They were met in London by some Australia House officials who informed them they would be transported straight away to the RAF centre at Uxbridge, about sixteen miles west of the capital. On arrival, they would be ‘sworn in’. There was no time to look around. The weather was against it anyway. And what was there to see around here as they departed in any case? Sombre, Doric-styled Australia House had been built in the Strand on an island site at the east end of Aldwych. Stretching from Australia House past St Clement Danes towards the great dome of St Paul’s Cathedral was Fleet Street, the hub of Britain’s newspaper publishing empire with its hectic traffic made up of double-decker buses, cars and cabs. On the footpaths busy people with umbrellas and overcoats still brushed by each other despite the soaking drizzle.
Lanes and little side streets branched off at right angles to left and right – Shoe Lane, Birde Lane and there to the left off Ludgate Hill was Old Bailey Street. Further along this street and higher up, just visible outlined against the cold grey sky, stood a tall bronze female figure. In her right hand was a sword held high and she balanced scales in her left – Blind Justice herself. She was on top of the courthouse. This was the Central Criminal Court, the famous ‘Old Bailey’. Next, they passed around the imposing St Paul’s Cathedral and up to Newgate Street to turn left and go westward, eventually leaving Central London along Oxford Street, passing Marble Arch and continuing along the Bayswater Road.
For Pat Hughes and his family, England and the Old Bailey was where their story had begun. (See Appendix 1: The Ancestry of Pat Hughes.)
The Australians were unimpressed. By the end of the first week they’d all had enough. Accustomed to fine sunny weather, they had great difficulty in accepting the confined existence of a wet English winter. The locals seemed to be completely attuned to it, but before long the disenchanted Aussies became irritable and moody.
On 19 February 1937, after being sworn in at RAF Uxbridge as ‘pilot officers in the General Duties Branch of the Royal Air Force’ for five years, they were instructed to go to London to buy RAF uniforms. These differed in colour from those of the RAAF, being a light-greyish blue, whereas the Australian uniform at that time was a dark royal blue similar to the navy uniform. The cost was about two years’ of their salary and the instruction was to pay this off by a banker’s order to deduct a set amount from their monthly salary. By this method the debt would be cleared in four years but their already very modest income was reduced to even smaller proportions. In the interim, permission was given to wear the Australian uniform. It was with mounting regret and some bitterness that they remembered the RAAF uniform had been supplied free.
For the next month the rain showed no sign of letting up. Day after day of freezing wet weather. There was nowhere to go and nothing to do – even the London tailor came to the camp for fitting the new uniforms. By the end of the month everyone was ready to go en masse back to Australia. Then, almost unexpectedly, they were ordered to transfer to Lincolnshire and split up, half going to Digby and some going to Grantham. The remainder were to go on to Thornaby in Yorkshire. Pat’s destination was No. 2 Flying Training School at Digby. Desmond Sheen was with the group going to No. 9 Flying Training School at Thornaby.
Digby airfield was located some twenty miles south of the city of Lincoln but to travel there by train the countryside all looked the same – grey and wet. To reach there by truck or coach there seemed to be tall fence-like hedges and piled stone walls bordering endless miles of twisting narrow roads. The furthest distance they could see in any given direction was about half a mile. Digby airfield dated back to the First World War when open fields near the village of Scopwick were used as a relief landing ground by the RNAS at Cranwell. Between the wars it was used extensively for training and was extensively modernised and upgraded as part of the RAF’s expansion programme in 1935 and 1936. Its commanding officer for a few months in 1920 had been Squadron Leader Arthur Harris, later to become commander-in-chief of RAF Bomber Command; other commanders included Wing Commander Arthur Tedder and Group Captain Trafford Leigh-Mallory. Following the completion of the expansion it passed into the control of No. 12 Group, RAF Fighter Command, and was to remain a fighter aerodrome for much of the war.
