Winds of Destruction

by Peter John Hornby Petter-Bowyer

  A couple of hours with Tony showed me that he had the potential but lacked concentration and was trying to ‘fly by numbers’ (meaning he was not yet using natural senses and every muscle in his body was as tight as an over-wound spring). Tony’s problem with flying reminded me of my father-in-law’s problem with dancing. Whether waltz, quick-step or tango he always moved his feet to his loudly whispered “one two three—one two three—one…”

  I gave Tony a very hard time even though it was not in my nature to do this. Determined not to have another of my pupils fail, I drove him mercilessly. Then it dawned on me that, in my early stages of learning to fly, I had overcome the natural tendency to tense up by deliberately relaxing the muscles of my buttocks. This I had been taught by my father as a youngster learning to ride horses. By repeatedly telling him, “Relax your butt”, Tony’s main problem of tensing was overcome and soon enough he started to fly well.

  Tony, five years later.

  For me Tony’s success has been something of a private triumph because he went on to give excellent service in Rhodesia and in the South African Air Force. He also qualified on a large number of aircraft types, including WWII fighters and bombers and became a member of the Confederate Air Force in the USA. However my success with Tony turned out to be a problem because I lost good students in exchange for difficult ones. In consequence I gained the questionable reputation of being a hard-arsed instructor, like Mick McLaren.

  Fire Officer

  DURING 1961 I WAS APPOINTED Station Fire Officer over and above my flying duties and found Flight Sergeant Jimmy Dumas and his crew of fire-fighters easy men to work with. My job was to ensure that their training was brought to the highest standard and that they were adequately equipped to deal with aircraft accidents and domestic fires.

  Within a week of my appointment, and by prior arrangement with Air Traffic Control, I called for a practice ‘fire rescue’ of Sergeant Taffy Dowell and me from the cockpit of our Provost, which I had stopped in the middle of the runway after landing.

  What an experience this turned out to be! Taffy and I, still strapped into our seats, were slumped forward holding our breath and simulating unconsciousness as black firemen climbed up to ‘rescue’ us. One big strong guy put his feet on the canopy rails then, placing his hands under my arms, nearly dislocated my shoulders because I was still firmly held down by the seat harness.

  Flight Sergeant Dumas shouted instructions to release the harness, which in itself was a fiasco. Finally I was lifted clear and inadvertently dropped head first off the trailing edge of the wing before flopping onto hard tarmac. Taffy suffered similar mishandling and we were both lucky to get away with a few scratches and bruises.

  Right away I decided to polish up on rescue training but to use firemen, complete with parachutes and helmets, in place of aircrew. Under my supervision they practised crew rescue, ad nauseam, from Provosts, T11s, FB9s and Canberras until procedures and techniques were slick and safe.

  Canberra belly-landing

  SQUADRON LEADER CHARLIE GOODWIN WAS the Senior Technical Officer at Thornhill. One morning he came rushing into the squadron asking to be taken up for an in-flight inspection of a Canberra whose right main undercarriage refused to respond to pilot selections. He wanted a Provost rather than a Vampire and I was instructed to make the flight.

  Squadron Leader Frank Mussell was flying the Canberra in question. He reduced speed to 120 knots to allow me to come into close formation directly under his right wing. It was immediately clear that the ‘D’ door had closed out of sequence ahead of the main wheel which was pressed hard against the outside of the ‘D’ door. The nose wheel and left main wheel were extended and locked down correctly.

  A Canberra’s undercarriage was controlled by sequence valves which were designed to lift the main wheel into its bay then close the ‘D’ door under the wheel to provide continuity to the wing surface for high speed flight. In this case the ‘D’ door sequenced before undercarriage and there was no way of overcoming the problem by selecting undercarriage-down because the sequence valve was trying to open the ‘D’ door first but it was held fast by the stronger hydraulic jack of the undercarriage. The history of sequence-valve failures on RAF Canberras was known to Charlie Goodwin who told Frank Mussell that he had no option but to tuck away the other wheels and land the aircraft on its belly.

