Night navigation presented different problems, especially when the summer months laid a heavy haze across the country. Dead reckoning and the ability to interpret distances and angles to the lights of towns and mines were of paramount importance. The atmosphere at night with dimly illuminated instruments always thrilled me. Some nights were as dark as a witch’s heart, whereas full moonlight made ground visible at low level. My favourite night-flying condition was when the moon illuminated towering, flashing thunderclouds that sent brilliant lightning strikes to the ground. The dangers one would face in the event of engine failure on any night were deliberately pushed to the back of one’s mind.
General flying continued between night and navigational flights and on occasions solo students were flying every airborne aircraft. Sometimes this was a pretty dangerous situation because, at that time, we had all logged about 140 flying hours.
I cannot recall where I learned that the Royal Air Force consider there are specific danger periods in the average military pilot’s career. These are when overconfidence tends to peak—around 50, 150, 500 and 1,500 hours. We were in the second danger period and the warnings given to us by Squadron Leader Whyte, concerning crew-room bragging and challenges, were all but forgotten. It was Eric Cary who always sought to challenge.
Eric was an outstanding sportsman who revelled in any one-on-one sport such as squash, for which he was then the Rhodesian champion. He also liked to pit his skills against other pilots and it was he who challenged me to meet him at a pre-arranged site in the flying area for a ‘dog fight’ to see which of us could outmanoeuvre the other.
On arrival at the appointed area I was astounded to find all six students gathered in what can only be described as a bloody dangerous situation with everyone chasing everyone else. The greatest potential for mid-air collision probably came from Hoffy who repeatedly climbed above the rest of us then dived straight through the pitching and circling mêlée.
We had not yet started formation flying but coaxed each other into giving it a go anyway. I shudder when looking back at what we did. We had not yet learned that the lead aircraft maintains steady power and that station-holding is the responsibility of those formatting on the leader. During one illegal formation flight, I could not understand why I could not hold a steady position on Bill Galloway who was ‘leading’. Once back on terra firma, Bill said he had been adjusting power to help me stay in position. The result was that I repeatedly overtook or fell back, with wing tips passing, oh so close!
Because there was no senior course to discipline or shove us around one of our instructors, Flying Officer Rex Taylor, had been appointed as Disciplinary Officer. He was a real little Hitler from time to time, but only in working hours. One day he instructed me to have John Barnes report to his office when John returned from flying. Since I would be flying by the time John landed, I wrote a notice for him on our crew-room board. I made the mistake of writing the instructor’s first name with surname instead of rank and surname. Flying Officer Taylor saw this and all hell broke loose. I owned up to the instructor and attempted to draw his wrath on me. He would have none of it, saying we all needed bringing down a peg or two.
It was a hot day and we were ordered to form up in two rows in full flying gear with masks clipped up to our faces. Flying Officer Taylor came to each student in turn and personally pulled the parachute harnesses so tight that we were really bent forward and could not straighten our legs. Then in two files he set us off at the double.
Flying Officer Rex Taylor.
Flight Lieutenant Mac Geeringh.
The Queen Mother is seen here with AVM Jacklin, Major-General Garlake and Wing Commander Taute before presenting wings to 9 SSU.
Hard-standings for the jets were still being constructed and a vast area was covered with row upon row of decomposed granite piles waiting to be levelled and compacted. Over these endless mounds we were forced to double. Though falling and sliding on the soft heaps and totally exhausted, we were driven for what seemed a lifetime. Fortunately Flight Lieutenant Edwards arrived on the scene and called a halt to the agony. Most of us reported to SSQ for treatment to raw groins and shoulders.
It was round about this time that the senior course, 9 SSU received their wings from Queen Elizabeth, the Queen Mother, at New Sarum.
When regular formation training started, the BFS phase was drawing to a close. We were all looking forward to our final cross-county flight with night-stop and a party with the townspeople of Gatooma because, immediately it was over, we would then be off on three weeks’ Christmas leave.