The Australians found Digby dreary and dismal. It was made up of small, supposedly temporary igloo-type structures that had been erected during the First World War. If they thought their ‘wind tunnel’ accommodation at Point Cook had been rough, compared to these igloos they had been luxurious. As one of the others, Lew Johnston, commented, ‘There were two types of igloos, small and bloody small.’ The smaller igloos had four ‘cells’ for the inmates, the larger had eight. There was an additional cell for the batman. Each just had room for a bed, a chair, a cupboard for clothes and a small fireplace in the only corner that was not occupied.
Gordon Olive, who was also at Digby, recalled:
The fireplace was there for the simple reason that the igloos were so cold. Unless they had some heating each night, the occupant was likely to freeze to death during his sleep.
Between each pair of igloos was a toilet-come-ablutions igloo. This worked on the principle that good fresh air was very healthful and that young officers should not luxuriate in hot baths under any circumstances. These were truly efficient wind tunnels and only the most determined of the Australians maintained their two baths a day routine. One thing the wind tunnel did achieve was to stop Pat Hughes’ daily bath song. Pat claimed that it was just not possible to sing and shiver to death at the same time…
The Air Council of the RAF seemed to have the philosophy that all young officers were virtually inseparable from trouble, and one way to combat this was to reduce them to abject poverty. In this they were most efficient, but the theory was only partially effective.
Thus on one notable night the citizens of Lincoln (the local city) were amazed to see three young men busily erecting a toilet pedestal, seat, cistern, chain and all on the footpath outside a pub called The Saracen’s Head. Pat Hughes was the ring leader, and proved very efficient with a Stillson wrench which he had acquired from somewhere. Pat claimed the pub was run by a pack of bums and that the toilet seat combination was a more appropriate sign outside the establishment than that depicting the decapitated Saracen of ancient vintage.
The local constabulary arrived and took the matter up with Pat, and those of us who were sober enough, took the matter of Pat up with the local constabulary. As a result, the toilet set-up was eventually replaced in its original location and we avoided the embarrassment of having to bail Pat out of the local gaol. Pat, for his part, stoutly demanded to go to gaol because he said it would just have to be warmer than the igloos at Digby.
The only break after the month of rain was a week of snow. For a while it changed the colour from grey to white but then the sun shone for a few hours turning the snow to slush. And then it rained for another month!3
The Australians filled in some of their seemingly endless waiting time by studying maps of the area for a radius of a hundred miles or so from the aerodrome. A number of neighbourhoods were prohibited and had to be avoided. One was Cranwell, the main RAF training school. Some civil aerodromes also had to be shunned, as were gunnery ranges on the coast. There were other service aerodromes dotted about where pilots could land if they became lost, or if for some reason a landing back at Digby became difficult or impossible.
Overall, the terrain was flat with seemingly endless fields for crops but lacking in such prominent landmarks as mountains and distinctive hills. Nevertheless, there were several very valuable landmarks. The forests in the vicinity were very important, they were told. These were isolated and not particularly large but they had very distinctive shapes and were easy to pick out from the surrounding cultivated countryside. Back in Australia roads and railway lines had always been good landmarks because they were very few and far between. This was not the case in England. There were literally dozens of roads and railways weaving their way over the countryside and
identifying one from another from the air was a major difficulty.
Old Roman roads were the exceptions. These ran for miles, sometimes forty or fifty miles in a straight line. This was most unusual in England because the multitude of country roads meandered drunkenly all over the place as if they could not decide which way to go. There were old Roman roads in Lincolnshire. The Australians were told that some ran along by some of the RAF airfields. These were the most useful of all the landmarks in that part of the world. Many a pilot had saved his life in bad weather by finding a straight Roman road and flying along it until an aerodrome appeared where he could make an emergency landing.
On the rare occasions when the rain did ease, several games of rugby were played with the local lads. The playing fields were as soft as sponges, and apart from churning up the mud and receiving a liberal coating of muck over everything, it was a much less violent sport than that played on the harder grounds back home. It was not as rough on the knees and other exposed parts as playing the same game back in Australia.