  For a landing of this nature it was necessary to burn off fuel to the lowest level possible, preparatory to a high-friction belly slide along the tarmac runway. The period required to burn off the fuel gave ample time for every person in camp to get up to the flight lines to join many excited spectators awaiting the event.

  Frank put the aircraft down very gently. A magnificent dense plume of white sparks fanned upwards from the Canberra which, holding a straight course, slid along the hard surface for about 1,200 metres before coming to rest, wings still level. When jacked up, the undercarriage was lowered and the aircraft was towed away for inspection. The damage, mainly to bomb doors, was considerably less that expected and the aircraft was declared fit for a one-time, wheels-down flight to New Sarum.

  At New Sarum, Master Technician Les Grace and his crew in the Stressed Skin Section of the Aircraft Servicing Flight repaired the Canberra in quick time. Les was a superb, softly spoken man who always wore a smile and had a great deal to talk about. He was also a good listener. His skills and those of the men he taught were proven hundreds of times over. They not only beefed up airframes and mainplanes of aircraft to meet operational stresses their designers had never considered, they also repaired aircraft damaged in accidents and in later years by enemy action. The work done was so perfect that only an expert eye could detect the sites of these repairs.

  Practical jokers

  AS WITH ANY FORCE THE RRAF had its fair share of practical jokers. Keith Kemsley was the best known at Thornhill, though I heard it said he was better at giving than in receiving.

  Hi-fi was new to Rhodesians and John Mussell seemed to be the most knowledgeable man on station about the technicalities and strange terms introduced with the equipment. Woofers and tweeters sounded more like Goon Show terms than serious electronic ones. Nevertheless John was a relatively wealthy bachelor who only bought the very best of equipment on the market. Keith was well aware of this when he met up with a Gwelo salesman of recently imported Hi-fi equipment. Keith asked the young man if he would be interested in coming over for dinner with him and his wife Pat so that he could meet a pilot who was looking for the tops in Hi-fi.

  The salesman accepted the invitation keenly before Keith told him that John Mussell was a great guy who was suffering some level of deafness from flying jets. “You will find he shouts loudly. Do not be embarrassed by this, just shout back. John has plenty of money so it’s worth your while.”

  Keith then asked John if he would be interested in coming over to his house where he and Pat had a Hi-fi fundi visiting for dinner. John leapt at the opportunity and accepted Keith’s warning that; “This guy is so into powerful speakers that he has become very deaf. Ignore the fact that he shouts and simply shout back.”

  John got to Keith and Pat’s home first. When the salesman arrived, Keith shouted introductions whereupon his guests responded more loudly and were immediately immersed in a shouted technical conversation. Keith, battling to keep a straight face, asked them to sit down and excused himself on the pretext of having to give Pat a hand in the kitchen. From there Keith heard the shouted conversation mounting in volume, just as he had hoped.

  After some time John turned his head away and muttered something to himself in a low voice. Immediately the salesman asked, “What was that”? in an equally low voice. Keith’s game was up; not that it spoilt a pleasant evening. But John left the Kemsley home determined to get his own back on Keith. He consulted Flight Lieutenant ‘Porky’ MacLaughlin on how best to do this.

  In the meanwhile Keith continued with his practical jokes, many of which were aimed at his beloved wife. The story goes
that he sent Pat to the hardware store where she was instructed to ask the salesman for ‘a long wait’. She got it all right, but had given the salesman hell for bad service before realising that her husband had set her up. On another occasion Pat was told to buy a pint of white-on-purple polka-dot paint. “Remember, white on purple—not purple on white." Again, Pat had been set up. When, however, Keith asked her to get a real item – a two-pound ball-and-claw steel-shafted hammer—Pat thought the description sounded too much like another of Keith’s pranks. Consequently he was not too pleased that his instruction had been ignored because he really needed the hammer for a job he intended to do that very day.

