Aeroplane Monthly 2017-08

EXCLUSIVE! HURRICANE AIR-TO-AIRS August 2017 Issue No 532, Vol 45, No 8

HISTORY IN THE AIR SINCE 1911

BATTLE OF BRITAIN

HURRICANES COMBAT VETERANS FROM 1940

CHANNEL STOP: ALBACORES ON D-DAY The RCAF’s last biplanes

AUGUST 2017 £4.50

FLIGHT OF THE NAVIGATOR On tour with Decca’s Airspeed Ambassador

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Contents August 2017

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CHARLES MASEFIELD’S MUSTANG Fifty years on from its King’s Cup win, we remember the UK’s first American warbird with the help of its former owner/pilot D-DAY ALBACORES The Fairey biplane’s final operational hurrah, in service with a Canadian squadron DECCA DEMONSTRATORS Flying demonstrations of the Decca Navigator system made variety the spice of life for the late Peter Huggins BATTLE OF BRITAIN HURRICANE Hugh Taylor’s Hurricane I P3717 has added another magnificent example to the worldwide population of the famed Hawker fighter. In an exclusive feature, we detail its history and present the first air-to-air images of this Battle of Britain veteran

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First Varsity prototype VX828 in flight.

DEVELOPMENT VICKER S VARSITY

DATABASE: VICKERS VARSITY 16 Denis J. Calvert DA TAB AS E explores the T VICKERS VARS ITY history of this much-loved RAF ‘flying IN-DEPTH classroom’ PAGES BAE SYSTEMS

IN-DEPTH PAGES

Vickers’ versatile ‘flying classroom ’

he Vickers Varsity has This had already its origins in led Viking civil airliner to the Specification crew training T13/48, roles was novel and the Valetta military which required but achievable, — yes, Vulcan) transport, and “a as to crew training the Varsity’s addition service over some the Varsity’s ridiculous (Vespa). the slightly aircraft by 1952 25 years to replace the tricycle undercarriageof a would prove. The use of a large Wellington The T10”. It went cabin steerable nosewheel with of the new design prototypes made possible on to state that brought were the the aircraft “will the basic formula allocated Type a number of crew provision of be used by more or less 648 in the day and night up to date. As Vickers scheme the various trainingstations for in the following will of type training roles: roles later, the Varsity be seen numbers, with envisaged. A (a) might not production contemporary navigation/bomb Air have been the aircraft being Vickers document aiming (b) end of the line, Type 668. The Pilot training wrote of a but the success name Varsity normal flight (c) Signals of corresponded crew of three: training”. Unusually, company’s Viscountthe neatly with the first pilot, second the RAF RAF’s intended pilot/navigator envisaged a new strongly suggested airliner use of the aircraft and radio operator, design rather as a ‘flying than an adaptation plus a commercial future that the classroom’, as complement of an lay in well as tying of up to four existing aircraft all-new in with Vickers’ development. trainees. The to meet the history pilot requirement. The concept alliterative aircraft of sat side-by-side and co-pilot That said, the of names, in a cockpit Varsity was the aircraft to meet a single which ranged offering dual extrapolation these different from controls and of a long line (Virginia, Victoria the sublime good visibility of development and Vulcan to the outside that started in world. The radio 1933 with (W/T) station Vickers’ tender was behind the to B9/32 for a Its equipment pilots, the twin-engined pupil’s and the day bomber be satisfactory, for the training role was instructor’s — the Crécy, felt to positions facing later reaft, christened the training stationsand the layout of the crew the radio equipmenteach with Wellington. and deemed excellent in a crate mounted in front rearwards in the of it. Further main cabin and behind the main spar was 78 www.aeroplanemo

WORDS: DENIS J. CALVERT

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Varsity T1s WL629 and WJ917 of No 5 FTS at Oakington in very close formation on 5 November 1969.

