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RAF Training

Autobiography

 

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My induction into the Air Force was at Carrington on the 17th of August 1942. This airforce base was famous in that it still has at that time the hangar for the R100, one of the worlds largest dirigibles, a gas filled airship. Most of these airships were filled with hydrogen and met with a very hot fate.

At Cardington we were kitted out and it was here that I came across service food. Breakfast was bacon and fried bread, and if you were lucky a fried egg swimming in fat. Being Jewish, at first I refused to eat the bacon but after a few days I did. I think I may have spent Sunday there. It was C of E’s to the right, Catholics to the left, other denominations to the middle. Jews go and clean the latrines. I quickly became a Christian and one week I was OP, another C of E, and even Catholic. Itried not to discriminate. What I saw confirmed my agnosticism.

From Cardington we were posted to London and were billeted in some very modern flats at St Johns Wood. This is near to the Lord Cricket Ground and we had our F.F.I. (Freedom from Infection) examination in the famous long room. We had to strip for the inspection and one of the examinations involved the doctor holding your testicles and asking you to cough. It served to be a very useful test as it was used at many of the medicals I had.

Most of the airmen who were aircrew cadets were from private schools, and few were from working class backgrounds. There were however, a number that had entered the Air Force as ground crew from the same sort of background as I had with a State School education to fourteen. When eventually, I was posted to my initial training wing I had as friends, two such airmen, Steve and Snowy. They were riggers and fitters and had already been in the airforce for four years. My Airforce number was 1623665. Mine had seven digits, theirs five. They talked about an airforce where they knew nearly everybody, but more importantly they knew what you could get away with.

Drill was an essential part of the training. We had a corporal in charge of our intake, indeed it seemed that the most important thing in the course was polishing your boots and buttons, having a sharp crease in your trousers and marching with precision. They called it bullshit and it was regarded as a necessary evil. Our accommodation was in the Grand Hotel in Torquay, which was a high-class holiday resort in Devon. The food was reasonable and though the weather was winter, the climate was temperate.

Each week we had to complete a cross country run, but Snowy, Steve and I would find ways to make the route a little shorter. The subject that we studied were the Theory of Flight, which I found fascinating, Engines, which I knew about and Navigation. We also had to be able to use morse code. I think we were considered efficient at ten words per minute.

We marched everywhere and our little corporal gradually revealed himself to be quite human. The course finally ended, but one small incident had quite an effect. Torquay was close to the English Channel and across that short stretch of water was occupied France. As part of our duties we had to do fire watching. This was done 24 hours a day. We were doing our stint one day on the roof of a building when we saw two aircraft approaching us not much higher than we were. They looked like a couple of Typhoons. In fact one of them was a FokeWulf and it opened fire with machine guns, presumably having seen us. We jumped through a hole in the roof. The FolkWulf the dropped a bomb which hit the hospital and did some damage as well as killing a few people. We last saw the FolkWulf heading back towards France with the Typhoon in hot pursuit.

After initial training I was posted to Booker, a small airfield south of London. The main purpose was to select people with an aptitude for flying. The field was a grass field and the aircraft were Tiger Moths. These were aircraft developed after World War I and were biplanes with a small engine that was started by ‘swinging’ a wooden propeller. They had two cockpits with very basic instruments.

The instructor explained that each control did and he took off into the wind which was indicated by a wind sock. Once airbourne he explained how to bank and turn using the joystick and the rudder. After landing, he took off again and handed the controls over to me. He asked me to do turns using the horizon to prevent gaining or losing height. Having ridden a bike, I found this flying by the seat of the pants easy. Having done a circuit of the airfield, he said ‘Go ahead and land’. I glided in and approaching the ground lost height slowly till I was on the ground. The instructor was pleased with this but pointed out that what I had done was not quite what I should have done, a three point landing but a wheeler. He took over and did a circuit and showed me. I then did a take off circuit and this time a three point landing. I still had plenty of hours left and we used them doing cross country flying. Booker was close to Windsor on Thamesand one of our trips was to this historic site.

After this initial selection I was posted to the holding unit at Heaton Park near home ready to be posted overseas for flying training. Hardly any primary training was done in Britain. Apart from being very dangerous because of enemy aircraft, every available flying field apart from tiny fields like Booker were essential for defence and offence. There was what was known as the Empire Air Training Scheme, Canada and Rhodesia being the main ones.

