I managed it without mishap or bungle. When the engines cut, which seemed to have nothing to do with my signal, I realised I was now quite superfluous, so I wandered back to the hut. I flopped, sweating, on to a chair.
‘Seemed OK,’ said my pal nonchalantly.
‘Phew!’ I replied. I’ve never forgotten the tingling sensation I experienced that first occasion when a vast Lancaster obeyed my signals....well, the pilot anyway. He could have been an Air Chief Marshall.... Actually he was a Squadron Leader.
We spent much time servicing two aircraft, a four engined Hastings and a twin engined Valetta that were being prepared for a good will tour of India. One or two such events were organised at the behest of the government. This one was to visit the country a year after Independence. Exactly what it entailed was not explained to we lowly characters, but we did a great deal of maintenance and refitting. To be accurate, the fitters did the fitting and we fetched, held and handed them the tools, and cleaned and swept up.
One evening in the billet Ken asked me if I fancied going to the gym for a spot of exercise. Every station had its gymnasium, usually staffed by one physical training instructor, a corporal PTI. For a few weeks we weren’t getting the normal Wednesday sports afternoon due to timetabled work in the hangars, so I agreed. This was well before the time when you went to a gym to use apparatus. That, for us, was wall bars, a beam or two, a medicine ball to lift, or a football to kick around. But on this occasion the PTI greeted us with a suggestion. Would we like to learn to play badminton? Further than that, would we find a few more men who would like to do the same? He’d just received some new kit and he’d like to see it used.
Neither of us had played before, though in my case I had pranced about tennis courts imagining I could play that game. There were public courts in a park near my home which I had used occasionally. Those at College were relaid and marked out three weeks before we left. Then after parting from Kim I had collected another girlfriend who played for the County Junior Team and who, by bashing me all over the court, demonstrated very well that I wasn’t much good at the game. But I’d never even seen a badminton court.
We cajoled a few more from our billet to join us and the PTI duly explained the court and the rules, then demonstrated how to play shots using a flick of the wrist rather than a sweep of the arm as in tennis. After a few evenings we began to get the hang of the game and began to enjoy it, albeit at a very modest level. The PTI then announced we needed practice playing against people who had a touch more experience. He said he’d fix up a match for us. We assumed he would rope in some other men from the station.
Six of us went to the gym on the appointed evening and were pleasantly surprised to be introduced to some attractive civilian ladies. Flattered, Ken and I were invited to play the first doubles match. One of us served, tentatively, and all hell broke loose. We were chased and battered all over the place by our highly skilled opponents. Occasionally we won a point, more by luck than skill. At the end of the game, very shamefacedly, we apologised and said we needed more practice, pointing out we’d only learned recently.
‘Oh yes, we know. We did rather put you through the mill. But then we are the Oxfordshire County Team. We’ve been playing for years.’
We rounded on our PTI but he’d disappeared. Some time later, after we had all suffered the same fate, he arrived with some coffee.
‘All good practice, men,’ was his sole comment. We felt murderous. Nevertheless, he was right and gradually we became quite proficient. Over the years I put the skill to good use in forming school badminton clubs. Early on we couldn’t have painted lines on hall floors - far too expensive - so I became adept at chalking out a court with fairly straight lines before each session. Chalk was cheap.
I found I was to be on Duty Crew one Sunday and detailed unusually to be there at 07.00 hours. Enquiries revealed the Wing Commander was taking an Auster on a flight. Due the pilot’s eminence, I was informed I would be partnered by a career corporal, so I knew my role was to look smart and salute at the right time and keep quiet. Other ground crew had prepared and fuelled the plane which we found on the grass in front of the control tower. We stood ready for the Winco’s appearance. A small red sports car zoomed around the corner of the hangar, pulled up and parked beside the con tower. Clad in civvies the driver got out, lugged a golf bag and clubs from the rear seat, pulled an integral sheet across to the windscreen and fastened it. Shouldering the clubs he strode towards the plane. We saluted.
‘Good morning, Corporal,’ he answered. It was not done to return salutes when not in uniform, hence the response. ‘Put these in the kite.’ He handed over the clubs to the corporal who opened a door under the wing of the Auster and put them behind the pilot’s seat. The Winco did the usual visual check of the aircraft - waggling the flaps, peering underneath at the wheels, and so forth. Then he stepped up into the pilot’s seat.
To start a single engined plane such as an Auster required a simple procedure which we learned during our Cosford course. The corporal followed the rigmarole.
‘Switches off, Sir? The pilot looked at his instrument panel.
‘Switches off.’
‘Sucking in, Sir,’ said the corporal who then seized the screw, aka the propeller, with both hands and rotated it two or three times. The Auster’s propeller had two blades. The procedure ensured fuel was drawn into the engine, but it was necessary to ensure the starter switch and others were in the ‘off’ position otherwise the engine might fire precipitately which would not do the man at the sharp end any good at all. I attempted to smile knowledgeably but actually did no such thing. I knew I wasn’t needed until later. When this was done the corporal called,
‘Ready to start, Sir?’
‘Ready to start,’ came the reply.
‘Switches on, Sir.’
‘Switches on.’
