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This short history was initially written for a magazine devoted to flight simulation; I have made some attempt to remove the references to that hobby that still provides me with so much enjoyment but, has no place in this story. It is now, mainly, a recollection of the happy times that I spent in the Royal Air Force from 1950 to 1993, some forty-three years of flying initially in Southern Rhodesia training on the Tiger Moth and Harvard and finally on the VC10 at RAF Brize Norton. I do hope that in the fullness of time my son, Richard, will have the chance to read these memoirs and will enjoy reading them as much as I have enjoyed writing them.

I will not spend too much time recounting my early days except as they show the route that led me to join the Royal Air Force. I was born in Darlington in 1931; my father ran a sport shop that failed in the slump of the early thirties. With a family to support and no employment available, he joined the RAF and remained in the service until his retirement in 1966. His first posting, after training, was to Thornaby where we rented a house in the town. I have a clear recollection of listening to the Prime Minister telling us over the radio “I have received no such assurance and that, consequently, we are at war with Germany”. As soon as air raids threatened, my sister and I were packed off to safety in the country; we were evacuated to Kirkby Malzeard in the Yorkshire Dales where we were billeted with an ancient uncle and aunt on my mother’s side of the family. They soon found us too difficult to manage and we were moved elsewhere in the village to stay with distant cousins who owned a farm. I was fortunate to receive an excellent education in the village school with a class consisting of one other boy, plus two girls, and myself. This led to a scholarship and a place at Ripon Grammar School founded as long ago as 1555 but recently placed under threat by our government. I left school in 1947 and, despite what now seem to be pretty good qualifications, decided to work in a local furniture factory. My father, recently returned from the war, advised me against this but I simply wanted to get away from school and gratefully accepted the proffered deferment from National Service during the period of my apprenticeship. My employers were W M Abbott & Co who made high quality, reproduction furniture and I was supposedly employed as a prospective furniture designer, a task for which I had little aptitude and even less enthusiasm. I spent most of the time calculating wages, stacking timber and readying furniture for despatch. Realising that I had made a terrible mistake and was in danger of becoming stuck in a job that I detested and offered no future, my eye was attracted to the current press advertisement advising “You too could fly this 600 mph Meteor if you are young, keen, fit and intelligent”. Well, in my humble opinion, I was all of those so off I went to Hornchurch to fit square pegs in round holes, attempting to convince the RAF that I was just the man they were looking for. In the event I was offered training as - Pilot, Navigator, Engineer, Signaller, or Air Gunner. I had seen enough war movies to know that all the glory went to the pilot and I had a rough idea that there was no rear gunner in the 600 mph Meteor so the choice was simple enough; I asked, politely, if I could be a pilot. I still wonder what I would have said had I been offered Air Gunner as the only choice. My father tried to dissuade me from joining the RAF, I suspect he thought I was not up to the task but, heartily sick of walnut veneer and grandfather clocks, decided to go ahead, despite his entirely understandable misgivings.

I have dragged my logbooks out of the attic, dusted them off and opened up the last volume. It shows my Record of Service from the day that I joined in 1950 until my retirement in 1993; it may help you to follow my narrative. You will note that during my 43 years in the Royal Air Force, I never had a ground tour. I suspect this is something of a record in itself as the normal aviator was inevitably consigned to a desk at some stage of his career. I say “his” because “hers” were not allowed near an aeroplane cockpit or flight deck until very late in my career, except of course as good looking, cabin crew serving tea or coffee. Quite right too, however, my apologies to any ladies who may be offended by my outdated, chauvinistic, male attitude.

My first day in the Royal Air Force began when I travelled by train from our home in Ripon, stopping at Leeds to join a group of fresh-faced youths all excitedly anticipating a new life. Because I was “Aircrew” I was placed in charge and tasked with getting us to our destination. Somewhat to my surprise we all eventually arrived at RAF Cardington. I marvelled at the sight of the airship sheds, underwent the brutality of my first military haircut, was issued with my uniforms, collected the King's shilling and received my service number. I became “4049157 AC2 Alderson”. You can forget your pin number but you never forget your service number. Nothing much happened at Cardington, I recall a station dance and my attestation ceremony, I still have my copy of the document with what looks now like very childish scrawl, promising to serve my King and country.

Then it was back up north to Driffield the home of one of the many Advanced Flying Schools currently churning out jet pilots as fast as they could to face the threat of the perceived communist menace. My immediate involvement at Driffield was limited to being processed in the direction of one or other of the Initial Training Schools that prepared the raw recruit for eventual flying training. After what I recall as being a fairly boring process I found myself falling in, re-classified as a Cadet Pilot, on an unusually hot October day and being marched down to the railway station with my kit-bag slung over my shoulder. Our eventual destination was the Isle of Man and No.1 ITS at RAF Jurby. We took the ferry across the Irish Sea from Liverpool to Douglas where we were introduced to our drill instructor, Corporal Perkins. If I ever meet Corporal Perkins again I swear I will drive a wooden stake through his heart, we formed a mutual hatred for each other on first sight. On to the strange, steam driven, narrow gauge railway and the short journey to Jurby. Our wing consisted of five flights of 22 cadets, each flight housed in a long barrack room that had to be scrubbed and polished until it shone. There then followed day after day of being screamed at by Perkins on the parade ground, I loathed him more with each passing day. We had lectures on the Theory of Flight, the History of the Royal Air Force, Meteorology, and Air Force Law; we endured miserable nights, in oo2

a tent, on the summit of Snaefell having our leadership potential developed, not the happiest period of my young life. I recall that once a week we were required to march around between classes with the old style leather flying helmet on our heads, this was supposed to accustom us to wearing this strange form of headgear. At the halfway point we sat examinations with a cut off mark for further progression on the course. I failed to achieve the required standard in one subject and suffered the horror of waiting to be called in to the squadron commander’s office for what I was sure was inevitable suspension. One after the other my failed colleagues were processed and returned looking crestfallen. For some reason my name was never called, an administrative error perhaps, or possibly due to the fact that I had played rugby for the station and the squadron commander happened to captain the team. Whatever the reason and mightily relieved I found myself suddenly living in the Officer's Mess with a room of my own and bearing the exalted title of Officer Cadet. I continued to make heavy weather of the course and, on leaving Jurby, entrusted with my personal documents, steamed open the folder. To my dismay I read that "Officer Cadet Alderson is only worthy of further training due to the current desperate shortage of pilots in the Royal Air Force". Ah well at least I would never see Perkins again and now I heard that I was off to Southern Rhodesia for flying training. We were told that we would be travelling out on a luxury, ocean liner, first-class, and, so rumour had it, full of single, young ladies looking for romance under the stars.

Of such things are dreams made. The reality was that during my embarkation leave there was a policy change and I was ordered to move myself down to RAF Lyneham where one of His Majesty's Handley Page Hastings was eagerly awaiting my pleasure with a view to inflicting a most uncomfortable journey on me. We flew out via Istres, Luqa, Fayid, Khartoum, Wadi Halfa, Nairobi, and finally Victoria Falls where we embarked on one of those amazing Rhodesian Railway trains that operated at the time; all wood panelling, wonderful views, splendid meals and a chap to turn down the bed for you before retiring. We travelled via Bulawayo to Gwelo finding that RAF Thornhill was just outside town and was in the process of changing from navigator training to pilot training to become No.5 FTS. Thornhill together with Heany near Bulawayo were all that was left of the Rhodesian Air Training Scheme that helped to train hundreds of aircrew during World War Two. Thornhill was equipped with Avro Ansons for navigator training, De Havilland Tiger Moths and North American Harvards for the pilots. We were accommodated in quite comfortable rooms with our own black batman to look after our every need. The only snag was that Corporal Perkins had reappeared, he had changed his name but it was Perkins all right, he still screamed at me and put me in his awkward squad because I could not present arms to his satisfaction.

Back to 1951, one early Rhodesian morning with the local mists swirling around the flights we got our hands on a real live aeroplane. We pulled the Tiger Moths out of the hangar, learned how to swing a prop and were introduced to our flying instructors. Mine was a super chap by the name of Flt Lt Douglas, he of the droopy moustache and lugubrious manner. Off we went into the wide blue yonder to learn the effects of control, aerobatics, spinning, navigation, and all the other mystiques related to flying. I did not find any of this easy, was violently sick on my first trip, and soon realised that I was not a natural pilot. My colleagues were all going solo but I was still up there with Flt Lt Douglas wishing that he would take a chance on me and send me off for a solo check. I began to fear the worst and my apprehension grew with the passing of time, however, one never to be forgotten day it happened and I was scheduled for a check ride with the squadron commander. I will let my logbook relate the bare details of that day.

If I tell you that I had previously flown sixteen sorties under the instruction of the estimable Flt Lt Douglas you will appreciate that I must have come perilously close to not going solo resulting in the inevitable ignominy of being removed from flying training; I had nightmares dreaming of my father saying, “I told you so”. In fact, although nobody ever said as much, the solo check must have been a scrub-check and a solo-check rolled into one. As it was I performed well enough for Sqn Ldr Speed to feel justified in climbing out of the front cockpit, patting me on the shoulder and asking me if I would kindly bring the Tiger Moth back in one piece. (In case any of you wonder, the Tiger Moth was flown solo from the rear cockpit.) At this distance in time I really cannot remember whether I felt exhilaration or nervousness but I would have taxied out swinging the nose from side to side to obtain some sort of view ahead. I do recall that it was a typical, beautiful Rhodesian day with a gentle breeze and hardly a cloud in the sky. I suppose there was a man in a caravan flashing a green aldis lamp as a signal for clear to takeoff, we certainly did not have radios in the Tiger Moth. All I do remember is that I was required to fly one circuit; land and taxi back to dispersal. I climbed out, slipping off my parachute, slinging it over my shoulder and walking as nonchalantly as possible, back to the crew room. I had joined the ranks of those who had gone solo and the future appeared clear and bright.

My first encounter with a flight simulator was the famous Link Trainer, a very basic piece of equipment, albeit equipped with a motion system. It was really nothing more than a box with a seat for the pilot who was provided with a set of basic instruments. We practised a manoeuvre called the Pattern B, a series of turns, climbs and descents that eventually brought one back to the start point. Simulated instrument flying in the Tiger Moth was practised “under the hood” whereas we used a system of blue glass screens and yellow goggles in the Harvard preventing one from seeing outside. Most of the screens had cleverly etched scratches in the canopy allowing the student to cheat. I quickly discovered that I had a certain talent for instrument flying while my pure handling still caused me problems.

We had a mid-course leave after the Tiger Moth phase and I spent mine, together with a friend in the Black Mountains near Umtali. We moved on to the Harvard after the mid-term leave and I was thrilled to be able to fly an aircraft with a retractable gear, flaps, and a hood that slid back and forth, not to mention a constant speed, variable pitch propeller. Thornhill was 5000 feet above sea level and the Harvard’s Wasp engine was up-rated enabling us to rush around at over 120 knots indicated. Flying became much more of a technical exercise, the downwind check was remembered as a jingle “TMPFFSGGHHH” I will leave out the naughty bits advising you that this was recited as “Tickle my ***** for ****’s sake goody goody ha ha ha”, all of which was intended to prompt, Throttle–Mixture–Pitch, etcetera. I found the Harvard much easier to fly than the Tiger Moth and had no major problems with the rest of the course despite a slight stumble during the night flying phase. My Final handling Check went well and I was awarded my pilot's wings just before Christmas 1950. We had an end of course celebratory dinner in a hotel in downtown Gwelo (since re-named Gweru), I imbibed far too much Castle Lager for my unpractised body to cope with and suffered next day during the “Wings Parade” during which I recall feeling distinctly unwell. Naturally I felt a mixture of delight, elation and relief at completing the course and, sorry as I was to say goodbye to Southern Rhodesia, looked forward to the next stage of my training. On completion of any formal training course, and indeed annually, logbooks were ceremoniously stamped with the Form 414A and completed to indicate how the individual had performed. My end of course summary shows the following hours and assessments. The Average assessment for pilot navigation was a result of getting ever so slightly lost on my final cross-country check ride otherwise I could well have finished with a clean sweep of “Above Average” assessments; I was quite pleased.

