A Very Unusual Air War (28 page)

7 February
: This entailed flying over the site in circles at varying altitudes up to about 5,000 feet. In a Tiger Moth with an open cockpit, in February, it was not much fun and very, very cold, definitely ‘brass monkey' weather. It was noticeable that none of the ground staff rushed to occupy the second cockpit.

10 February
: Fuel consumption was always a matter of importance, especially in an aircraft like the Spitfire that was designed as a purely defensive fighter. With the bigger, more powerful Griffon engine, consumption for the MkXII would have been roughly 5 % worse than in a Mk IX.

13 February
: The ASI (Air Speed Indicator) was worked by a pressure device called the pitot tube mounted on a stem below the wing so that air pressure through it would vary with forward speed. The information obtained was passed to the dashboard instrument.

The Hunsden trip was a joyride for two of the unit's officers who did not often get the chance of a flight, S/Ldr Fountain, the C. of E. Chaplain and F/O Collins (known as Lottie), the AFDU Engineering Officer during our stay at Duxford.

14 February
: For air-to-air camera work there would have been another aircraft acting as target. For air-to-ground work we would usually have aimed at a target in The Wash but in view of the short duration of the flight the target was probably at nearby Colley Weston airfield.

15 February
: More joy rides. Sergeant Hill was one of the ground staff on aircraft maintenance, Mr Charles one of the technical experts attached to the unit; popularly known as Boffins. F/Lt Clive, was our flight commander and Cpt. Dyer was the C/O of the searchlight unit.

16 February
: Zoom climbs were better than anything at a fair. This test started flying at nought feet, straight and level, then opening up to maximum cruising throttle setting, waiting until speed settled down at something over 300mph, then pulling up into a 45/50 degree climb, recording times to 5,10 and 20,000 feet. This procedure had to be repeated a number of times to get an average result. Lovely!

17 February
: The zoom climbs were a repeat of previous test runs but with different starting throttle settings.

For the second test the aircraft was flown at full throttle to a speed of over 400mph,then pulled up into the steepest possible climb. Phew! By now I was involved in the full test programme for the Spitfire XII, so at last I could call myself a real test pilot.

19 February
: I never really cared for stall tests; they entailed putting the aircraft into a climb, closing the throttle and waiting for the speed to drop off. In a Spitfire the nose would suddenly drop and the aircraft start a dive from which it was easy to recover. At the point of stall, if you kicked on hard rudder one way or the other, the machine would go into a spin. A Spitfire behaved well and was easy to recover but in some types the stall could be violent and recovery difficult; some aircraft would go into a spin and be reluctant to come out. So as I say, I did not enjoy stalling: it was not pleasant to leave your stomach up there when you were down here.

24 February
: Stall tests again, definitely not recommended for the morning after a boozy night out! The move to Duxford caused difficulty for travelling home either to Waddesdon and Brill (Poletrees Farm) or to Redditch. My brother-in-law, Percy Climer, owned a 1936 Austin 10 Ruby saloon car he had laid up for the duration, due to petrol restrictions. He offered it to me for the price he had paid, the princely sum of £35. I gladly accepted his kind offer and that solved the problem of travelling home on leave as well as local journeys around Duxford. It was a most reliable vehicle, not very fast, about 55 mph was top speed but it would cruise happily at about 40 mph and seemed capable of going on forever.

Some time in the early summer of 1943 I was offered a Vauxhall 14 by an airman who was posted abroad. It seemed a good move so I bought the Vauxhall.My faithful Ruby was sold to one of our other pilots, a New Zealander, F/O Bill Burge, with whom I reestablished contact postwar. He kept the old Austin until the war ended and he returned to New Zealand. He later moved to Australia. The Vauxhall proved to be a disaster and caused me nothing but trouble. I was very glad to see the back of it early in 1944, after AFDU moved to Tangmere.

25 February
: AD204 had been named the Andoverian, having been paid for and given by the people of Andover to the Air Force.

It started its service life at Ibsley, Hampshire with 118 Squadron in September 1941 and had a long, interesting history, surviving the war. The book
Johnnie Spitfire
by H.T.N. Ling (1980) tells the story.

26 February
: The P47 Thunderbolt, because of its shape and size, was nicknamed the ‘Jug'.

It was a most impressive aeroplane and with its heavy armament of 8.5 machine guns and its longer range, did sterling work in the USAAF, escorting the B17s on their daylight raids into Germany. It was easy and pleasant to fly; number 16189 arrived at Duxford under the charge of an American Top Sergeant, who was nearly as big as the aeroplane and seemed to regard it as his own personal property. Alone, he covered all aspects of servicing. As far as I know, the P47 was not adopted by the RAF.

On this day I made seven flights in five different types or marks of aircraft, three of which were American, one a Spitfire and finally two trips in a twin-engine Oxford.

27 February
: AFDU's first co-operation with American pilots and aircraft. We found it necessary to use the Spitfire Mk XII in order to match the speed of the B25 Mitchells. (The B25 was known in the RAF as the Mitchell.) It was my first all-day stay at an American base over lunchtime: grilled pork chops with ‘Jello' and peanut butter all on the same plate, followed by lashings of ice cream. Lovely! The jello and peanut butter were new to me; I liked the jello, which made a nice change from apple sauce, but had reservations about the peanut butter.

Monthly total: 30 hours 20 minutes

E. Smith
Squadron leader

O/C. Flying AFDU

5 March
: When the original Mk I Mustang went through its speed trials in this country, the top speed was recorded as 380mph at 1,000ft. In one of my test flights in Mustang X FZ107 (in early 1944) at the same height, I recorded 448mph. This made it the fastest operational aircraft in the world at that time. In a later flight I achieved an indicated speed of 455mph at ground level.

The Master III was similar to the Mk I, which I flew for my SFTS training at Hullavington except that it was powered by an American Pratt and Whitney Wasp. The same engine was used in the US Harvard trainer, consequently the Master Mk III sounded like, and was often mistaken for, a Harvard.

6 March
: 1426 Flight was a unit within AFDU but operated as a detached, independent unit, based at nearby Colley Weston airfield. They flew, to my knowledge, a number of German machines including a Heinkel III, a Messerschmitt 110, a Henshall 126, an ME109 and a JU 88. Some time later they also acquired a Focke Wulf FW 190 A3. If their flight plan took them into the sensitive area of the southeast of England, it was necessary to provide a Spitfire escort. On this flight it was the Heinkel III that we escorted to somewhere in 11 Group.

10 March
: Although I made several flights in a Mosquito, I have always regretted that I did not actually fly it solo. On this flight, the wing commander allowed me to take the controls, but as I did not carry out the take-off and landing, I could only claim this and subsequent flights as 2nd pilot. A great pity as the Mossie was such a lovely and successful aircraft.

11 March
: This short flight was caused by a fault in the aircraft, which was corrected and off we went again.

12 March
: S/Ldr Aldis was obviously quite expert and as he did not need any more instruction was sent straight off solo.

In the Avro Anson, this time it was me who was under instruction. A quick whip round and a couple of landings and S/Ldr Ted Smith passed me proficient to take the ‘Annie' solo. Some of my older readers may remember motor cars with starting handles (and a few broken wrists). The Anson was a pre-war wood and canvas aeroplane, used by Coastal Command for reconnaissance and for twin-engine training at SFTS. The engines were started by inserting a starting handle in the appropriate hole at the side of the engine cowling and with a few turns to get the prop revolving, hopefully, to start the engine. The undercarriage was retracted and lowered by a hand-winding wheel on the floor behind the pilot and I remember that it took quite a few turns to get the wheels up or down.