 1946, and on their anniversary 70 years later in their nursing home in Southbourne, this picture courtesy of the Bournemouth Echo. Rosemary, now 93, said: “I think we were two very lucky people who clicked together and stayed together.”

FROM BLACKPOOL I was sent to a POW rehabilitation unit at West Malling where we spent a month being lectured. They actually tried to give us drill which we steadfastly refused to do. I was given a fortnight's leave at the end of November, and I went to the Air Ministry where I persuaded Wing Cdr Day to put me back on the list for flying. I realised that if I did not do so then I would never lay the ghost of that awful mistake, which I think engendered a basic underlying fear of flying.

So I was sent to 21 PAFU, a pilots' advanced flying unit, and I met a lot of other ex-POWs on the train to Wolverhampton where we were met by RAF lorry for our journey to RAF Wheaton Aston.

We arrived at the Mess about 5pm on November 10, 1945, and were just unloading our luggage when above the 10/10 cloud we heard the most terrific explosion and about a minute later a Mosquito fuselage, minus outer wing sections and tailplane, flames belching from both engines, came hurtling out of the sky like a flaming rocket and went crunch into the centre of the airfield.

About two minutes later a Roman-candling parachute came out, it hadn't developed properly, and beneath it was the body of a man spreadeagled with his arms out and his foot attached to the parachute harness, going at such a speed he could not possibly have survived the impact. Then about 10 minutes later we saw a man coming down on a fully developed parachute, so we could see the general direction he was going, and boarded the lorry to retrieve him.

I have always thought what an amazing return to flying that was, that so soon we should see the dark side of that activity. I never knew what happened to the aeroplane but it must have had an effect on me because I took about 20 hours to go solo on the Oxford. [The Mosquito PR34, fastest of all the Mosquitos, had been on a radar calibration flight when the starboard engine exploded and started an airframe fire. The navigator survived but the pilot, P/Officer John Peter Van der Heijden, RAFVR, was killed – Ed.]

My instructors were all dying to leave the Service and became rather impatient, but I don't know why I found it frightfully difficult to readjust. Eventually I went solo and was then sent to Seighford to do a beam approach course, which was successful.

By that time Alistair Panton had got to Benson as SLO and Tommy Callen, another POW, was on the staff at the photographic HQ, and they arranged that I should join the Mosquito OTU. Well, the adjutant at 21 PAFU tried to persuade me against this, saying that I had obviously had difficulty on the Oxford and it was really crazy for me to go and fly the Mosquito which was known to be quite a tricky aeroplane. But I was starting to get optimistic by then and I wanted to get to Alistair Panton and a lot of other POWs who were now flying at Benson.

So I went to the OCU at Benson for 14 days' ground school and was able to get home every weekend, which was a great bonus. The OCU aircraft moved to a satellite aircraft called Chalgrove and I was there in June and July flying dual on the Mosquito T.3, an unarmed trainer version with dual controls.

NEXT POST: Rupert soldiers on with the Mosquito, but is relieved when he is transferred to be a staff pilot at Leuchars in Scotland, operating the kindly Anson on navigation training.

[Chugalug2]

Danny:-
All is not lost, it was not double-dutch, but Norwegian.
Ah, a nice return by opposing counsel, leaving our side in slight confusion. The site is the Dutch version of wiki (hence the .nl in the hyperlink) and the attribute for the pic (which I belatedly produce now) gives:-
Fairey Battle light bomber
Nederlands: Fairey Battle in het Koninklijk Museum van het Leger en de Krijgsgeschiedenis te Brussel
Polski: Zdjęcie z Muzeum Lotnictwa w Brukseli z 2005 roku.
Created by nl:user:Paul Hermans and released under GFDL
Uploaded to nl wiki by Paul Hermans on January 31, 2005

ie in Dutch and (for whatever reason) Polish, and yet I hesitate to question learned Counsel further, for he has a far wider knowledge of European languages than myself (the bane of several French teachers who as a result often resorted to colloquialisms not found in standard textbooks). So I in turn will shuffle my papers feverishly and quickly change the subject...

Danny:-
The wing, acherly ! (slip of the pen, of course),


I do apologise, My Lord, I expressed myself poorly. I should have said that there appears to be a positive Angle of Incidence between the wings and the fuselage. I thank your Lordship for allowing me to clarify the point I was trying to make. (smiles obsequiously to his Lordship, who returns it with the same uber pince-nez scowl he has just given to Counsel for the Complainant. Things not looking at all good suddenly!

