My History in the Air

 I have written on some of the following items in previous blogs. Here they are in a different context.

From flying in biplanes of canvas and wire with air-cooled piston engines making much noise in the wind around open cockpits, to now boarding an aircraft the kind of which is not revealed until reading the "escape" manual on board. I have been lucky enough to witness and live through times of enormous change in aviation.

As a schoolboy I made exact models of aircraft from "Skybird" bits. In these boxes were pieces of wood, some thread, a lead casting of a pilot, a piece of mica for the windshield, a propeller and two wheels. Included was a set of plans. The rest was up to you. One learned a lot about aeroplanes that way.

For the practical side of flying, a pilot, F/O W.E. Johns, wrote an illustrated book called The Pictorial Flying Course. It was my bible. He went on to write the highly successful Biggles books.

In 1932, aged seven, I first flew in an Avro Tutor with Allan Cobham's Flying Circus, from a farmer's field rented by Cobham near Rye, in Hampshire.

My parents had paid extra (7/6 in all) for me to experience a loop-the-loop, which was done over the sea.

A year earlier (1931), Kingsford Smith, with Wyndham Hewitt (my uncle) as flight engineer, flew the first all-Australian airmail flight from Australia to England in an Avro 10 Trimotor (Southern Star). It took them 17 days. Although much publicised as having an all-Australian crew, it wasn't, as my uncle was about as English as they come.

Because of my uncle's friendship with Kingsford Smith, my brother and myself were offered a flying trip around London, taking off from Croydon Aerodrome. But because of Kingsford Smith's unreliability, or that the tail skid on his aeroplane had broken, we were taken aloft (loose in the open rear cockpit and with caps back to front) in a very modern German low wing monoplane, called a Klemm Bat. Then, except for flying in a Dominie and a Gypsy Moth, it was not until I had joined the RAF in 1942 and, in waiting for a posting, that I took a temporary job as a prop swinger at RAF There. It was there that I flew in an Oxford and an Anson. But it was mostly in DH 82s (Tiger Moths) that I obtained flying instruction - usually on weather flights upwind with a sympathetic pilot from the airfield in charge. There was no meteorology then so these flights were to see what weather was in store.

My brother-in-law, Ian MacNaughton, in his army AOP Auster, flew Generals around battlefields. So he flew with no rules and often under very adverse circumstances. He landed crosswind at These, much to the displeasure of the authorities there, to fly me over Silchester to see the house where I was born. He supplied his mess with eggs (then a rare commodity) by finding a farm with a driveway, landing on it and parking at the front door of the house. The farmers were so surprised to find an aeroplane on their doorstep that his mess was seldom short of eggs.

It was during this time that two matters of interest took place above my head. The first was a German Ju 88 flying low in front of me on its way to bomb Reading. The other was when I heard a strange sound from above and looking up to see a smallish and fast aircraft flying with no propeller at the front or rear. It was our first jet aircraft, the Gloster E 28/39. I was with others on the airfield at Theale when it flew over. None of us could quite believe what we had seen.

My first solo flight was in a Tiger Moth at RAF Shellingford, in Berkshire. The station consisted of a few huts and a farmer's field. For me it was a watershed occasion, even though I already had some experience in the air. But I was now on my way as a real pilot.

Like other trainee pilots we were given operational experience to give us an idea of what was to come. I was sent to RAF Davidstow Moor (now of cheese fame), in Cornwall, and one of the RAF's high altitude airfields.

From it we flew Warwick aircraft, a twin-engined bomber failure but still of use in Coastal Comma with a specially made lifeboat strapped to its belly. Our job was to look for baled-out aircrew in the Bay of Biscay and drop our lifeboat suspended through the air by six parachutes. In the 20 hours of my time there on operations we never found anyone to save. Bur I did have my uses. My job was to keep an eye out for German Condor aircraft, which were powerfully armed with cannon. We were no match, being poorly armed by comparison. From the second pilot's seat I did see one at a great distance from us. So we dived down to just above sea level and headed for home.

Years later there was an interesting sequel to this episode. It transpired that the deceased father of my picture framer was a Warwick pilot, at Davidstow Moor, and at the same time as I was there. I might have flown with him. So we looked at his logbook to see if my name was mentioned. If I was one of his aircrew, the entry described me only as "passenger". Had I lost my life on one of those sorties, I wonder if my demise would have even been noticed at all?

Also for experience I was posted to a Lancaster squadron at RAF Skellingthorpe, just outside Lincoln. One day the rear gunner of a bomber was unable to be aboard one of the Lancasters flying on an engine test to Scotland and back, before leaving to bomb Germany at night. So I took his place in the rear turret with four Browning machine guns loaded and ready. It was unlikely that a German aircraft would cross the North Sea to shoot us down. But I was ready. My only job aboard was to line up my guns on the landscape below and read off the aircraft's drift on a gauge. This I relayed to the navigator at his request via the intercom.

When my real training took place it was in Oklahoma, in the mid-west of America where the weather was generally good. The aircraft for those of us starting was a Cornell (PT 19). When water sprayed up from a wet satellite field on to the control surfaces of my aeroplane and froze, I crashed it. It was a lovely aircraft. Then I flew Harvards (AT 6s) until awarded my wings and commission.

Returning from America once after the war, I crossed the Atlantic in a four, turbo prop engined Britannia - it being much cheaper than the newly introduced Boeing 707 jet. I expect that the Britannia was a lot quieter.

In the 1950s there was only one civilised way of getting to France by car. Waiting on the grass at Lydd airport on the Kent coast would be a propeller-driven, high wing Bristol Freighter aircraft, its jaws wide open. Your car, with two others, would be driven into the freighter and secured. The jaws would close and the passengers allowed aloft to sit with the pilot. Then the aeroplane would trundle over the grass to fly just above the waves of the English Channel and land at Le Touquet. There the jaws would be opened, the cars driven out, and away we would drive through France. 

To travel that way was something special - and fun.

Twice in the Far East I was a passenger on ex-wartime Dakotas (DC 3s). One rattled as part of its construction undid itself and then reversed the process. In the other, wires were hanging down from the cabin ceiling. But they worked. What a wonderful aircraft it was - and probably still is. 

BEa's 3 jet Trident aircraft pioneered Autoland in the 1960s. It was great then to land at Paris's Le Bourget airport in dense fog. That was real aviation progress.

Nowadays, when close to passenger aircraft that look as if, and do weigh tons, I wonder how on earth they can fly, let alone with freight, luggage and passengers aboard. I know the principles of flight and have had experience of them for years, but it is still somehow magic to me that these metallic hulks can take off and fly at all.