I loved Southern Rhodesia, I returned many years later during the ill fated “Declaration of Independence” when I flew the then Colonial Secretary to Salisbury (now Harare) in a doomed attempt to recover the deteriorating situation. Later still, whenever I returned to Zimbabwe, as it is now called, I was appalled to see what a mess had been made of such a wonderful country.

After the wings parade those of us who had survived boarded a Viking of CruiseAir, a long defunct airline, and headed homewards in very small, slow stages. We had a couple of attempts at leaving Malta; both aborted due to an engine problem. Finally at Nice the captain, much to our surprise, advised us that he was leaving us behind, climbed into his Viking and vanished into the blue. We had no money and no idea what to do next; in desperation we threw ourselves on the mercy of the local consul who provided us with tickets for the journey across France and the English Channel. We were miraculously met at Dover by a three-ton truck and driven, filthy and exhausted, to RAF Hendon from whence we were despatched on disembarkation leave.

By this time I knew that I had been awarded a commission, these were the days when most pilots finishing pilot training became sergeant pilots, and I hung around at home waiting to be advised what to do next. I received a cheque to cover the cost of buying my first officer kit; my inclination was to save some of this unexpected booty by visiting Messrs Burton’s in the Ripon market square. My mother, being wiser, marched me off to Austin Reeds in Harrogate who took every penny of my uniform allowance and then some, but fitted me with the best uniform I ever had. Eventually I was told to report to RAF Feltwell for acclimatisation training, this because I had spent my time flying in mainly clear blue skies with never a suggestion of frost or fog. I flew about twenty hours at Feltwell on the Harvard, discovered how to fly a Ground Controlled Approach (GCA) and was introduced to the Tuneable Beam Approach (TBA). This was a system of audible dots and dashes indicating whether you were left or right of the final approach course and equipped with markers to provide the distance to touch down. This was a very accurate and perfectly acceptable means of getting back down on the ground on a murky, winter’s day in Norfolk in a slow aircraft. I honestly cannot recall having such complications as Instrument Approach Minima to worry us; we just pressed on until the runway came into view and then landed, all very simple really.

At the end of the course we were called together in the crew room to be told the role that we had been selected for. Expectation hung heavy in the air as at this time the RAF was still operating such famous aircraft as the Spitfire, Sunderland, and Mosquito; how I would love to be able to tell you that I flew the Spitfire, no such luck. In theory our performance had been assessed, or perhaps the names simply tossed into a hat and extracted at random. With the benefit of hindsight I now appreciate that, like every other decision the RAF ever made on my behalf, it was all a question of what was needed, where, at the time. Whatever the system, if any, I was ordered back up north to RAF Middleton St George for Meteor conversion. I was “young, keen, fit and intelligent” after all!

I finished my Acclimatisation Course at Feltwell on the 24th March 1951 and by the 18th April, having completed the ground school, was strapped in to Meteor T7 WF829 at No 205 Advanced Flying School, RAF Middleton St George, for my first flight in a jet aircraft. My instructor was to be Flight Sergeant Forster and again I was fortunate to find myself in the hands of a sympathetic individual. As a brand new Pilot Officer I had enough sense to call him “Sir” an accolade that he graciously accepted without even the blink of an eye. In the meantime I had been explosively decompressed to 37,000 feet and shot up the ejection seat training device, not that either the two-seat Meteor T7 or the single-seat Meteor F4 boasted such an advanced facility. The Meteor was a new experience waiting to hit a pilot who had never flown anything more powerful than the Harvard. Its twin Derwents packed a terrific punch compared to the Pratt & Witney Wasp; each engine developed around 3,500 pounds of static thrust and fuel for thirty-five minutes of flight time, if you were lucky. It was quite normal to arrive back in the circuit with forty gallons of fuel remaining in tanks although the official required minimum fuel on rejoining was known as 40/40, that is, a total of eighty gallons. Just enough, in theory, for a quick circuit, missed approach, another “dirty dart” and a landing. Navigation aids were non-existent, getting back to the local area was dependant on “pigeon instinct” and the rather archaic system of homing bearings provided by a disenchanted national serviceman sitting in a shack somewhere on the airfield. Even in later years I never lost an awareness of where I was in space; a skill learned from bitter experience in single-seat jets.

After nine sorties, about par for the course, I was sent solo in Meteor F4 - VT272. The Meteor F4 was a lovely aircraft, fully pressurised and therefore not as prone to the canopy misting after descent that often happened in the Mark 7 trainer. Both types suffered from the appalling design problems caused by the relight buttons being located on a panel on the right-hand side of the office; meanwhile, the HP fuel cocks were levers on either side of the seat. The contortions required to restart an engine were legendary, rudder application to keep the beast straight, one hand gripping the stick and the other groping to find the relight button on the right hand side of the cockpit. Now we needed a third hand to feed on the HP fuel cock. Impossible you might say, and you would be absolutely right, the only way was to wrap one leg around the stick, using the resultant, free hand for the relight and the other for the HP cock, while the leg holding the asymmetric load ached and shuddered in protest. If you can bear to imagine the scenario, the worst-case was the loss of the right-hand engine, compounded, as it was, by the fact that this engine was also used to drive the hydraulic pump. This alarming deficiency was overcome in later marks of Meteor by the simple expedient of placing the relight buttons on the end of the HP cock levers. It seems impossible to believe now that we actually practiced single engine approaches with an engine shut down rather than throttled back. My logbook also shows that we flew close formation in the un-pressurised T7 at 35,000 feet. We really must have been truly mad but looking back now I can see that the instructors were as much in the dark as the students with regard to how best to fly a jet aircraft.

Another limitation of the F4 that I recall was a totally inadequate compass system that collapsed when any aerobatic manoeuvre was performed, quite a disadvantage in an aircraft designed as a day fighter. Again this was rectified on later marks of Meteor with the introduction of the G4B compass, an instrument that has seldom been surpassed, in my opinion, for accuracy and reliability. The engines of course being Rolls Royce were magnificent, you could literally throw a brick into the intake and the Derwent would spit it out the back end in small pieces with just the faintest of nicks on the centrifugal compressor and turbine blades. It had very few moving parts and in all my hours on Meteors I only had one engine failure, and that successfully relit at the first attempt.

The Meteor’s handling qualities were truly excellent; it was the most forgiving of aeroplanes and was a joy to fly. It performed quite happily at Mach 0.74 with only marked control stiffening causing any great problems above that speed. A favourite trick in the Meteor was to point it straight up until the airspeed indicator read zero, then leave everything to see what happened. Usually the aircraft would simply fall into a vertical dive back towards mother earth and sort itself out quite happily. Only the Meteor’s single engine performance was perhaps questionable, the engines were, of course, mounted on the wings, heaven knows why as they could just as easily have been positioned against the fuselage. The result was that at low speeds and high power, the rudder was only just man enough for the job; later marks of Meteor, with the straight fin and rudder, improved the asymmetric handling. The approach was flown at 110 knots and was straightforward with the view over the nose being completely uninterrupted. This took a while to get used to as the absence of a nice fat engine cowling was initially disconcerting resulting in a feeling of sitting out in a void.

If you ever have the chance to visit or stay in the Airport Hotel at what is now Teesside Airport you may wish to reflect on the fact that the building was, in my time, the Officer’s Mess. While I was at Middleton St George one of the students had the misfortune to swing off the runway and crash into his own room. He would probably have come to very little harm except for the fact that some masonry fell on him, he was unfortunately killed and his ghost is still said to haunt that particular room in the hotel. I was amazed when I stayed at the hotel, much later on an overnight VC10 stop, to have this story recounted to me by the receptionist who was surprised to hear that I had been there when the sad event had taken place. I do not think that she really believed the ghost story until I told her, recounting with suitable embellishment, that I had seen the spectre sitting in the cockpit of a Meteor while performing my duties as Orderly Officer; quite untrue of course.

There was one very happy moment during my time at Middleton-St-George when I took my then girl friend to the summer ball at the officer’s mess. I seem to recall being given a lift to Ripon to collect her as I certainly did not possess any private transportation at the time, very few young officers did, indeed I did not even own a bicycle.

I am somewhat surprised with the passage of time to note in my logbook that the Meteor course lasted as long as it did; I completed my AFS training on 11th August 1951. In the first part of my story I explained how, at the end of any formal course of instruction, the individual’s logbook was stamped with the Form 414A and annotated with the achieved flying hours and an assessment of one’s ability. I do not reproduce them in an attempt to demonstrate how well I was performing; you will see later that I was brought down to earth with more realistic average assessments. My Summary of Flying and Assessments at the end of Meteor conversion read as follows:

The award of an Above Average rating came as a surprise and at last I was able to feel that I was getting to grips with this flying business. Once more it was time to go home to my parents in Ripon and await my next posting. Once again my wait was short lived and I was almost immediately whisked the short distance back up the A1 to No 228 OCU at RAF Leeming for night fighter training. I probably travelled to Leeming by train, very few young officers could afford to run a car; my cases would have been collected at home by the railway luggage service and magically deposited to await my arrival at the Officer’s Mess. Ah those were the days, the London and North Eastern Railway, green locomotives and brown carriages, and the long gone benefits of a batman to make my bed and clean my shoes, my laundry mysteriously collected and returned neatly deposited in the appropriate drawer. Mess life was different then, suits were worn every evening except Wednesday and weekends when navy blue blazers with slacks (grey) were allowed as a concession to the changing times. You were never seen in the mess without a collar and tie of a suitably sober design and we were only just emerging from the edict that a hat must be worn when outdoors. When I left the air force, jeans and sweatshirts were considered acceptable; “plus ca’change” as Del Boy would say.

Enough of this, it is time to tell you of my trials and tribulations changing myself into a steely eyed night fighter pilot with thunder in my gloves. RAF Leeming was a pre World War Two airfield and had recently changed over from Mosquito to Meteor training. The Mosquito was still used for an exercise called the “Night Attack Demo” as its side-by-side seating provided a suitable vehicle for the student pilot to witness the closure to an unlit target in the dark. I was most impressed and awaited my chance to try it for myself in a Meteor. First we had to go through the process of crewing up with a navigator and this seemingly impossible task was achieved by simply allowing the course members to sort it out for themselves. We wandered around the crew-room trying to guess who might be compatible without having any idea what it was we were looking for in each other. I finally ended up with Pete Collier who seemed a pleasant enough individual and we soon struck up a good relationship. Unfortunately once we got in the air he quickly demonstrated to me, but more importantly to the staff instructors, that he had no aptitude for the art of night fighting; he was completely and hopelessly dysfunctional.

The Armstrong Whitworth Meteor NF11 had the same awful glasshouse canopy as that fitted to the Meteor T7. The nose was elongated to accommodate the Airborne Interception Radar, in this case, the AI Mk 10. We still did not have the benefit of ejector seats and leaving the aircraft in an emergency was something of a gamble as the tail tended to get in the way. The navigator occupied the rear seat and spent his life with his head stuck in a visor gazing at two radar scopes, one providing a horizontal picture with range markers (the B scope), the other provided a vertical picture (the C scope). The maximum range available was usually around six miles and rarely more than ten. The navigator’s hands were kept busy twiddling knobs controlling the gain level while he shouted horizontal and vertical commands that were intended to allow the pilot to adjust the flight path in such a way that he would eventually be able to obtain a visual sighting on the target. On a dark night this involved closing to about two hundred yards to stand any chance of seeing the simulated enemy aircraft. As the course progressed the target weaved around the sky in ever increasing gyrations and life with poor old Pete became distinctly hairy.