  Then one Friday afternoon, at the very moment all Government departments closed down for the weekend, Keith and Pat received a hand-delivered registered envelope from the Registrar of Births, Marriages and Deaths. The enclosed document stated that, due to some error in paperwork at the time of their marriage they had never, in effect, been officially married. This meant that in the eyes of the law their children were illegitimate. An early visit to the offices of The Registrar of Births, Marriages and Deaths was strongly recommended to put matters to right.

  Keith and Pat were beside themselves with concern for the entire weekend, just as John and Porky had hoped. Keith arranged a flight to Salisbury to be at the Registrar’s office the moment its doors opened on Monday morning. He presented the letter to the receptionist and waited while the appropriate file was being sought from registry. A puzzled attendant kept appearing and disappearing, saying the file reference group seemed correct but that the final digit corresponded to a file that could not be located. Eventually the penny dropped and Keith realised that the joke against him had been so well prepared that even the Registrar’s Office had been fooled.

  John enjoyed this experience so much that he decided to pull a fast one on all officers at Thornhill. We received an official-looking questionnaire purporting to have come from Air Headquarters. It started with the usual Rank, Name, Number, Date of Birth, Date of Attestation etc. and required individual Flying Log Book records be broken down into components that required hours of work. The spaces to be filled were such that little space was given where the entry would be long and large spaces for entries requiring little space; typically Government! However, the questions went on and on and even asked for domestic details including such things as how many pets one kept, their names and food brands.

  It only fooled those who were in the habit of filling in forms as they read each question. Those of us who read through the questionnaire first, smelled a rat and threw it into the waste bin. Unfortunately, two senior officers who had little time to spare put in a lot of work before realising a prankster had caught them out. There was hell to pay.

  Before an official investigation could progress too far, John Mussell owned up to being the one who had prepared, printed and issued the questionnaires. For his troubles he received a severe reprimand and had to replace all the paper that had been wasted.

  When my course reported to New Sarum for the pilot selection process in 1956, we all noticed that the cover flap on one toilet seat in the ablution block of the officers single quarters had been elaborately painted with a poem set inside a floral wreath. As I recall it, the poem started with the words “In loving memory of Mike Saunders who did’st on…”

  Mike Saunders was well known for naughty deeds right from the start of his flying career. He was a junior pilot when he went into a toilet and waited there until the other three adjoining ones were occupied. At this point he lit a short fuse affixed to a commercial detonator. As soon as the fuse was burning, Mike dropped it into the toilet and flushed. He expected the water to transport the fuse and detonator into the external sewerage pipe where detonation would pressurise the system and blow the contents of the toilet bowls upward onto the bare butts of his unsuspecting mates.

  Mike’s plan failed. The fuse and detonator were too heavy for the water to carry over the bowl’s water trap. The flush was complete before detonation occurred, shearing the toilet bowl at floor level. Mike’s error cost him all the repair expenses and his colleagues rubbed this in with the painted remembrance wreath and poem on the new wooden seat.

  Some time during the ’60s, Alex Roughead had become a menacing pyromaniac. He revelled in explosives and set many traps for his mates. One of his pranks involved substituting a small wad of magnesium cotton in place of the filament of a broken light bulb. Upon entering their own rooms his friends would receive quite a fright and become temporarily blinded when they switched on the main light. He had done this at New Sarum so many times that all of his friends had learned to look away and expect a bang when they switched on ceiling lights.

  Alex decided he should change the position and set up a larger charge on a bedside light. Having heard nothing during the night nor received any abuse at the breakfast table next morning, he felt disappointed. So he went to inspect the bedside light he had doctored and found it as he had left it. Alex switched on the light, but nothing happened. He could not understand this. Next he went to the main electrical board in the passageway where he found a thermal breaker had dropped out. As he switched it on an almighty explosion occurred.

  Alex returned to his friend’s smoke-filled room to discover that the bedside cabinet, light and most of the bed had been destroyed. Huge black burn marks covered two walls and the ceiling. Realising that his friend might have been killed or badly hurt if the thermal switch had not tripped out the previous night, Alex abandoned pyrotechnic trapping.

