The only thing that prevented a tragic and almost certainly fatal accident from happening that day, was that a wide-awake young SAAF pilot was at the controls. Perhaps that is the most fitting testimony that I can give to the excellence of the Wings Course training given to SAAF pilots.
In the flight tests themselves, every imaginable aerobatic manoeuvre was carefully carried out to ensure that the aircraft was operating within its design parameters. The last stage of the test flight was my least favourite and involved spinning the aircraft from a great height, with the pilot holding it in the spin, to complete a full eight rolling, pitching and yawing revolutions before recovery was initiated. This exercise was guaranteed to expose any latent defect resulting from the major service, and naturally the ‘scribing’ was done after the aircraft had (hopefully) returned to straight-and-level flight after the extended spin. This type of flying was quite obviously nerve-jangling and not for the faint of heart.
During this period, about 40 Harvards went to Durban for the weekend, each carrying a crew of two under the guise of a ‘long navigation exercise’. Thirty-eight of the Harvards were crewed by trainee instructors and their respective tutors. I flew in one of the remaining aircraft with one of the stasieslette.
All the aircraft headed for a place called Tugela Ferry in the Natal hinterland. On reaching Tugela Ferry, the idea was to descend quickly to ground level and then fly down the Tugela River valley at low level, turn 90 degrees to starboard (right) upon reaching Tugela Mouth on the Indian Ocean coast, and proceed, still at low level, along the North Coast of Natal to a landing at AFB Durban.
The stasieslet and I carried out the instructions to the letter and arrived unscathed at the mouth of the Tugela River, where we turned south in the direction of Durban. To pass the time, I related to him that I had family who had lived at Shaka’s Rock for a number of years, and also that this was the legendary spot from which Zulu warriors who had been defeated in battle would be cast to their deaths on the jagged rocks below.
The 20-metre-high rock stands at the northern entrance to a small inlet called Thompson’s Bay. I knew the place well, having spent many hours fruitlessly fishing from its heights. Thompson’s Bay was also where a significant number of local beauties spent time sunbathing, occasionally topless, in relative seclusion from prying eyes. Thus was the groundwork laid for a close aerial inspection of the beach at Thompson’s Bay (and any of its attractive occupants) as we flew by. It was, after all, directly on our route to AFB Durban.
Even though the Harvard is not the fastest aircraft on earth, it still gets along at quite a fair clip, and we rapidly approached Thompson’s Bay, passing the Salt Rock and Shaka’s Rock hotels. A few seconds later, Shaka’s Rock was abeam on the starboard side. So mesmerised were we with spotting gorgeous tanners on the beach that it was only at the very last second that we saw the kite-fisherman standing atop Shaka’s Rock. I recall clearly that his mouth was agape at an almost impossible angle and his posture remarkably aggressive.
‘What’s that idiot so upset about?’ I muttered under my breath a split second before I observed, in what seemed like slow motion, how his large rod and reel were torn from his hand and catapulted into the air between him and our airborne chariot.
‘I think that oke just lost his tackle!’ said the stasieslet, somewhat redundantly.
Realising that we might just be in a bit of trouble, we headed for Durban as fast as the Harvard could carry us.
Ten minutes later we landed on Runway 23 at Louis Botha International Airport (now no longer operational), from where we would taxi to AFB Durban. Louis Botha had an area on a taxiway near the southern end of Runway 23 where an aircraft the size of a Harvard was invisible to anyone in the civilian control tower or anywhere on AFB Durban.
A good stasieslet, and the one I was flying with was one of the best, would know important information like the vantage points from which an arriving Harvard could be seen and where not. So, as we turned off quite a long way down Runway 23 and entered the taxiway going northeast back towards the parking area at AFB Durban, we disappeared from the line of sight of any interested observer in the tower or at the Air Force base.
As we did, the stasieslet slowed the Harvard right down to a crawl and asked me to jump out of the aircraft, still with my parachute strapped to my backside, and run along next to the plane, removing any traces of fishing line that might still be attached to our tail. This took just a few seconds, and I jumped back into my seat and we continued taxiing, at increased speed, to the AFB Durban parking area.
Before the chocks were even in, a delegation of officers arrived and immediately demanded to know why we had been flying so low and so dangerously along the coastline north of Durban.
‘Not us!’ we echoed simultaneously, looks of shock, horror and incredulity etched on our unlined and innocent faces. ‘We would never break the rules!’
But, within seconds, there was a triumphant ‘Aha!’ from one of the technical officers (TOs) inspecting our Harvard. The other members of the rapidly assembled inspection party gathered around the gleeful TO, who was standing observing our tailplane.
‘Look!’ he said pointing at the horizontal stabiliser, where he had discovered evidence of something that had obviously impacted the elevator’s leading edge at high speed and gouged shallow furrows in its paintwork (as might be caused by heavy fishing line coming into contact with a Harvard flying at 150 knots, or about 275 kph).
‘Deny everything!’ whispered the stasieslet to me through clenched teeth.
Just then there was a disturbance as the Harvard that had followed five minutes behind us arrived.
‘It’s probably them. They always fly too low,’ said the stasieslet, loudly enough for the welcoming committee to hear.
‘Bah!’ responded their obvious leader, a guy with a massive handlebar moustache, but then, a little tentatively, and to cover all bases, he dispatched another of his TOs to scrutinise the arriving Harvard, just to make sure.
As it happened, that Harvard also had gouge marks on its tail.
And so did all 40 Harvards that arrived in Durban that day.
It seems that flying too low and too close to the beach was common practice among Harvard pilots. The practice had been going on since flying started, and will continue long after I have gone and robots replace young men as commanders of airborne military equipment.
Any stasieslet worth his salt would know important things like this.
4
Becoming a chopper pilot
Before too long I was posted to South African Air Force College (SAAFCol) in Voortrekkerhoogte, Pretoria, alongside about 70 other newly qualified pilots and navigators for the prescribed SAAF Officer’s Course.
At this stage, none of us had been commissioned and we still all wore the white shoulder tabs designating candidate officer, the rank we’d all held since starting the Pupe’s Course. A week or two into the Officer’s Course, a small Wings Parade was held and Brian King and I received our coveted SAAF Pilot’s Wings.
The three-month Officer’s Course was designed to smooth off the remaining rough edges that some of us still carried from the wide diversity of our upbringing and schooling, to teach us a few of the protocols necessary to be good junior officers, to equip us with some basic administrative skills, to get rid of some of the belly fat accumulated during the latter stages of the Pupe’s Course, and, most importantly, to help us to survive formal dinners.