Cockeyed Optimist

On leaving RAF Holme-on-Spalding Moor, the scene of my ignominious exit from pilot training, I was posted to No 3 Air Navigation School, in Bishopscourt, County Down, Northern Ireland. This airfield was a few miles from the fishing village of Downpatrick, and near to the Mountains of Mourne (which indeed “sweep down to the sea”).

We flew in two different types of aircraft, both derived from the Vickers Viking airliner. The Valleta was a “flying classroom”, with 10 student positions, each with radar consoles for radio-navigation and the other necessary instruments.

The Varsity was a crew trainer, with facilities for training pilots, flight engineers, navigators and bomb-aimers (bombardiers); we only saw it in use for navigator training. It had a nose-wheel undercarriage (unlike the Valetta, with a tail-wheel), and you will notice a “pod” underneath. This was never used for training by we navigators - it was a bomb-aimer’s station - but nevertheless we got some use out of it, in two ways.

First, the front window of the pod, which was slanted, was a nice cold place to put the chocolate bars we were given with our sandwiches for 8- or 9-hour navigational exercises (we flew almost all the way round the British Isles on these trips); second, it was a test of bravery to stay, prone, in the pod during landings, when the front window was only a foot or so above the runway. The experience as the aircraft touched down at over a hundred miles an hour was somewhat exciting!

Both these aircraft were unpressurized, so when we flew above a certain height on our long navigational trips in the Varsity, we had to use oxygen masks. On these long trips we flew in pairs, alternately taking the role of first and second navigator. The second navigator had fairly long idle spells, so it was a chance to catch up on our sleep (as 19 and 20-year olds, we had fairly hectic social nightlives), and if you took off your oxygen mask, it was easy to drift off.

We learnt a range of types of radio or radar navigation, also dead reckoning and astro-navigation (you stood up with your sextant in a transparent dome on the top of the fuselage, and took sights on various stars).

Another type of exercise we did in the Valetta was radar assisted approach and landing, or BABS. Each of we trainees would go up in turn to the master station just behind the flight deck, where the instructor would take us through the procedure and the operation of the radar set. So the exercise had to involve frequent approaches to the runway at low altitude. When it was clear we had brought the aircraft in correctly, the pilot would overshoot and go round again for the next trainee.

One of these exercises will stay in my mind for ever. It was a nice sunny day, with little fluffy white clouds covering the sky - a pretty picture. Unfortunately, little fluffy white clouds are caused by thermal upcurrents, which means turbulence. By the time 6 or 7 trainees had had their goes, the rest of us were getting more and more airsick (I found myself seriously wishing we would crash to put us out of our misery). And as we listened over our earphones to yet another repetition of the instructor’s spiel to his current pupil, we heard him exclaim in horror ” Oh, @$#%&*!!!, he’s vomited right into the console!”

Well, at the end of about 9 months, I proudly collected my navigator’s brevet,

and awaited a posting to a squadron. After a short leave, I received notifiaction that I was assigned to 187 Squadron, at RAF Aston Down, near Gloucester, in the West of England. By this time I only had 2 or 3 months of my National Service left.

I found that 187 Squadron was a ferry squadron, part of Transport Command. The task I was to do was to help to run a taxi service! We used Avro Anson aircraft,

and our job was to pick up and deliver the aircrew who collected new aircraft from a factory and took them to the RAF station where they were to be kept. So, we might fly to a RAF base to pick up a crew, take them to the De Havilland factory, then maybe deliver another crew somewhere else, then pick up the first crew after they had made their delivery, and so on. My job as navigator turned out to be not much more than a map-reader, because most of our calls were in England, and it is so built up there that you can more or less follow roads and railway lines (but we used to file flight plans, just to keep up appearances). Half way through the day, of course, we would start thinking about lunch, so I would discuss it with the pilot, “Bristol Aircraft have very nice canteen, don’t they”, “Yes but RAF Leconfield have just got a new cook, he hasn’t been ruined by the RAF yet!”, and so on.

This was a pleasant life, and our station was in a very pretty part of the country, so it was an enjoyable couple of months. The new academic year was about to start at Cambridge, and I actually had to apply for a very small curtailment of my National Service, which was granted readily enough.

So, off to University!

If you liked this, why not treat me to a coffee (or a bone for Kafka)? Thanks, mate!

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