With blood being driven into his eyes by the airflow, Randy could not see a thing. Fortunately he did not lose consciousness, his mask and earphones continued to function and he could still move throttle and control column. Peter McLurg had seen the collision right next to him but instantly lost Colin’s aircraft when it pitched out of sight. Like Mike Reynolds, Peter moved away slightly but he kept his eye on Randy whose aircraft was climbing.
Peter knew that Colin had ploughed in and, closing his mind to this horror, switched his full attention to Randy who reported that he was blind. Peter moved in and became Randy’s eyes by calling his climb angle and telling him which way to roll to keep wings level. Holding formation on Randy, Peter asked him to start throttling back and continued informing Randy of his flight attitude, speed and engine rpm.
Randy du Rand.
Peter McLurg.
Randy considered bailing out but Peter McLurg insisted he was safer where he was and assured Randy he would guide him in for a safe landing. After discussion, Randy agreed that a wheels-up landing on the large open expanses of cut grass was safer than attempting to bail out or risking a blind landing on the relatively narrow tarmac runway. By this time Randy, now flying at reduced speed, could see just enough to hold formation on Peter.
All attention was on the two dots descending towards the airfield. Anyone not knowing of the drama in the air would not have guessed that the pilot of one aircraft could hardly see. Everything looked normal except for the fact that the aircraft were not aligned with the main runway. On short finals Randy’s descent suddenly increased towards high-tension power-lines running between the railway and the airfield boundary fence. He responded to Peter’s urgent “Pull up—check—hold it—descend—close throttle—start rounding out—a bit more—touch down now!”
Peter McLurg was overshooting as Randy’s aircraft bellied onto the grass. High friction pitched the aircraft nose down, lifting the tail so high it remained visible above flying debris and a great cloud of red dust. Having travelled about 200 metres, the aircraft went into a slow turn and was lost to view in dust before it came to rest facing back along the line of torn-up grass. A Staff car seen tearing across the grass paddock from the Tower disappeared into the dust cloud. When it cleared we could see Randy being helped out of his wrecked cockpit by the one and only Mac Geeringh; ever ready to help anyone in trouble.
An inspection of the crash site suggested that Colin had deliberately rolled his stricken aircraft to avoid crashing into a particular house. The engine had buried itself into the ground but three of the 20mm cannons broke loose and somersaulted ahead of airframe wreckage. In another house, a Rhodesian Railways man was fast asleep in his bed, having come off night duty. He was awakened by the loud noise of one cannon smashing through his window and driving sideways through a large wardrobe. It had passed just a couple of inches above his body. Two other cannons passed either side of the man’s two small children who were playing in the driveway. These came to rest at the back of his garage, one each side of his unscathed car. These were lucky people but Colin was not the only casualty that day. An old man seeking to give assistance died of a heart attack before reaching the crash site.
Prior to the accident, a routine medical examination showed that one of Randy’s eyes had become weaker than the other, but not to the extent that he could not pass the compulsory six-monthly flying fitness test. When he had fully recovered from the accident, it was established that the bang he had received on his head might have been the reason his faulty eye had returned to normal.
Air shows
FOLLOWING THE DEATH OF COLIN we received a new squadron commander. Squadron Leader Sandy Mutch’s posting to No 1 Squadron brought our OC’s rank into line with the other squadrons. He took over leadership of Colin’s formation aerobatic team and had it ready in time for the ‘Elizabethville Show’.
After this there were air shows in Broken Hill and Lusaka in Northern Rhodesia and a number of others in Southern Rhodesia. Each involved flying displays by all squadrons. My involvement with other junior officers was manning static displays of aircraft and equipment. It happened to be a very pleasant task because spectators showed so much interested in the aircraft. When the flying started I could watch every display from start to finish because all spectators were doing the same. There were two particular displays that stick in my mind. They were given by Canberra and Vampire FB9 solo routines, both at Broken Hill.
