The Lonely Sea and the Sky

by Sir Francis Chichester

  When I went round to the hospital first thing in the morning, I was utterly miserable: if the injury itself had not killed Frank, then the shock would probably do so. Not only was he an old man, but both blades of the propeller had been broken off in hitting him. But as I walked up to his bed, and before I could begin to say anything, he said, 'Where's that propeller? Make sure you keep it – I want it for a souvenir.' What a man!

  Frank did not get well quickly. The heat was the obstacle – when it was 95 °F they told us that it was cool for Baghdad! The RAF station at Ramadi found us a metal propeller. It was not quite right for the Gipsy Major engine, but we managed to fit it.

  I flew Frank to Cairo, with one stop at Rutbah Wells, and a halt in the desert for lunch during the six and a quarter hour flight from Rutbah.

  In Cairo, Frank went into hospital, but he still could not get his arm healed. Again, he could not stand up to the great heat. We finally decided to make a fast passage home in the Puss Moth, and this we did, landing en route at Es Sollum, Benghazi, Tripoli, Tunis, Bastia, Lyons, Joigny and St. Inglevert. It took us twenty-nine and a half hours flying from Cairo to Brooklands.

  I am glad to say that Frank recovered completely and returned to his station homestead at Tautane with his propeller. I believe that his life had been saved by the fact that he always carried a silver cigarette case in his outside breast pocket. I think that the first blade, cutting down, had struck this cigarette case a glancing blow, and halted Frank, otherwise the next stroke would have cut down on his shoulder instead of hitting his forearm.

  CHAPTER 23

  SHEILA AND THE WAR

  It was autumn when we arrived, and I went down to Devon to visit my family. My father had retired, and was living in South Devon. Then I went to see my cousins in North Devon, and had a happy time at Instow and Westward Ho. I was much intrigued by the talk about the impending visit of a girl called Sheila Craven. She was due to visit North Devon after a dance in Wiltshire, and instead of motoring down, she put her car on a train, an unusual move which interested me. I asked her why she had done this, and she said that she thought she would be tired after the dance, but wanted to arrive as fresh as possible so as to enjoy her Devonshire visit.

  She liked comfort, and appeared rather languid. I felt that she should have a black boy following her with cushions, a rug and a parasol over her head. Time seemed to have little importance for her. But she was always interesting to listen to, and often had original views. I was surprised when I discovered that this languid personality had just returned from a voyage alone to India and Abyssinia. I could better understand that having embarked on this voyage she should have become a guest of the Viceroy in India, and of the British Minister in Addis Ababa. She said that she had always wanted to go exploring. I thought that this was just an airy bit of verbal thistledown; if it had been revealed to me then that she would one day sail across the Atlantic with me, just the two of us, and a second time sail across it with our son as crew, just the three of us, I would have laughed at the joke. Anyway, the upshot was that I fell in love with her, we married, and went out to New Zealand by steamer. Sheila says that I boarded her London train at the next station and said, 'I have £100 in money, £14,000 overdraft and some trees, will you marry me?'

  That New Zealand visit in 1937 was not a success. I could only afford a suburban villa, and there were various little things Sheila could not reconcile herself to, such as having to fetch the milk at the gate down the road because the milkman would not bring it up to the house; having to manage with little help in the house; and being unable to dine later than 6.30 in the best hotel in New Zealand. I tried to convince her that New Zealand led the world in social revolution, and had pioneered things like women's voting and baby care, also a National Health Service and State Insurance. I tried to explain that what was happening in New Zealand then would take place in England in twenty years; I said that if I was running a country like Britain or America I would place an astute observer in New Zealand, because world trends and development were apparent there whereas they would be disguised by prejudice and proximity in the principle countries concerned with them. It was no good. Sheila detested the life we had to lead in New Zealand. Apart from that, I found myself in a difficult position; there was not enough income from our business to justify my staying there without another job. Considering that war with Germany was looming in Europe, and that I would be taking part in it, we decided to move back to England. I made an arrangement with Geoffrey to look after our business, and we returned to England in the Christian Huyghens, via the Dutch East Indies. On board the Christian Huyghens was Field-Marshal Von Blomberg, who had been until recently the Minister of War in Germany. He became friendly to me, and we spent many hours talking: I have a snapshot which shows him bringing his fist down on the table between us to illustrate some point he was making. During the voyage he outlined to me the future history of Europe for the next ten years, and I do not think that he made a mistake. The chief point that impressed itself on me was that if we did not make friends with Germany, the German scientists and inventors would be absorbed by Russia, which would make Russia an overwhelming world power. One interesting thing he told me was that in the First World War, the British invented tanks and tried out three in the front line. These got stuck in the mud, and were captured by the Germans. He, Blomberg, was one of three German generals who had to decide whether to make these tanks themselves. He said that Germany had not enough steel to make all the shells they needed, as well as tanks, and it was his vote which was responsible for the tanks not being made at the time. Maybe he made a mistake there.

