With the kind permission of the author, One Man’s Addiction to Flying will be published online each and every day. After the online publication is completed, a PDF version will be available to download.
One Man’s Addiction to Flying – Introduction is here.
One Man’s Addiction to Flying – The War Years (Part One) is here.
One Man’s Addiction to Flying – The War Years (Part Two) is here.
One Man’s Addiction to Flying – The War Years (Part Three) is here.
One Man’s Addiction to Flying – The War Years (Part Four) is here.
One Man’s Addiction to Flying – The War Years (Part Five) is here.
One Man’s Addiction to Flying – Post War Flying
The Leicestershire Aero Club had reformed after the war, first at Ratcliffe and then at Stoughton. I was on the committee and, in 1951 was Chairman. When firing a Verey pistol from the roof of the club house to start some event in a big display we were running, the gun exploded in my hand and made rather a mess of it and also my face. A piece of the barrel went into the thigh of an RAF airman helping the display and did him no good at all.
I had got rather tired of noisy aircraft, and in Mosquitos, with a pair of 1,000 horse power Merlins with open exhausts on each side of the cockpit, the noise was really quite something. Gliding was something which appealed to me as being really quiet and I joined the Leicestershire Gliding Club which was operating from Ratcliffe Aerodrome. I enjoyed this very much and got my A, B and C certificates and went on many week-end camps to hill sites.
It was rather fun to be able to chat to someone on the ground from 500 feet in one of the open cockpit training gliders. Rather late on one summer evening I was drinking scotch rather morosely in the Club bar when a man named Bob Loorimer, a local hosiery producer, came in. He asked me why the gloom and I explained that we had just broken our last serviceable glider. ‘Don’t worry’ he said, ‘I’ll buy you a new one-how much are they? I told him 500 pounds and he wrote a cheque cut on the spot. We finished up the bottle and next morning took the cheque into the bank rather hesitantly, but it was passed, and we bought a new Olympia glider which his wife later christened. I was made a life honorary member. I should think so! To progress much further in the gliding world meant doing cross-country trips, and in turn, this meant sharing with another pilot, taking turns to tow the trailer and collect the glider from wherever. Very time consuming and I was getting involved in towing the horse trailer for my children’s gymkhana activities. So that was the temporary end of my aviation activities.
[This not quite how I remember this! There was a ghastly flying accident when the release gear on the towing wire which was used to launch the gliders malfunctioned. The glider was unable to separate from the wire and was pulled down into the ground killing the pilot instantly. I think my Mother, who had been very patient up to this point, put her foot down. There were by then 3 of us children who needed their Father and having survived the war Mother was not about to let him kill himself in a glider accident. I am not totally sure that the line my Father was shooting here was strictly tikiti-boo, but Dad is not here now to correct the record!]
In 1974 I retired from business and went to live in Blakeney, only 10 miles from Little Snoring.
In 1983 my wife said to me that I looked as if I needed a challenge in life. “What about getting your pilot’s licence back?” So I accepted the challenge and went to talk to the Norfolk Flying Club, who were flying from an RAF airfield at Swanton Morley. They had the use of the grass airfield and one hangar which the RAF was not using. On their advice I first went for quite a stiff – and expensive medical test required by the Civil Aviation Authority before a Private Pilot’s licence can be issued. Not much point embarking on a very expensive training course only to be failed later on medical grounds. This proved to be O.K, and I started on the necessary flying training, The Authority had recently tightened up their demands owing to a large number of pilots who were killing themselves soon after getting their licences, accidents which were put down to inexperience. The new requirements for the number of flying hours was a minimum of forty-three, but as I went to see them with my log books and, in spite of the thirty-seven year gao, because of my previous experience, I was granted a concession of a minimum of twenty-eight hours which saved me a lot of money.
The aircraft used for training by the Club were Cessna 152’s. These are small metal, tricycle undercarriage, dual control machines. There are thousands of them all over the world and they are treated rather like motor-cars. Fill them up with petrol and oil, kick the tyres, make sure nothing is falling off, press the self-starter and off you go. When I reported for my first lesson, my instructor suggested that I wheeled the aircraft out of the hangar, carried out the routine checks and waited for him to join me. This was quite a surprise to me because my last powered flight had been in a Mosquito which had been most carefully checked for every function and the necessary form presented to me by the Flight Sargent fitter for my signature before take-off. Oh well!!
Being a fairly cautious character, as regards aircraft anyway, I was reasonably through in my checks, especially flying controls. During my time at Cambridge I was asked to flight test a Tiger Moth which had emerged from a major inspection. For some reason I did not test the controls and, as soon as I got airborne, I found that they had connected up the wrong way. This made life very interesting and I approached the ground for a landing with considerable caution. All was well, but it taught me a lesson.
I was relieved to find that flying, like riding a bicycle, once learned is never forgotten. A little polishing here and there but no major problems. I was fortunate to arrive at the Club when they had a very good team of instructors. I was allowed to go solo after three hours and found no problem with the flying training syllabus. R/T (Radio Transmission) proved to be a major problem for me. Swanton Morley was at the time surrounded by very active RAF bases from which there was almost continuous flying. These bases each had their own controlled area and their own frequency. These frequencies were obtained by twiddling a knob until the right number came up, just like a radio set. Swanton had its own frequency and, on leaving the vicinity of the airfield, it was necessary to call them up and tell them that you were switching to such and such a frequency. When on cross-country flights, it was necessary to call up the next controlled zone and say, for instance, “Marham, this Golf- Bravo-Foxtrot-Sierra-Romeo on a student training flight in a Cessna 152. My present position is…my height is…my course is…and my estimated time to enter your controlled zone is….Request your permission to proceed. Over.”
