Ginger Lacey: Fighter Pilot

by Richard Townsend Bickers

  Early one morning at the beginning of his fourth week of attachment, he stood on the tarmac outside the squadron hangar, with the other pilots, watching the arrival of a hump-backed monoplane fighter in the circuit. Before it had landed, three more were overhead and presently sixteen of these monsters were lined up at the edge of the airfield. The ferry pilots who had brought them paused only long enough to drink a cup of N.A.A.F.I. tea, smoke a cigarette to take the taste away, and climb into the Furies. Feeling like small boys being deprived of a cherished toy, No. 1 Squadron watched their Hawker Furies disappear and walked over to take stock of their Hawker Hurricanes.

  Poking its nose 13 ft. 3 in. into the air, 3 ft. higher than the little Fury, with a wing span l0 ft. greater, a fuselage 5 ft. longer, and a weight of 6,000 lb. compared with its predecessor’s 3,600 lb., the Hurricane was a daunting sight.

  Lacey walked round one, in silence, with a senior regular flight sergeant. When they had completed their external inspection, the latter pushed his forage cap to the back of his head and looked disgusted and awed. ‘Blimey. A single-seat troop carrier!’

  Lacey said, quite simply, that he did not feel that that he would ever be able to fly one. Sergeant ‘Lofty’ Luckham, however, who had qualified on these strange beasts, soon dispelled this lack of confidence with some encouraging words. As a briefing, his introduction of Lacey to the Hurricane was admirably succinct. ‘Don’t touch that lever in the right hand corner of the cockpit, there, while you’re on the ground, or the aeroplane will fall down. Otherwise, she’s exactly the same as a Fury.’

  ‘If you say so.’ The Volunteer Reserve sergeant looked at the regular, detected no trace of a leg-pull, hoisted himself into the cockpit and took off. ‘I didn’t touch the lever in the right hand corner, while on the ground; or in the air: nor, I must admit, did I touch it for the next two flights either: I had no confidence whatsoever in retractable undercarriages at that time and wasn’t sure that the wheels would ever come down again.’

  He was in no hurry to return to the Yorkshire Aeroplane Club and resume his civilian occupation. Indeed, his visit to Tangmere had come at an opportune time: just previously, he had ‘written off’ an aircraft belonging to his employers through, he admits ‘to a certain extent, my own fault.’

  The Tipsy ‘B’ was a delightful little light two-seat monoplane with a 60 h.p. engine: even the Blackburn B.2 had a 120 h.p. motor. In theory, it was impossible to spin this aircraft. Lacey disproved this; albeit unwittingly.

  Having spent an hour over the aerodrome, trying unsuccessfully to spin the Tipsy ‘B’, he turned to his passenger, shrugged and said, ‘Well, we’d better go in to land.’

  The passenger, who had reacted with mixed feelings to their inability to spin, nodded agreeably. Honour was satisfied and spinning is a stomach-churning sensation. Besides, who was to know what would happen if the unspinnable aeroplane was forced to spin? It would probably prove to be unrecoverable too, once compelled into an unnatural function.

  A moment later he found out, as Lacey throttled back on the approach.

  With only three hundred feet of air beneath them, and well inside the aerodrome perimeter, Lacey felt the aircraft lurch into a spin, taking him by surprise.

  He had barely time to tell himself that the makers’ claim was not entirely justifiable after all, and even mildly to congratulate himself on succeeding (even accidentally) where others had failed, when the little aeroplane plunged nose first into the middle of the grass airfield.

  With a rending of canvas and cracking of wood, it ploughed along the ground bucking and twisting. The engine roared deafeningly. Lacey saw his passenger’s mouth open in a cry of alarm, but the sound was muted by the terrifying noises of the crash. For a few seconds he was filled with fear and horror; and with anger at himself for endangering his passenger through an error. But the violence of sound and motion ended in sudden, complete silence as he cut the ignition and the petrol feed. Flung about in their straps one moment, pilot and passenger found themselves an instant later at rest and dazedly undoing the buckles.

  Scrambling out of the tangle of splintered wood and torn fabric, they saw a fleet of cars racing out of the car park near the club house. Not far behind them ran the club steward, his white coat gleaming in the sun. He appeared to be carrying a tray.

  Lacey nodded to his passenger. ‘You all right?’