The NF11 was also equipped with the Gee navigational aid, a hangover from WW2, quite an accurate navigation aid for its time, some navigators tried to convince us that they could talk us down on to a runway using Gee and the airborne radar; most pilots, understandably, placed more trust in the GCA radar approach despite the fact that the controllers always seemed to speak with Czech or Polish accents. One controller was famous for telling pilots - “You are nicely steady, well below the glidepath”. Other than that we were again back to using our in built homing instinct and reliance on the previously mentioned National Serviceman in the hut. The Meteor NF11 endurance was much improved over the Meteor F4 as it had the usual 325 gallons in the main tank, a ventral tank (175 gallons) plus optional, drop tanks on the wings (100 gallons each) giving a total fuel capacity of 700 gallons. We still arrived back at the end of the flight with one anxious eye on the fuel gauges but at least we were able to clock up more flying hours than previously; a typical sortie length was now an hour and a half. Sometimes a GCI radar station set up practice interceptions for us but more usually we did it all for ourselves with a pair of Meteors acting as target and fighter in turn. We soon became adept at arranging the necessary divergent headings to ensure that, having turned back on to converging headings, the required head-on or angular displacement interception was achieved. Occasionally a third aircraft followed us with a staff crew observing our efforts from close hand; at the time this struck me as a particularly dangerous exercise, three aircraft in close proximity, in the dark, doing their best to get as close as possible to each other without actually coming into contact. As I have already intimated Pete Collier was having problems and I spent a number of frustrating nights weaving around the night sky catching, perhaps, a brief glimpse of the target as it flashed past us. Eventually Pete was taken aside and persuaded that there were occupations more suited to his talents. I was then crewed up with my dear old friend Bill Rough, a tall highly educated Scot whose pilot had also fallen foul of the powers that be. Initially I feared that he was not to prove much of an improvement over my first navigator but eventually we worked it out between us and Bill and I were to fly together for the next three years.

We began to settle in to the routine that was to be my life for the next ten years, a Night Flying Test in the afternoon, two night sorties, debrief, night flying supper usually consisting of an unhealthy, sausage, egg and chips in the Airmen’s Mess, then bed. We slept all morning then repeated the same sequence all over again, except for Wednesdays, which was Sports Afternoon and sacrosanct in the Royal Air Force since pre-war days. The thought of it all now fills me with horror but I was young and only too pleased to have the opportunity to live such a life; I never quite got used to the idea even in later years that I was being paid to fly aeroplanes.

Our flight commander was one “Andy” Andrewejski, fairly obviously Polish and reputed to be a count. He was the one who in the famous, no doubt apocryphal, story was supposed to have taken a young student aside and asked him his name. The student replied “Smith - Sir”. “No, no” said Andy in his best heavily accented English – “What does your mother call you” to which Smith replied “Nicholas – Sir”. Armed with this vital information Andy looked Smith in the eyes and informed him “Well Nicholas, your ****ing scrubbed”. Bill and I were, perhaps, fortunate to find that we had passed the course; my logbook does not record a final check ride and perhaps they were just glad to get rid of us. By now you will have become accustomed to my End of Course Summaries, as I have intimated they do highlight the ups and downs that my career was subject to.

This, I felt, was a much more realistic assessment of my ability at the time and I was not surprised to be relieved of the above average assessment that I had been awarded at Middleton St George; flying an aeroplane is one thing, flying it in an operational role is quite another. Perhaps a word of explanation might be in order with regard to the award of a “White Card” instrument rating. The RAF had devised a system of ratings going from White for the least experienced, through Amber, Green, and Master Green, based on hours flown and expertise demonstrated under test. Despite how well you did, your rating was ultimately limited by the hours flown factor. The system was further confused by an Instrument Rating Examiner qualification and the ultimate accolade the Command Instrument Rating Examiner that allowed the holder to walk on water. Qualifications were intended to define responsibilities and the weather limits that the individual could operate to, it was an awfully cumbersome system that demanded constant vigilance on the part of the authorising officer and, in fact, quite unworkable in many unsupervised environments.

By this time I was madly in love and a quick trip to Harrogate resulted in the purchase of an engagement ring and the promise of unswerving faithfulness to my loved one; a promise that I have, more or less, kept for fifty-four years. My total flying hours had risen to 372:50 and I was feeling fairly confident that I might make the grade as a squadron pilot. In any case it was time, yet again, to await the posters decision on my immediate future. I still marvel at the fact that I never had to hang around between postings and I was soon advised that Bill and I were off to Germany to join 2nd Tactical Air Force. It had taken me just over two years from that day in October 1950 when I had reported to RAF Cardington, but at last I was about to join my first squadron. The airship hangars, the King’s shilling, and Corporal Perkins all seemed but distant memories.

I had three operational tours on night fighters, No 96 Squadron based at RAF Ahlhorn in what was then the British occupied zone of West Germany. I was then posted as an instructor to No.228 OCU at RAF Leeming and, finally, on N.25 Squadron at RAF Waterbeach. This part of my memoirs, indeed the rest of my story, was curtailed at the request of the editor of the magazine mentioned in the preface, one of these days, if I can find time; I will enlarge on the content.

At last Initial, Flying, Advanced and Operational training had all been completed and it was time to move on to my first squadron. Having completed our OCU training my navigator, Bill Rough, and I were posted to 2nd Tactical Air Force (2TAF), based in Germany since the allied invasion of Europe in 1944. We made our way to Harwich from where, at that time, a military troopship regularly set sail for the Hook of Holland. The boat sailed overnight and on arrival we found a number of military trains ready to move the voyagers on to their various destinations. After a brief visit to 2TAF Headquarters at RAF Buckeburg, Bill and I took to the German railway system and made our way to RAF Ahlhorn, in the British Zone of what was still occupied Germany, to join No.96 Squadron. We were deposited late at night at the newly built Officer’s Mess.

There were two squadrons based at Ahlhorn, 96 and 256, both equipped with the Meteor NF11; Ahlhorn is no longer an active airfield and I cannot find a Meteor NF11 for FS2004. Ahlhorn was an old Luftwaffe base and many of the old buildings and hangars remained in use. After a briefing by the station adjutant on relations with the beaten foe, Bill and I presented ourselves at the squadron full of that awful “new boy at school feeling” but soon found that we had joined a very friendly outfit. The Boss was Sqn Ldr (George) Melville-Jackson, there were a few experienced crews but the bulk of the aircrew consisted of brand new flying officers and sergeants. We had our own ground crew although I confess that in those days social contact was minimal. Nowadays we all meet every year for a Squadron Reunion and such inhibitions have happily gone forever.

I have already described a typical twenty-four hour cycle in the life of a night fighter crewmember; however, an examination of my logbook shows a wider variety of activity than I had remembered. I note that in fact we flew lots of air-to-air cine, air-to-ground firing and low level cross-country sorties. We became proficient at formation flying, nothing like Red Arrows standard but good enough to look very presentable. My logbook indicates that I flew twenty to thirty hours every month, but I managed forty hours on a few occasions. In theory we had our own aircraft, from memory I recall mine as being WM144, but this was mainly an excuse for the pilot, navigator, rigger, and fitter to spend weary Saturday mornings, after the inevitable parade, with buckets of soapy water removing the accumulated grime from the airframe.

We occasionally pretended to be day fighter pilots and practised battle formation attempting to do cross over turns in “finger four”, a somewhat cumbersome exercise in the dear old Meteor NF11. The rule, when turning, was “Inside Under – Outside Over”, this meant that if your were the pair on the outside of the turn, you crossed over the other pair, inevitably losing sight of them at some time. Air to ground firing was practiced on one of the local ranges allowing us to gleefully fire our four 20mm canons from point blank range into a large white square erected on the ground. The NF11 was an excellent platform for this purpose and we returned some pretty good scores. Mess life was enjoyable; a gin and tonic cost something like three old pennies and we all drank far more than was good for us. The head barman was a local German called Walter; he had been a Luftwaffe pilot in WW2 and would proudly recount his wartime experiences to newcomers, quickly followed by “Auf dem Ostfront naturlich”. I had a rather lovely German lady to look after me; she took great care of me and I am ashamed to admit that she was extremely grateful for the packet of cigarettes and two bars of chocolate that I gave her each week to supplement her wages. We led a fairly monastic existence; the locals were not unfriendly but as few of us spoke much, if any, German we tended to live in an air force cocoon protected from the realities of the outside world. We were even paid in military money – BAFS, which I think stood for British Armed Forces Script, totally worthless outside the confines of a military base. Any journey into the big outside world required a visit to Station Headquarters to collect some marks and these, at twelve to the pound, allowed us to live royally on the recovering German economy.

Twice a year the squadron decamped to RAF Sylt, just south of the Danish border, for the air-to-air practice camp. We all had a wonderful time as quite apart from the flying we soon discovered the joys of the local town - Westerland, and the infamous nudist beach - the Abysinnien. I fear that Westerland was another excuse to drink more than we should. This, of course, was in the days when the Officers Confidential Report still required the assessing officer to state whether the subject under review habitually drank “Regularly – Wisely”, “Regularly – Unwisely”, or, and this was the kiss of death career wise, “Does Not Drink”. Our air-to-air results were never anything other than woeful. After a sortie we would examine the banner hoping to find at least a few holes to prove that we had hit the target, I say we, in fact Bill Rough suffered with a fragile stomach and rarely flew with me on these sorties, I either flew solo or gave a ride to one of our ground crew. The reason for the poor results was a direct result of the guns being mounted in the wings outboard of the engines. Firing at the banner required a turn with fairly high “g” forces resulting in the wings twisting and pointing the guns in an entirely different direction to that intended by the pilot. It was galling to hear F86 Sabre pilots with their radar gun sights and nose-mounted cannon regaling us with scores of 85%, or better, while we were delighted to achieve even one hit.

The other major event of the year was the annual summer exercise when the squadron moved house to another airfield, we normally lived under canvas but were still provided with all the creature comforts – excellent food and wine was available even under these simulated war conditions. One exercise had us based at RAF Bruggen, Bill and I had completed a typical night sortie against a bomber stream in WM182 on 25 July 1953. We were heading back to base when we found ourselves in the middle of a thunderstorm. The AI radar was of little use for detecting weather and I soon found myself struggling to control the aircraft as hailstones smashed against the canopy. The resultant noise was beyond my experience and Bill suggested evacuating the aircraft; the thought of all those hailstones with only my leather helmet as protection appalled me and I told Bill that we were staying right where we were. Eventually I extricated us from our perilous position and asked for a diversion to the nearest airfield, RAF Wahn near Cologne, the home of two more night fighter squadrons. The aircraft had been badly damaged by the hailstones; I can find no further record of WM182 in my logbook and I believe it never flew again. Bill and I were returned to Bruggen in the station Anson where I had to explain to the boss what I had done to one of his aeroplanes. He was obviously not too angry because Bill and I were airborne again that same night. Somewhat later the 2TAF Accident Summary in attempting to describe the incident stated simply that “having entered cloud the pilot could not see”. I thought this to be a rather a curious comment that completely understated the terror I had been subjected to. There was certainly no mention of either a red (bad) ol2

or green (good) endorsement and I suppose I was grateful that the accident although classified as “Major” was deemed also to be, “Unavoidable”. During the early fifties accidents were a fairly frequent occurrence in the jet fighter world; our squadron had an excellent record but 256 Squadron lost some crews to fatal accidents. The only major accident I can recall to one of our aircraft was as a result of a night landing in bad weather, in the woods just short of the westerly runway. The wings and tail were ripped off leaving the pilot and navigator sitting bemused in what little remained of the aircraft. It took a while for air traffic to realise that something was wrong and even longer to find the crew who were fortunately completely unharmed. The pilot, a flight sergeant, was completely unfazed by the accident and was soon back on flying; his navigator took a little longer to regain his enthusiasm for his job.

Towards the end of my tour Squadron Leader Hugh Verity took over as squadron commander; he was famous for his exploits in World War Two, ferrying agents in Lysanders to and from dimly lit fields in occupied Europe. During his time as boss we were detached to Soesterberg in Holland again living in tents but still accompanied by the delights of the Officer’s Mess catering. One night Bill and I found ourselves on standby in a typical dispersal with another Meteor parked across the way from us. When the “Scramble” order came I found that one of the engines would not start. Full of enthusiasm we vacated the aircraft and dashed across to the neighbouring Meteor. The ground crew produced the Form 700, a quick scribble of acceptance and just about to start when, out of the corner of my eye, I saw the original Meteor moving majestically towards me; the chocks had been removed during the attempt to start. I peeped out through my gloved fingers hoping against hope that no harm would befall either aircraft. No such luck, the first Meteor sliced through the radome of the second and continued on its graceful progress coming to eventual rest in a shallow ditch. After ruefully advising Air Traffic that my interest in further events that evening had probably come to an end we reported back to the Squadron HQ tent where dear old Hugh fixed me with a baleful eye and advised me that he would not deal with me summarily. Later, reclining on my camp bed, I asked Bill what summarily meant to which Bill offered the comforting advice that he imagined that I would not actually have to pay for the damage. What the boss really meant, of course, was that he intended to refer me to higher authority for punishment. Fortunately for me our OC Flying at the time was a Wing Commander Jimmy James who I regularly played rugby with. I am sure that this fact had at least something to do with his judgement when he interviewed me back at Ahlhorn and let me off with a very mild admonishment. Yet again rugby had come to my rescue.

