Trials and Errors

by Mike Brooke

  In 1976 I had also managed to fly, under close supervision of course, the DHC Buffalo STOL transporter and the Italian Sia-Marchetti SF 260 trainer. Chalk and cheese!

  And it all happened again two years later in 1978 – only some of the aircraft and faces changed. It was during that show that I met a very affable member of the press: Peter Gilchrist. I am usually very wary of those of the journalistic persuasion – it’s a matter of trust and credibility – and at first I was cautious with Peter. However, it soon became apparent that he was passionate about two things: aviation and getting his facts right. On top of that he was very good company. Our friendship blossomed and over the next couple of years we produced several articles for Aircraft Illustrated aviation magazine based on my assessment of several, usually historic, aircraft types. These included the Blackburn B-2, the Boeing B-17, the North American Harvard and the DHC Dash 8. I wrote the first draft then Peter, having taken the photographs, worked his journalistic magic to make it all a bit more readable!

  One fine summer’s day a small brown biplane was towed out of A Hangar to an area of grass on the south side of the main runway. I recognised it as an SE5a First World War British fighter; designed and built right here in the ‘Factory’ sixty years earlier. The story of this genuine article’s restoration can wait for another day. But here it was about to be tested after repairs to its undercarriage following a forced landing over a year ago. Our gallant leader, Gp Capt. Reggie Spiers, was there to do that test flight. Before he boarded the diminutive but purposeful-looking flying machine we were allowed to peer into the cockpit. There was an array of antiquated instruments, copper pipes, brass taps and shiny levers. As the group captain strode up we respectfully stood back as he eased his not inconsiderable person into the tiny cockpit. Not long after the ground crew swung the prop and the six-cylinder Wolseley Viper engine burst into life.

  After the usual checks of the engine, involving men holding the tail down, Reggie opened the throttle and bumped off across the grass, lifting into the air after a surprisingly short run. We watched as he flew around over the airfield for about twenty minutes then made an immaculate three-point landing in front of us. He taxied back to where he had started from, eased himself out of the cockpit and strode across to the assembled crowd of jealous test pilots with a large smile on his face.

  ‘I’ll tell you something, chaps, fly-by-wire and relaxed stability are nothing new,’ were his only words to us as he strode by back to his staff car! I wondered how I might get to fly this wonderful flying machine; after all I had well over 1,000 flying hours on ‘taildraggers’. I wrote to the wing commander but was gently turned down. What I didn’t know then was that ten years later I would fly many hours in SE5a F904.

  In the summer of 1978 my ‘Desk Officer’, of the RAF’s Personnel Management organisation, who looked after postings and appointments, called me. A bit like Baldrick he said that he had a cunning plan for my future. By then I had received a ‘blue letter’, which was not a sad note that started ‘Dear John’, but an unperfumed missive on pale blue paper with a crest at the top. This contained the brilliant news that I was to be promoted to squadron leader on the next list. ‘So what’s the plan?’ I asked.

  ‘We’re going to send you to a Buccaneer squadron in Germany as a squadron QFI,’ the man on the other end answered.

  ‘Are they all squadron leaders now?’ I asked. In my squadron and CFS Agents days the squadron QFIs were usually senior flight lieutenants.

  ‘It’s a new scheme, Mike,’ he replied. ‘It’s called a Hodgkinson Post.’

  Well I’d heard of the disease but not the post. ‘What does that mean?’

  He then filled me in on another cunning plan thought up by a very senior RAF person called Hodgkinson to get a better turnover of squadron leaders through operational executive appointments.

  ‘So you’ll do a short course on the OCU, get your instructor’s ticket on the Buccaneer and the Hunter and do one year on the squadron as the QFI; then you should move up into one of the flight commander’s slots for the rest of your three-year tour.’

  ‘That sounds absolutely great,’ I rejoined. ‘When? is the only question I have left.’

  ‘End of the year or so, old boy,’ was the response.