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BAE SYSTEMS

● Versatile ‘flying classroom’

● RAF service career

● Other operators

● An instructor’s viewpoint

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Insights

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SKYWRITERS Q&A Your questions asked and answered HOOKS’ TOURS More splendid colour images from Mike Hooks’ outstanding archive. This month, a selection of Sud-Est Caravelles

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THE FIGHT FOR AIRFIELD H-3 During 1967’s Six-Day War, aerial fighting raged in the skies above a key Iraqi airfield RYAN SCW In bringing his beautiful Ryan SCW from Australia to Europe, Steve Carter has highlighted the history of this fine machine AEROPLANE MEETS… BARRY TEMPEST Stories galore from this veteran of the British display scene

In Service

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FEATURES

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Technical Details

REGULARS

EVENTS Reviews from La Ferté Alais, Duxford, Shuttleworth and Cosford, plus show dates for August 100 REVIEWS 106 NEXT MONTH

Development

FROM THE EDITOR NEWS • P-47D Dottie May flies again • Another Hurricane I airborne • Sea Vixen damaged in belly landing • BBMF Lancaster ready • Canadian Anson goes on show …and the month’s other top aircraft preservation news HANGAR TALK Steve Slater’s comment on the historic aircraft world FLIGHT LINE Reflections on aviation history with Denis J. Calvert

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Varsity VK 501 Royal Jordanian Air Force CHRIS SANDHAM-BAILEY

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103 AEROPLANE ARCHIVE: PRINCE BERNHARD The Dutch royal’s wartime flying COVER IMAGE: Two Battle of Britain veteran Hurricane Is formate in our exclusive cover shot: Hugh Taylor’s newly restored P3717 leads Hurricane Heritage’s R4118. DARREN HARBAR

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Editor From the

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here did your love of used then, of course. Remember historic aeroplanes that this was 22 years after the end stem from? For me, of the Second World War, meaning more than anything, it a generation of young post-war was Duxford and its warbird pilots. enthusiasts on these shores had The late 1980s and early 1990s never seen a P-51 flying. And the represent the formative period of my verve with which Masefield flew enthusiasm, a time of great displays it, whether in air races or displays, at Duxford and elsewhere. The added to the attraction. Privately number of airworthy warbirds on the owned aircraft of that potency were British circuit had steadily increased, virtually unknown in British skies, and, oh, the flying… Perhaps a little and with the Mustang came a style of more aggressive than we see now, my display flying that set a new standard. word, it made It didn’t last long an impression. — just two seasons Privately owned Probably its before the machine finest expression aircraft of such potency was sold — but was in those were virtually unknown in many of those who ‘Ultimate Pistons’ it cherish their Britain, and with Charles saw tailchases, Ray recollections of Hanna versus this aircraft. Masefield’s Mustang Stephen Grey, So does Sir came a new style of Fury against Charles Masefield Bearcat, that himself. As display flying developed at the you’ll find out Classic Fighter shows. But that era in our feature celebrating the 50th saw many magnificent moments, anniversary of his Mustang-mounted maybe with smaller multiples of King’s Cup win, owning that aircraft than we see now, but no less aeroplane changed the course of his memorable for that. life. It’s another of the stories relating Go back further, and many of you to the history of aircraft preservation will have had similar experiences. — not something covered in much I’m sure one aircraft in particular depth elsewhere — that we’re features in some. Today we take P-51 delighted to bring you in Aeroplane, Mustangs almost for granted, but and there are plenty more to come. not so 50 years ago. In the summer Sorry, incidentally, that we aren’t of 1967, Charles Masefield’s newly able to publish as many of your acquired example burst onto the contributions to Skywriters and scene, and in some style. Yes, a P-47 Q&A as usual this month — despite Thunderbolt operated by Republic there being more of them than ever! Aircraft had made a brief visit from Unfortunately, space reasons have the States in 1962, but Mustang forced us to reduce them to just a N6356T (originally brought to the page each, but they’ll be back up to UK by Mike Keegan) was Britain’s their usual size next time. first permanently based American Ben Dunnell warbird — not that the term was

ESTABLISHED 1911

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Aeroplane traces its lineage back to the weekly The Aeroplane, founded by C. G. Grey in 1911 and published until 1968. It was relaunched as a monthly in 1973 by Richard T. Riding, editor for 25 years until 1998.

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CONTRIBUTORS THIS MONTH DENIS J. CALVERT In this month’s Database, Denis tackles a long-time favourite aircraft type of his, namely the Vickers Varsity, on which so many RAF multi-engine pilots trained. He well remembers living in the early ‘70s in a village in East Anglia where you could frequently look up and see three or four No 5 FTS Varsities, all pounding the Oakington circuit. Denis greatly regrets that he never got to fly in one.