  When I reached England, I applied to join the RAF as a fighter pilot. I thought that my flying experience, combined with my capability at shooting, would be just what they wanted. I was surprised and chagrined to be told that I was too old. I was thirty-seven, and the idea of being too old for anything had just not occurred to me. So I set about job-hunting. I felt that life was too precious to be used up for the sole aim of making money, and I wanted something creative or congenial, something, if possible, to do with instruments, or navigation. I tried to form a company for making instruments with Paul Goudime, Henry de Laszlo and Douglas Johnson, but we could not raise the necessary capital. Later, Paul started Electronic Instruments on his own, which he recently sold to Cambridge Instruments for three quarters of a million pounds. I went on looking for a job, but could find no opening. There were not many jobs available in England then, and I think I did not fit into the English pattern. It was six months before Arthur J. Hughes made a post for me in Henry Hughes and Son, as a navigation specialist. One of my jobs was to help with the development of the bubble sextant. This involved many hours in the air taking sights, and on the ground checking instruments. One day I was taking off on a flight in Canopus with Don Bennett, the Australian pilot of Imperial Airways whom I regarded as one of the world's finest navigators. We were walking down to the hard at Hythe on Southampton Water to board Canopus for a long experimental flight. There was a fuelling launch alongside the flying-boat, and as I looked I saw a flame run along the hose-pipe to the flying-boat's hull. A tongue of flame licked the air from the nose of the flying-boat, and in a few seconds she was burning fiercely. That was the end of that flight.

  I found it strange to be an employee of an English firm after having been a boss of my own business since I was twenty-one. My salary was £8 13s a week, which did not pay the rent of our flat in Chelsea. I found it a strain to defer to the opinions of my seniors, and not to be emphatic about my own. The jockeying for power and precedence in the big English firms was a surprise to me. Men were apt to be jealous if their colleagues were successful, and resentful if a junior showed more ability, skill, or enterprise than themselves. I had expected to find more teamwork, everybody trying to hurry work on, and to improve methods. I found my life restricted, and pondered how I could break through into a bigger life. There seemed to be no possibility of doing this. I was also restricted
physically. In New Zealand I was used to open-air sport being easily available; in England, the countryside seemed crowded, even the roads seemed narrow and tortuous. I became so desperate for some outdoor activity that during one weekend spent with friends on their half an acre of land, I stood all morning in a deserted tennis-court among some trees waiting hopefully for a pigeon to fly over and give me a shot which I never got.

  I started writing on navigation. Flight published a set of articles describing a system of navigation I evolved for bombing pinpoint targets by star navigation. I used to get up at 5 a.m. and write hard until I had to leave the house to get to my office at 9 a.m. I wrote four small volumes on astro-navigation. These were instructions on how to navigate by the sun and stars. I tried again to get into the Air Force, but was turned down once more.

  War came in 1939. Sheila and I were motoring across country, and when all the sirens wailed we decamped from our car and crouched in a ditch while three puny biplanes of our own Air Force came in to land at Hendon.

  With another man in the Royal Aero Club, I tried to form a squadron of experienced pilots who were considered unacceptable to the Air Force because of lacking a leg, or for some similar reason. The object of this squadron would be to bomb valuable pinpoint targets in enemy country, flying in alone by precise navigation. The idea was turned down. I believe that this would have shown the value of a pathfinder force, and brought it forward by a year or two. I was disgusted at the turning down of my third attempt to do something with the RAF, and said, 'If they want me after this they can damn well come and get me.'

  Factories had been asked to work long hours, seven days a week, and at the Hughes factory at Barkingside production was gradually slowing down in consequence of this silly and hysterical demand. On a hot sunny Saturday afternoon that autumn, I went out into some neighbouring fields with my gun after a pheasant. There was a big German bombing raid, and our fighter pilots were attacking overhead. Cartridge cases and bullets were falling near me, and I sat in a ditch watching the battle overhead. Several pilots who had baled out were on their way down, their parachutes gleaming white in the sunshine. This was the first time I had seen a successful parachute jump. I had seen three jumps made in New Zealand and America, and in each case the parachutist had been killed. In New Zealand the man had gone into the sea with his parachute unopened, and a single column of water had shot up which looked 100-foot high.

  I wrote a book called The Spotter's Handbook, which, although it contained a good deal of nonsense, was a bestseller. And it may have helped to cut down the time wasted through stopping work unnecessarily when enemy bombers were on their way. I think that the book did something to give people confidence to go on working until it was really necessary to take cover. I need hardly say that I was an active member of the Home Guard squad of our factory.

  I used to visit Philip Unwin to discuss the publication of the books I was producing, and it was a stock joke whenever an air-raid warning sounded while we were at lunch. 'Good for business!' we would laugh. I followed The Spotter's Handbook with another one, Night and Fire Spotting, which also contained a lot of baloney. I remember being at the bottom end of Bond Street at 11 o'clock one morning, and hearing the clop, clop, clop of a milk van horse, up at the far end of the street. It was in the dead silence preceding an air raid. This was at the beginning of the war and I wondered if, in a few years time, there would be grass growing the length of Bond Street.

