Mike Saunders was well known for naughty deeds right from the start of his flying career. He was a junior pilot when he went into a toilet and waited there until the other three adjoining ones were occupied. At this point he lit a short fuse affixed to a commercial detonator. As soon as the fuse was burning, Mike dropped it into the toilet and flushed. He expected the water to transport the fuse and detonator into the external sewerage pipe where detonation would pressurise the system and blow the contents of the toilet bowls upward onto the bare butts of his unsuspecting mates.
Mike’s plan failed. The fuse and detonator were too heavy for the water to carry over the bowl’s water trap. The flush was complete before detonation occurred, shearing the toilet bowl at floor level. Mike’s error cost him all the repair expenses and his colleagues rubbed this in with the painted remembrance wreath and poem on the new wooden seat.
Some time during the ’60s, Alex Roughead had become a menacing pyromaniac. He revelled in explosives and set many traps for his mates. One of his pranks involved substituting a small wad of magnesium cotton in place of the filament of a broken light bulb. Upon entering their own rooms his friends would receive quite a fright and become temporarily blinded when they switched on the main light. He had done this at New Sarum so many times that all of his friends had learned to look away and expect a bang when they switched on ceiling lights.
Alex decided he should change the position and set up a larger charge on a bedside light. Having heard nothing during the night nor received any abuse at the breakfast table next morning, he felt disappointed. So he went to inspect the bedside light he had doctored and found it as he had left it. Alex switched on the light, but nothing happened. He could not understand this. Next he went to the main electrical board in the passageway where he found a thermal breaker had dropped out. As he switched it on an almighty explosion occurred.
Alex returned to his friend’s smoke-filled room to discover that the bedside cabinet, light and most of the bed had been destroyed. Huge black burn marks covered two walls and the ceiling. Realising that his friend might have been killed or badly hurt if the thermal switch had not tripped out the previous night, Alex abandoned pyrotechnic trapping.
Unrelated to Air Force were stories of a commercial pilot serving with Central African Airways before that airline became Air Rhodesia. He had been trained by Air Force and delighted in teasing old ladies and brand-new airhostesses. Walking backwards from the flight deck, drawing out two lengths of string, he would come to an old lady and hand her both strings requesting that she fly the aircraft whilst he slipped off to the loo.
Targeting a new hostess on her first flight he gathered up all the salad on his lunch plate and placed it inside an airsick bag. With the connivance of the skipper, he rang the service bell for the hostess. When she arrived on the flight deck she found the second Dickey doubled up and noisily puking into the sick-bag. He turned and apologised for asking her to take the bag from him. As the hostess reached for the bag the captain grabbed it saying, “I love my salad warm" whereupon he hand-scooped salad into his mouth. The hostess, with hand over mouth, left the cabin retching.
On another occasion this naughty pilot dug a hole in the paper plate on which his lunch had been served. He undid his fly and pulled the head of his twin through the hole and set salad neatly around it. When the new hostess responded to the cockpit service bell, he pointed to the centre of the salad pile and asked, “What’s the meaning of serving this with my salad”? The panicking hostess apologised, took the fork from the plate and stabbed the offending item, which promptly bled profusely as cries of agony emitted from its owner. Not surprisingly, this pilot became more circumspect in future pranks.
15 PTC
WITH THE INTRODUCTION OF CANBERRAS and the impending arrival of Hunters, the RRAF was running short of pilots. Following the 1960 break in pilot training, it was decided to make this up in 1961. No 15 PTC was brought forward to mid-1961 to follow close behind 14 PTC, which was then midway through BFS.
When 14 PTC moved on to Vampires, I was allocated three 15 PTC students. They were Officer Cadets David Hume, Doug Patterson and Bruce McKerron. Patterson did not do well. I put him up for a scrub check and he returned to Civvy Street. McKerron was a cocky young fellow who was too familiar for my liking, but once he knew where he stood he did well and I enjoyed teaching him.
Hume came from Umtali where I had known his parents and brother Peter before I joined the Air Force; but I had only noticed young David in passing.
From his very first gentle flight Dave Hume was airsick and sortie after sortie had to be cut short to get the honking cadet back on the ground. It was obvious to me that David had potential and should make a good pilot, so long as the airsickness problem could be overcome. Feeling sure his was not a physical problem, I set out to cure him.
Most of the students had flown about eight hours but Dave Hume had less than half of this time. As usual, he reached for his ‘honk packet’ twenty minutes into the flight. Once he had heaved up, I told him to tighten his seat belt and hold tight to see what he must eventually endure if he was to become a pilot. For about fifteen minutes I conducted non-stop aerobatics with lots of positive and negative ‘G’, plenty of fuel fumes and a couple of naughty flick rolls that even made me feel a bit queasy. When I stopped, Dave had half his face in the honk packet and his knees were up by his ears as he wretched noisily and repeatedly, but with nothing coming from his stomach. Back on the ground he staggered back to the crew-room bathed in sweat and so pale I became worried that I might have overdone things. When he eventually recovered I said to him, “Hume, you have experienced and survived much harsher flying than you will face at any stage of your flying training. What you have to go through to reach solo is very, very gentle, so stop worrying about your stomach and let’s get on with the job." Dave never had a moment’s trouble from then on and went solo with time to spare. He eventually gained the Sword of Honour as best student when he and his course members received their wings.
Some time after the last solo had been flown I was given Officer Cadet Harold Griffiths, due to ‘non-compatibility’ with his first instructor. He had joined the ground-training phase of his course late because, as a member of the Churchill School Pipe Band, Griffiths (Griff) had been given special dispensation by Air HQ to accompany the band on a tour of Scotland. His introduction to flying with the RRAF was unusual and might have put a lesser man right off flying as a career.
The Churchill School Pipe Band was well known to all Rhodesians for its excellence in Scottish piping dress and drills. So their invitation to participate at the Edinburgh Festival was wholly supported and the RRAF undertook to fly the band to Scotland and back.
OC 3 Squadron, Squadron Leader Harry Coleman, captained the aircraft with Flight Lieutenant Bill Smith as his co-pilot. They were in for a Tough trip because the work of professional saboteurs showed up again. Just prior to crossing the Zambezi River on the northbound leg, the port outer engine had to be closed down due to total loss of oil pressure. This necessitated turning back to Salisbury where a standby Canadair was available to resume the long flight to England. Two engines on this replacement aircraft also suffered the selfsame problem as the first. Fortunately these both occurred in the UK costing much wasted time and money. The aircraft eventually returned to New Sarum safely and disgorged a very relieved bunch of pipers.