When, in 1967, Air Vice-Marshal Archie Wilson interviewed me upon my promotion to Squadron Leader, he let me know just how much he knew of my many misdemeanours over the years. The first of these was Beryl’s nightly visits to me. With a twinkle in his eye he said he would have been disappointed, for Beryl’s sake, had I not disobeyed his ‘no visitor’ ruling.
When the guys came back from leave, it was good to be off permanent duty and return to flying, even though we had to continue on Provosts for another two months because the Vampires were away on their first detachment to RAF Aden.
Whereas most of the pilots, technicians and aircraft of No 1 Squadron were involved, Group HQ had decided to withhold moving the balance of the squadron to Thornhill until one week before the detachment was due back from Aden.
Far from being disappointed by the delayed jet conversion, my course saw possibilities opening up for involvement in future overseas deployments. I was given Flying Officer Alan Bradnick as my instructor for the period, which I found refreshing. He smiled easily and spoke a lot in flight.
Apart from consolidating on general flying standards, it was a pleasure flying with little if any pressure. However, an unfortunate flying accident marred an otherwise easy-going period. It involved a mid-air collision.
Four aircraft were practising formation with emphasis given to slick formation changes. At the time of the incident Bill Galloway was flying lead with his instructor, Flying Officer Mike Saunders. Gordon Wright was with Flying Officer Alan Bradnick as No 4.
The formation was in echelon starboard in which Bill would have been nearest camera and Gordon farthest away.
Lead called “Box, Box go”, whereupon No 3 and No 4 initiated a drop in height and moved left to their new positions. In this, No 3 moved to echelon port (nearest camera) and No 4 moved to line astern behind and below the lead aircraft. Flying conditions were typically bumpy and Gordon had moved too far forward. Unfortunately his aircraft rose as the lead aircraft dropped and his propeller chopped off the lead’s elevators.
No 4 fell back out of harm’s way but the lead Provost pitched nose down and, with no elevator to control pitch, settled into a moderately steep dive from which there was no hope of recovery. Flying Officer Mike Saunders jettisoned the canopy and ordered Bill Galloway to bail out immediately but he stayed with the aircraft to steer it away from a built-up area in order to crash in open veld. Only when very low did Mike abandon the aircraft. His parachute opened in the nick of time and he suffered a very heavy landing with the fireball from the stricken aircraft very close by.
Advanced Flying School
THE ARRIVAL OF VAMPIRES FROM Aden is indelibly embedded in my memory. The fellows who had remained in Salisbury while most of 1 Squadron were away in Aden were now at Thornhill with all the ground equipment and one Vampire T11. Everyone at Thornhill, including the wives of the squadron guys, assembled on the flight lines to welcome the boys back.
The first formation of four in echelon starboard came in low and fast to make a formation break. Lead banked sharply pulling up and away from the group. Nos 2, 3 and 4 followed suit at two-second intervals. This manoeuvre placed the aircraft on the downwind leg, equally spaced for a stream landing off a continuous descending turn to the runway.
No war film ever impressed me as much as those screeching jets taxiing to their parking positions. All aircraft closed engines as one with the pilots climbing down from their machines. They had just completed the last legs from Dar es Salaam via Chileka in Nyasaland, so large patches of sweat substantially marked their flying suits and Mae West survival vests. Removal of bone domes, incorporating inner headgear with oxygen mask and headphones, revealed untidy, wet and flattened hair. Their glistening faces, deeply marked by the pressure lines of masks and huge grins made the pilots look really macho. A further three formations arrived and soon the place was full of jet aircraft and happy people.
We had been practising our cockpit drills on the side-by-side Vampire T11 trainer for some time. So we were well and truly ready when allocated to our instructors the very next day. Mine was Flight Lieutenant John Mussell whom I had not seen before his arrival from Aden.
Learning to fly a jet was totally different to what I expected. Flight Lieutenant Mussell was easygoing and talkative, the nose wheel design made taxiing so much easier than the propeller-driven ‘tail-dragger’ Provost, the engine sounded quiet inside the closed cockpit and take-off was a dream—though controls were noticeably heavy.
This first flight in a jet was on a cloudy day with intermittent bursts of sunlight. I was amazed by the speed once airborne, with stratus clouds zipping fast overhead. Once through, the fluffy white structures fell away rapidly as the Vampire made its seemingly effortless climb. Flight seemed so quiet and smooth with only a gentle background hissing from the high-speed airflow and a muffled rumbling from the Goblin jet engine embedded in the airframe behind us.
On this first sortie I not only experienced stalling, spinning and steep turning but was given an introduction to jet aerobatics. All seemed easier than flying a Provost, though two situations were trying. Firstly, steep turning and aerobatics brought about much higher ‘G’ loadings than I had known before. The Provost’s 4.5 Gs was now replaced by up to 6 Gs so I found turning my head very difficult and raising an arm required considerable effort.
The second difficulty concerned jet engine handling, which did not compare with a Provost’s instant response to throttle movement. The Vampire’s Goblin engine had to be handled very gently in the low rpm regions because rapid application of throttle would flood the engine and cause it to flame out. Once engine speed reached 9,000 rpm, the throttle could be advanced quite rapidly.
Back in the Thornhill circuit things changed a great deal. I simply could not get through all the pre-landing checks on the downwind leg before it was time to commence the continuous descending turn onto the runway. Going around again also required speeds of action that had me sweating. Within a few sorties I was coping well and could not understand why I had been so hard pressed in the first place. My whole course agreed that flying the Vampire T11 was not only great fun it was much easier to handle than the propeller-driven, ‘tail-dragger’ Provost.
Flying at high altitude was not only wonderful in itself; it induced a sense of awe from the sheer vastness of the air mass and the beauty surrounding me. By day the colour of the sky varied from the stark dark blue above to the light smoky blue of the far-off horizon. The sheer whiteness and gentle contours of clouds contrasted greatly with the blue above and the motley browns and greens of hills, trees, fields, rivers, dams and open veld far below.
On dark nights it seemed as if the stars had multiplied both in number and brightness and they appeared so close that one felt it possible to reach out and touch them. Although aerobatics were disallowed at night, I enjoyed diving for speed then pitching up to about sixty degrees before rolling the aircraft inverted. Once upside down, I allowed the aircraft to pitch gently at zero G as I gazed at the stars imagining myself to be flying in space with the stars spread out below me. The majesty of this was greatly enhanced by the wonderful sensations that accompany weightlessness.
My greatest joy came on those rare occasions flying in full moonlight between towering cumulonimbus clouds whose huge structures were illuminated in dazzling lightning displays of immeasurable beauty. In such surroundings one feels very small, but cosy and safe within the compact cockpit, while sensing God’s immeasurable power all around.