  My books, I think, got me into the RAF. Air Vice-Marshal Cochrane, director of navigation training at the Air Ministry, sent for me to write navigation notes for instructors and students. I was commissioned as a Flying Officer, and told to report to the Deputy Director who would be my chief.

  I had once heard a wonderful story about an Air Force navigator, and had used it as the plot for a short story – the only work of fiction I have ever published – writing fiction has always seemed to me paltry compared with real life. This story was called Curly the Navigator, and described how the navigator had told the captain of the flying-boat that he was on the wrong course, which must result in the flying-boat's being lost at sea. An argument resulted in the navigator's knocking out his superior officer, and bringing the seaplane safely back to base. When I reported for duty at the Air Ministry, I found that my boss was Group Captain Kelly Barnes, a big red-faced character who looked and acted exactly like the traditional John Bull. He had been the flying-boat navigator whose story I had dished up. I was decidedly uneasy as to what sort of reception I should get. He called me into his office and, as I did my best to stand smartly at attention, he said, 'You know, you got the end of that story wrong; what actually happened was that I was court martialled in the morning, and called up before the Air Council in the afternoon to be awarded the MBE.' Kelly Barnes never liked me, and my two years in the Air Ministry was a frustrated, unhappy period. Kelly B. had been a navigator all his career; he was not only brilliant with the theory of it – he had revised the Advanced Navigation Manual – but he had sound, advanced views on navigation practice. For example, he devised a simple grouping of the stars which would make them much easier to recognise than those connected with mythology. I felt he resented my being brought in, an amateur, civilian navigator.

  About the time I was brought into the Air Force, I produced a game, 'Pinpoint the Bomber', for teaching navigation. This was published by Allen and Unwin, and considering the limited market which any navigational work must have, it was a great success. I also brought out a sun compass which enabled you to tell the direction by the sun if you knew the time, or to tell the time if you knew the direction of the sun. This, in turn, was followed by a star compass made of cardboard and transparent plastic which sold for 5s, and a 2s 6d Planisphere of Navigation Stars. Another publication of mine was a big star chart designed for teaching star identification.

  At the Air Ministry I worked for some time in the same room as Dicky Richardson, then a Wing-Commander who was rewriting the Standard Manual of Air Navigation, A.P. 1234. He made a fine job of it. Dicky was one of those sterling, stalwart citizens who make a country great if there are enough of them. He left the Air Ministry to become Chief Navigation Officer of Coastal Command, where he introduced a navigation drill which helped raise the standard of navigation and with it the standard of safety. Dicky's navigation drill was almost precisely the same as the system I had worked out for navigating to Lord Howe Island and Norfolk Island.

  Convoy escorts, and anti-submarine patrols were out for long flights with continuous manoeuvring, such as square searches to be plotted. I took part in one sortie, in a Liberator which was eleven hours and forty minutes out. We proceeded to 25° W. in the Atlantic, and after an oblong search for ships' boats, picked up a convoy on the return. Another day I joined a Fortress, for an eight hour thirty-five minutes flight into the Atlantic. I got into hot water with the captain of the aircraft for firing a burst from a .5 machine gun I was interested in, just as a corvette was passing below.

  By the middle of 1943 I reckoned that I had written 500,000 words on navigation, and was becoming difficult to live or work with. I was offered a post at the Empire Central Flying School, with no official status and the rank of Flying Officer, the lowest commissioned rank except Pilot Officer. I accepted what looked like an interesting job. I was not allowed to do the sort of job I wanted, such as Navigating Officer at an operational station, because of my bad eyesight; and for the same reason I was not permitted to hold a General Duties post. I could only have an administrative job. I was not officially allowed to fly, not officially allowed to navigate, and I was not permitted to wear pilot's or navigator's wings on my tunic. One of the results of this was that whenever I visited an operational mess, unless I knew one of the members of the mess personally, I would soon be quietly edged out of any group of operational pilots talking at the bar. For my job at the Air Ministry I had been upgraded to the rank of Flight Lieutenant, but that was as high as I could rise.

  I arrived at Hullavington
where the Empire Central Flying School was stationed feeling like a new boy at a public school. The standard procedure for anyone coming into the Air Force was to do an Officers' Training Course. I had been moved straight into a uniform and into an office, and I knew little about the drill, customs and procedure. Hullavington was a big station – we had thirty-seven different types of aircraft there alone – and taking the parade as Duty Officer when the ensign was lowered at 6 o'clock was a formidable ordeal when my turn came. The last squad I had drilled was at my preparatory school in 1914. Naturally, I watched what the preceding Duty Officer did, but it was a very different thing to shout all the same commands in a parade ground voice to troops who were experts. It was a great relief to me when I found that I could get through it all right.