Unlike many airmen I did not stay at Heaton Park long – only a few days – then it was on a troop train to the north. Eventually we found that we were in Glasgow and got off the train and on to a large ferry boat.

We sailed up the Clyde to a nondescript looking ship. As we got closer we began to see that the ship was very big and as we passed under the stern we saw its name – Queen Mary. At that time it was one of the largest and fastest ships in the world.

There were various rumours as to where we might be going but we boarded and were given a cabin in what was probably the lowest class. It was hard to get into the cabin because it had nine bunks in it, three sets of three tiered bunks. Parts of the ship were palatial and in one of the dining rooms we had a lecture from some [man, lad, lord????] on the future welfare society that was planned for Britain after the war had been won..

We were on deck just before the ship was about to sail and a naval torpedo boat tied up and a single figure was taken on board. The person was unmistakably that of Winston Churchill, the Prime Minister of Britain.

Shortly afterwards we sailed down the Clyde toward the open sea, together with a cruiser. The Queen Mary was one of the fastest ships in the world and generally made the trip across the Atlantic unescorted but we were accompanied by a cruiser of the Royal Navy. The Queen Mary steered a zig zag course so that every few minutes the ship keeled over. This was mainly a strategy against being torpedoed by U-boats. A very large tonnage was sunk in the Atlantic despite the Navy and the RAF Sunderland flying boats. Presumably as a consequence of this threat we were accompanied by by the Navy’s fastest cruiser.

If I remember rightly it took three days to cross the Atlantic. We arrived in New York during a stevedore’s strike. The captain without the aid of tugboats turned the gigantic ship in the river and parked it as one would a car. Churchill was the first to leave.

Eventually we were put ashore and taken by bus to Grand Central Station where we boarded a train. This headed north to Taunton in New England. This was a historic town with many fine buildings built presumably by the very early settlers. We were put into a US army barracks where the food was good and the accommodation excellent. After a few days we were entrained again, travelling north and crossing the border to Canada. We eventually got off the train at Moncton [sp??] New Brunswick on the East coast of Canada. It was fine summer weather but we did not stay long. At this stage of the war there was flying training in Canada and we were assured that this was where it would take place, but within a week we were on the train again, going back into the USA. The journey was a long one. We spent a day in Chicago and then on south west to Kansas City and finally to Ponca City, Oklahoma, a hundred miles south of Wichita in Kansas and a hundred miles north of Oklahoma City in Oklahoma.

Ponca City at that time was about the size of Keswick in England or Penola in Australia. It was at that time a company town, somewhat like Broken Hill, exept instead of mining lead, it pumped oil for one of the oil giants, Conoca. Being in a flat landscape with hardly any hills it was the ideal spot for flying training. It had low rainfall and little cloud. It was an area where twisters developed whilst I was there I actually saw one develop while I was flying. A big cumulonimbus cloud developed a roll in front of it, and this roll at one side dropped down to the ground and began tearing up small vegetation and dust. It later moved into the town and lifted a few cars.

The Darr School of Aeronautics (No 6 British Flying Training School) was a private school and the accommodation was good and the food excellent. The dining room was air conditioned by an enormous fan pushing hot air through a web where water was circulating and the result was moist cool air.

My Flying Log Book records that on May 31st I took off with my flying instructor, Mr Simms in a Boeing Primary Trainer 17 with a 220hp Continental engine and did straight and level flying. Climbing and descending and medium level turns. On June the 9th I did my first solo flight and by the end of June I had 30 hours flying. 12 of these were solo, that is with no instructor. By the middle of June I was flying solo at night.

The next big step was flying the more powerful Harvard, a monoplane with a Pratt and Whitney engine. The flying was more advanced and included long cross-country with a navigator. As well as day cross-country, we also did so at night.