A final cross-country with night-stop at one of Rhodesia’s towns was a way to celebrate the completion of BFS and it also brought the Air Force into closer contact with Rhodesian citizens. As with any town in the country, the people of Gatooma went out of their way to give us a great party and treated us to superb food and anything we wished to drink. My course was still mostly teetotal though we did justice to the huge spread of food. The instructors and supporting ground Staff were less interested in the food than joining the local drinking fraternity, for which they suffered the next day on a particularly bumpy ride home in the back of a Dakota.
I had asked Beryl to pick me up at Thornhill when I passed over on return from Gatooma. She would recognise my return by my changing engine revs up and down a couple of times over her house. However, I stupidly dived for a low-level pass over her house then climbed steeply to enter the Thornhill circuit. Considering I was behind the Air Traffic Controllers’ field of view, I was surprise that, almost immediately, Thornhill Tower broadcast “Aircraft flying low level over Riverside identify yourself." I owned up immediately but on entering the Squadron crew-room I received instruction to get dressed and report immediately to the Station Commander.
Wing Commander Wilson had seen operational service with the RAF during the war and, thereafter, became a prime mover in re-establishing the Southern Rhodesian Air Force. Many stories of this stocky, softly spoken and immensely strong man had reached our ears. One was that he preferred direct disciplinary action to conventional military processes. It was rumoured that, rather than give a man the option of court martial, he took offenders out of sight behind a hangar and laid them low with a couple of mighty blows. Because I was engaged, the CO had asked Beryl and me to baby-sit his two daughters on a few occasions while he and his wife Lorna attended official functions. Within his home it was hard to believe that this man could be anything but a gentle person. Nevertheless, I was very nervous when I reported to his secretary who wheeled me straight into the CO’s office.
I marched up to the front of Wing Commander Wilson’s desk and saluted. He sat looking me in the eye for a moment then came straight to the point by saying he’d happened to be visiting the control tower and while ascending the stairway had spotted an aircraft climbing steeply from low level. “Was that you”? he asked. I said it was. With no further ado he asked, “Do you elect to be tried by court martial or will you accept my punishment?” I accepted his punishment though I feared it more than a court martial. But I was not marched off to the back of a hangar.
Instead, Wing Commander Wilson said, very quietly, that I was to forfeit Christmas leave and be on duty as the Station Orderly Officer for twenty-four hours a day until my course mates returned from their leave twenty-one days hence. I could neither make nor receive private telephone calls and was disallowed any visitor for the whole period. This punishment was far worse than being taken behind the hangar because I had been looking forward so much to taking Beryl to Norrhodia to meet my mother and stepfather.
I was depressed and lonely when I started my rounds as Orderly Officer. However, Flight Lieutenant Mac Geeringh the Senior Air Traffic Control Officer, who had been something of a father to my course, came to see me on the first night. He let me know that he had been to see Beryl and had told her of a back entrance into Thornhill which, if used after midnight, would allow her to visit me undetected. He considered forfeiture of leave and being Order
ly Officer without break was sufficient punishment. He felt being denied visitors as well was too harsh because, in effect, Beryl was being punished too. Mac had persuaded Beryl to visit me daily and said he would accept responsibility if the CO found out.
Beryl’s nightly visits were wonderful and she always arrived with hot coffee and sandwiches. Her parents could not understand why Beryl was going to bed very early and why her Dad’s car, a Vauxhall Cresta, appeared to be parked in a slightly different position each morning. Nevertheless, Beryl and I got away with the secret visits, or so we thought.
When, in 1967, Air Vice-Marshal Archie Wilson interviewed me upon my promotion to Squadron Leader, he let me know just how much he knew of my many misdemeanours over the years. The first of these was Beryl’s nightly visits to me. With a twinkle in his eye he said he would have been disappointed, for Beryl’s sake, had I not disobeyed his ‘no visitor’ ruling.
When the guys came back from leave, it was good to be off permanent duty and return to flying, even though we had to continue on Provosts for another two months because the Vampires were away on their first detachment to RAF Aden.