  Unrelated to Air Force were stories of a commercial pilot serving with Central African Airways before that airline became Air Rhodesia. He had been trained by Air Force and delighted in teasing old ladies and brand-new airhostesses. Walking backwards from the flight deck, drawing out two lengths of string, he would come to an old lady and hand her both strings requesting that she fly the aircraft whilst he slipped off to the loo.

  Targeting a new hostess on her first flight he gathered up all the salad on his lunch plate and placed it inside an airsick bag. With the connivance of the skipper, he rang the service bell for the hostess. When she arrived on the flight deck she found the second Dickey doubled up and noisily puking into the sick-bag. He turned and apologised for asking her to take the bag from him. As the hostess reached for the bag the captain grabbed it saying, “I love my salad warm" whereupon he hand-scooped salad into his mouth. The hostess, with hand over mouth, left the cabin retching.

  On another occasion this naughty pilot dug a hole in the paper plate on which his lunch had been served. He undid his fly and pulled the head of his twin through the hole and set salad neatly around it. When the new hostess responded to the cockpit service bell, he pointed to the centre of the salad pile and asked, “What’s the meaning of serving this with my salad”? The panicking hostess apologised, took the fork from the plate and stabbed the offending item, which promptly bled profusely as cries of agony emitted from its owner. Not surprisingly, this pilot became more circumspect in future pranks.

  The impending arrival of Hunters meant we had urgent need for more pilots.

  15 PTC

  WITH THE INTRODUCTION OF CANBERRAS and the impending arrival of Hunters, the RRAF was running short of pilots. Following the 1960 break in pilot training, it was decided to make this up in 1961. No 15 PTC was brought forward to mid-1961 to follow close behind 14 PTC, which was then midway through BFS.

  When 14 PTC moved on to Vampires, I was allocated three 15 PTC students. They were Officer Cadets David Hume, Doug Patterson and Bruce McKerron. Patterson did not do well. I put him up for a scrub check and he returned to Civvy Street. McKerron was a cocky young fellow who was too familiar for my liking, but once he knew where he stood he did well and I enjoyed teaching him.

  Officer Cadets David Hume, Doug Patterson and Bruce McKerron.

  Hume came from Umtali where I had known his parents and brother Peter before I joined the Air Force; but I had only noticed young David in passing
.

  From his very first gentle flight Dave Hume was airsick and sortie after sortie had to be cut short to get the honking cadet back on the ground. It was obvious to me that David had potential and should make a good pilot, so long as the airsickness problem could be overcome. Feeling sure his was not a physical problem, I set out to cure him.

  Most of the students had flown about eight hours but Dave Hume had less than half of this time. As usual, he reached for his ‘honk packet’ twenty minutes into the flight. Once he had heaved up, I told him to tighten his seat belt and hold tight to see what he must eventually endure if he was to become a pilot. For about fifteen minutes I conducted non-stop aerobatics with lots of positive and negative ‘G’, plenty of fuel fumes and a couple of naughty flick rolls that even made me feel a bit queasy. When I stopped, Dave had half his face in the honk packet and his knees were up by his ears as he wretched noisily and repeatedly, but with nothing coming from his stomach. Back on the ground he staggered back to the crew-room bathed in sweat and so pale I became worried that I might have overdone things. When he eventually recovered I said to him, “Hume, you have experienced and survived much harsher flying than you will face at any stage of your flying training. What you have to go through to reach solo is very, very gentle, so stop worrying about your stomach and let’s get on with the job." Dave never had a moment’s trouble from then on and went solo with time to spare. He eventually gained the Sword of Honour as best student when he and his course members received their wings.

  Some time after the last solo had been flown I was given Officer Cadet Harold Griffiths, due to ‘non-compatibility’ with his first instructor. He had joined the ground-training phase of his course late because, as a member of the Churchill School Pipe Band, Griffiths (Griff) had been given special dispensation by Air HQ to accompany the band on a tour of Scotland. His introduction to flying with the RRAF was unusual and might have put a lesser man right off flying as a career.