On the 2nd of November while returning from a cros country flight with a fellow student as navigator, an american called Porterfield, when coming in to land I decided to use landing lights. I had not been instructed in there use and had the impression that you shone them down the runway. I was doing this about 40 feet above the runway, a wing dropped and I stalled. I had lost flying speed. Porterfield, began screaming “cut the switches, cut the switches” He presumably thought we were going to spin and crash. At the same time the bloke in the tower was saying “Jesus Christ……Jesus Christ”

However during training we had done exactly this and the way to recover was to full throttle and nose down. This I did and I managed to bring the wing up and then brought the nose up on full power and settled down with a large bump on to the runway. The aircraft began to do a ground loop and I corrected this, but began to spin in the opposite direction. We slowed down considerably and eventually stopped. Flood lights were turned on, a fire engine and other vehicles came out. I thought “This is it Salkin – the end of your flying career.”

The following morning I was hauled up in front of the Chief Instructor Clyde[check spelling] W Fellers. He was the voice in the tower calling on Jesus. I was severely reprimanded but that was all. I presume they thought that I was that lucky to get out of such an ordeal without wrecking the aircraft or injuring myself or my navigator. I might even make it through the course.

This was not the case with one other member of the course. He was universally liked and was an American from Texas. He was actually a cowboy and was allowed to wear high heeled boots, because he just couldn’t wal in normal shoes. He went out flying one day and didn’t come back. The plane was later recovered, a burnt out shell. It was the first of a number of military funerals I attended.

Most of the weekends were free and we would hitch hike to either of the two large cities, Wichita or Oklahoma City. It was generally Witchita and we were always welcome at one particular home.

On October 16th and 17th 1943 as a unit in the final part of the course, we did a two-day cross country in which we flew from Ponca City to Amarillo in Texas. The landing there was noticeably faster because of the high altitude of the airfield.

I was flying with an old friend Steve from Torquay ITW (Initial Training Wing). He was a one of the very few who were with the RAF before the war, a very laconic and unflappable character with a broad Cornish accent. We took turns to fly and navigate. From Armarillo we flew to a field called Hensley, which is near Dallas, also in Texas. Each leg of the trip was about 400 miles or in todays measure 600km or two to three hours flying depending on wind direction. The final leg for the first day was to Little Rock in Arkansas and we spent the night in a hotel.

The following day we flew to Independence in Kansas, to Kearney in Nebraska and finally back to Ponca City. Apart from the confidence it gave us in flying and navigating, we saw the vastness of the American continent and came into contact with American Servicemen. They called us Limeys and were curious as to why we were there. We had to explain how every airfield in Britain was precious and how vulnerable a training plane would be to enemy aircraft. Few of them realised how small an Island Britain was and how close it was to continental Europe. Some of them no doubt discovered this at a later date

The course eventually came to a close and I think everyone graduated. We were given our wings at a ceremony and promoted from Leading Aircraftsmen to either pilot Officer or Sergeant. The criteria for selecting officers was perfectly straightforward, it was the old boys network. If you had been to a particular group of private secondary schools, you automatically got a ribbon round your sleeve. If like Steve or myself, you had finished your education at 14, no matter hoe good you were, you got three stripes. Pay being commensurate with you rank made it even more galling.

We went back to Moncton New Brunswick. This time it was winter with snow a metre deep with large ruts made by the cars. Fortunately we did not spend much time there. Our return to England was by another of the very fast ships that ran the blockade, the Muaretania, not as big as the Queen Mary.

Back in England we were posted to a holding unit at Harrogate, a watering place in Yorkshire. Like Torquay we were in a Grand Hotel and there were hundreds of us waiting to OUT (Operational Training Units). For some it would be flying twin engined aircraft in preparationfor flying bombers. For others it would be converting on Masters to British type aircraft and then onto fighters, mainly spitfires at this stage of the war.

The conversion unit was 5AFU (Advanced Flying Unit) and it was at Candover [check sp ] near Ludlow at Shropshire.We called it Mudlow in Slopshire. I was there from the 15th of July to the end of August 1944The purpose of flying Masters was that we had been selected to fly singles and the instruments were similar to that of Hurricanes and Spitfires.

Flying in Britain was very different to the USA. The weather was quite often cloudy, the navigation difficult, but there was the compensation of being able at times to hitch hike home.