  ‘Thanks, have a nice day.’

  Wow, I thought, at last I’m getting my wish come true. Back to Germany, even possibly to my old outfit – No. 16 Squadron, now flying Buccaneers at Laarbruch. I was a very happy bunny. Bring it on!

  Notes

  24 Nuclear, Biological and Chemical.

  25 The helmet colour scheme can be seen on the front cover.

  26 See A Bucket of Sunshine by this author, published by The History Press, 2012.

  PART 3

  RESEARCHING RADAR

  24 INTO THE BLACK

  Meanwhile I was still walking around Farnborough with two stripes on my uniforms and flying suits; I would not be allowed to put the additional narrow stripe between them, indicating my new rank, until I left there. Even then it would be ‘acting’ rank until the London Gazette published the promotion lists on New Year’s Day 1978 – five months hence. I carried on with the usual round of trials and check flights, conversion or refresher training and IRTs on the Canberra, on which I had been the Farnborough specialist for most of my tour. It was an added workload and thus I had effectively filled two flying appointments during my time there – experimental test pilot and Canberra QFI/IRE. I didn’t mind at all – it meant that I got more flying!

  Over the last year of my time at Farnborough there had been changes of personality in our management and leadership chain: Wg Cdr Ian Strachan had taken over from David Bywater as OC Flying and then Gp Capt. ‘Chuck’ Charles had replaced Reggie Spiers as COEF. Also my replacement had arrived in August, fresh from doing the test pilots’ course en français at EPNER, the French test pilots’ school based at Istres in the south of France. His name was Nigel Wood and he proved to be a sharp-minded man with great natural flying ability, or as we say in the trade – a fine pair of hands. Nigel would go on to fly as a test pilot at Edwards AFB in California’s High Desert and be selected to be the UK’s first Space Shuttle astronaut. Sadly his mission was scheduled to be the next after the STS-51L Challenger disaster of 28 January 1986. The RAF reckoned that the thirty-two-month hiatus that followed was too long a pause in Nigel’s career, so he came home and never did go into space. That must have been the biggest disappointment that any pilot could bear; I know it would have been for me. Nigel finished his time in the RAF as an Air Commodore at Boscombe Down.

  In October my Desk Officer’s cunning plan of me going to Buccaneers in RAF Germany totally unravelled. His job was complicated enough but, for us RAF officers serving within MOD(PE), there was another layer of personnel management that could interfere with the RAF’s plans! This remit was under the wing of an agreeable chap called Bill Sewell who resided at MOD(PE) HQ in St Giles Court, in central London. It transpired in a phone call from him that the present boss of the RRS, based at RAE Bedford, one Alan Holbourne, was about to move on and be promoted to wing commander. Moreover, the present OC Flying at RAE Bedford, Wg Cdr Hugh Rigg (brother of actress Diana), had decided to retire early, so Alan was going to move across the airfield at Bedford and take up residence in the office of OC Flying there.

  What this chain of events had to do with me was carefully and gently explained; I think that Bill knew that I would not be best pleased to not to be returning to the front line. I was now going to replace Alan Holbourne as boss of the RRS. The OC was required to be a test pilot who was qualified on the Buccaneer, Canberra and Hunter. I fitted the bill, as did my end-of-tour date – now 26 November. Do not pass GO – do not collect £200 – do not go to Germany – move directly to Bedford/Thurleigh and report for duty on Monday 27 November 1978! By the end of my three-year tour on EFS I had flown over 900 hours on twenty-three types of aircraft, including four marks of Canberra and three marks of Hunter. My final sortie a
t Farnborough was an air test in the MRF’s Canberra PR3, the first time I had flown that mark.