Squadron Leader Charles Paxton flew the Canberra. Like most bombers, this aircraft was not stressed for aerobatics even though, without the encumbrance of bombs and long-range fuel tanks, it could perform lovely-looking loops and barrel rolls.
Charles opened his display with a high-speed pass followed by loops and barrel rolls. Next came tight turns at very slow speed so that spectators could see bomb doors opening for a close look into the bomb bay. In the next turn undercarriage was lowered to show the sequencing of wheel doors and gear, again at close range. Two more turns were made with bomb doors closing and wheels retracting before full power was applied in the last turn which developed into a thunderous sounding steep climb-out followed by a powerless and silent descending turn back towards the crowd.
Still holding crowd attention, Charles whispered past the crowd flying slowly with full flap and wheels down. At this point John Mussell opened his display with an ultra low-level, high-speed pass under the Canberra, flying in the opposite direction then pulled up into the loop that opened his sequence. John Mussell had flown the FB9 solo aerobatic display for some time before Bob Woodward arrived from the RAF with his own polished version of low-level aerobatics flown in a T11.
Charles Paxton (right) seen here with his navigator, John Digby (centre) and ‘Numpie’ Phillips, Station Adjutant.
Bob, who had been the top solo aerobatist in RAF Central Flying School in the mid 1950s, flew a close-in compact display at relatively slow speed that only pilots could appreciate because of the flying skills involved. John Mussell on the other hand flew to please the public. Flat out at full power he provided the noise and speed expected by all civilian spectators.
John’s run under the Canberra was so low that many people standing two or more rows back heard but did not see the FB9 flash by. The crowd loved the noisy surprise, which resulted, according to the newspapers, in two of Broken Hill’s pregnant ladies being carted off to the maternity home ahead of schedule.
Because he was so fast, John’s first loop took him almost out of sight before he came down in a forty-five degrees inverted dive. Leaving his roll-out very late, he entered a second loop with plenty of crowd-pleasing speed and noise. He continued on with his sequence for about five minutes, throwing in every aerobatic manoeuvre before making a slow roll along the viewing line at very, very, low level as only John could do. He then pulled up sharply into a vertical climb intending to execute a left-hand stall turn, again high up.
John Mussell.
I do not recall what went wrong. The aircraft was pivoting around its left wing when suddenly it started a rotation. This tightened as the aircraft descended. When John had done more than six turns in an ever-tightening spin, it seemed he would not recover from the dreaded condition for which the FB9 had such a bad reputation. It was obvious that John would have trouble bailing out and I had a picture in my mind of what he was experiencing up there as the crowd clapped and cheered this ‘spectacular manoeuvre’. When it looked as if there was no hope, the aircraft snapped out of the spin and John stole the show by continuing his noisy display as if nothing untoward had happened. The crowd certainly did not realise how close they had come to witnessing a disaster!
On return to Thornhill there was a fuss over the Canberra that Charles Paxton had been flying. Many of the rivets in the fin and rear fuselage had popped, indicating that the aircraft had exceeded its structural limitations. Though the damage was easily repaired, Canberra pilots were immediately banned from making any aerobatic manoeuvre.
Standing: Officers of No
1 Squadron at the time Sandy Mutch assumed command. From left to right: Eric Cary, Keith Corrans, Mike Reynolds, Ted Stevenson, Eddie Wilkinson, Peter McLurg, Bob Woodward, Sandy Mutch, Norman Walsh, Randy du Rand, Justin Varkivisser, Basil Green, Dave Thorne, Bill Galloway and PB. Kneeling is Warrant Officer Jimmy Stewart whose incredibly small team of dedicated technicians maintained an ongoing 90% daily line availability of sixteen Vampires; the equivalent of one and a half aircraft per man. The man sitting second to the right of Jimmy, on secondment from the RAF, was used to at least three men per aircraft.