We had a number of Australians on the course and the odd New Zealander. One New Zealander was a personal friend and he would share with his mates the fruitcakes his mum would send. He talked about the mountains that he likened to the Himalayas than the Alps because of their extensive glaciation

One event at occurred at Candover, which I suppose was life threatening. I was night flying solo and had lined up for take off, just after a Master had landed. I heard over the radio the sound of the horn and some extensive swearing in an Aussie accent. I was just about to open the throttle when a voice came over the radio “I’ve come a guttzer”. The floodlights came on and there in the middle of the runway was an aircraft with its wheels still retracted. It was a close call for both of us.

After the course I was sent to Blackpool, a renowned seaside resort on the west coast. This was a holding unit prior to a posting to an Operational Training Unit. I had my 21st Birthday at Blackpool and as I was born on the 6th of June, it coincided with D-Day when the Battle to establish a Bridgehead in Northern France began. Shortly after turning 21 we went to Liverpool and boarded a troopship. We travelled in convoy and were attacked a number of times by U-boat and numerous depth charges went off. As far as I know no ships were sunk.

We passed through the straits of Gibraltar and entered the Mediterranean, eventually landing at Alexandria. Egypt was an exciting place and there were all kinds of attractions. We were warned against the dangers of going out with the local women. As the warrant Officer put it “You’re going to put your old man where I wouldn’t put this” brandishing his walking stick. There were actually much better things to do. I remember going to a string quartet. I cannot remember who they were, but they were no doubt world class.

From Alexandria we went by train to Cairo and were billeted in the Heliopolis Grand Palace Hotel. It was grand only in name. It was summer and the flies were very numerous. It made eating difficult. Some airmen made a hobby of beheading flies which would then fly off without their heads.

I shared a room with three Aussies and one day there was a ‘blue’. One airman called another one a dingo. A dingo is a native Australian dog which tends to avoid people and any sort of trouble. The fight didn’t last long, one blow brought a bloody nose.

Shortly after this I was posted with other UK airmen to an Operational Training Unit. I later heard that all the Ausssies were not posted and there were a number of them who eventually took over the Hotel and demanded to be posted. The Officer in Charge called in the troops and besieged the hotel. Eventually the Australian Liaison Officer was called in and on the promise that they would be posted immediately, the siege ended.

The Operation Training Unit that we went to was Number 71 (Middle East) OUT at Ismailia on the Suez Canal. This airfield was a historic one and was used on the first flight from England to Australia. From what I remember the runways were very long and were very close to the canal. Apart from the vegetation near the canal it was mostly desert.

My flying log book indicates that I began flying at Ismalaia on November 15th 1944 and the first four hours were familiarisation of the area and conditions, flying with an instructor. I was then sent solo in the harvard and immediately afterwards did the cockpit drill on a Hurricane IIC and took off. The Hurricane being a single seat fighter, the first time you fly it, you do so by yourself. They warn you that there is a slight lag of control with the backward movement of the joystick.

That is, if you pull the stick back, nothing happens for five or so seconds, so the uninitiated pull the stick back further , the result of which is that the nose comes up too far and you push the stick forward and the nose starts to go down. Eventually you get used to this lag in control. I spent one hour landing and taking off. From November 21st to December 1st I put in 10 hours which included formation flying, aerobatics and spinning. On December the 4th I did my first solo on a spitfire VC. Then followed battle formation, low flying and aerobatics One of the interesting things we had to do was to climb to 28,000 feet, from this height we could see the whole of the Suez Canal and what was then Palestine.

We lived almost exclusively on the station. Visits to the town of Ismalaia were pretty unpleasant with the people trying to flog you any thing from a shoeshine, jewellery, to women and dirty pictures. There was also the hazard of being robbed. I’d already had a fountain pen whipped out of my pocket by a young boy. There was however one incident that made me see the Gypos (Egyptian Arabs) in a different light, We used to fly what was called battle formation. It had been realised how vulnerable to anti-aircraft fire, planes in close formation were, so a modified formation was used.

The problem of turning was solved by the two centre aircraft turning at the same time as the aircraft on the inside of the turn dived and began their turn. The aircraft on the outside climbed and then turned. It was whilst performing this difficult manoeuvre that one aircraft collided with another. One aircraft escaped with minor damage, but the other went into a shallow dive and eventually hit the desert. Fortunately this crash was in the vicinity of an Arab encampment and they rescued the pilot from the wreckage and provided first aid. The pilot survived but I don’t believe he ever flew again.

 

(To be Continued)

 

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