At this point the corporal correctly moved to a position to swing the propeller. Like other aircraft of its ilk the Auster had no self-starter, so the ground crew man had to swing the propeller just as you did starting a car with a handle when necessary, which was not infrequent in those days. Just as you had to make sure a sudden kick back on the handle didn’t damage your thumb or any other part, so you had to swing the prop with one hand, employing a sort of underarm bowling action, moving with it and away rather smartly. Usually this took two or three goes, then the engine coughed and decided to co-operate.
There was one other, vital, point you needed to observe - the direction the propeller would turn when the engine was running. Like fan blades they are shaped to force air backwards. It might be thought that all aircraft propellers would turn in the same direction. Most did, but the Auster was perverse. It’s designer decreed it should turn in the opposite direction to most aircraft. This meant that you swung with the opposite hand and arm compared to nomal.. Actually you tell by looking at the leading edge of the propeller blades because they have to cut into the air.
I expected the corporal to grab one blade with the correct hand, yell ‘Contact’ and bowl away. Had he swung the propeller with the wrong hand and had it kicked, it would very likely have bashed his arm severely as it swung back. Or even worse.
Fortunately I mentally switched on marginally ahead of the engine.
‘Corporal,’ I yelled and, equally fortunately he stopped, turned and glared at me.
‘What do you...’ But I dashed to his side and whispered. ‘Auster screw goes in the opposite direction.’
Momentarily he looked hard at the propeller, rolled his eyes, changed hands and swung. The engine burst into life first go despite the fact that its preliminary sucking in routine must have been in reverse. The Winco set off for his round of golf.
‘Thanks, lad. I haven’t been close to an Auster in years. Completely forgot.’
‘Well, I’ve not been that close to one at all, but it was one of the
odd things I remembered from training a few weeks ago.’
Next day in the billet I recounted the episode for the amusement of whoever was around listening. Ken laughed.
‘I know all about Austers. I’ve got one.’
He was rewarded with blank stares.
‘You’ve what?’ I ventured.
‘Got an Auster. Actually it’s my father’s - he bought it. But I’ve got the pilot’s licence.’
We clustered around, hardly believing.
‘When did you get that?’ someone asked.
‘A few months before I was called up. It’s kept at Southend Flying Club. It’s being hired out whilst I’m in the RAF. I go down and fly it some weekends; it’s not too far from where I live in London.’
Most of us found there were convenient ways to get home each weekend. In my case someone in Station HQ organised a coach to my city and someone else did the same to London, so on a Saturday we took whatever we needed for home, usually our washing, down to the hangar. At precisely 12.00 noon when someone rang the dismissal bell we sprinted madly for the main gate and the waiting coaches. Ours reached the the centre by 14.00 and with luck I was home eating a meal mother kept warm for me by 14.30. Then we reassembled in the centre at 23.00 on Sunday, reached camp by 01.00 and were in bed by 01.30. The London mob didn’t make it until 02.30 but I rarely heard them.
There were two elements which contrived not to make it quite as comfortable as it sounds. I mentioned coach but that’s far too polite. It was a very ramshackle affair but at least it was reliable. The yawning return journey couldn’t be eased by sleep because we were jammed into upright positions on small, hard seats. Occasionally I managed a few moments’ doze with my head in my hands, elbows on case on my lap, but frequent lurches - the driver drove at a creditable speed - negated the effort. The other problem was walking round in a daze throughout Monday. One had to be careful not to mess up anything important.
After some weeks Ken and I invited each other to our homes for exchange weekends. So I had the great thrill of being entertained in his large and very well appointed house. His father had a very successful cycle business. He drove us along the A12 to Southend, where Ken duly took him and me for a flight over Southend with its famous long pier in his Auster. Someone else swung the prop for him.
Ken then visited our very pleasant but rather smaller house. Instead of a flight he came to Church in the evening with our family which was our normal routine. The only excitement we were able to offer was a totally unexpected four inches of snow on the Sunday morning, despite it being May. But in those tough days four inches was nothing. It didn’t stop buses, nor our coach. They didn’t clear the roads, either, just fitted chains on wheels.
News of Ken’s qualification soon permeated the hangar - and beyond. No doubt intrigued by having an ordinary aircraftman with a pilot’s licence in the camp, one of the officers sought him out in the hangar. The permanent NCOs bristled, but said nothing. The officer asked Ken whether he would have a go at flying his Tiger Moth, to which Ken delightedly agreed, saying however that he hadn’t flown one very often. Assured that would be no problem as it had dual controls, Ken was kitted out and walked out with the officer and aplomb. The NCOs bristled some more. This wrecked the natural hierarchy. There were the commissioned ranks, the non-commissioned ranks, the ordinary airmen who formed the groundcrew, backbone of every flying station, and the lowest of the low, the conscripts, glorified with the new title of National Servicemen. They were at the bottom of an extensive ladder and were not expected to be very bright. They were certainly not expected to be pilots. The World Turned Upside Down indeed.
To his great annoyance a nasty cross wind chose the wrong moment to blow across the field as Ken came into land and he had to relinquish control to his superior officer. No doubt news of that mollified the permanent men slightly.