My tour was coming to an end and it was time to return to the UK. Bill Rough had decided to extend his tour on the squadron; sadly, Bill was killed in a Canberra accident on his next tour of duty. I made the journey alone visiting the old Air Ministry and hoping for another flying tour. This time there was not even a short wait and I was told that my immediate future would be back at RAF Leeming as a night-fighter instructor. During my tour on 96 Squadron from January 1953 to July 1955 I had flown 546 hours and my grand total stood at 923 hours. Fortunately, perhaps, the boss was away when I left 96 Squadron and my flight commander (now the president of the 96 Squadron Association) signed my End of Tour Summary; he was kind enough to reinstate my Above Average assessment.

During a short disembarkation I found rented accommodation in part of the vicarage at West Tanfield, a beautiful village on the edge of the Yorkshire Dales. At this point in my life I had no idea how to drive a car but needed wheels of some sort for the fifteen-mile journey from our new home to Leeming. My father, still in the RAF at Dishforth, had solved the problem by buying a BSA Bantam 125cc motorcycle. I tried a quick circuit of the block on his machine and decided that this was quite a pleasant mode of transport; I rushed into Ripon and bought one. This had all happened on a beautiful summer day which in no way prepared me for some of the miserable journeys that I was to undertake during the forthcoming Yorkshire winter.

RAF Leeming was a pre-WW2 airfield and is still very much in use to this day. The main runway parallels the main A1 resulting in quite a few scary approaches when the road was mistaken for the runway. Another local difficulty was caused by the prevailing westerly wind being channelled through the “Wensleydale Gap” resulting in some pretty strong crosswinds. Most of my work involved flying with student navigators and allowing them to demonstrate their ability to guide me to the required position behind the target. Once the student achieved reasonable proficiency he was turned loose with his own pilot to polish their joint skills. Finally, the student crew was examined by a staff crew following them around the night skies. In this case three aircraft were involved in what could be a fairly exciting sortie. All three aircraft got airborne, if necessary performing a snake-climb through cloud taking off at ten second intervals and miraculously appearing in the clear with a safe separation. The staff crew flying the third aircraft then maintained close formation behind the fighter; the target of course had all navigation lights turned off but for fairly obvious reasons the fighter left its lights on thus helping the staff crew to remain in formation. In fact the red and green wing lights could not be seen from behind and it was normal to use the tail light and the twin jet exhausts as a triangle to maintain visual contact. One well-known problem that all night fighter crews suffered from was the dreaded “Weave”. This resulted from the navigator over doing his directions to his pilot, it was easily recognised with experience but student crews could set up some alarming manoeuvres that were extremely difficult to follow from close behind at night.

We all looked forward to the OCU re-equipping with the Javelin “All Weather Fighter” and it was with a certain degree of impatience that we awaited the arrival of the Javelin FAW Mk5. I was despatched to Gloucester to learn about the aircraft systems and its engines, this with a view to me passing all this information on to students. At the time aircraft and engine manufacturers were literally rolling in money and Messrs Gloster and Bristol Siddeley ensured that this was a most pleasant time.

The Javelin duly arrived and we all trooped out to watch the landing, it was an impressive aircraft to look at and all those who heard it remember the unique sound of its two Sapphire engines. The T3 two seat pilot trainer was not yet available and there was no flight simulator, and so on 15 July 1957 after satisfying someone that I knew the takeoff and landing drills I launched myself into the air. My logbook records a familiarisation flight in Javelin FAW Mk5 XA695 for a 40-minute sortie. The most startling thing about the first takeoff was the effect of the power controls, everybody fell victim to a bout of severe wing-waggle. Sufficient to say that by the time I had sorted this out I convinced myself that the air speed indicator had jammed. I called for another aircraft to meet up with me so that I could be led back to Leeming for a formation landing. Before the other aircraft could arrive I gathered my wits and realised that the ASI was not malfunctioning but was actually hard up against the “fast as it can go” stops, I had been rushing around Yorkshire at heaven knows what speed. I closed the throttles, got the speed back into a regime that the ASI could recognise and all was well again. Rather sheepishly, and without admitting to anyone what had happened, I cancelled my request for assistance claiming that the ASI had magically become unglued.

The Javelin was a much maligned aircraft, it did have its faults, but in the hands of a good pilot it was a very useful all weather interceptor. It could climb to 40,000 feet in about eight minutes and was capable of supersonic flight in a very shallow dive. Its top useful ceiling was around 55,000 but with a little encouragement could make 60,000 feet. It had a much improved radar system providing the navigator with a greater initial intercept range and ‘glory of glories’ the pilot had a “Head Up Display”. The rather dated armament of the Meteor was replaced with the Avon 30mm canon, albeit still mounted in the wings; the Firestreak missile came later with the Mk7. The main shortcoming was of course the Javelin’s notoriously poor slow speed characteristics, the Javelin being unique in that having a delta wing it also had a tail plane that was completely blanked off in a stall. Recovery from a stall was virtually impossible and the advice was to get the beast into a spin and try one recovery, if that failed then the advice was to eject!

My career prospects were put to the test when I returned one day after a banner-towing sortie. The banner had either been shot off or the cable had snapped, a not infrequent occurrence. An investigation was currently under way to determine which of these two possibilities was occurring and why. With this in mind I was instructed to land with the remains of the cable still attached to the aircraft rather than the normal practice of jettisoning it into the North Sea. Unfortunately I brought the aircraft in rather low and dragged the cable across half of North Yorkshire terrifying the livestock and knocking down lots of telephone lines. The worst result of all this was that the railway service between Northallerton and the Dales had to be suspended until the necessary communication systems could be restored. I was not popular.

And so life continued in a serene and enjoyable path. I was very happy in my work and could once again play for my beloved Ripon Cricket Club every summer weekend. My reverie was rudely shattered with a surprise announcement that I was being posted to No 25 Squadron at RAF Waterbeach. My total hours were now 1524.40.

No.25 Squadron was based at RAF Waterbeach near Cambridge and was still flying the Meteor NF12 and NF14 but was shortly to re-equip with the Javelin FAW Mk7. I was one of the few pilots on 25 Squadron to have flown the Javelin and the plan was that I should help with the conversion to the new aircraft. On arrival at Waterbeach I was also surprised to learn that I was to become a deputy flight commander and I suddenly realised that my days of being considered a young, inexperienced officer had come to an end. No.25 Squadron had only recently moved from West Malling to Waterbeach and had been reinforced with the remnants of two other Meteor squadrons that had been disbanded. The Squadron Commander, Wing Commander Cook, a navigator, had a difficult task attempting to mould this motley throng into an efficient unit. As time went on the atmosphere on 25 Squadron did improve but I never felt the same spirit of comradeship that I had experienced on my first squadron in Germany.

It was necessary to find a new navigator and I was soon crewed with “Baz” Whorwood, a strange individual who infuriated the hierarchy by insisting on wearing a “Ban the Bomb” badge whether in or out of uniform, not a ploy likely to endear him to the authorities at that time! The Javelins had already begun to arrive and on 30 Dec 58 I climbed into XH908 and launched one of the first No.25 Squadron Javelin mission into the skies. I was thoroughly comfortable with the aircraft by now and determined to demonstrate that there was nothing to fear from the “Gloster Dragmaster”. I held the aircraft down to achieve sufficient speed and then pulled back pointing us skywards at an impressive angle. After landing I was summoned to the boss’s office where he criticised me for my condescending attitude to the Javelin. I was not sure whether condescending was an appropriate adjective but, foolishly, put this down to the Wing Commander’s apparent poor grasp of the English language. Worse was to follow when I was despatched to the Gloster Aircraft airfield at Morton Vallance to pick up another brand new model for delivery to Waterbeach. I thought that safely out of view of the “Cookie Monster” I could repeat my exhibition so treated the Gloster workers to my steep climb after takeoff but this time followed by a radar altimeter check at zero feet along the runway. Great fun, until on arrival at home base I was once again summoned to the Boss’s office and torn off another strip, the Gloster chief test pilot had turned me in over the phone. Despite my low opinion of the boss’s English he was able to advise me that I was required to relinquish my deputy flight commander’s hat.

It occurs to me that I have perhaps not spelled out a typical night fighter sortie profile and an account of what we steely eyed killers practised might be pertinent at this point in my narrative. Fighter Command was responsible for providing a number of aircraft at night readiness available for scramble to intercept any incoming hostile threat. Each squadron adopted this responsibility in turn under an operational codeword, I still hesitate to mention the actual codeword, it was secret and old habits linger on. The whole thing started with a night flying briefing when we were told for the umpteenth time that the blue lights were on one side of the taxiway and the yellow lights were on the other. The Met Man would hazard a guess at what weather to expect, then flying kit on and off to the crew room for coffee and a browse through the RAF flight safety magazine - Air Clues. Eventually the pilot and navigator would be driven out to the aircraft parked on the ARP (Air Readiness Platform) at the end of the active runway. The pilot did the lower walk around check while the navigator performed an upper surface check (far too dangerous for pilots). The ground crew helped to strap us in, removed the safety pins from the ejector seat and left us to our devices. We checked in with the controller and established communications, completed the checks up to engine start, and then did nothing for hour after hour. If you were lucky the radio would burst in to life and order a scramble. A quick flash of the landing lights would alert the ground crew, start the engines, chocks away, taxi on to the runway and blast off; all in a matter of a few seconds. The sector controller would order a heading and altitude and the adrenaline started to flow. Passing 20,000 feet reheat was selected, not that reheat made much difference to the Javelin’s performance. As the target was closed the navigator would be searching for a radar contact and as soon as it was achieved we advised the controller, the navigator stamped his foot on the mute button to prevent any interruption from the ground and we were on our own. Initially the navigator gave turn and elevation commands until the pilot obtained Head Up information then it was a simple matter of arming a Firestreak and waiting for target acquisition. You will have guessed that we were unfortunately not allowed to fire the missile; instead we closed for visual recognition to find, inevitably, that we had been launched for a practice against some harmless Vulcan or Victor. With the mission complete it was time to re-establish contact with the controller – pigeons for base and a close eye on the fuel state. Recovery was still very much a question of self-help using Gee until the inevitable GCA approach to landing. After taxiing back to the squadron apron the aircraft was refuelled for the next sortie. Hopefully it would be the end of our night so off to the Mess for a night flying supper of sausage, egg, and chips. Then a lonely, dawn, drive to our home at Great Shelford as the sun rose over the spires of Cambridge.

On 18 Jan 59 my logbook records my first flight in Javelin FAW9 – XH769 and I continued to fly the FAW7 and FAW9 for the remainder of my tour on No.25 Squadron. Late in 1960 we heard that the squadron was to be detached to Cyprus as reinforcement during the EOKA troubles. All our aircraft were made serviceable and we stuck pyjamas and toothbrush into as many empty holes as we could find on the Javelin. The boss had decided that we would treat the wives and sweethearts to a formation flypast before setting off so sixteen Javelins duly got airborne on 26 July 1960 and wheeled around over Ely trying to get into something that might look like a formation. I was in Javelin FAW9 XH770 and finally found myself heading back towards Waterbeach as part of four boxes of four, one eye on the leader and, as always, the other on the fuel gauges. After this futile exercise we set off for Istres in France, all sixteen aircraft arrived in a pile over the airfield desperately short of fuel and inevitably in weather that required air traffic assistance to get us down. A number of pilots advised our esteemed leader that he was about to lose some of his precious charges unless he made a command decision. This brought out the best in Jim who declared that it was – “Every man for himself.” We all threw caution to the wind and headed for the TACAN hoping and praying that the Sapphires were good at running on fumes; surprisingly we managed to avoid each other and made it safely to “terra firma”.