Geriaviator, Sqn Ldr Parkhouse seems to have a penchant for setting himself targets that he cannot meet and then persuading others to let him have a go nonetheless. If only his Flt Cdr in France had refused to authorise him to fly on account of his youthfulness and lack of experience as he had first intended. This approach of constantly proving yourself against all evidence to the contrary may have worked out on the playing fields of Public Schools but in aviation it is a one way ticket, and especially so in wartime. Now he is trying to rebuild his confidence by learning to fly the Mosquito, of all types!

It seems by your comments though that at last his superiors have engaged mind over matter...and not too soon!

[JW411]

Brian 48nav and Chugalug2:

Dave Carter was probably the best mate that I ever had and I miss him deeply. About 2 years before I retired from professional flying at age 65, I bought a Piper PA-28 which I kept at Shoreham. I started a monthly Old Pharts club whereby, once a month, four of us would fly somewhere for lunch and tell each other lies.

As it so happens, I took the officer Carter on his very last flight. As best as I can remember it was 15.02.08 (the day after his birthday). We (or the weather) decided that we were going to Lydd. I invited him to get into the left seat and take us there. He had not been particularly well and he said that my insurance company might not like the idea.

"F**k the insurance company" said I "get in and do it". And do it he did in his usual immaculate manner. Bob Osborne flew us back after a good lunch. Dave thanked me for letting him have a go and two weeks later he was dead.

At the risk of starting another thread drift, I am convinced that letting him and so many others watch the serious firework displays off Christmas Island with very little protection might well have expedited his end.

Here is Captain Carter about to commit his last piece of avaition.

[Chugalug2]

You did a fine thing JW411, it must have given Dave a real boost when he really needed it. I did not know of his illness and I'm glad to know now that his friends rallied round when they were needed. Thank you!

That surely is the point of this thread, is it not? Whether we are serving or have served, we are all part of a family that cares for each other. Our virtual crew room is the symbol of that mutual care and respect that we have for each other. May it never end! :ok:

[Danny42C]

Chugalug (#9960),
...I do apologise, My Lord, I expressed myself poorly. I should have said that there appears to be a positive Angle of Incidence between the wings and the fuselage. I thank your Lordship for allowing me to clarify the point I was trying to make. (smiles obsequiously to his Lordship, who returns it with the same uber pince-nez scowl he has just given to Counsel for the Complainant. Things not looking at all good suddenly!...
My Lord and both Counsel now repair to the (invariably nearby) tavern (our local one is the "Wig and Pen"), for an afternoon of ale and good fellowship as befits brothers-in-Law. My Lord convulses the company with an account of how once, when he was on his majestic way to the York Assizes in the Lord Mayor's Roller, he was tail-gated all the way by a cheeky little villein in what (I am told) is vulgarly known as a Bubble Car.

This scurvy wight, having so interposed himself when the constabulary were more pleasurably engaged in persecuting law-abiding citizens, having had the effrontery to return all the salutes of the police officers of York (intended for their Lordship), did not refrain from waving at the crowd which had assembled in Piccadilly to see their Lordship pass, but encouraged them into lewd catcalls and quite unseemly mirth.

Worst of all, when the entourage arrived at the Courts, by reason of an unpardonable misunderstanding between the escorting Police, this varlet was not apprehended and escaped at high speed in a southerly direction. There is reason to believe that he is a member of the Royal Air Force, which does not surprise me, as they are well known to the Magistrates of this fair City, and have on occasion appeared before me, usually at the suit of some desolate maiden.

Serving wench now sent for another flagon of ale and some pork scratchings.................

Danny.

[oxenos]

Was a wartime case of an Anson chap who lost both (donks) at height over airfield. Had plenty of time on way down to crank-up wheels and then use starter motors to set both props E-W. Dead-sticked on runway, nil damage. Good Show !
I recall a report in Air Clues (must be true) in the mid 60's of a similar situation in reverse.
Undercarriage jammed in up position. On downwind leg, stop one engine, crank prop to E-W. On final, when sure of making runway, stop other engine, crank prop E-W. Land on protruding wheel halves. Apparently the brakes still worked. Only damage was to the pitot head, which protruded below the nose.