DARREN HARBAR Darren has been photographing aircraft for many years and is a regular contributor to Aeroplane. He is also the man behind the aircraft photography training days hosted at IWM Duxford and the Shuttleworth Collection. One of Darren’s favourite subjects has always been the Hawker Hurricane, and it is apt therefore that in this issue he goes air-to-air with two of the famous fighters. “It was a dream come true”, he says, “to fly alongside and photograph two Battle of Britain veteran Hurricanes at once.”

SQN LDR PETER HUGGINS The late Peter Huggins joined the RAF Volunteer Reserve in 1938, and was a Bomber Command pilot on Wellingtons and Lancasters from 1942 until the end of World War Two. Post-war, he worked for the Ministry of Civil Aviation Flying Unit, and then the Decca company — his recollections of flying for Decca, taken from his extensive memoirs, are featured in this issue. Peter carried on flying in retirement, and piloted light aircraft until he was well into his 90s. He passed away during 2011.

GORDON RILEY Gordon was introduced to vintage aviation through his father, a Lancaster pilot during WW2. Having left college he was editorial assistant on Aviation News before founding Vintage Aircraft magazine, which he edited from 1976-86. Always interested in the histories of individual aircraft, Gordon has recently turned his attention to Hawker machines, and his book Hawker Hurricane Survivors was published by Grub Street in 2015. More recently he has collaborated with John Dibbs and Tony Holmes on the new edition of Hurricane: Hawker’s Fighter Legend (Osprey, 2017).

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OFFERED FOR SALE

Courtesy: Owner

North American TF-51 full dual-control Mustang S/N: 44-63473 Registration: D-FUNN Price: US$3,200,000 + V.A.T. if applicable

Courtesy: Owner

Messerschmitt Bf-109G-6 S/N: 440738 Registration: D-FMGS Price: €4,950,000 + V.A.T. if applicable

Courtesy: Owner

Courtesy: Owner

Vickers-Supermarine Spitfire FR XVIIIe S/N: TP280 Registration: D-FSPT Price: £1,950,000 + V.A.T. if applicable

Messerschmitt Bf-109G-12 (Dual-Control) S/N: 440738. Registration: D-FMGZ Sold with interchangeable DB605 and RR Merlin Q.E.C.s Price: €6,950,000 + V.A.T. if applicable

+1800.210.1951

News

NEWS EDITOR: TONY HARMSWORTH

E-MAIL TO: [email protected] TELEPHONE: +44 (0)7791 808044 WRITE TO: Aeroplane, Key Publishing Ltd, PO Box 100, Stamford, Lincolnshire PE9 1XQ, UK

P-47D Dottie Mae flies

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HE only surviving Republic P-47D Thunderbolt with combat history in the European theatre of operations (ETO) flew for the first time in 72 years on 22 June at Caldwell Industrial Airport, Idaho, with John Maloney at the controls. The fighter, 42-29150, was recovered from a depth of 600ft at the bottom of the Traunsee lake in Austria by Sandy Air Corp of Innsbruck in June 2005, and has been restored by Mike Breshears and his team at Vintage Airframes LLC over the past seven years with the aid of blueprints obtained from the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum. Built during the summer of 1944 at Evansville, Indiana, ’29150 was assigned to the 511th Fighter Squadron, 405th Fighter Group. Part of the 9th Air Force in France, the unit provided air support ahead of the US Third Army as it advanced eastward across France and into the Low Countries and Germany. Regular pilot Lt Larry Kuhl named the aircraft after his then wife, Dottie Mae, with the nose art — based on the Alonso Vargas ‘Santa’s Little Helper’ illustration on the December 1945 page of the Esquire magazine pin-up calendar — being painted on the port cowling by the unit artist, SSgt Samuel L. Kirschenbaum. The aircraft, wearing the codes K4-S, was to fly an impressive total of 93 combat missions, destroying at least three aircraft on the ground: on 16 April 1945, flying from Ophoven, Belgium, the P-47s of the 405th FG