After lunch at Istres, observing to our amazement the French aircrew downing copious quantities of wine, we continued our journey, with nobody talking to poor old Jim, via a night stop at Luqa (Malta) and then on via El Adem (Libya) to Nicosia in Cyprus. Our time in Cyprus was divided between standby in an unbearably hot cockpit, local flying, and days off when we made for Kyrenia on the north coast where there was a military recreation facility in the shadows of the old Crusader castle. At lunchtime we would move to Clito’s tavern made famous in Lawrence Durrell’s excellent book “Bitter Lemons”. Here we would partake of refreshments and copious amounts of Clito’s best libations. Later and much the worse for wear we would throw ourselves once more into the Mediterranean before heading off back to base ready for next day’s attempts to “Save the Empire”.
My main memories of the return flight to the UK centre on the refuelling stop at Pisa when I also needed to top up my AVPIN. This concoction was used to start the Javelin and just about the most lethal stuff you could put in or near to an aircraft as it was liable to ignite, or explode, if you sneezed. You can imagine then how alarmed I was to see an Italian mechanic rolling a barrel of the wretched stuff towards me firmly strapped, as I was, to my aircraft.

My night fighter era was drawing to a close, I still enjoyed flying the Javelin but was getting just a little tired of strapping myself into a Martin Baker ejector seat encumbered by oxygen mask, bone dome, G suit, and immersion suit. The occasional international crisis had raised the level of expectation from time to time but practice interceptions and failed attempts to put many holes in the banner had long since failed to excite my imagination. I longed for something different, provided of course that it was not a ground tour. I was surprised and delighted therefore to be summoned to Jim’s office, not for another rocket, but to be offered a posting to Transport Command, flying the Comet. By now we had two children and were comfortably housed, on base, in a married quarter; after diplomatically going through the motions of checking with Mum, I jumped at the opportunity.

During my three night fighter tours I had flown the Meteor T7, F8, NF12, NF14, all the Javelins from the Mk2 to the Mk9, the Vampire T11, and the Chipmunk. My total hours had risen to 1954:50 with 1240:05 on Meteors and 483:40 on Javelins. To save space I have avoided including earlier end of tour assessments but include this one to summarise my time on night fighters. I have probably been unfair to navigator bosses in general and Jim Walton in particular and note his assessments and remarks with gratitude. Although a competent pilot and had qualified as an Instrument Rating Examiner I was well aware that I was by no stretch of the imagination ever genuinely, or likely to become, an above average fighter pilot.

                           Single Engine Aircraft          Multi Engine Aircraft
                                    Day        Night                 Day              Night                Total
Dual                 0.55                                                                               0.55
Pilot                 10.50                           154.45           61.10             226.45
Totals               11.45                               61.10           227.40

            As a NF AW Pilot                                Above the Average
            In Air Gunnery                                      No recent experience
            In Instrument Flying                              Instrument Rating Examiner

Remarks “Thanks for your excellent efforts Ollie and
the best of luck in your new role” – JHW

Perhaps the sub-title of this chapter may sound a little pretentious considering that the Comet prototype had first flown in 1949 and my involvement in “The Comet Years” did not begin until 1960, however, as I was lucky enough to spend fifteen years of my life flying this famous aircraft, perhaps I may be excused. Following the well-documented accidents that befell the Comet 1 in the early fifties, airlines cancelled orders for later marks and the Comet 2 was offloaded on to the RAF serving with No 216 Squadron at Lyneham where a survivor still guards the main gate. I made my way from Waterbeach to the de-Havilland factory at Hatfield where I learned every nut and bolt that went to make up the Comet, then on to Rolls Royce at Glasgow to learn the Avon engine in even greater detail; half ball valves and bus-bars are necessary but their exact purpose is, perhaps, not as important to a pilot as the RAF seemed to believe at the time. I found accommodation for my family in Devizes and returned to collect them from Waterbeach, crashing my car in the process; we were forced to make our way to Devizes by railway resembling a band of wandering gypsies.

I recently read an article I which the author suggested that military pilots lack discipline. Initially my hackles adopted the vertical position but after calming down I was forced to admit that, provided he was referring to military combat pilots, he probably had a point. Certainly I had to quickly accept that the world of strategic transport demanded a whole new attitude to flying than the one that I had known as a fighter pilot. I accustomed myself to going to work only when absolutely necessary, if I was not scheduled to fly, or work was not required on my secondary duty, then I stayed at home. This secondary duty was quite enjoyable as it entailed writing the monthly addition to the squadron history; this did land me in trouble when I described in some detail the Comet’s involvement in the political reaction to the erection of the Berlin Wall in 1962. As I had been the co-pilot on this ill advised venture I did know the background to the plan that included us wearing parachutes with a rope threaded from the flight deck to the passenger door so that we could all bale out after the Russians shot us down! Much to my surprise I was summoned to see the boss who was pretty cross at my attempts to divulge this “State Secret”. I was brave enough to point out to him that the squadron history was itself classified “Secret” and I could, therefore, not see a problem. This was probably not the response that was expected from a very junior co-pilot.

The Comet 2 was not my all-time favourite aircraft; I disliked its handling qualities as it lacked a yaw damper and snaked around on finals like a demented rabbit. The flight deck was archaic and I was amazed to find that the stand-by compass was the same one that I had last used in the Tiger Moth, the type that had a magnetic needle floating around in a bowl of spirit. The flight deck was festooned with levers and wheels that seemed to me positively pre-historic; all of this coupled with the fact that I did not take kindly to being treated very much as the dogsbody of the crew did not sit well with my, perhaps, over inflated opinion of my own importance. We carried a signaller who was responsible for all communication with the outside world, I never did get used to the nonsensical system whereby the captain would tell the signaller to call “Downwind”. After a pause the signaller would come back with “Signaller to Captain – Tower want us to call finals”. I learned to grudgingly accept the situation as many of the captains had been brought up this way and quite liked the system. Once when advised by the signaller that air traffic wanted to know our passing flight level I was mischievous enough to advise that we were passing “Angels One-Five”, I really feared the very senior captain in the left hand seat was going to have a heart attack.

Before going too much further I should explain the Transport Command “Categorisation” system as it existed at that time. The individual was periodically examined and awarded a category depending on results achieved in a simulator test, a flying test, and ground examinations; all topped off by something known as the Commander’s Assessment. You could perform brilliantly in tests and exams but fall foul of the boss if he thought you did not hold your knife and fork correctly. The top award was the A Category (Exceptional) descending through B (Above Average), C (Average), D (Below Average or Inexperienced) finally to E (Hopeless - requires re-training or sacking). It was usual for a student on completion of initial conversion to be labelled with a D Category for one reason or another but this did allow the individual to operate as part of a crew albeit on a restricted basis. Transport Command still believed that it was best for crews to stay together rather than picking up whoever was available for a particular task. Personally I never liked this constituted crew system, probably a necessary evil in the V Force where small, tightly knit crews were trained for an attack on a particular target, however, attempting to keep eight or so individuals free from illness and wives having babies inevitably caused problems in the transport world. Notwithstanding my opinions I found myself flying with the same people for the next year on some interesting trips. We did not use the slip system on the Comet 2 but took the aircraft around from start to finish staying overnight where necessary for crew rest and setting off next day with much the same load of passengers. This did make for some interesting relationships but perhaps I should not elaborate. The Comet 2 was fitted with thirty-six luxurious, first class passenger seats and could manage a stage length of about 2,300 nautical miles so it was hardly a true North Atlantic aircraft, any trip to the USA required a re-fuelling stop at somewhere like Gander which at that time was still mainly populated with Constellations and DC-6s, we were largely on our own at the dizzy heights at which we operated. My Comet 2 days were short lived and early in 1962 I learned, much to my delight, that I had been selected as one of the pilots for conversion to the Comet 4C.

This time BOAC took care of our conversion at Cranebank and it was interesting to note the much more practical attitude that they had to training. It would be unfair to say that if you did not need to know something to pass the CAA exam, then it was not taught, but certainly we were not required to know the function of the previously mentioned half ball valves. The main thing we had to learn was how to interpret and use the Smiths Flight System (SEP2), quite an advance on the Comet 2 where the navigator said “turn left two degrees” - so we did, without knowing why, now we could fly the airways accurately without assistance from “Vasco de Gama”. Sufficient to say that I found the BOAC instructors to be excellent in passing on their experience on the Comet 4 that they had been operating for some time. After systems and simulator training we flew out to Akrotiri in Cyprus for type conversion, I found that the new Comet flew like a real aeroplane, yaw dampers took care of the “Dutch Roll” and I was relieved to find that the rudder pedals had regained their primary purpose in life in that they were provided purely to rest your feet on. Our instructors were a couple of lovely old ex Hastings pilots that it was impossible not to admire; one of them watched my attempts at a two engine approach, sighed and advised me that he had control. There then followed a demonstration that was so laid back as to be ridiculous; he set the aircraft up half way round the turn to finals then removed his hands and feet from the controls allowing the aircraft to do its own thing until he made a small adjustment as we achieved the centreline. After some route training we returned to Lyneham and I was drafted in to a constituted crew employed primarily on the task that had been allotted to the Comet 4C – “The Changi Slip”. I have already mentioned that we did not slip crews on the Comet 2, now with the ability to carry something like a hundred passengers over 2,500 mile sectors it was obvious that the aircraft had to keep moving with a change of crew where necessary. With this in mind a slip pattern was set up with crews positioned, outbound and inbound, at Khormaksar in Aden and a crew at Changi on Singapore Island. The route was Lyneham, El Adem, Aden, Gan and finally Changi with the same route reversed inbound to the UK. Aden could be hot and sticky and the accommodation was pretty ordinary, however, Tarshyne Beach was some compensation where we all foolishly braved the sharks in the water and the schoolteachers on the beach; I wonder now, which of these two hazards was the more dangerous. The Comet left Lyneham twice a week; if you were lucky you spent three days outbound in Aden, four days at Changi, and three days inbound again in Aden. There was always competition to avoid the four days outbound and inbound stops in Aden and it was advantageous to fly with a captain who had some seniority and leverage with the schedulers.

ol4 We had five Comet 4Cs (XR395 – XR399); the aircraft had an excellent power to weight ratio that endowed it with quite a spectacular climb immediately after takeoff, a feature that was great fun to demonstrate at low takeoff weights. We carried about 100 passengers, not as luxurious seating as the Comet 2 but perfectly adequate for normal passenger tasks. The original flight deck crew included a signaller but he was thankfully soon dispensed with leaving us with two pilots, a navigator and a flight engineer. On VIP trips we normally carried four cabin crew, ground engineer and security support, plus “hangers-on”, resulting in a total crew that could be anything from fifteen to twenty strong. The normal cabin fit was replaced for VIP tasks and usually included a twin bed sleeping compartment forward, then a lounge and dining area, first-class seating for the VIP’s staff and finally economy seats for the media and support crew. The Comet was normally cruised between thirty-one and thirty-seven thousand feet at Mach 0.74; if necessary we could cruise at up to a maximum of 43,000 feet. A certain amount of bending the rules could result in substantially increased range but perhaps I should not dwell on this rather dubious area of our operation, especially as we learned it from a well-known airline. One VIP task managed Fiji to Honolulu direct; FSNav tells me that the direct distance is 2756 nautical miles, a somewhat dubious undertaking that required some explanation from the captain later. The main en-route navigation aid was “Doppler” that could be hooked up to the autopilot and was a reasonably accurate device for its time. Airways navigation was managed with twin VHF receivers backed up by twin ADFs plus TACAN. For communications we had twin VHF, twin UHF plus twin HF with SELCAL. An oddity of the Comet was that the passenger doors were on the right hand side of the aircraft, a feature that resulted in some chaotic VIP arrivals when Ground tried to park us on an air jetty. Another drawback was that the Comet did not have air-stairs or an APU and the rather unusual arrangement of having a DC electrical system meant that we often had trouble finding a suitable ground power unit. If one was not available we resorted to a battery start that required a one-minute pause between engine starts; a minute can seem like a long time in a hot, sticky climate.