[Danny42C]

On Private Flying Forum an Elderly Gent is ploughing a lonely furrow with his tales of flying.

See: An old pilot returns to the fold. A ramble from the past Thread

Have tried (#5) to tempt him here where he belongs, but without success. Anyone else care to try ?

Danny.

[Geriaviator]

Danny, I think Elderly Gent probably feels closer to the private scene where he has 'served his time' rather than while serving His/Her Majesty, despite the effects on his bank balance (like my own :ooh:) I was interested in his club's training Auster as I carried out extensive work and C of A overhaul on this machine some 45 years ago. Unfortunately its new owner took about 50 hours to solo the little beast and hit power cables while attempting a field landing, killing his passenger and himself succumbing some time later.

[Danny42C]

Geriaviator,

Ta. A pity.

Danny.

[Danny42C]

In the turmoil of the past few days, and what with a Bad Eye Day (thankfully they're firing on all two cylinders again, and cleaning my specs has helped), I appear to have overlooked Post #9950 (Geriaviator) and Post #9951 (Brian 48nav) and now wish to make amends.

Thank you, Gentlemen, for reserving to me the honour of breasting the 10,000th Post tape on this magnificent Thread. For a long time, it was (barring Capcom and "Stickies", which are special cases), the leading Thread on this Forum in Number of Posts and (more importantly, Number of "hits" - a surer indicator of its enduring popularity).

It would be ungenerous in the extreme not to acknowledge the part played by our Moderators in this success. They have shown us unbelievable latitude as we wander off Thread in countless directions and then wander back after many twists and turns. On our part, we have, almost without exception, responded by behaving in this our cyber-crewroom as ladies and gentlemen should, without a harsh or wounding word ever being spoken. Long may it remain so. As I have earlier said, Clifford Leach RIP (Cliffnemo), its Onlie Begetter, "Builded better than he knew" all those years ago.

It was with some dismay that I noted we had been overhauled (in number of Posts only) by that latecomer "F-35 Cancelled, then what ?" (the simple answer to that being: "Up the creek without a paddle, that's what !" But that Thread should surely be renamed: "What's Gone Wrong with the F-35 NOW" (President Trump being its latest threat). We shall see.

As for me, I am humbled by the honour done to me. As my generation just happened to be on deck when Hitler and Mussolini came along, and simply got on with the job which had to be done, so I put my head above the parapet five years ago, realised I was "standing on the shoulders of Giants", and added my two cent's worth.

It has been my absorbing hobby in these my declining years, and if I have roused some interest and amusement in my hearers, then that is a bonus. If it had not been me, it would have been someone else to tell one man's story of those exciting years now passing from living memory. Thank you all.

Danny.

[Fareastdriver]

We will all have to stop at about 9995 as three posts or more might come at the same time. If we stop there then we can let Danny wander through the last few by himself.

[BernieC]

This very junior member of pprune is tempted to try to recall wartime memories in the hope of prompting replies that clarify what he saw but did not understand. My cabinet-maker father was an aircraft rigger in WWI and some time in 1941 came to be employed by Handley Page at their London Colney (Park St) factory/aerodrome), just south of St Albans, where he was chargehand of a team that fitted Halifax rear wheels.

We lived in the gatehouse of a slightly grand house, Harperbury, Harper Lane, whose rather unfriendly occupants had to put up with us evacuees, whose home in London had been damaged, and we stayed there from about January 1942 until April 1944, when I was 11 years old. Naturally I became very interested in aviation, my weekly obsession being to find a newsagent with a remaining 6d. copy of "The Aeroplane Spotter". Among things spotted I recall the nightly roar of bombers assembling on the way to Germany and, in daylight (probably approaching D-Day), flocks of B26 Narauders and B25 Mitchells, perhaps on similar duties.

Various rare types were based at the HP works at different times, but the only one I clearly recall was a "flying wing" which memory says was an Armstrong Whitworth product. It flew many circuits, with our cottage being somewhere in the middle of its path. And there was also one that became my favourite subject for sketching, the handsome Westland Whirlwind, which I believe proved good only at making safe wheels-up landings.

I remember being surprised that Gerry never attacked the HP factory or aerodrome, at least during the years we lived thereabouts, but now that the history of the blitzkrieg is better understood that failure is not so surprising.

Happy days!