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attacked an airfield on the outskirts of the city of Magdeburg, where a mixture of Luftwaffe bombers and fighters were parked in the open. The group claimed 69 aircraft destroyed and 48 damaged, pilots from the 511th being responsible for 39 and 18 of those respectively. Larry Kuhl flying ’29150 scored three destroyed and one damaged. This particular ‘Jug’ was damaged four times in combat. On 1 May 1945, operating from Kitzingen, Bavaria, 12 Thunderbolts from the 511th flew a ground attack mission just to the southeast of Munich, K4-S taking a hit from ground fire in the turbocharger housing in the rear fuselage. After rapid repairs in one of the hangars recently vacated by the Luftwaffe, the following day Kuhl took ’29150 up on a 50-minute test on what was to become his last flight in Dottie Mae. On 8 May, the date of its

ABOVE: The original cowling, with the ‘Santa’s Little Helper’ artwork which was painted on ’29150 by SSgt Kirschenbaum from the communications section of the 511th FS. JIM RAEDER

final mission, K4-S had moved with the rest of the 511th FS to an airfield at Straubing in lower Bavaria. Later that day, 2nd Lt Henry Mohr was on his 15th

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mission with the unit, flying K4-S low over a PoW camp at Ebensee to alert the prisoners to the prospect of imminent liberation. Mohr got too low over the Traunsee, the propeller blades hitting the water. He was soon rescued by the locals, and Dottie Mae sank to the bottom, becoming the last USAAF fighter lost on a combat mission in the ETO. Restoration crew chief Mike Breshears, a US Air Force veteran, says: “This is the most complicated airplane I’ve ever worked on and probably will ever work on. It’s a very tough airplane to build, but is now the most accurate and historically correct P-47 in the world”. During the rebuild, Larry Kuhl visited the Vintage Airframes hangar to examine his old aeroplane, as did one of the original armourers, Sgt Leonard Hitchman, and pilot Ralph VanKerhove, who flew the aircraft while with the 511th on one of his 19 combat missions. Mike Breshears continues: “It’s a great job, and it means a lot to let the vets see their heritage being restored and to be remembered.” The detailed restoration/conservation priorities for the project included preserving as much of the existing airframe as possible. Parts in good airworthy condition were cleaned and reused, slightly damaged parts repaired, replacement hardware was ‘new old stock’ where possible and, in the last resort, non-existent and impossible-tofind parts were rebuilt. New material was

ABOVE: The P-47 coming in to land, showing the yellow-painted cowling and canopy rail worn by 511th FS aircraft. This ‘Jug’ originally arrived in Europe at Liverpool docks in October 1944, and was air-tested at Speke. JIM RAEDER

clearly marked, and the original fuselage skins bearing the names of the groundcrew and the original nose artwork have been conserved for future display. The skins on the aeroplane were replaced, but flak repairs in the lower rear fuselage have been retained. Original production details have been reproduced, including the Alcoa and Reynolds Aluminum watermarks on the skins and ribs, and the original factory worker pencil marks, graffiti and stamps from the Evansville plant are recreated on the new skins in the exact locations as found on the originals. Artwork has been applied — by brush, as in period — and although the ‘Vargas girl’ nose art had not been repainted prior to the first flight, it will be

added to the port-side cowling soon. The Pratt & Whitney R-2800 engine was beyond repair, and a replacement unit has been built up by Anderson Aeromotive at Grangeville, Idaho. The aircraft is owned by Jack Croul, a World War Two B-17 navigator who also has a P-38L Lightning, 44-26981, in his Allied Fighters collection at Chino, California. Croul flew 33 missions as a lead navigator with the 96th Bomb Group, the ‘Snetterton Falcons’, from East Anglia. His F6F-3 Hellcat, BuNo 08825/ N4965V, is under restoration to fly in the Vintage Airframes LLC workshop at Caldwell.

ABOVE: Chino, Californiabased pilot John Maloney lands in P-47D 42-29150/ N47DM at the conclusion of its first flight in 72 years at Caldwell, Idaho on 22 June. JIM RAEDER

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News August 2017

Hurricane I P2902/ G-ROBT, wearing its original No 245 Squadron markings, getting airborne at Elmsett on 19 June.