  The only thing that I knew about the Radar Research Squadron was that it did what it said on the tin: the squadron flew aircraft fitted with experimental radar equipment on research and development flight trials. The organisation that provided and managed most of the work of RRS was the Royal Radar and Signals Establishment (RSRE) based at Great Malvern. On my first day on the squadron, now wearing my new rank badges, I quickly discovered that RRS occupied a rather secluded area with three hangars and several buildings to house its aircraft, scientists, aircrew and ground crew. Access was via a road from the main gate at the western side of the airfield and the unit was about 2 miles by this perimeter road from the Control Tower, where my boss OC Flying resided, along with ATC, the Operations Staff and the Met Office. It was here where our day would start, with the 8.30 a.m. daily briefing. Our drive to the squadron after that was shortened by kind permission of the ATC staff, who let us cross the runway for a limited time window after receiving a green light from the local controller in the tower.

  Once over there I discovered that my office was huge, modern and well-equipped. It was next to the Squadron Operations (Ops) Room, with a small hatch through which communication could take place. There were various individual offices and a large, comfortable crew room in the rest of the building that the squadron occupied, which was about one quarter of the whole complex; the rest being given over to offices for the Trials Officers and their staff, admin and a conference room or two.

  My deputy and the Senior Trials/Ops Officer was another squadron leader, a navigator called Dave Broughton. He was a man with the nav’s equivalent of the ‘tp’ qualification – known to all and sundry as the ‘Spec N’. Dave was a real asset, especially to a ‘new boy’ like me trying out his leadership skills on such a mixed bunch of old hands. Dave was an avuncular guy with a ready sense of humour and a wonderful talent for playing the ‘old joanna’ – especially his renditions of Scott Joplin ragtime tunes. He was also, like many of us were in the 1970s, into making his own wine. I recall going to a party at Broughton Towers and finding that some of the wine bottles did not just have a date on them but a time as well!

  There were a total of seventeen aircrew, including Dave and myself, only one of whom was younger than me! Most of them were Specialist Aircrew and they specialised on ‘their’ aircraft type. There were some real characters among them.

  Perhaps the biggest character of them all was a navigator called Jack Cooke. He was a small, wiry individual who was getting a little long in the tooth. However, he was living proof of the saying ‘while age is mandatory, maturity is optional’! Jack was always amusing, although he was sometimes a little difficult to understand as he spoke very quickly with a strong south-western burr. His ‘party piece’ was to stand on his head, with a drink in one hand, and sing – or at least warble – the song ‘I like Java, I Like Tea’; this was more often than not performed at Happy Hours or at Dining-In nights and was always amusing. Then there was the moustachioed ‘Captain’ Geoff Mannings. He was another man heading towards his retirement date, a Specialist Aircrew squadron leader and the RRS heavy aircraft expert – flying the Nimrod and Viscounts – where he reigned supreme over the flight deck. Geoff was also a campanologist in the village church of Sharnbrook, where the RAF ‘Married Patch’ was. His heavy-aircraft specialist colleague was a man from the far south-west, Flt Lt John Trout, who also acted as a co-pilot on the Puma and Sea King helicopters. Among the other pilots was the helicopter specialist Andy Digby, Canberra leader Dave Watson (a formidable opponent on the squash court who regularly won the RAF veteran’s title); Dave had also qualified on the Hunter. There were others who flew the Canberras, such as an outgoing younger guy called Nick Stillwell. Later on Chris White, Stu Waring and Paddy Clarke would arrive to fly the Canberras, as would my old friends from No. 16 Squadron days, pilot John Sadler (who was also a ‘tp’) and navigator Trevor Carpenter.

  Among the other rear crew were a friendly Scot called Jack Stewart, Mo Hammond (who had followed me from Farnborough), Cliff Ware, Geoff Holt and a tall extrovert called Pete Middlebrook; like Mo Hammond he was qualified on the Buccaneer. There was also an Air Engineer called John Pollock. On first encountering him I thought that he was a bit taciturn and tended toward being a bit of a ‘barrack room lawyer’. While there was some truth in this impression, as well as being good at his day job, John was a wizard at organising the squadron in-flight rations and extracting the maximum from the system, quite legally. There was always sufficient ‘free’ food in the crew room to feed everybody. Cheese on toast was a favourite – that was until the toaster broke. When Dave Watson left RRS he presented the unit with a new toaster. However, it was one of the fold-up type. Paddy Clarke observed loudly that it was no good as the cheese would fall off!