BernieC

[Chugalug2]

Danny, your #9963, classic! You owe me a new keyboard too (I'll settle for one of those trendy wrap-around ones, very stylish!). You reminded me of a Mark Williams piece to camera in his recounting of the unfortunate explosion of the unattended "Puffing Devil" of Richard Trevithick which had been abandoned under a shelter while
The parties adjourned to the hotel and comforted their hearts with a roast goose and proper drinks! Forgetful of the engine, its water boiled away. The iron of the boiler became hot, and nothing combustible remained of either the engine or the house!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zaA15hBV8Go

Mark Williams shares our love of whimsy, I think you'll agree. I'm glad the peepers are back on line. As to the relative positioning of this thread with others, never mind the width feel the quality! No other has given such pleasure to its adherents as this one in my view.

[MPN11]

Greetings, BernieC ... tea or coffee, Sir? ;)

Your 'Armstrong Whitworth' flying wing would have to be the A.W.52G (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Armstrong_Whitworth_A.W.52) in it's half-scale glider existence. Construction of the AW.52G began in March 1943, with the glider making its maiden flight, towed by an Armstrong Whitworth Whitley bomber, on 2 March 1945.

[Danny42C]

Chugalug (#9971),

Thank you for the graceful remarks about my elephantine humour ! Fresh out of keyboards of any size or shape in village, I'm afraid !

Curiously, the Danny family went to Malta a few years back. Incuded in luggage was a small aluminium teapot and a miniature travel "immersion heater", to ensure a proper cup of good Yorkshire tea was available on tap at any hour of day or night.

Of course it happened (rift in domestic lute), immersion heater self-destructs, kettle very hot but only slightly deformed, no fire, but no tea TFN.

Of course it was All Daddy's Fault that Daddy had Forgotten To Put The Water In - but then isn't it always ?

Danny.

[Danny42C]

MPN11 (#9972),

Never heard of this one, Google/Wiki put me in the picture. And what a picture ! First reaction - "OMG!"

Would have liked to watch that fly (from a safe distance).

Danny.

[FantomZorbin]

Danny, you didn't miss much, the water is desalinated and makes the tea taste ghastly ... after 2+ years it tastes a little better but the tea back in the UK takes a bit of getting used to on RTB!!

[Geriaviator]

The memoirs of Sqn Ldr Rupert Parkhouse, recorded in 1995 – Part 22. First post in this series is #9775 on page 489 of this thread.

https://s20.postimg.org/t0opbnygd/anson_wd413.jpg


ONE OF the unfortunate things was that we used to fly on Monday but then the aircraft would go u/s and we would not fly again until Friday, a gap of four days, and one of the things about flying training is that you must constantly reinforce your knowledge and your skill.

I soldiered on for 20 hours' dual on the Mosquito, the amazing thing being that I did five takeoffs in succession without any swing developing and my instructor said 'I think you've really got it now, Rupe, we'll have you solo next week'.

But the next time we flew I was all over the place, we developed a swing and we left the runway and hurtled towards the hedge. I remember him screaming at me 'Don't clamp on those brakes, don't clamp on those brakes'. Unfortunately his wife was about 500 yards away walking their child in a pram along the edge of the airfield, I don't know what she thought of the performance.

Anyway, I was sent on leave for a week and on my return the CFI told me he didn't think I was going to make it and he would have to see what could be done with me. Well, the Air Ministry very sensibly sent me up to the School of GR at Leuchars as a staff pilot on Avro Ansons, with which I had no trouble at all.

I flew exercises with the navigation students until the following June when my CO, Jimmy Stack, who had been my under-officer at Cranwell and who was an old flying-boat man, wangled me a posting to 201 flying-boat Sqn and I went down to Calshot as a sort of third pilot at the end of June 1947. I had always wanted to fly boats, I thought it would be a nice comfortable life and I could work my way up to captain in about three years.

We were on a long night sortie over the North Sea with four pilots on board, as was the custom, and we were having a fry-up snack in the wardroom when W/Cdr Mondo Crosby, who was captain of the aircraft, announced to the gathering that he had some news for us, Flt Lt Parkhouse has been promoted to squadron leader. I was absolutely amazed. This was part of the sortout in 1947 when all the seniorities were adjusted.

NEXT POST: “At the Air Ministry, a very pleasant South African called Fats Lowe told me that I was quite useless and that I would have to be re-trained.”