At first I used to get completely tongue-tied half way through the transmission and have to start again. Most of the controllers, especially if they were female, were pretty tolerant but some got a bit shirty. If you were accepted you were then told to “stand by on this frequency’. At the busy stations and at Norwich Airport there was fairly continuous chatter going on and if your own call- sign came up you were expected to reply immediately. Since invariably you were endeavouring to cope with several other problems at the same time, this was not always as immediate as the controller expected and they tended to get a bit tetchy – especially if it was a message from an RAF base such as “Golf Sierra Romeo. This is Marham. Alter course immediately 90 degrees to port. There is fast traffic approaching from your starboard side. Acknowledge. Over”. A few minutes later five or six Tornadoes or similar would scream past at 650mph – sometimes uncomfortably close. When peace again reigned the message would come: “Golf Sierra Romeo. Resume your original course” by this time you were almost certainly lost to the wide and trying desperately to pick up landmarks which were not on your prepared route.
One of the passing-out tests was a triangular cross-country, landing at two other airfields and getting a signed report that proper procedures had been followed. I chose Ipswich and Cambridge. When I was working out my flight plan, I realised that I should have to make sixteen frequency changes, some of them in a short space of time. It seemed to leave little time for flying the aircraft and map reading, but it all worked out in the end and I got my two pieces of paper. All this flying was done by map and compass, just as in 1937. How I longed for the sophisticated equipment we had at the end of the war, and a navigator to do some of the work.
I then had to tackle a passing-out test by a Civil Aviation Authority Examiner. He was reckoned by the Swanton gang to be a bit of a grumpy bastard, but I found that he was nearly as old as me, that we had a lot in common and we got on well. The two hour test included verbal tests on the ground concerning the aircraft and then a very thorough flying test including spinning, blind flying, forced landings, cross wind landings and take-offs, etc. I passed. The most trying part of all were the ground examinations. I had attended several lectures on various subjects and I had been through and through the official booklets. but my brain seemed to have lost a lot of whatever capacity it once had for absorbing knowledge. I was frequently up at 6.00am through the summer studying various subjects. There were three exams of two hours duration. With only a very little cheating with cribs, I passed all three and was awarded my Private Pilot’s licence. At 67, one of the oldest members of the Flying Club.
I was then entitled to take passengers and, using the Club’s four-seater Cessna 172, I took up several friends to show them the coast and their houses from the air. My wife Sheila came with me on several occasions and took some very good aerial photos. I was also able to use my licence in Australia and in 1995 I hired a Cessna from the Sunshine Coast Air Charter at Caloundra in Queensland and Sheila again got some excellent photographs.
In 1988 I had a sudden urge to try flying a helicopter and had a hour’s lesson from a company at Norwich Airport. Very, very difficult and very, very expensive. End of urge.
I enjoyed it all immensely, but in the summer of 1989 I caught myself making some minor errors and being a bit forgetful. Since I had not had an accident or damaged an aircraft in my 3000 hours of flying I felt the time had come to pack it in while the going was good. I made my last flight in Golf-Bravo Hotel Alpha Victor on 29 September aged 73 and very grateful for all the fun that flying had afforded me.
[ Father had enjoyed his ‘addiction to flying and at the end the war his log book credited him with 2,874 hours and 30 minutes of actual flying time. This was an astonishing total. With some 72 operational sorties the fact that he survived in one piece was amazing. The hours that he flew gliders and light aircraft are sadly not recorded, but he fulfilled his dream of flying in a big way!]
Dad died peacefully on 26 November 2012, in his sleep, at the ripe old age of 96. He was tired. We scattered his ashes from a boat in Blakeney Harbour. He would have flown over this harbour many times as he made his way to and from Little Snoring airfield in 1945. He loved to sail there in later years, especially after his retirement. As we drifted slowly out towards Blakeney Point on the ebbing tide, I read Psalm 139 as the family said our farewells. It is known as the airman’s Psalm. Part of it is quoted on the following page (the emphasis is mine):
Psalm 139
¹ O LORD, you have searched me and known me!
2 You know when I sit down and when I rise up;
you discern my thoughts from afar.
3 You search out my path and my lying down
and are acquainted with all my ways.
4 Even before a word is on my tongue,
behold, O LORD, you know it altogether.
5 You hem me in, behind and before,
and lay your hand upon me.
6 Such knowledge is too wonderful for me;
it is high; I cannot attain it.
7 Where shall I go from your Spirit?
Or where shall I flee from your presence?
8 If I ascend to heaven, you are there!
If I make my bed in Sheol, you are there!
9 If I take the wings of the morning
and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea,
10 Even there your hand shall lead me,
and your right hand shall hold me.
11 If I say, “Surely the darkness shall cover me, and the light about me be night,”
12 Even the darkness is not dark to you;
the night is bright as the day,
for darkness is as light with you…
Next time…
A complete version in a more readable PDF file.
RAF 23 Squadron 