  ‘Fine. And you?’

  ‘I’m O.K. But I could do with a drink.’

  ‘Looks as though the steward thought of that.’

  They watched the cars sink gradually into the soft ground on the outskirts of the field. Presently the rescuers were churning slowly through mud, in bottom gear; and the steward, his legs going like a Derby winner’s, had overtaken them.

  Within three minutes of the accident, he arrived, red faced and out of breath; a tray in his hands and on the tray two balloon glasses.

  ‘I brought you two double brandies, sir.’ He stood there, deferential and panting.

  Lacey gestured politely to his companion. ‘After you.’

  ‘No thanks: I don’t drink.’

  ‘Don’t you, by George? Well I do!’ And Lacey obligingly drank them both. Then, inspecting the wreckage with the insouciance of one who has survived many such misfortunes, he remarked, ‘H’m. That elevator’s quite unharmed. As good as new. All they need do is wheel another fuselage and wings under it and they’ve got a perfectly good aeroplane.’

  A senior club official, having flogged his car in bottom gear across several hundred yards of bumpy, boggy ground, to rescue a presumably badly injured instructor and member, was not pleased to overhear this.

  ‘While the Directors forgot about my little effort there, I went down and did six weeks with 1 Squadron,’ explains Lacey, looking back.

  When he returned to Yorkshire, his misdemeanour had been swamped by much graver events. Germany was spoiling for trouble; and this time it looked as though she was going to find it.

  All the instructors at the Club were on one or other of the R.A.F. reserves and imminently expecting to be called up. Ginger Lacey, with the recent memory of squadron badinage, endless ‘shop’ over pints of beer in Sussex pubs, and flying a Hurricane at 300 m.p.h., was not reluctant to return to regular Service life. Despite his natural independence and his relish for civilian freedom, he had quickly acquired a taste for R.A.F. customs and the unobtrusive esprit de corps which infuses every squadron. He did not know it, but he was rapidly approaching the threshold of what was to become a permanent career.

  CHAPTER THREE - The Balloon Goes Up

  The closer danger looms the calmer the British become. When it arrives, they acknowledge it with some under-stated phrase. The 3rd September 1939 was recognized as ‘the day on which the balloon went up.’ This was as happy a description as could have become cliché, for it had a literal connotation also: the bloated silver barrage balloons which floated up on their cables around every major military target in the British Isles.

  Sergeant Lacey was ordered to report on Saturday, 2nd September, to his Town Centre in Hull. He heard the Prime Minister’s broadcast telling the nation it was at war with Germany, at the bar of the Hedon Aero Club on 3rd September, with a pint of bitter in his hand and in company with a score or more of other called-up reserve pilots. A lot of alcohol had flowed almost unceasingly since the previous day: another British habit when confronted with patriotic obligations of the more violent order.

  ‘It didn’t mean a lot to me, but the prospect of fighting in a war scared me stiff.’ He was not alone.

  The only practical worry he had was about his posting. He hoped it would be to a squadron which was equipped with Hurricanes and stationed in some pleasant place. After having put in about thirty hours on Hurricanes, he did not want to return to biplanes; and there were a few Gladiator squadrons still. Nor did he want to find himself on some remote station where the only amusement would be to drink in the Sergeants’ Mess: he wanted to have a choice in where he
did his drinking of an evening. He might even want to go to a cinema or do some shopping.

  Things could have been worse: he was sent to 501 (County of Gloucester) Squadron, an Auxiliary Air Force unit, which was based at Filton, a suburb of Bristol. Like all R.A.F.V.Rs. he looked darkly on the A.A.F. which, in peacetime, had only officer pilots and was regarded by V.Rs. as a rather snobbish preserve of the rich. In order to make the auxiliary squadrons up to their wartime establishment, N.C.O. pilots were posted to them from the reserve.

  501 Squadron, which had been given Hurricanes only a few days before the declaration of war, found itself with a lot of commissioned pilots who had never flown them and several strange reserve sergeants who had. The squadron owned a Fairey Battle equipped for dual flying and it was decreed that, as a face-saving measure for the officers, no N.C.O. pilot would be allowed to handle a Hurricane until he had been checked out on this. The officers were all automatically considered proficient to fly Hurricanes as they had each, at some time, flown the Battle; and none of the sergeants had enjoyed this privilege! By this unsubtle compromise, the officers were given time to break themselves in to a new machine while the N.C.Os. wasted their time and the taxpayers’ money as well as petrol, on a retrogressive schedule. However, within a month the whole squadron was operational.