Many years later I saw Ken again - on a television news clip. A Boeing Superfortress was flown into Germany for some kind of ceremony, being the first occasion one had done so since the massive daylight air raids visited upon the country by the American Air Force. Briefly I glimpsed the pilot and recognised the older but still familiar figure of Ken. Obviously he had upgraded from Austers and Tiger Moths.
One fine morning with a blue sky dotted with contrasting cumulonimbus clouds building into glistening white towers, a few of us were detailed for an airtest flight. This was considered one of the perks of our work. After every service an aircraft was flown on an airtest to check whether it worked properly. To ensure that those carrying out the service had also worked properly all such personnel were required to go on the airtest flight. It was effective natural discipline. We took off and I enjoyed watching as we weaved in and out of pristine white valleys and over mountain tops glistening in sunlight. The aircraft having survived for an hour following our ministrations upon it, we landed. As another lad and I were walking back to the hangar a sergeant hailed us and invited us to join another flight going to Belfast that afternoon. Some days were like that. They balanced those that were not. We grabbed lunch and ran down having also, as regulations required, grabbed parachutes again and shot into the waiting aircraft.
We learned we were accompanying a Lancaster that had arrived recently with a highly unusual excrescence on its belly. This was a kind of large bright aluminium box fixed to it approximately where the bomb bay is housed, giving the effect of a weird pregnancy. We had no idea what this contained but it contrasted sharply with the camouflage elsewhere. It aroused a degree of notoriety in the camp. It was now being flown to Short Brothers, located in Belfast and we were in the plane detailed to bring back the Lancaster’s crew. So I spent the afternoon in the air. I found it particularly appealing because the pilot flew over Snowdonia and I was shortly to go rock climbing there on ‘Whitsun Grant’ leave. Actually it was really scrambling, but you couldn’t climb Tryfan without using your hands occasionally. At least that’s what I found when I climbed it first the previous Whitsun during the last term at College. We flew directly above the mountain still in glorious sunshine. It looked very rocky from above but much more dumpy, as George Borrow called it when he walked through Snowdonia to write ‘Wild Wales’. I say through accurately because he did the forty miles from Cerrig y Druiddion to Bangor in one day, fortified solely by cheese and ale.
We then dropped to about a hundred feet and skimmed the waves at an impressive speed, then climbed again to pass the southern tip of the Isle of Man at a respectable height. Then we skimmed low again over Strangford Lough and landed at Belfast, more or less as you do to-day. Then, however, the facilities were rather less.
We two very ordinary airmen hung about the very ordinary café to which everyone had gone, wondering why we had been asked to join the flight. Actually we never discovered. But whilst I was hovering, holding a cup of tea and a bun, trying to keep out of the way of officers and civilian businessmen animatedly talking, someone half knocked my shoulder as he passed. I looked up to see a broad shouldered back clad in a sports jacket walking steadily away. An officer must have noticed my look.
‘Any idea who that man is?’ he asked.
‘No Sir.’
‘Douglas Bader.’
He didn’t have to explain further. For years afterwards I traded on the fact that I’d rubbed shoulders with Douggie Bader. Many years later I was invited to be a guest at a ceremony where he was to present awards to Craft Apprentices at a research station, some of whom had been to the School of which I was Head.. I thought about telling him of the time I had almost met him. Alas, he died before the event.
Early on D-Day, 6th June 1944, many personnel travelled to their key zones in large Horsa gliders towed, usually, by the good old workhorse the DC3, universally known as the Dakota. A number had set off from Brize Norton. So it was logical to use the station for further experiments with such gliders. Most airborne landings during the war involved a
write-off of the gliders. Someone, somewhere, wondered whether in some circumstances it might be useful to recover any undamaged gliders complete with the troops.
It was comparatively easy to fill gliders with men, attach a tow-rope to an aircraft and then belt down the runway at full power and wait for the wonderful power of lift to elevate both aircraft and glider. All you needed was a long runway - a mile or more. But gliders going into a war zone don’t always land conveniently on airfields, unless such happen to be their targets. What about open grassy spaces? Those are usually favoured for landings. Could gliders be picked up again?
A mechanism was needed for snatching the glider off the ground. As an experiment a Dakota was fitted with a large, exceptionally strong and extremely well attached hook which protruded well below the fuselage. The next requirement was a cable on the glider which could be caught by the hook on the aircraft in flight. Newton’s first Law of Motion comes into play at this point, the one about inertia, i.e. a body in motion or at rest tends to stay like that unless operated upon by a sufficiently large force. I doubt he’ll object to my paraphrase. The glider would experience a highly significant jerk from its state of rest, whilst the plane would suffer equally when it met the resistance of the stationary glider. The third law, you remember, is the one that says any applied force meets an equal and opposite force.
Some genius worked out an ingenious solution - as he would. The tow-rope from the glider was to be a very large loop. From the glider’s nose it was extended forward and outwards, then placed over two poles set a fair distance apart so the cable then extended across the intervening space in a taut line. From above the cable looked like a triangle with the nose of the glider at the point of one angle and the poles at each of the other two.
Greetings Noble Sir Page 23