I suppose the moment that perhaps shaped my life for years to come arrived when I was involved in an accident at RAF Gan in the Maldive Islands on 27 November 1962 in XR399. It was a beautiful day with a gentle breeze blowing down Runway 26 when for no reason I landed short and hit the approach lights causing extensive damage to the aircraft flaps and lower fuselage. The airfield is still there catering nowadays for the tourist trade, the runway is 6,000 feet long, the Indian Ocean laps gently at the runway threshold at both ends, in other words, no undershoot or overshoot area. None of this is any excuse and I am eternally sorry that the unfortunate captain eventually took most of the blame for allowing me to make a mess of the landing. I can still remember our Loadmaster, who suffered from an unfortunate speech impediment, coming on to the stunned and silent flight deck “its alright cccccaptain I have told the passengers that everything is ppperfectly nnnormal and under cccontrol” which of course it patently had not been. We suffered days of misery waiting for the Court of Enquiry to arrive from the UK, I was marched in first and after a short examination was advised, as required by air force law, that I might subsequently be held to blame for the accident. As a result I was invited to remain for the rest of the evidence hoping that a court martial would not follow. The findings were better than I probably deserved and stated that “the accident had been the result of an error of judgement not involving culpable negligence”; I thought that this was a pretty fair verdict. Finally the captain and myself were summoned to Transport Command Headquarters at Upavon to be interviewed by the Air Officer Commanding, Air Marshal Huddleston. The captain went in first to see his eminence and emerged looking ashen; I feared the worst but in fact was let off very lightly when, to my surprise, I was advised that the captain should have given me better protection and that the Air Marshal trusted that I would take more care of my co-pilot when I gained my command. At the time this seemed to me a distinctly unlikely prospect, only time would tell but I certainly learned one lesson for future years and that is
“The captain is always to blame no matter what”

ol5 For a while I continued to fly with the same crew but a combination of the fact that my confidence had taken a knock and that the captain no longer trusted me made a change of crew inevitable. I was switched to a much more understanding captain who gradually brought me back to the land of the living; I flew with him very happily until I converted to the left hand seat in 1964. Although I already loved the transport world, captaincy made all the difference and as I have already intimated I was never completely happy as number two on the flight deck. I continued to gain experience flying the “Slip” and by 1966 had achieved a B Category that only required the addition of a VIP endorsement to allow me into the big time, flying the high and mighty to exotic locations away from the RAF’s orbit. I soon gained this qualification and my first real VIP trip was flying the Chief of the Air Staff, Air Chief Marshal Sir Charles Elworthy on a global itinerary. I cannot resist listing the route – Heathrow, Akrotiri, Bahrain, Colombo, Changi, Cocos Island, Perth, Canberra, O’Hakea, Wellington, Aukland, Fiji, Canton Island, Honolulu, San Francisco, Ottawa, Trenton, Chatham, Heathrow; all of this between 9 March and 4 April 1966. This was without question the most satisfying period of my flying career, I eventually flew just about every member of the Royal Family, all the prime ministers from Harold Wilson to Margaret Thatcher plus most of the then current cabinet ministers and service chiefs. One of my most memorable trips was flying Princess Alexandra on an official visit to Brazil via Lisbon, Dakar, Recife, Sao Paulo, Rio de Janeiro and Brasilia but there were many others, too numerous to mention in this short narrative. The accompanying photo shows us smiling for the camera during a re-fuelling stop; I am the good-looking one standing next to HRH. I recall one interesting event that occurred on the Brazil trip; during the turn-round at Lisbon I was walking back to the aircraft when I saw what could only be described as a torrent of fuel departing the aircraft in the region of one of the pod-tanks. Faced with having to declare the aircraft un-serviceable and the embarrassment of telling HRH that we were going nowhere I was mightily relieved when the local BEA engineer declared in his best Scottish accent (engineers are always Scottish) that he could stem the flow by driving a suitably greased bolt into the offending hole. I watched with horror as he hit the bolt with his size twenty mallet and was amazed to see that the temporary fix worked; off we went on our way to Brazil. Not a word to Princess Alexandra of course even when she and her husband kindly invited me to join them for supper at their hotel during the night stop at Dakar. It would obviously not be appropriate to discuss who my least favourite VIPs were, sufficient to say that some of them could be extremely difficult while others, like Princess Alexandra, were an absolute joy to fly. Lord Carrington was also very popular with our crews and I recall him during his time as the head of NATO coming on the flight deck as we taxied in at Brussels and offering odds on whether we would get steps to the aircraft within half an hour, Sabena were notoriously delinquent in this respect.

Apart from the Changi Slip we also flew a once a week schedule to New York JFK operated on a non-slip basis and this was a very popular break from routine. This caused some hilarity among the rest of Transport Command when it was learned that 216 Squadron had a rule that insisted that you could not fly to the USA unless you had a B Category but you could not have a B Category until you had been to the USA! A recent series of excellent programmes on Sky Television have included the harrowing account of a South American aircraft running out of fuel at Kennedy after prolonged holding in bad weather. My most significant memory of Kennedy was an arrival in a snowstorm with complete communications failure and my Station Commander playing at captain in the left hand seat. We somehow managed to get down safely and discovered that our problems had been caused by a flight deck visitor resting his camera case on the redundant signallers morse key! The last remnants of that unhappy breed were promptly removed from all five of our aircraft.

I gravitated to the Air Training Squadron, gained my A Category and learned to walk on water then back to the squadron where by now 216 Sqn was primarily tasked with VIP flying, the Comet 2 had been retired and we had six crews, all VIP qualified. The two resident Britannia squadrons moved to Brize Norton and the Air Training Squadron closed, I was tasked with forming the Comet Training Flight and was appointed as the Air Support Command Comet Examiner. We tended to move out of the UK with each new course for the flying training phase, Akrotiri, Luqa and Gan were all favourite locations for this exercise. At the end of the course we would go off on a route trainer and I confess to designing itineraries ensuring, for example, days off to watch a test match in Sydney. We always included Hong Kong with at least two free days and another day devoted to local training demonstrating the delights of the chequer board approach to Kai Tak’s Runway 13. Looking back now I cannot imagine how we were allowed to get away with such nonsense, we often circum-navigated the globe visiting flesh spots en-route that the inexperienced students were quite unable to enjoy as they were completely jet-lagged after just a few days.

By late 1974 rumours of the Comets withdrawal from RAF service began to be aired together with warnings of yet another redundancy programme; I therefore rushed around trying to finalise my civil licences. This apparent wish to leave the RAF was based purely on a realisation that, like others in my position, my future livelihood was under threat. I had recently been promoted to squadron leader and had been awarded the Air Force Cross so my feelings towards the service were hardly likely to be anything other than benevolent. While my colleagues looked over their shoulders I was offered Nimrods (flying suits) and the HS125 (too small) and was relieved when I was asked if I would be interested in an exchange tour with the USAF flying the C5-A Galaxy. Naturally there were domestic considerations but it did not take me too long to accept the offer and all thoughts of a career in civil aviation were summarily dismissed. I had flown over 5,000 hours on the Comet and accumulated a total of 7,566 hours total flying, just under half my final total flying hours; I wonder what I would have thought at the time if I had known that fact.

By now the F414A that you will have become accustomed to in earlier parts of my story had been replaced by an Annual Summary required at the end of each June, the following extract from my logbook is a suitable indication of my progress from brand new co-pilot to experienced transport captain. I am in danger of becoming increasingly embarrassed by what could be perceived as an attempt, on my part, to blow my own proverbial trumpet. Consider, however, that but a few years before this report I was, together with the captain and navigator, languishing in a very hot, non air-conditioned, tin hut on Gan Island awaiting my fate at the hands of a Court of Enquiry. During this incarceration the captain wondered aloud “I wonder what is going to happen to us?” The navigator, a somewhat lugubrious character considered for a while and then responded – “I think they should take you both out at dawn and shoot you.” Believe me gentle reader, I was always, and still am, well aware of my own fallibility and limitations.

                                       Day Flying                 Night Flying   Total    Captain
                        1st Plt      Dual              1st Plt      Dual
Comet 4C        325.05     1.55             72.15                         399.15 397.20
Totals               325.05     1.55             72.15                          399.15 397.20

My exchange tour with the USAF was confirmed and I had to make some rapid family decisions that mainly revolved around our three children; to cut a long story short, my elder daughter stayed behind while the rest of us climbed on board a VC-10 of No 10 Squadron at Brize Norton bound for Washington-Dulles. I cast a critical eye over the cabin service and had to admit that it was not too bad. The Exchange Scheme had been in existence for some time and I was the most recent of a long line of pilots who had been temporarily “exchanged” with somebody from another friendly air force. The idea was that this programme would be mutually beneficial to both parties, socially and professionally. I have had to re-write this part of my history as earlier attempts sounded excessively grumpy and critical, whereas, I must record that I met unfailing hospitality and friendship during three most enjoyable years in California; I also learned a great deal about big jet operation and hope that what follows will be a balanced account of my time with the United States Air Force.

We spent a few days in Washington DC while I was briefed by the embassy on financial matters and my diplomatic position while serving with the USAF. We took a commercial flight to San Francisco and found our way up Interstate-80 to Travis Air Force Base. After a short stay in Visiting Officer’s Quarters we moved into a comfortable base house and negotiated the purchase of furniture using the funds that the embassy had showered upon me. I was subjected to my first USAF medical inspection and suffered the indignity of the “fickle finger” that I had, fortunately, been warned to expect. I obviously also needed a car, I bought one that seemed to me to be entirely suitable but was told by the wife of the USAF major, who was looking after our immediate needs, that the colour was totally wrong. The reason for this escaped me at the time; back it went and eventually a beige Dodge Dart complete with air conditioning and power steering was approved as being suitably restrained and racially acceptable. Then, feeling far from settled, I was whisked off to Altus for C5 conversion leaving my loved ones to sort out the domestic arrangements.

Altus is in Oklahoma and does not feature in travel brochures, not surprising, as apart from the fact that apparently “the grass is as high as an elephant’s eye” I doubt if many people have much knowledge of the state. I imagine that the citizens of Altus believe that Oklahoma is a splendid place to live; I do not share their enthusiasm. To say that I did not enjoy my time at Altus would be an understatement and I will not pretend otherwise. The base existed for one purpose only, the mass production of C-141 and C-5A pilots. The first phase of the course was devoted to ground school, mainly in the hands of disenchanted flight engineers. As we neared the end of ground school I suddenly realised that nobody had mentioned the airframe de-icing system, I asked why not and was startled to learn that the C-5A did not have one; “stranger and stranger” as Alice would have said. Off I went to the flight simulator complete with a four-axis motion system and, for that time, a state of the art visual attachment. I launched myself skywards quickly discovering that I had no idea what the speed or altitude was; the C5 had vertical tapes, an innovation that I had never met previously. I surprised the instructor by calling for a “Time Out” while I gathered my wits, then tried again, this time I managed to keep things pointing in more or less the right direction. I experienced the USAF idea of flying instruction for the first time; this consisted mainly of a tick chasing exercise. Everything was self-briefed and there was no real de-brief; provided one had achieved the necessary events you simply went on to the next exercise.

My first flight in the aircraft was on 20 May 1975 I was airborne in C5-A tail number 80021 with Captain Chan as the instructor and again the differences in instruction came as a surprise, I cannot recall Capt Chan ever touching the controls or offering a word of advice, he simply recorded more and more ticks. My first impressions of the aircraft were entirely as you would expect; I was impressed by the sheer size of everything. It was a very easy aircraft to fly and landing was straightforward once you became accustomed to the distance between yourself and the concrete. I never flew above 3,000 feet or faster than 210 knots at Altus as the conversion was entirely aimed at teaching takeoff and landing. I flew seven sorties, there was no Final Handling Check; when your instructor decided you were ready he signed you off. At this point Altus pretty much lost interest and it was left to the individual to find transport back to one’s home base. As I was a stranger to the system I felt very isolated but made my way to “Transportation” and eventually hitched a ride back to Travis on a C-141. You would be correct in thinking that I was not impressed with the USAF at this stage of my tour, things were to improve rapidly and I soon discovered the joys of being a “Brit” at large with the USAF.