Even after eight long and boring weeks, the Australian boys were still trying to acclimatise to English hibernation. Some were cursing their foolishness for electing to join the RAF. The eagerly awaited mail from home added to their torture. It was full of cheerful descriptions of friends and relations swimming and baking in glorious summer sunshine. Lew Johnston summed it up: ‘Even the birds walk in this bloody climate.’ ‘It was true,’ Gordon Olive agreed. ‘The waterlogged aerodrome was dotted with groups of crows and seagulls pulling up earth worms which had come to the surface to avoid being drowned.’4 Pat remembered Cooma in New South Wales could be cold and wet, but it was nothing like this.
Eventually, as April approached, the weather did improve. At first there was one clear day followed by two or three days of rain, then two clear days followed – and then it was almost fine! The wind was still very cold, but there was more and more sunshine. The Englishmen claimed it was spring arriving.
As the weather cleared, flying started at long last. With every new day there was more activity and soon they were fully occupied. This was what they wanted! First, there were the essential familiarisation flights. Yes, the local countryside was as flat as the maps showed; patterned fields of crops did spread in every direction; and so too there were the irregular patches of woods and forests, but these had displays of thick greenness that complemented the yellows and browns in the fields and gave a serene beauty that was at the same time restful and surprising.
The aircraft at Digby were Hawker Harts, Furies and Audaxes, all by the Hawker Company, and Avro Tutors. The elegant Hart two-seater light bomber which had first flown in June 1928 had introduced an unrivalled dynasty of Hawker military machines to the RAF. It was an early product of designer Sydney Camm, a promising draughtsman who, with engineer Fred Sigrist, had devised a system of bolted duralumin tubes that became the characteristic fuselage construction of all new Hawker machines. Their Hart boasted a matchless performance for its time that included a top speed in level flight of 184 mph. It was chosen as the RAF’s new light day-bomber and nearly 1,000 were built, with large export orders. It had proved to be one of the most adaptable aeroplanes in RAF history.
Early experience with the Hart in squadron service left little doubt that it could be adapted to fulfil a variety of roles. One of the first involved fairly minor changes to satisfy an army cooperation requirement, with the air force needing a replacement for lower-performance types such as the Westland Wapiti. A message pick-up hook and other minor equipment changes transformed the Hart into the Audax.
The Demon was an interim fighter based on the Hart bomber but the next Hawker machine, the Fury, was designed as a fighter from the outset. This graceful single-seat biplane was the RAF’s first to exceed 200 mph in level flight. Ordered in 1930 and entering service in May 1931, the Fury’s superb supercharged Rolls-Royce Kestrel engine gave it an impressive rate of climb, superior to the contemporary Bristol Bulldog, while its light controls made it ideal for aerobatics. They initiated the development of additional multiple types such as the Hardy, Hind, Hector and Hart Trainer, on which many future Second World War pilots would cut their teeth.
Aside from a few other stray machines, the Tutor was the other main type at Digby, and it was not from the Hawker stable. It was the A. V. Roe (Avro) and Co. Ltd’s Type 621 Trainer of 1929 which had been designed as a replacement for the Avro 504N of First World War vintage. The Tutor featured a welded steel-tube structure and a 155 horsepower Armstrong Siddeley Mongoose IIIA radial engine. Eventually Avro mass-produced more than 390 of them for the RAF, including fourteen Sea Tutor floatplanes with long single-step Alclad floats.
Despite becoming busier, Pat still found time to keep up with his correspondence. To his sister, Constance, he wrote:
Con,
The address as you see proclaims my existence in the land of Eskimos and seals and other things that make up this dear England in winter time.
I won’t write you a long story of the trip, as I managed to keep a sort of diary on the boat, and I, as it has just come back into my possession, am about to post it home, so you can gather it off the Mater and peruse it some afternoon when you have naught else to do.
Well, to be honest, this England, even though it has been miserable weather, is a pretty decent place.
Our quarters here are only temporary until we move on to a squadron and so we can’t expect a palace, so after all life has been pretty good.
I have completely regained my land and flying legs, seen most of London, spent a fair bit of money and seen a good deal of countryside by flying over it.