  When I took over from Alan Holbourne, who as a wing commander I had now to call ‘Sir’, RRS had a fleet of eighteen aircraft of eight different types on strength; and what a fleet it was:

  • One Nimrod (XV 148 – the 2nd prototype)

  • Two Vickers Viscounts

  • One Hunter T8M

  • One Buccaneer S2B (Special build)

  • One Canberra T4

  • Nine Canberras of various marks, many of which were highly modified for trials work

  • Three helicopters – one Puma, one Wessex and one Sea King

  Sadly, the squadron’s Meteor NF.11/12 had been pensioned off before I had taken over – I had been looking forward to learning to fly that!

  I had made up my mind about three things before I had taken command: firstly, I would not change anything within three months (unless it affected flight safety); secondly, I would learn a lot more about radar and how it worked! I had never used radar before and I had a very basic understanding of its magic properties. However, there were lots of technical terms that meant little or nothing to me and I needed rapidly to learn the jargon and banter and what it all meant technically. Dave Broughton gave me several volumes of his notes from his Specialist Navigator’s Course and they provided my bedtime reading for several weeks! I soon could keep up with the boffins when they talked about such things as pulse repetition frequency, or the characteristics of wave-guides, magnetrons and travelling wave tubes. The third thing that I had decided was that I would try to lead from the front, particularly in the air. Leadership is like airmanship: you can only become good at it through experience. Fortunately during my seventeen years in the RAF to date I had seen quite a few examples of both good and bad leadership. I hoped to be able to remember the good bits! What I really didn’t want was the guys following me solely out of a sense of curiosity!

  I also decided that I would get my feet firmly under my large office table and not rush into the air without getting to know the squadron and scientific staff and watching how the well-oiled RRS machine operated. I was greatly aided in the first of these aims by the combination of East Anglian winter weather and very poor aircraft availability. December was drear and grey with lots of low cloud and freezing winds. January proved little better, especially when a good snowfall arrived and put the airfield out of action for three weeks (there was no snow clearing gear at Bedford – ‘not cost effective, old boy’ I was told).

  The other round of visits I made early in my tour was to the air traffic control and operations staff as well as the other test pilots on the airfield, over the other side in Aerodynamics Flight. One of those was George Ellis, who had been on my ETPS course and had won the Patuxent Shield as the runner-up to the top student. But the first port of call on day one was to our hangar to get to know the civilian ground crew, especially the men in charge. From them I discovered that the ‘tradition’ of the last landing was to be at 5 p.m. unless a very urgent need was satisfactorily demonstrated to ‘management’!

  As it happened there were only a few trials sorties each day and then only when the weather allowed. The average number of air
craft available each day was but a fraction of the whole fleet. This, I soon realised, was why the aircrew/airframe ratio was so much lower than it would have been on a similarly sized RAF unit; and why a squadron leader was allowed to be the commanding officer. I soon established a regime in which folk did not have to come to work or stay there if there was absolutely no prospect of them appearing on the flying programme. However, all secondary duties, of which there were a good number, had to be bang up to date and excuses for them not being so would not be tolerated.

  Some of the guys arranged extracurricular activities, including a memorable visit using the squadron minibus on snowy roads to the Carlsberg brewery in Northampton. Air Engineer John Pollock, altruistically offered to drive. Several roadside stops were made on the way back to Bedford – much to the relief of many! On some days it was possible to call an ‘Early Stack’ (service speak for a half-day) via a squadron lunch in the Officers’ Mess. On one occasion, when the Met Man had poured cold water, gales and all manner of meteorological curses on flying prospects for the whole day, I walked into the Ops Room and drew a red line through the few planned sorties.