I was always aware that the C5 was not a popular aircraft with congress due to cost over-runs and the fact that it had been designed to meet a very demanding specification that it had no hope of achieving; as an example, the aircraft was supposed to be able to takeoff and land at maximum weight from an unprepared strip; I believe it achieved this miracle once! While I was at Altus the USAF had been busy evacuating the last remnants of the American military presence in Vietnam, you may recall seeing the harrowing news footage on television and recall the awful accident that happened when the rear doors of a C5 came adrift after takeoff from Saigon. Most of the passengers, mainly children, were simply sitting on the cargo floor and were sucked out of the aircraft. As the doors left the aircraft they destroyed the lines to three of the four hydraulic systems, all elevator, vertical stabiliser and rudder power was lost and only one of the four ailerons remained powered. Faced with this catastrophe the two young pilots managed to retain a degree of control in pitch with power changes and pointed the aircraft back towards Saigon, however, the aircraft crashed before reaching the airfield. The flight deck broke away from the rest of the airframe and amazingly the flight crew survived the crash without a scratch, both pilots were, quite rightly, awarded the Air Force Cross. The result of this accident was that the rear doors were de-activated and the C5, for the rest of my tour, was only flown when absolutely necessary with a view to carrying outsize cargo. I was contacted by the British air attaché who asked if I would like him to arrange a transfer to the C-141. The thought of another session at Altus filled me with horror, I turned down his offer and, as things transpired, this was the best decision I ever made in my life.

I was assigned to the 22nd Military Airlift Squadron part of the 60th Military Airlift Wing and the 22nd Air Force; the squadron commander was a southern gentleman of the “Gone with the Wind” school named Colonel Charles Geer. Travis was a huge base and, with four C-5 and four C-141 squadrons plus a squadron of KC-135 tankers, quite outside my experience. My immediate position was as a co-pilot and my first squadron trip was on 2 July 1975 with Major Bill Thalberg who subsequently became a very good friend of mine, the route was, Travis – Honolulu – Guam – Honolulu – Davis Mothan – Travis. The USAF operated very much as we had done in Transport Command; that is, “Leg and Leg about” in other words the pilots flew alternate sectors; the difference being that the USAF had the operating pilot in the left hand seat. This sensible approach appealed to me and I subsequently tried, without success, to get the RAF to adopt the idea. The C5 apart from its size was quite a complex aircraft and I worked hard to master the systems, I can still tell you exactly what happens when you pull a fire handle – the fuel is cut off, the igniters are de-energised, the generator and hydraulic pumps are turned off, the thrust reverses are de-activated and the air supply from the engine is isolated – not bad memory cells for a 74 year old!

The main problem that I found was that it was almost impossible to maintain any sort of flying practice, as I have already explained, the C-5 was only allowed to fly when necessary and this extended to individual proficiency and currency. All that was required for a pilot was to achieve what was known as “two and two”. This meant that you only had to fly two takeoffs and two landings in any one month to maintain currency. Early in my time I found myself scheduled for a local training sortie but was surprised to find more pilots than seemed reasonable to me climbing on board the aircraft. Initially I found myself sitting quite comfortably in the rest area behind the flight deck. Eventually I was summoned to the front and climbed into the left-hand seat, looked up and saw, to my surprise, the runway a couple of miles ahead – “Pilot’s Airplane” (USAF for “You have control”), we landed, rolled and climbed away. To my complete and undying surprise I was despatched back to the rest area. I had achieved a takeoff and landing and that was all that was required of me for the rest of that month. I asked to see Colonel Geer who was quite surprised to hear me lambasting the USAF and telling him that I would rather go non-current than undergo that pantomime again. Another pointless exercise was the so called “Great Whale Hunt” necessary to achieve an Over Water Mission, this time the aircraft was packed full of crews and flown out, from memory, to 140°West. The aircraft crossed this line on the earth’s surface, crews were swapped, the aircraft reversed course and crossed the line, again and again, until all were suitably qualified!

ol7 Perhaps because of my stated aversion to this nonsense and to placate my sensibilities I flew for a very short time as co-pilot before being packed off back to Altus, in September 1975, for Aircraft Commander training. Again Altus did not impress me and I was glad to be back at Travis battling to get myself assigned to a route mission. Once this was achieved I loved flying with MAC, most of the Travis missions were into the Pacific region, often terminating at Yokota just outside Tokyo. The normal pattern at the end of a crew duty day was to enter crew rest of fourteen hours; if you were quick this just about gave you time to shower, change and dash for the nearest bar before the dreaded “Ten Hours Bottle to Throttle” rule cut off any further refreshment. The captain could elect for either a six-hour or twelve-hour period after crew rest when his crew would be “legal for alert”. During this period the crew could be alerted and had one hour to report for duty. The crew could then be “kept on the hook” for six hours before being released back to crew rest. I quickly became aware of the fact that the operations officers were well versed in playing these rules to the hilt and would frequently alert a crew just in case “something” popped up from the system. Apart from that, I thoroughly enjoyed the experience of flying the C5, a rather slow bird at Mach 0.74 but with a tremendous load carrying capability; I once carried eight F-5s with their wings neatly stowed alongside the fuselage from McLellan to Alconbury, re-fuelling from a KC-135 somewhere off the coast of Canada. It was my misfortune that this mission was loaded with gentlemen of the press; I still have a copy of an article detailing what now sound like my banal observations as we approached Alconbury. An even bigger problem arose when one of the reporters wrote an article with a lurid account of how I had treated them all to a “good old English beer” in Cambridge during crew rest, I was later summoned to the Wing Commander who asked me to explain how we had managed this with out breaking the “Bottle to Throttle” rule. I fear that I got away with an awful lot because I was a Brit.

This is no place to voice my opinion of American politics, however, I did find that the individual could be insular and lacking in general knowledge. To highlight this I will briefly recount a particular story, the date was 7 Dec 1977 and I was flying C-5A 90011 from Yokota to Honolulu; the significance of this suddenly struck me and I expressed surprise that we should find ourselves flying an approach to Hickam AFB with Pearl Harbour clearly in view, at around eight o’clock in the morning, on such an auspicious date. To my amazement, not one of the crew appreciated the significance of the date and time. Roosevelt perhaps had a point - “A date that will live in Infamy”.

Perhaps the most difficult part of the C-5 operation to master was the offloading sequence that required some fairly careful crew co-ordination to get the visor raised and the cargo safely off the aircraft. This was especially the case when using the docking system that was installed at Travis, Frankfurt and Yokota. This required the aircraft to be taxied up to something that resembled a huge meccano set, the visor was raised and the cargo was connected to a winch. When all was ready the cargo, suitably connected from front to rear, was yanked out of the aircraft accompanied by what sounded like the end of the world as we sat watching this train vanish from beneath our feet.

The other new feature that I encountered was the IMU (Inertial Measurement Unit), an early form of INS and operated purely by the navigator. Unfortunately the gyro units were housed in the forward nose section and, with the rear doors locked shut, this meant that the IMU could not be aligned until the cargo was loaded and the nose lowered. As MAC was besotted with the “On Time Departure” we were always battling with the cargo people to get a move on. The ultimate demonstration of all this was the infamous Travis send-off that was known as “The Fifteen Colonel Launch”. You could guarantee that whenever a delay looked possible the colonels would draw up in their blue staff cars, pointing towards the nose of the aircraft, clipboards poised, taking notes of any occurrence that they could use to defend the position of their particular unit. Towards the end of my tour the C5 was equipped with triple INS with the gyros in the electrics bay and the control heads located on the throttle pedestal; the navigators were all sacked and life became much easier. The landing gear was a miracle of engineering science, when it worked. The four main legs had six wheel bogies and this together with the four nose wheels, if my maths is correct, adds up to twenty-eight wheels. On retraction the main bogies were supposed to rotate through ninety degrees before retracting; sometimes they did, but not always and the retraction process was always something of a lottery. The main bogies could be steered on the ground using switches at the co-pilot’s station and this facility allowed the aircraft to be parked in some quite tight spots. The gear could also be offset in-flight to counteract drift on landing but, personally, I was happier using the system that I had been brought up with and continued to point the aircraft into wind, kicking it straight in the flare.

I rapidly moved through the positions that were available to me at Travis, pilot instructor, then flight examiner and finally as one of the two wing staneval pilots. Staneval was commanded by a colonel, directly responsible to the Wing Commander for the Standardisation and Evaluation of all crews, hence – Staneval. One of the things that most impressed me with MAC was the level of standardisation that was demanded, checklists were meticulously observed and a wrong word resulted in the co-pilot repeating the challenge until he got the correct response. Procedures were also followed to the letter and this came as quite a surprise coming, as I did, from an air force that allowed a degree of individuality. The flip side of this was that I found that captains were quite incapable of making their own decisions when faced with a set of circumstances that seemed to me to be fairly straightforward. This was evidenced one day when I was administering a line check on a flight from Kadena to Taegu in Korea, we had a piece of kit called MADAR (malfunction analysis data and recording) and this chattered away from time to time telling the crew what was wrong with a particular system. On this occasion MADAR announced that we should shut down one of the engines because it was outside the vibration limits. To my amazement the captain gave control to the co-pilot and proceeded to climb out of his seat evidently believing that I would want to take over command of the mission. After I had disabused him of any such idea he reluctantly climbed back and initiated, as I knew he would, a phone patch to 22nd Air Force Staneval. He was advised to do what MADAR had commanded but divert to Osan where better maintenance facilities were available. After landing the young captain expressed his appreciation for the confidence I had shown in him but pointed out that it was the first time that he had ever shut down an engine in anger or flown a diversion to an alternate airfield.

During the spring of 1978 I was told that a VC-10 would be night stopping at Travis. The captain, an old boss of mine from Comet days now commanded the VC-10 OCU at Brize Norton. The inevitable barbecue was laid on for the crew and during the festivities I was taken aside and told that I would shortly be advised of a posting to No 10 squadron as a straight-in captain for a short tour before moving to the OCU as one of his instructors. Welcome as this news was, I knew enough to fear that this would not be a popular move as the RAF system depended heavily on pilots serving a tour of duty as co-pilot before moving to the left hand seat, regardless of experience or seniority. I could sense the mutterings among those forced to wait even longer for their command. Despite these forebodings I was naturally delighted to hear the news, I was forty-seven years old and rapidly approaching pilot senility; little did I know that I would still be flying fifteen years later!

I had flown over a thousand hours in the C5 when my replacement arrived; we said our goodbyes to our many friends, promising to visit them in the years ahead, a promise that we have signally failed to keep. My final assessment was signed off in my logbook, the wording may sound a little over the top to British sensibilities but it is quite normal for Americans to indulge their peers in this manner.

                                       Day Flying                 Night Flying   Total    Captain
                        1st Plt      Dual              1st Plt      Dual
C-5A               232.50     7.40             107.50     2.00             350.20 340.40
Totals               232.50     7.40             107.50     2.00             350.20 340.40

Assessment of Ability and Remarks A superb officer, gentleman, and pilot who has made a significant contribution to the mission of the United States Air Force

We reversed our route homewards from the States stopping off at St Louis to visit friends, then on to Washington for a de-brief at the British Embassy before boarding a Royal Air Force VC-10 of No 10 Squadron to Brize Norton. I had arranged a married quarter and we moved into a very comfortable four-bedroom house for the next four years before buying a much more modest property in Carterton where we live to this day.

You will recall that I had been told that I was destined for direct captaincy on the squadron and I explained my apprehension in this respect. I had barely settled in to our new home when I was summoned to see the station commander Group Captain “Dickie” Bates who had been a flying officer with me back at Ahlhorn all those years ago. I could sense his discomfort as soon as I entered his office and he reluctantly explained to me that I would have to serve a full tour as a co-pilot before conversion to captain; apparently news of the original plan had almost caused a mutiny on the squadron. I was offered a choice of accepting this situation or a posting to another aircraft type. I asked for time to consider before taking the weak option out of this dilemma; with my family settled in to a new house, I elected to stay with the VC-10.

At the time 10 Squadron was still running a slip service to Hong Kong with crew rest at Hong Kong, Bahrain and Colombo with occasional extensions to Kathmandu, Osan and Brunei when required to meet a specific task. This was quite a lucrative exercise with good allowances while staying in excellent hotels; during the inbound stop at Bahrain we all trooped down to the local souk to change our ill-gotten gains into real money. We also ran a service to Dulles, a much simpler slip pattern departing Brize Norton on Mondays and Fridays and slipping crews at Washington. This gave us either two or three free days in Washington DC and I confess to being something of an expert on what to do and see in that fair city. An additional Washington flight left Brize on Wednesdays at an ungodly hour with the resident Dulles crew taking the flight on to Belize and back. The originating crew spent fourteen hours trying to sleep while the hotel cleaners busied themselves with their vacuum cleaners and then operated the flight back to Brize Norton overnight; this was not a popular schedule.