[BernieC]

MPN11

Thanks for the AW 52G info. I hope you are right, but young as I was then, I am sure that I would have recognized if was being towed and also would have "spotted" a Whitley, a type that never did come within my eyeball distance. There must have been a self-propelled flying wing, but I have never found any trace of it in the very small researches made.

[DHfan]

Danny, you didn't miss much, the water is desalinated and makes the tea taste ghastly ... after 2+ years it tastes a little better but the tea back in the UK takes a bit of getting used to on RTB!!

I would amend that to nominally desalinated... and I think ghastly is extremely generous.

We were self-catering so the equipment wasn't a problem but, IIRC, we bought bottled water for making tea.

Fortunately the Hopleaf Bitter was perfectly acceptable.

[JW411]

BernieC:

You may have noticed that I have recently been talking about 53 Squadron Hector/Blenheim pilots? Well, as something of a coincidence, one of my good friends from that era was a chap called John Wray (Gp Capt JB Wray CBE DFC) who is sadly no longer with us.

When he left 53 Squadron he was posted as the commanding officer of 137 Squadron equipped with Westland Whirlwinds. He absolutely loved the aircraft. He admitted that it was not a great fighter but it was an excellent ground attack machine. They used to take off from Manston, cross the Channel at low level and cause a lot of mayhem in northern France.

The aircraft would take a lot of punishment and would get you home easily on one engine. The big problem was that the government of the day had ordered Rolls-Royce to concentrate on the Merlin and to stop making the Peregrine which powered the Whirlwind. Consequently, there was only ever one other Whirlwind squadron (263 Sqn).

I have always found it interesting in my flying career that most of rumour, legend and general bad-mouthing about certain aircraft comes from those who have never set foot or worked on the aircraft concerned.

Of course, I do not include you in that category; you are merely passing on the existing myth. It is so much more interesting to talk to people who were actually there operating and risking their lives in the machine.

[MPN11]

Ah, the Whirlwind [the original one]. I don't suppose we'll find another Danny who flew those on Ops now. From Wiki (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Westland_Whirlwind_(fighter)) ... The basic feature of the Whirlwind was its concentration of firepower: its four closely-grouped heavy cannon in the nose had a rate of fire of 600 lb./minute – which, until the introduction of the Beaufighter, placed it ahead of any fighter in the world. Hand in hand with this dense firepower went a first-rate speed and climb performance, excellent manoeuvrability, and a fighting view hitherto unsurpassed. The Whirlwind was, in its day, faster than the Spitfire down low and, with lighter lateral control, was considered to be one of the nicest "twins" ever built… From the flying viewpoint, the Whirlwind was considered magnificent.

— P. J. R. Moyes[28]
I always thought it was waaaay ahead of its time in many respects. However, the exigencies of wartime production were, I guess, it's death knell.

[Chugalug2]

I once read or heard somewhere that the problem with the quadruple cannon installation in the nose of the Whirlwind was feeding the ammunition to them, and that in order to come up with a solution a food processing engineer was engaged. He used his knowledge of supplying a continuous stream of tin cans to be filled with baked beans, etc, to the feeding of shells to the cannons, presumably successfully.

[MPN11]

Sounds plausible, Chugalug2 ... as we approach Post #10,000 ;)

[Geriaviator]

I'm sure fellow pPruners will know that the Whirlwind was designed by W E Petter, who went on to design the Folland Gnat and two English Electric products, the Canberra and the Lightning. Those were the days ...

Chug, the other example of lateral thinking was on the Tsetse Mosquito, where de Havilland turned to the Molins cigarette packaging company to design the feed for its monster cannon which thereafter was known as the Molins gun. And very well it worked, by all accounts, until its replacement by RP. I suppose the gun round resembles a giant cigarette, and both products were hazardous to health, even though the ciggies take longer to do the job. :=

https://s20.postimg.org/ttskw66nh/tsetse.jpg

[Geriaviator]

I have just noticed that this is page 500 on our thread! Fifteen posts to go ...

[DHfan]

MPN11

Thanks for the AW 52G info. I hope you are right, but young as I was then, I am sure that I would have recognized if was being towed and also would have "spotted" a Whitley, a type that never did come within my eyeball distance. There must have been a self-propelled flying wing, but I have never found any trace of it in the very small researches made.