KEVIN ELLIS

Another airworthy Hurricane I

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AWKER Hurricane I P2902/G-ROBT made a successful first test flight from Elmsett Airfield in Suffolk on 19 June with Stu Goldspink at the controls, following a complete rebuild by Hawker Restorations. The company, which recently moved to Elmsett from Milden (see News, Aeroplane June 2017), has now completed the restoration of a grand total of 10 Hurricanes, with more to come. The fighter is owned by Anglia Aircraft Restorations, and will join its collection at Duxford alongside Fury ISS G-CBEL, Spitfire XIV MV293/ G-SPIT and TF-51D 44-84847/G-TFSI Miss Velma. This Gloster-built Hurricane served with No 245 Squadron at Hawkinge in late May 1940, covering the retreat from Dunkirk. On 31 May, while being flown by Plt Off Kenneth McGlashan on a coastal patrol over northern France, it took hits on the windscreen and through the cooling system from an intercepting Messerschmitt Bf 109E. McGlashan was slightly wounded and partially blinded by oil and glycol splashing into his face, but managed to make a successful forced landing, after which he was rescued by British soldiers from some

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French colonial troops who imagined him to be German. McGlashan returned to the UK on the famous Thames paddle steamer PS Golden Eagle. After disembarking at Margate, he was taken back to Hawkinge, and continued to serve with 245 throughout the Battle of Britain. The predominantly intact Hurricane hulk was excavated from under the sand during 1989 by a team from the Dunkerque Aero Club. After a period of storage it was acquired in 1994 from a French aviation museum in trade for a

Bf 109E and repatriated to the UK. The aircraft has been configured exactly as it was when it flew its last mission at Dunkirk, including all the appropriate flare mechanisms, parachute tubes, and ‘short’ Merlin engine with small radiator. Further work continues at Hawker Restorations on Hurricane I V7497/G-HRLI, a Battle of Britain veteran which was shot down over Deal on 30 September 1940 while being flown by Plt Off Everett Rogers from No 501 Squadron at Kenley. Rogers, who had

GRANSDEN HURRICANE AND FURY FOR BROOKLANDS BROOKLANDS Museum announced on 29 June that the Cambridgeshire Bomber and Fighter Society (CBFS) has agreed to place its Hurricane I, L1639, and Hawker Fury ‘K1928’ on permanent display at Brooklands once their restorations are completed in several years’ time. A team of Brooklands Museum volunteers will be assisting the society’s own restoration volunteers at their Little Gransden workshop, as and when this work can be fitted in around the restoration of the museum’s own Hurricane and other projects on which these volunteers are working. L1639 was one of the first batch of 100 Hurricanes completed at Brooklands and served with No 85 Squadron before being shot down in France in 1940, while K1928 was from the first batch of 21 examples of the Fury to be built.

destroyed a Dornier Do 17 on 15 September, baled out, and went on to become a bomber pilot flying the Handley Page Halifax. This Hurricane will be the first to benefit from the increased capability in-house to manufacture wings at the new Elmsett base. It is co-owned between Hawker Restorations and Peter Kirkpatrick, an eminent neurosurgeon based in Cambridge, who is also an accomplished pilot. Tony Ditheridge, the founder of Hawker Restorations, says: “Work is also under way on the next in-house project, a Hurricane I which is to be configured as a two-seater, a sympathetic conversion as seen on Hurricanes used in North Africa, giving a more conventional Hurricane appearance than that of the factory-built ‘bubble’-canopy two-seat example. This will enable enthusiasts to experience the unique experience of being flown in a Hurricane alongside a Spitfire. This now paves the way for the sale of our 50 per cent share in V7497, enabling us to continue to build the two-seater project”. Any interested parties should contact Hawker Restorations by ‘phone on 01473 828707.

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August 2017 News

Sea Vixen damaged in belly landing

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OLLOWING its display at Duxford on 27 May, Naval Aviation Ltd’s de Havilland Sea Vixen FAW2 XP924/G-CVIX made a controlled wheels-up landing at its RNAS Yeovilton base after suffering hydraulic failure, pilot Cdr Simon Hargreaves emerging unhurt. A statement on 29 June confirmed that the structural damage to the airframe in what had by necessity to be a high-speed, flapless landing was more serious than first thought, including cracks on both tail booms, warping of the main bulkheads in the engine compartment and major damage to the gearbox. It is estimated that three to four years and £2-3 million will be required to repair G-CVIX. To contribute, visit www.navywings.org.uk.