Flypasts
NO 1 SQUADRON WAS OFTEN INVOLVED in formation flypasts for a variety of special occasions. In the latter half of my first year on the squadron I was included in formation flypasts over parades held for the Queen’s Birthday, the Governor-General of the Federation inspection of forces and the Battle of Britain Commemoration Parade. Little preparation was required for formating pilots but the formation leaders had to practise for the split-second accuracy needed to pass over a parade bang on time. This was much more difficult to achieve than was apparent to observers on the ground.
The first requirement was to know the exact order of parade, the height and ‘time zero’ for The first formation to be overhead. Also needed were timings and heights for those following. Time Zero inevitably coincided with the last note of the Royal Anthem. The parade would remain at the ‘Present’ until the last formation noise had abated sufficiently for the parade commander’s voice to carry to all units on parade.
An Air Force officer on the ground (air co-ordinator) had to time parade rehearsal so that he would be in a position to give the formation leaders a running commentary on what was happening on the parade ground with a countdown to ‘Zero’.
Formation leaders would usually fly a reverse pattern from the parade ground to their intended holding point to establish precisely how many minutes and seconds it took to fly the route. Having established this, they would then fly their intended path a few times to prove their timings for the actual parade when they would be leading whole formations.
Out of sight and hearing of the parade each formation flew a racetrack pattern in its assigned waiting area, well separated by height and distance for safety’s sake. Each leader knew how long it would take from any position in his racetrack pattern to get to the parade ground on time and on correct heading. But seldom did the timings of the practice match those of the official parade. This made a formation leader’s job a very tricky business.
The problems in getting timings right were almost always due to unexpected actions by the reviewing Officer. This is the sort of information from the Air Force co-ordinator that formation leaders dreaded, but had to be prepared for:
Formation of six Vampires.
“No sight of the Reviewing Officer’s car yet—already running five seconds late—Oh! Here he comes—he is driving slower than expected—pulling up behind dais now—56 seconds—Governor General climbing out of the car—51 seconds—Oh boy, he has turned to the crowd and not the dais—moving to greet someone on the front seats—still talking—looks like he might move now—yes—51 seconds—climbing steps now—taking position—35 seconds—presenting arms—Royal salute—28 seconds.”
The leaders of slow aircraft faced the greatest difficulties when this type of thing happened because, to make the distance, they would have been running in, even before the reviewing Officer’s car came into view. Having reduced speed to meet the first five-second delay they then faced the unexpected problem of the reviewing officer turning to greet someone giving no option but to go into a 180-degree turn. But how tight? How long before the reviewing officer moves to the dais? Problems such as these were greater for a leader of cumbersome Dakota formations than for leaders of smaller nimble aircraft such as the Provosts. For the helicopters that came later this was a piece of cake.
When helicopters led flypasts Provosts, Dakotas, Vampires, Canberras and Hunters followed them in that order. I recall the reviewing officer of one parade in Bulawayo making so many changes to his briefed routine that the helicopters, Provosts and Dakotas passed over the parade at the same time; one formation stepped closely above the other. Happily the spectators thought this was intentional and were suitably impressed. Just a few seconds further delay would have had the aircraft passing in reverse order before the Royal Anthem had been played out.
Formation leaders were generally cool characters who always considered pilots’ difficulties formating on them. Sandy Mutch, being a highly excitable character, was not one of these and being led by him was usually bloody dangerous. For example, we were doing a six-machine Vampire flypast for a parade in Luanshya in Northern Rhodesia when Sandy became uncertain of his position. At a very late stage he suddenly saw the parade area at ninety degrees to his left and without any warning banked sharply. I was the second aircraft on the port side where I had to roll rapidly and pull away to avoid collision with the inside aircraft, whose pilot had been forced to do the same. My breakaway put me well outside the formation forcing me to close rapidly, so rapidly in fact that I was banking steeply to check closing speed as the formation passed over the parade. In this case the observers could not possibly have been impressed.
In four years’ time we would see twelve-ship Hunter formations such as this.