The trouble is the smoke hangs around so much that I can’t see very much from about 4,000 feet.
I’m flying rather nice and fast aeroplanes, single seater, 700 horse power fighter planes called Hawker ‘Furies’. They are supposed to kick out about 250 miles an hour, but mine must be old as it only does about 200 and then feels as if the engine will jump out.
I hope to go to a squadron equipped with planes called ‘Gauntlets’ or ‘Gladiators’, nice and fast, much faster than these old Furies, but I’m terribly satisfied as I am.
There’s only one other chap from our lot up here with me, Johnston, a Queenslander, and he is flying heavy bombers the poor sod, so it looks as if I will be going to a squadron by myself, as none of the other chaps except for Des Sheen will be flying single-seater fighters, and he’s going to a squadron near London I think.
I haven’t done anything this Easter as I didn’t have anywhere in particular to go, and I didn’t have much money so I just mooned around and played squash.
We have had snow and rain practically four days out of five during our working week, and on Wednesdays, Saturdays and Sundays, when we have holidays, it was so foggy or dull we couldn’t do a thing …
… Saw Merle Oberon in a play called ‘Beloved Enemy’ and saw the play called ‘This Will Make You Whistle’ with Jack Buchanan. He’s a dumb cluck if ever there was one but old Merle is a tasty dish. Yum! Yum! What would mother say?
Tell your lanky hero not to get fat and lazy just because he’s married, but to look after himself. Keep on with the swimming lessons.
After 6 weeks on that boat where I spent about 4 hours a day in the pool reckon I could take on the great Weissmuller himself.5
Haven’t bought a car yet although I hear that Hartnell, in a fit of rashness, placed all his money on a Ford, which he proudly motors to and fro in. Tough luck about the air force packing those two Demons up in Tasmania and tougher luck still on Eagerty when he fell in the water. Those three chaps were in the senior cadets when I was there. Tough luck.
We’ve got an old lady called the Dutchess of Bedford, she’s 73 but she flies her own aeroplane.
She got lost the other day and we’ve spent about three days looking for her, but they found some wreckage of her kite in the sea, so it looks as though the old duck has gone and done it sort of thing. Poor old thing! Although a woma
n of her age should have more sense.
So sister mine, behave yourself and see that the family doesn’t have too many arguments and tell everybody you see to write me or send me a telegram or some damned thing. If I don’t get some letters soon I’ll have to start reading books to remember what Australia looks like.
Love to all and give my love to young Judith when you see her.
Love and Love
Pat6
After their familiarisation flights, the flying concentrated on camera gun exercises against ground targets and then against air targets – enjoyable fun and better was to come.
For the next stage, they went to Catfoss Aerodrome in Yorkshire where they carried out the same exercises and practice sessions all over again. The airfield was located on the east coast, north-east of Hull. While they were still there, they progressed to firing live ammunition at ground targets, and then at large flags being towed by other aircraft out over the North Sea. The results were being assessed to judge their suitability for placement into either fighter squadrons or bomber squadrons.
This was the era of the bomber, it was the ‘glamour’ aircraft. The latest bomber types, such as the new Bristol Blenheim, Vickers Wellington and Handley Page Hampden, were more ‘modern’ and faster than the RAF’s existing biplane fighters. Many regarded fighters as a machine of the past. Even if new fighters could make up the gap in performance, there were rumours of new hydraulic four-gun turrets (that would be fitted to the Armstrong Whitworth Whitley) which would be able to shoot them down long before they came into range. Most of the Australians wanted to be categorised for bombers or seaplanes with the object of taking up careers in civil aviation in the future, but not Pat Hughes. He knew all about the great fighting aces of the First World War like the great Irishman Mick Mannock, the Canadian Billy Bishop, James McCudden, Harry Cobby, the Australian Flying Corp’s top ace; and even the legendary Germans: the Red Baron Manfred von Richthofen, Boelcke, Immellmann and Voss. Fighters were what Pat wanted!
A Spitfire Pilot's Story: Pat Hughes: Battle of Britain Top Gun Page 6