ABOVE: Sea Vixen XP924 up on jacks the week after its belly landing, showing damage to the underside skins. An urgent appeal has been launched to find a major benefactor to underwrite the cost of repairs.

Bf 109G-12 comes to Headcorn

The stunning Bf 109G-12 D-FMGZ during its first airto-air photo session, being flown by Klaus Plasa off Usedom on 23 June.

RICHARD PAVER

THE Air Fighter Academy’s Messerschmitt Bf 109G-12 D-FMGZ made its first flight with a newly installed Rolls-Royce Merlin 500 engine at Heringsdorf, on the northern German island of Usedom, on 23 June with Klaus Plasa at the controls. Further successful test flights of the fighter trainer — which

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is based on a Spanish-built Hispano HA-1112 Buchón airframe — took place over the next couple of days, and the aircraft was then dismantled for surface transportation to Headcorn aerodrome, Kent, where it was scheduled to make its display debut at the biennial Aero Legends Battle of Britain

Airshow on 8-9 July. Depending on Civil Aviation Authority approvals, the G-12 may spend some time in the UK in order to participate in Aero Legends’ ‘fly alongside’ experiences with de Havilland Devon VP981/G-DHDV. The rebuild of the Buchón to Bf 109G-12 two-seat trainer configuration,

complete with a Daimler-Benz DB605 engine, was begun by the MeierMotors team at Bremgarten, south-western Germany during 2013, ’MGZ making its first flight as such on 4 August 2016. The framing for the two-seat canopy was built using a very rare, original G-12 canopy as a template. From early 1944, several Bf 109Gs were converted to two-seat trainers, fitted with a full set of controls in the rear cockpit. In order to improve the ‘usability’ of the machine, engineers from Hangar 10 at Heringsdorf recently removed the DB605, replacing it with the Merlin and propeller assembly previously fitted to Buchón G-AWHE. That aeroplane was exported to Germany in late 2016 following several years on the UK airshow circuit in a desert colour scheme, based at Humberside and Duxford. More next month.

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News August 2017

NEWS IN BRIEF TRAVOLTA’S 707 TO HARS

HARS

On 27 May, actor John Travolta announced that he will donate his ex-Qantas Boeing 707-138B, N707JT, to the Historical Aircraft Restoration Society (HARS) in Albion Park, 90 miles south of Sydney, Australia. The aircraft requires a lot of work to be put back into airworthy condition, the cost of this and the ferry flight being estimated at around A$1million.

AER LINGUS RETRO ‘DAK’

On 13 June Douglas DC-3 ZS-NTE was flown from Zweibrücken, Germany, to Shannon for repainting into historic Aer Lingus colours. It is scheduled to make a few display appearances in these markings during the summer. The aircraft was sold in 2015 by Springbok Flying Safaris to German owner Peter Adrian and is based both at Zweibrücken and Luxembourg airports.

ABOVE: The newly painted nose art on PA474. The red bomb symbols denote Berlin missions, the ice cream cones sorties over Italy, and the yellow bombs all other missions over Europe. COL POPE

BBMF Lancaster ready T

HE major overhaul of the Battle of Britain Memorial Flight’s Avro Lancaster I PA474 was completed by a team from the Aircraft Restoration Company in the new Stephenson hangar at Duxford on 26 June, and the bomber was due to fly back to its base at RAF Coningsby by the start of July. The aircraft, which arrived at Duxford on 6 October 2016,

now wears different squadron markings on each side of the fuselage. The port side represents a No 460 Squadron, Royal Australian Air Force aircraft, W5005, with the codes AR-L. The nose art portrays a kangaroo playing bagpipes, the original aircraft having had two Scotsmen crewing alongside the Australians. The starboard side is painted with the No 50

Squadron codes VN-T, an aircraft commanded by Fg Off Douglas Millikin DFC, the grandfather of the BBMF’s current CO, Sqn Ldr Andy Millikin who flew 27 of his first tour of 30 missions on that aircraft. Colour scheme research was undertaken by ARC’s Col Pope, with original archive material being supplied by former BBMF CO Clive Rowley.