  Operations, for the time being, consisted of convoy patrols over the Bristol Channel: looking not only for enemy aircraft but for submarines. ‘We were seeing submarines, too. There weren’t any there; but we were seeing them.’ An astonishing number of different types of disturbance on the water can be mistaken for the ripple of a periscope, when flying at five thousand feet or even lower. Everyone was bursting with enthusiasm for the real war to break out and it was to be expected that frequent false identifications should be reported.

  The convoy patrols were flown during the day, and after dark there was night flying practice. Lacey soon put himself in the dog-house.

  The Squadron Adjutant, a regular officer, was a Qualified Flying Instructor from the Central Flying School. On the first evening that Sergeant Lacey was detailed for night flying, the Adjutant had a short conversation with him.

  ‘How much Service night flying have you done, Sergeant?’

  ‘None, sir.’

  Standing there innocently in the locker room, with his Irvine jacket half open and his young, guileless face giving no hint of what was going on in his mind, Lacey was a born con. man; but the Adjutant had no way of knowing this. Yet. Nor would Lacey have admitted that he was leading the Q.F.I. up the garden path. He had been asked a definite question, to which he had given a truthful answer.

  ‘Well,’ said the Adjutant and Flying Instructor briskly, ‘I’d better give you a spot of dual in the Hart trainer.’

  Lacey courteously acknowledged the good sense of this suggestion. The Q.F.I. glowed with inward satisfaction and pleasure. Some of these non-regulars were a bit rough and bolshie: made a change when you ran across a decent, amenable youngster like this one. The Adjutant was all of twenty-six himself.

  Together they walked out to the trainer, the Adjutant making friendly comments on the suitability of the weather for a night exercise and the prospects of someone seeing a genuine U-boat in the near future for a change. Sergeant Lacey kept his thoughts to himself.

  Full of bonhomie, confident that it wouldn’t take long to familiarize this quite experienced reservist with night flying technique, the Adjutant demonstrated a couple of circuits and landings. Then, ‘You have control, Sergeant Lacey. Try a landing.’ Amiable, that’s what he was; downright amiable and he was striding straight into a pitfall if only he did but know.

  ‘Very good, sir.’ Lacey was downright respectful; which, had the Adjutant known his sergeant, would have been a red light to him.

  Lacey began his approach. A little high, he felt. An instant later, a startled Q.F.I. found himself clutching the rim of his cockpit for support as he was thrown steeply to one side. Sergeant Lacey was side-slipping off his excess height. They touched down gently and the Adjutant burst into wrathful life.

  ‘What the hell do you mean by doing side-slips at night, Sergeant? Here it is, your first attempt at night flying, and you behave like a barn-storming circus pilot. You’ve got no common sense, man. Side-slipping on your first night flight! I never heard anything like it. I’ve a good mind to put you on a charge.’

  ‘But I always side-slip off extra height, sir.’

  ‘Not at night, you fool.’

  ‘Yes, sir; at night, sir. Always, sir.’

  ‘But … but you told me you hadn’t done any night flying, Sergeant.’

  ‘No sir. You asked me if I had any Service night flying, and I quite honestly told you I hadn’t. Actually, I’ve got over a hundred hours’ night flying on civil aircraft.’

  Unfortunately, a hundred hours of night flying was considerably more than the Adjutant could claim for himself.

  Lacey says, ‘After that I was allowed to go off at night in a Hurricane. And side-slip it if I felt like it.’

  That sort of thing is all right if you can get away with it; and, if you are a good enough performer, you will get away with it: but pilots who attempt feats which will demonstrate their skill—and the night flying incident was not calculated showing off, but an instinctive reaction to a familiar situation—too often exceed their ability.

  There was a sergeant pilot on 263 Squadron, which was also at Filton, who provided a talking point at about this time.