The AW 52 was powered by two RR Nenes but didn't fly until 1948 which is well past your time frame.
It was flown from Baginton and Boscombe Down but no mention of Radlett which of course belonged to a competitor.

I've been trying to think of another UK flying wing and come up blank.
The DH 108 is a possibility although not a true flying wing. Based at Hatfield they would be likely to fly over London Colney but again, the first two didn't fly until mid 1946.

[Chugalug2]

If we're talking about Handley Page, could the "Flying Wing" be the tailless HP Manx?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Handley_Page_Manx

[Danny42C]

Fantom Zorbin and DHfan (#9978),
...Danny, you didn't miss much, the water is desalinated and makes the tea taste ghastly ... after 2+ years it tastes a little better but the tea back in the UK takes a bit of getting used to on RTB!!...
Yes, like most people we only drank bottled water out there.

Reminds me that, when on a tour in RAF(G) with the precious New Car, most people were able to adjust to driving on the right with no difficulty at all. The rot set in when you came back to UK and had to change back to the left !

Danny.

[Fareastdriver]

precious New Car

When I was a young lad in Bulawayo, then Southern Rhodesia, a weekend's jaunt was to transport new cars from Port Elizabeth to the dealer in town; and get paid for it.

Friday night on the train to Joberg. Then a connection to P E and be there at lunchtime. You would then take charge of anything from a big Chevrolet/Ford/Plymouth/AustinA90/Worsley6 and proceed to drive these in convoy up north. Another night stop in Joberg and Sunday afternoon these dust laden, race proven cars would arrive at their respective dealers to have their pre-sale service, plus other corrections, before the purchaser saw it.

Couth dealers, like Jaguar and Bristol(Glasby's Garage) would have their cars shipped up by rail.

[DHfan]

If we're talking about Handley Page, could the "Flying Wing" be the tailless HP Manx?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Handley_Page_Manx

I think you must have cracked it. The timescale fits and presumably it was based at Radlett.

[Blacksheep]

The rot set in when you came back to UK and had to change back to the left !My Chief at Brize was returning from a tour in Germany and was stopped on the road from Dover by the police. "Been in Germany long?" asked the copper, eyeing his BFG number plate. "Three years" says our hero. "Well, try to remember that in England we go around the roundabouts in a clockwise direction" says the policeman and lets him drive on. :)

[ian16th]

I managed as a pedestrian!

Got off the boat train at Victoria Station, looked the wrong way for the oncoming traffic, and stepped out in front of a black cab.

The driver fortunately screeched to a halt a few thou from my legs, and I learnt some delicate Cockney phrases. :rolleyes:

[Geriaviator]

https://s23.postimg.org/8e1u76tm3/Sunderland_Hamburg.jpg

The memoirs of Sqn Ldr Rupert Parkhouse, recorded in 1995 – Part 23. First post in this series is #9775 on page 489 of this thread.
I LEFT 201 Sqn immediately and went for interview at the Air Ministry with a very pleasant South African called Fats Lowe, who told me that I was quite useless and that I would have to be re-trained. In early 1948 I went to 201 AFS at Finningley.

By this time Flying Training Command was really getting its act together and I was given a very well organised course on the Wellington Mk 10, and since I was going back to Coastal Command I then had to do the maritime OTU at Kinloss on Lancasters. The feeling of taking off in a Lancaster is one of the great memories of my flying life, it was an absolutely superb sensation opening up all four Merlins.

At the end of that course I went to 223 OCU at Calshot where I had a course on Sunderlands and on August 1 I was transferred supernumerary to 230 Sqn, commanded by another former POW my old friend Tony Payne, and based at Finkenberger on the River Elbe flying the Berlin Airlift.

Between September and December 1948 I did about 40 trips into Berlin carrying 10,000 lbs of salt inwards and about 40 refugees, usually children to whom we gave our chocolate ration, returning to evacuation centres and schools in Hamburg. [The corrosion-protected Sunderland was the only aircraft which could carry salt without risk of structural damage – Ed.]

On December 16 1949 I flew back with a load of ground crew to Calshot, where the squadrons were going to be taken off the airlift and moved to Pembroke Dock. After Christmas leave I rejoined 201 Sqn, now at Pembroke Dock, and became CO of the squadron in January 1950.

NEXT AND FINAL POST: A close shave with a Sunderland convinces Rupert to finish his flying career and join the ranks of the penguins, where at last he finds contentment as a staff officer.