Whereas most of the pilots, technicians and aircraft of No 1 Squadron were involved, Group HQ had decided to withhold moving the balance of the squadron to Thornhill until one week before the detachment was due back from Aden.
Far from being disappointed by the delayed jet conversion, my course saw possibilities opening up for involvement in future overseas deployments. I was given Flying Officer Alan Bradnick as my instructor for the period, which I found refreshing. He smiled easily and spoke a lot in flight.
Apart from consolidating on general flying standards, it was a pleasure flying with little if any pressure. However, an unfortunate flying accident marred an otherwise easy-going period. It involved a mid-air collision.
Four aircraft were practising formation with emphasis given to slick formation changes. At the time of the incident Bill Galloway was flying lead with his instructor, Flying Officer Mike Saunders. Gordon Wright was with Flying Officer Alan Bradnick as No 4.
The formation was in echelon starboard in which Bill would have been nearest camera and Gordon farthest away.
Lead called “Box, Box go”, whereupon No 3 and No 4 initiated a drop in height and moved left to their new positions. In this, No 3 moved to echelon port (nearest camera) and No 4 moved to line astern behind and below the lead aircraft. Flying conditions were typically bumpy and Gordon had moved too far forward. Unfortunately his aircraft rose as the lead aircraft dropped and his propeller chopped off the lead’s elevators.
No 4 fell back out of harm’s way but the lead Provost pitched nose down and, with no elevator to control pitch, settled into a moderately steep dive from which there was no hope of recovery. Flying Officer Mike Saunders jettisoned the canopy and ordered Bill Galloway to bail out immediately but he stayed with the aircraft to steer it away from a built-up area in order to crash in open veld. Only when very low did Mike abandon the aircraft. His parachute opened in the nick of time and he suffered a very heavy landing with the fireball from the stricken aircraft very close by.
Advanced Flying School
THE ARRIVAL OF VAMPIRES FROM Aden is indelibly embedded in my memory. The fellows who had remained in Salisbury while most of 1 Squadron were away in Aden were now at Thornhill with all the ground equipment and one Vampire T11. Everyone at Thornhill, including the wives of the squadron guys, assembled on the flight lines to welcome the boys back.
The first formation of four in echelon starboard came in low and fast to make a formation break. Lead banked sharply pulling up and away from the group. Nos 2, 3 and 4 followed suit at two-second intervals. This manoeuvre placed the aircraft on the downwind leg, equally spaced for a stream landing off a continuous descending turn to the runway.
No war film ever impressed me as much as those screeching jets taxiing to their parking positions. All aircraft closed engines as one with the pilots climbing down from their machines. They had just completed the last legs from Dar es Salaam via Chileka in Nyasaland, so large patches of sweat substantially marked their flying suits and Mae West survival vests. Removal of bone domes, incorporating inner headgear with oxygen mask and headphones, revealed untidy, wet and flattened hair. Their glistening faces, deeply marked by the pressure lines of masks and huge grins made the pilots look really macho. A further three formations arrived and soon the place was full of jet aircraft and happy people.
We had been practising our cockpit drills on the side-by-side Vampire T11 trainer for some time. So we were well and truly ready when allocated to our instructors the very next day. Mine was Flight Lieutenant John Mussell whom I had not seen before his arrival from Aden.
Learning to fly a jet was totally different to what I expected. Flight Lieutenant Mussell was easygoing and talkative, the nose wheel design made taxiing so much easier than the propeller-driven ‘tail-dragger’ Provost, the engine sounded quiet inside the closed cockpit and take-off was a dream—though controls were noticeably heavy.
This first flight in a jet was on a cloudy day with intermittent bursts of sunlight. I was amazed by the speed once airborne, with stratus clouds zipping fast overhead. Once through, the fluffy white structures fell away rapidly as the Vampire made its seemingly effortless climb. Flight seemed so quiet and smooth with only a gentle background hissing from the high-speed airflow and a muffled rumbling from the Goblin jet engine embedded in the airframe behind us.