It must be said however that the standard of leadership and of formation flying in general improved noticeably as the Air Force increased in size and experience.
Aden detachment
IN LATE SEPTEMBER 1959 WE learned that No 8 Squadron of the RAF was to be temporarily detached from Aden to Cyprus and that No 1 Squadron was to fill in for the month of November.
Preparatory to going on the squadron’s third trip to Aden, I passed my Green Card Instrument Rating test and gained a First Line Servicing Certificate. The squadron’s entire weapons allocations for the balance of the financial year was made available for intensified weapons training and emphasis was given to formating in cloud.
Two days before our departure, a Canadair set off from New Sarum to drop technical staging parties and Air Traffic Controllers at three Airfields along our route, and to take the detachment technicians to Aden. On its return, the Canadair recovered the staging parties.
Our route to Aden was via Chileka, Dar es Salaam and Mogadishu. The legs, Chileka to Dar es Salaam and on to Mogadishu, were flown in almost continuous cloud, which I found very hard going because, whilst in cloud, I suffered continuously from ‘the leans’. Flying No 4 in a tight-finger four-starboard position I felt as if we were in a continuous steep left-hand turn orbiting over one spot. When cloud density allowed me to see the lead aircraft it was not so bad, but on many occasions the cloud was so dense that I could see no more than the red wing-tip of Mike Reynold’s aircraft, on which I was formating. Coming out of cloud and being able to see all the aircraft was a great relief.
At Dar es Salaam my whole canopy and front windscreen misted up on short finals, forcing me to roll back the canopy on touch down so that I could see the edge of the runway to hold line up. As soon as the aircraft was rolling slow enough I undid my straps and stood on the rudder pedals looking over the top of the windscreen to taxi into dispersals in blistering hot conditions.
Our pre-positioned ground crews, shirtless, bathed in sweat and smiling as always, brought superbly cold bottles of Coca-Cola to each pilot. Refuelling and aircraft turn-round for my formation was very slick and had been completed just before the next formation of four taxiied in.
We stayed overnight in Dar es Salaam but once in the air-conditioned hotel few of our number ventured out into the oppressive heat. Following an early breakfast, we were ready to return to the airport. Early though it was, the air was muggy and we were all sweating in our flying overalls even before climbing aboard a steamy airless bus.
One was supposed to be airborne with gear raised before turning on the Vampire’s Godfrey air-conditioning unit. However, it was so hot that I am sure I was not the only pilot who
rolled the air-conditioner control wheel to maximum cold as soon as we were at full power on the take-off run. The inrush of cold air provided instant relief and allowed me to enjoy the sight of endless palm trees stretching across the vast land that sank away from the climbing formation. Zanzibar Island was in full sunshine as we passed it, still in the climb. Brilliant colours varying from deep blue water to light turquoise over shallow coral reefs contrasted strongly with Persil-white beaches of mainland and island. It looked just as spectacular as the glossy travel magazines showed it. But the view was short-lived.
Back in cloud all the way to Mogadishu, I again suffered the sensation of that damned continuous left turn. About ten minutes out of Mogadishu we picked up the unmistakable and most comforting voice of Flight Lieutenant Peter Cooke. He had pre-positioned at Mogadishu Airport, which ran parallel and close to the beach, with his portable device that gave him the directions he would give us to steer to reach the airfield. Peter told us that the cloud base was down to 500 feet over the airfield that was covered by thin sea mist, but he thought that the cloud base was somewhat higher and visibility better out at sea. Having heard this, Bob Woodward changed heading with the intention of breaking cloud over water east of Mogadishu.
At around 1,500 feet above sea level the descent rate and flying speed had been reduced when we passed through particularly dense cloud and encountered a patch of severe turbulence. Mike Reynolds, upon whom I was formating, lost visual contact with the leader’s wing-tip and immediately pulled up and out of my sight. I broke starboard and reverted to instruments.
Winds of Destruction Page 11