The VC-10 had something of a political weight around its neck; British Airways were the main user and were never over enthusiastic about the aircraft. It had been designed in the first place with a view to operating from high altitude airfields with short runways, unfortunately by the time it came into airline service most of these runways were being lengthened and the Boeing 707 became the preferred aircraft for airline operation. The RAF, as always, were asked to pick up some of the pieces and orders were placed for twelve VC-10 CMk1s, something of a hybrid aircraft as it had the standard fuselage with the super wing. It also had a full strength freight floor and a hinged cargo door on the side of the fuselage that I always eyed with suspicion, as I distrust doors that do not plug fit into the airframe. Initially, we had LORAN as the main navigation aid but the VC-10 was progressively fitted with OMEGA and finally INS. You will recall that I had been fortunate enough to fly the C5-A fitted with triple INS and I could hardly believe it when I heard that the RAF planned to have one inertial unit located at the navigator’s station. My objections fell on deaf ears even after I explained that one unit was useless as you could have no way of knowing whether it was working or not. It would have been much more cost effective, as the USAF had appreciated, to buy three units per aircraft and sack the navigators. Apart from this I loved the VC-10, it was a pretty fast aircraft cruising at up to Mach 0.88 and during air testing we flew it at Mach 0.925. On the Belize flights the resident Harriers often asked us if we would accept a practice interception, we naturally agreed and then the more adventurous souls would casually open the high speed warning circuit breakers and mystify the “fast-jets” who found it quite impossible to catch us.

ol8 Eventually we lost the Hong Kong service when a bright civil servant decided that he could save the country money by hiring seats on the British Airways service. We still flew to the Far East especially when Kathmandu, Brunei and Osan extensions were required, however, the loss of the bread and butter service hit the VC-10 hard and when I switched to the left hand seat there was precious little flying for us. Fortunately, depending on your point of view, General Galtieri decided that it would be a good idea to invade the Falkland Islands. Our reaction to this was rapid and commendable and, as you all know, a task force was despatched to the South Atlantic to retake our possessions. We set up a service to Ascension Island with crews slipping at Dakar in Senegal; during the lead-up to the conflict an aircraft left Brize Norton every eight hours. We all managed to amass hundreds of hours flying while enjoying the “Life of Riley” during the stopover in Dakar. We then operated to Ascension, offloaded, and returned, usually, empty to Dakar. I remember one extremely tough looking individual coming on to the flight deck for a chat and telling us, quite nonchalantly, that he planned to drop from a Hercules riding on a large raft, suspended from a parachute, that he then intended paddling on to dry land! Once battle was joined we flew a number of tasks to Montevideo to pick up casualties that had been shipped in from the Falklands; these aircraft were clearly marked as hospital flights and were thankfully unmolested by the Argentines. We continued the Ascension flights well after the conflict had been resolved but, as we were now operating empty outbound, we were able to fly to Ascension direct. We then night-stopped and picked up a load of dishevelled warriors keen to get back to their loved ones in the UK. Initially we were housed in some awful American temporary pre-fabricated accommodation, known to one and all as “ Concertina City” where I picked up a nasty case of Athlete’s Foot. Eventually this most unsatisfactory arrangement was resolved when we were housed in what had once been the isolation hospital, located on a magnificent beach complete with nocturnal turtles.

I set my sights on regaining my VIP category with a view to breaking away from the treadmill of routine tasks. I achieved this fairly quickly and spent some very happy years flying the nation’s famous to exotic spots around the world. I flew to Moscow twice and on the first visit we arrived poised for our usual “On-time Arrival” only to be told to join the hold at Sheremetetyevo; I asked the co-pilot to remind air traffic that we had a VIP on board; to which we received a perfunctory reply and ordered to do as we were told. Eventually we were cleared for the approach, landed and taxied up to the VIP terminal; as we stopped the aircraft the co-pilot drew my attention to the prominent clock that was gently ticking its way around to indicate that we had, after all, arrived “On-Time”. The defence attaché told us later that we had been held off because the VIP reception party was late getting to the airport and that it was a typical face-saving gambit on the part of the Russians to adjust clocks to order. The next time I flew to Moscow was to attend the funeral of President Chernenko; our principal passengers were the prime minister, Mrs Thatcher, Neil Kinnock, David Owen and David Steel. After returning them all safely to the UK it was suggested by one mischievous wag that perhaps we should have left at least three of them in Moscow, being non-political I will not say which three, however, I must record that Mrs Thatcher was one of my favourite passengers. On a much more serious note, having regained my A category, I was privileged to fly the Queen from Toronto to Lexington in Kentucky and Sheridan in Wyoming before returning Her Majesty to Heathrow.

The thing that really annoyed me with the RAF at this stage of my career was that the service chiefs had decided that we should take part in a nonsense known as Taceval, or Tactical Evaluation; the exercise was really intended to examine “fast jet” bases and had little or no relevance to strategic transport operation. At very short notice a bunch of people descended on the station and subjected it to a simulated scenario that bore no relation to the job we all knew we would have to undertake if we ever went to war. I will not go into details of the ridiculous practices we were subjected to while still allowing fare-paying passengers to witness what must have appeared to them to be the end of the world. Perhaps one example will suffice – I was once asked to sweep simulated nuclear fallout from the wings of a VC-10 with a broom. You will be pleased to hear that your taxes are no longer wasted on Taceval

I managed to winkle my way on to an exclusive group of four captains who were trained to undertake a particular task. I cannot describe this in too much detail, however, it involved converting to the BAe 1-11 with a national airline and flying sectors with one of their training captains in the right-hand seat along rather sensitive routes. Among the things that I learned during this period was that two-man operation on a first generation twinjet is jolly hard work and it was perhaps as well that we always selected our more able pilots for this job. We were retrained every three months on the flight simulator at Cranebank and then hopped on a flight to “a city somewhere in Europe” where we refreshed on the aircraft before spending the rest of the week flying the scheduled routes. It really was one of the most satisfying periods of my flying career and I have nothing but admiration for the professionalism displayed by the airline in question. This idyllic combination of VIP flying and civil airline operation came to an end when I reluctantly moved on to the OCU (Operational Conversion Unit) as a flight instructor. The RAF had adopted a system known as Periodic Refresher Training, this required crews to be withdrawn from the squadron to be re-trained and examined on a regular basis. In addition, individuals were examined on a scheduled route task with the sum total of all these examinations deciding whether or not the existing category should be renewed or upgraded. Pilots do not like being examined, either medically or professionally, and in truth looking back, I have to admit that we did rather overdo things in an attempt to ensure efficiency in the strategic transport force. Having said that, the RAF does have a proud record in that it has never hurt, let alone killed, a passenger in a multi-engine jet aircraft; a record that any airline would be proud to claim. The other major job assigned to the OCU was the training of new crews, sometimes a straight-forward task when the individual had transport experience, but difficult when attempting to explain to a fighter pilot that – “No Biggles, you do not always fill the tanks full with fuel”. At the end of the conversion we took ourselves off on a route trainer, usually to Hong Kong. On one of these trainers I was getting ready to leave the hotel when I heard on the radio that the Governor of Hong Kong had died during a visit to China, I phoned our man at Kai Tak and suggested that we should at least delay our departure until the news had been digested, he disagreed and we were just starting the engines when I saw him frantically signalling us to shut down. Just as I had suspected we were required to fly to Peking with the Governor’s wife and daughters to pick up the coffin. Another unusual feature of all this was that we happened to have our new Station Commander along as one of the student pilots, he suggested that perhaps he should captain the flight; I looked him in the eyes and politely advised him that the job was way beyond his ability let alone his qualifications. In the event he was suitably placated by my offer to allow him to come along designated as Aircraft Commander looking after the unfortunate widow, this allowed him to recover his self esteem; everything went very well including us taxiing in on schedule, following a night approach to Runway 13, for a sad but impressive ceremonial arrival. I have told this story with a certain degree of pride as it illustrates the efficiency and flexibility of what I believe was, at the time, the world’s best military airline.
ol9
On another route trainer I was sitting comfortably watching a young first tour co-pilot doing his best to land at Kathmandu. All seemed to be going quite well and he had satisfied my basic belief, that if the aircraft was stable on the approach at the right speed nothing much could go wrong, when to my surprise we hit the runway with an almighty thwack and bounced back into the rarefied atmosphere of Nepal. I should have pushed the throttles open and gone around but, foolishly, left things as they were and allowed the young man to put us back on the ground. Unfortunately, by now, he had the toe-brakes firmly applied, we then experienced a strange rumbling sound; all eight main wheels had lost their tyres and were now running on the shreds of what little remained. After shutting down we examined the landing gear and remembering my own unhappy experience at Gan all those years earlier, I took the co-pilot aside and explained to him that he should not worry unduly as any blame for the accident would be aimed fairly and squarely at me. Eventually I managed to make telephone contact with my boss back in the UK asking plaintively if he would kindly arrange to send me eight new wheels. We then had a splendid week in Kathmandu exploring its many unique treasures and spending time in the Himalayan foothills. Eventually we were rescued and made our way home where I was taken aside and forcibly reminded of my responsibilities as a training captain!

I was supposed to leave the air force at the age of fifty-five but was fortunate that I occupied a training post at a time when the RAF found itself short of flying instructors; I was offered the first in a series of extensions of service, all of which I accepted enthusiastically. At about the same time the position of VC-10 Standardisation Pilot became available and, although I was not a qualified flying instructor, I was selected for the position. Again I was delighted as this allowed me a degree of independence, directly responsible to command headquarters. Shortly after taking up the post I was sitting comfortably in my office, contemplating a few quiet years before retirement, when I heard on the news that Iraq had invaded Kuwait. I was effectively returned to No 10 Squadron and for the next six months flew almost non-stop between the UK and the Middle East. This was not the way I would have chosen to spend my last few months in the air force but apart from a little early trepidation, I confess to enjoying the experience tremendously. My good luck held with nobody ever firing a shot in my direction although there were times during air-raid alerts when I wondered what a sixty year old was doing in such an unfriendly environment. Among the bits of ribbon that I am entitled to wear and will eventually hand on to my son is one that was presented to me by the Saudi king along with a splendidly worded citation, the medal is reputedly made of solid gold. I finally hung up my goggles in1993 by which time I was sixty-two, well past the age at which I was legally entitled to be in command of a large passenger carrying jet; a fact that seemed to escape the air force and one that I was not about to point out to them. The RAF VC-10 fleet was modified to the air-to-air refuelling role and the standards that had been so jealously guarded in the transport force were progressively eroded. I saw the start of the slippery slope with the tanker people carrying passengers while, in my opinion, totally untrained and unqualified for the job. The Royal Air Force that I had known was changing and although I had enjoyed every moment of my forty-three years in the service, I knew it was time for me to go. I was all set for one last Dulles slip schedule with Joan my wife when, at the last moment I was told that the boss of No.10 Squadron had decided that it should be given to a squadron captain, this left an unfortunate taste in what should have been a fond farewell to the RAF; instead, on 9 Nov 1993 I flew my last task, Brize–Bruggen-Cagliari–Bruggen–Brize. I retired wondering how I would manage without flying, however, tt took me barely a couple of weeks to realise that retirement was not too bad after all, no more getting out of bed at two o’clock in the morning, no more sixteen hour days and jet lag; I could now fly when I wished, courtesy of Mr Gates and his flight simulator. Not quite the same as the pure joy of flying the real thing, but it keeps me out of mischief.

These narratives normally end with my final annual summary, but in this case the remarks are personal and too embarrassing, even for me, to reproduce. I will, instead, simply record that I flew a total of 15,555.55 hours between 1950 and 1993.

Nowadays I spend far too much time tapping away, two fingered, on my computer. I have joined a virtual airline and find great comfort in reliving all those wonderful years in the world of aviation; there can be no doubt in my mind that I was lucky to find my true vocation and I often wonder what sort of person I would have been had I spent the rest of my working life trying to convince myself, and others, that I could design furniture. These words written by Leonardo da Vinci, perhaps, sum up my feelings.

When once you have tasted flight, you will forever walk the earth with your eyes turned skyward, for there you have been, and there you will always long to return – Leonardo da Vinci.

ATC