  No. 263 had converted from Gladiators to Spitfires before this pilot joined them. He had already flown the latter, but never the former. Then the squadron was chosen for the campaign in Norway and its Spitfires were replaced by Gladiators. The sergeant, making his first flight in one of the latter, decided to repeat a familiar practice of all the Filton pilots: flying under the railway bridge across the Severn. There was nothing particularly hazardous about this, for there was ample clearance. The sergeant pilot, who was used to the slim monoplane Spitfire with its retractable undercarriage, habitually went within inches of the river’s surface. The Gladiator was not only a biplane, it had a fixed undercarriage. The pilot, allowing too much clearance for the overhead wing, also misjudged his height above the river and gouged the surface. This pulled the aircraft onto its nose. The propeller flailed the yellow water into boiling foam and dragged the aeroplane under. Nearly a minute later, vomiting with shock, pain and hastily swallowed muddy water, the pilot floated up. The Severn runs fast and he turned at once towards the Welsh shore and began to swim across the current. In his haste he forgot that he was still wearing a parachute strapped under his buttocks. For twenty minutes he fought the stream in agony, approaching exhaustion. Every movement of his legs brought grinding pain. His arms were soon leaden with weariness, his throat and lungs raw with the rasping of cold air and gritty spray. When, at last, he could touch bottom, he found his legs buckling under him. Three rescuers, wading in to drag him to safety, found him too heavy for them: his parachute, waterlogged, weighed half as much as he did.

  When they laid him on dry land he screamed as they tried to lift him. The doctor found that he had broken both legs and seven ribs.

  In the Sergeants’ Mess, the event was discussed ribaldry; as are all pilot errors. Lacey took a moment off for some sober thought on the fallibility of everyone who handles a fast, lethal machine. If he had to die or be injured in this war it was going to be by enemy action. and not his own damned foolishness.

  In December, 1939, Fighter Command decided that 501 Squadron was now fully operational and posted it to Tangmere. 601 (County of London) Squadron, A.A.F., commanded by Loel Guinness and adorned by such other plutocratic names as Whitney Straight and Max Aitken, ‘and all the other millionaire boys’, was at Tangmere then; along with 92 Squadron; and a mysterious unit which flew Lysanders whose pilots would say nothing about their work. They operated mostly at night, presumably to France, and returned before dawn.

  In the third month of war, Tangmere s
till ran as a well-established peacetime station. There was ample provision of servants in both the Officers’ and Sergeants’ Messes, and Lacey found his uniforms impeccably cleaned and pressed for him. It was the rule that each sergeant had to take it in turn to be mess caterer for a month. Lacey repeats the old Service legend that, ‘At the end of the month you were able to buy a car. You more or less had to: there was no other way of getting rid of the money!’ With second-hand cars costing from five to twenty pounds, this, even if faintly true, did not represent a vast deal of profiteering.

  Christmas at the new, comfortable station brought a welcome break in the boredom of the phoney war. Daily flights over the English Channel, circling convoys monotonously with never a sight of the enemy in the air or on the sea, were discouraging of enterprise.

  But Group began to shift the emphasis to night flying: not only was there constant night practice, but a stand-by aircraft was detailed from dusk to dawn.

  The Squadron Adjutant’s memory was long enough to stretch back three months.

  He sent for Lacey.

  ‘Sir?’

  ‘Oh, Sergeant: you have more night flying time in your log-book than anyone else on the squadron, I see.’

  ‘Have I sir?’ The authentic look of faintly surprised innocence figured here; rather blighted by the pink veins around the youthful blue pupils, which told of rapid maturity hastened by another late party in the Sergeants’ Mess the night before.

  ‘You know damn well you have.’

  Silence. Hell, how the light from that window is hurting my eyes!

  ‘So,’ said the Adjutant, matching the look of frankness with one of his own, ‘I’m afraid you’re going to find yourself doing duty stand-by pilot most nights.’

  This merely entailed sleeping between rather smelly blankets in the hangar, with the aircraft a few yards outside. And every night the Operations Room would telephone a practice scramble. In theory, the duty stand-by pilot then leaped up, buckled on his parachute, sprinted to his cockpit, fastened his straps, put on his helmet and plugged it in to the radio, started the engine and taxied to the end of the runway in use. Meanwhile the Duty Pilot on Flying Control duties, and his crew, were frantically laying a string of flare path lights. The stand-by pilot then called Ops. on the R/T and was promptly ordered to return to dispersal and switch off. And there ended the practice night scramble.