[MPN11]

Counting the remaining posts before 10,000 carefully ... :)

There is sometimes satisfaction in Staff appointments. I can think of 4 (out of 7) that I actually enjoyed! OK, so I'm weird, OK? :)

[BernieC]

Chugalu2

HP Manx must indeed be what I remember seeing, Thank you!

[BernieC]

And the Wikipedia page to which we were referred reminded me of another Handley Page-related experience of that time. How it came about I do not recall, but presumably a school-organised visit some time in early 1944 after we had returned to London: a tour of the HP works at Cricklewood. Utterly confusing to me at the time except for a walk into the wooden mockup of the HP Hermes (name only half-remembered), which left some memory-trace.

[Danny42C]

Geriaviator (pp Rupert Parkhouse #9992),

One aspect that Rupert has not touched on - his return to the UK must surely have been cushioned by the five year's Back Pay (what deductions did the Germans make ? - I seem to recall that our old pal Fredjhh [RIP] had to pay for being scalped by the Camp Barber).

Even so, would've thought there was a nice little nest-egg waiting for him !

Danny.

[Danny42C]

Geriaviator (pp Rupert Parkhouse #9992),
...carrying 10,000 lbs of salt inwards...
Better than coal, it seemed; I believe the Yorks could never get rid of the coal dust.

Did the Sunderlands land in the Havel lake ?

... and about 40 refugees, usually children to whom we gave our chocolate ration...
Recalls the US Skymasters going into Tempelhof, where the second dickies would open the side window on long finals, and toss out a load of 'Hershey' bars (one at a time !) to the eager crowd of Berlin children below (didn't Hershey, when they heard of this, supply the chokkies free for the purpose ? (through the PX, I suppose).

Danny.

[BEagle]

The dropping of chocolates to the Berlin children was started by Gail Halvorsen, aka 'Uncle Wiggly Wings' - see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gail_Halvorsen

[Danny42C]

(Bit of a "Bum's Rush" from now on, to put you out of your misery).

Not too well known is that there looked like a replay coming up in 1961, when the Berlin Wall rose like a mushroom in the night, and we thought that Khrushchev was going to try again.

Trouble was, after the first gefuffle had settled down peacefully, we'd left the old MPN-1 ("Bendix") in position at Gatow. No way were they going to let us get a CPN-4 in there now (did we have anything which could airlift it ?)

So a hue 'n cry went up in RAF(G) for any old hairies who could still remember how to operate the old Gatow museum piece.


Off goes Danny from Geilenkirchen - Helmstedt - Marienborn - Gatow (creepy, lonely, stretch of autobann) to spend a few weeks enjoying himself in bright lights of Berlin, before they got a relief Controller up to him, and he came back same way to a rather cross (because carless) Mrs D.

Das war ja Zeite !

Danny.

[Danny42C]

Geriaviator pp Rupert Parkhouse (#9992 - tension rises - roll of drums !)
...A close shave with a Sunderland convinces Rupert to finish his flying career and join the ranks of the penguins, where at last he finds contentment as a staff officer...
Perhaps just as well. There comes a time for all of us when we need to hang up our boots and call it a day.

10,000 on the clock ! Never thought I'd see the day ! Thanks, fellas and popsies ! (Roll on 11,000).

Coincidentally, it is nearly five years to the day (27th January 2012) that I timidly put in my first Post on PPRuNe. How time flies !

I stand aside now, Ladies 'n Gentlemen. The field is free !

Nunc dimittis.....(well, not just yet),

Danny.

EDIT: Overshot ! (always did come in too fast) D.

EDIT (2): No, I didn't - it was the PPRuNe Gremlin who clocked 10,001 on me (I Swear) ! D,

[Geriaviator]

Congratulations Danny! And I'm sure everyone on this matchless thread will join me in thanking you for past years in which you have right royally entertained us with wit, wisdom, and experience. Go easy on the Nunc Dimittis, the Magnificat would be more appropriate :D

I don't know about Rupert's back pay, Danny, I presume he cashed in as did other POWs. I certainly hope so as small compensation for giving up the best years of his life in a prison camp; today he remembers nothing about it. Yes, the Sunderlands did land on Lake Havel, apparently Berlin needed more than 30 tons of salt among the 6000+ tons of general supplies delivered daily. Operation Plainfare has its own very interesting entry on Wiki.