On this first sortie I not only experienced stalling, spinning and steep turning but was given an introduction to jet aerobatics. All seemed easier than flying a Provost, though two situations were trying. Firstly, steep turning and aerobatics brought about much higher ‘G’ loadings than I had known before. The Provost’s 4.5 Gs was now replaced by up to 6 Gs so I found turning my head very difficult and raising an arm required considerable effort.
A pair of Vampires.
The second difficulty concerned jet engine handling, which did not compare with a Provost’s instant response to throttle movement. The Vampire’s Goblin engine had to be handled very gently in the low rpm regions because rapid application of throttle would flood the engine and cause it to flame out. Once engine speed reached 9,000 rpm, the throttle could be advanced quite rapidly.
Back in the Thornhill circuit things changed a great deal. I simply could not get through all the pre-landing checks on the downwind leg before it was time to commence the continuous descending turn onto the runway. Going around again also required speeds of action that had me sweating. Within a few sorties I was coping well and could not understand why I had been so hard pressed in the first place. My whole course agreed that flying the Vampire T11 was not only great fun it was much easier to handle than the propeller-driven, ‘tail-dragger’ Provost.
Flying at high altitude was not only wonderful in itself; it induced a sense of awe from the sheer vastness of the air mass and the beauty surrounding me. By day the colour of the sky varied from the stark dark blue above to the light smoky blue of the far-off horizon. The sheer whiteness and gentle contours of clouds contrasted greatly with the blue above and the motley browns and greens of hills, trees, fields, rivers, dams and open veld far below.
On dark nights it seemed as if the stars had multiplied both in number and brightness and they appeared so close that one felt it possible to reach out and touch them. Although aerobatics were disallowed at night, I enjoyed diving for speed then pitching up to about sixty degrees before rolling the aircraft inverted. Once upside down, I allowed the aircraft to pitch gently at zero G as I gazed at the stars imagining myself to be flying in space with the stars spread out below me. The majesty of this was greatly enhanced by the wonderful sensations that accompany weightlessness.
My greatest joy came on those rare occasions flying in full moonlight between towering cumulonimbus clouds whose huge structures were illuminated in dazzling lightning displays of immeasurable beauty. In such surroundings one feels very small,
but cosy and safe within the compact cockpit, while sensing God’s immeasurable power all around.
The Royal Rhodesian Air Force possessed more Vampire FB9 single-seater aircraft than Vampire T11s. ‘FB’ denotes fighter-bomber and ‘T’ trainer. Whereas a Vampire T11 was fitted with two Martin Baker ejector seats, each incorporating parachute and emergency pack, the FB9 lacked this comforting luxury. Its single seat, just like the Provost, was known as a bucket seat.
Vampire FB9.
A pilot had to strap on his parachute before climbing into the FB9 cockpit and, on entry, the parachute upon which the pilot sat fitted into the ‘bucket’ of the seat. When flying long-range sorties, particularly over water, a survival pack was included between the pilot’s buttocks and his parachute. The only similarity between this arrangement and the permanent survival pack, upon which a pilot sat in an ejector seat, was the immense discomfort of sitting on a hard, lumpy pack. Any flight of more than an hour usually ended with a pilot emerging from his cockpit rubbing a sore, numb bum.
Because of the Vampire’s twin-boomed tail arrangement, with the tail plane set between the booms, a major collision hazard existed for any pilot having to abandon his aircraft in flight. The Vampire FB9 had such a bad reputation for RAF pilots being killed when abandoning stricken aircraft that the fitment of ejector seats had been considered. However, cost for modification was so high that the RAF withdrew Vampire FB9s from service and replaced them with up-rated single-seater Venom fighter-bombers fitted with ejector seats. (These were the aircraft I had seen over Umtali that excited me so much, causing me to join the Air Force.) Due to a lack of Federal defence funds, our Air Force took on refurbished FB9s from Britain at very low cost, fully accepting the risks involved in operating them.
Winds of Destruction Page 6