DUXFORD BUCHÓN REPAINTED IN DESERT COLOURS AT Duxford, Historic Flying’s Hispano HA-1112 Buchón C.4K-102/G-AWHK has been repainted to represent Messerschmitt Bf 109E-7 ‘Black 8’ of JG 27, flown by Leutnant Werner Schroer and based at Ain el Gazala, Libya, in April 1941. The new scheme was applied for the Flying Legends 2017 show at Duxford on 8-9 July, the weathered finish reflecting the harsh operating climate of the North African desert. The Buchón previously wore the colours in which it was operated for the Battle of Britain film in 1968.

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Schroer went on to be one of the Luftwaffe’s highest-scoring aces, finishing the war with 114 victories in aerial combat — second only to Hans-Joachim Marseille in the Mediterranean theatre. Post-war he initially worked as a taxi driver in Frankfurt, but went on to become head of the central protocol department at Messerschmitt-Bölkow-Blohm. He died in 1985 at the age of 66.

BELOW: The wellweathered Buchón G-AWHK was painted for the Flying Legends show. COL POPE

AEROPLANE AUGUST 2017

30/06/2017 12:40

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AVRO AIR FAIR SUNDAY 6th AUGUST WOODFORD AERODROME

Including FLYPASTS from an Avro ANSON and the BBMF Avro LANCASTER!! ¯Live Engine Run-Ups

¯Classic Cars & Vintage Buses ¯Steam Traction Engines ¯Craft and Trade Stalls ¯Ice Creams & Beverages ¯Hot & Cold Food ¯Live Music & Brass Band ¯Children’s Entertainment

(Merlin, Griffon and Cheetah) ¯Flight Simulator ¯Hughes 500 Helicopter ¯Large Model Air Club Display ¯Replica Messershmitt ¯Replica Spitfire

**The appearance of the Lancaster, Anson, Hughes 500 Helicopter, and the Live Engines are dependent on serviceability**

TICKETS available from www.avroheritagemuseum.co.uk or Pay at the Gate on the day

ADULTS £10

5-16 YEARS £5

UNDER 5’s FREE

Includes entry to the Museum and Vulcan Park. Dogs on leads welcome in outside areas.

Event open 10am - 5pm LAST ADMISSION 4PM

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NO TRANSPORT? We’ve got it sorted!

A free shuttle bus will be provided from the main gate, and back!

28/06/2017 10:32

News August 2017

SECOND ‘SHTURMOVIK’ AIRBORNE ON 15 June the world’s second airworthy Ilyushin Il-2 made its maiden flight at Novosibirsk, southwestern Siberia. The aircraft, ‘Red 19’ (c/n 1872452), was salvaged from Lake Krivoe near Severomorsk, Murmansk in June 2012 by the ICARUS Recovery Group and has been restored in Boris Osetinsky’s Aviarestavratsiya workshops at Novosibirsk, with support coming from Russia’s United Aircraft Corporation and the Ilyushin Foundation. The Mikulin AM-38 engine has been replaced with an Allison V-1710. The Il-2 is owned by Vadim Zadorozhny, who runs the Moscow-based Wings of Victory organisation and also has an airworthy MiG-3, several Polikarpov fighters and a Yak-3 in his collection. The ‘Shturmovik’ is due to make its public debut at the MAKS airshow at Zhukovsky from 18-23 July this year. ‘Red 19’ was operated by the 46th Air Assault Regiment of the Northern Fleet Air Force, and made a forced landing on the Lake Krivoe ice after sustaining damage during an attack by 16 Il-2s on the Luftwaffe airfield at Luostari on 25 November 1943. The pilot, 22-yearold Valentin Skopintsev, pulled his wounded and unconscious gunner Vladimir Gumennoy from the aircraft, which soon sank through the ice. They continued to fly as a crew, Skopintsev completing 51 sorties and three times being awarded the Order of the Red Banner. He left the military in 1946, and passed away in 1996.

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The immaculate Anson II on display at the National Air Force Museum of Canada. MARK PEAPELL

Anson II goes on show

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T the National Air Force Museum of Canada in Trenton, Ontario, restoration of an Avro Anson II has been completed, 12 years after it arrived at the museum following donation by Byron Reynolds of Wetaskiwin, Alberta. The manufacturer’s serial number and RCAF tail number of this particular Anson are not known, as it was nothing but a steel frame with two Jacobs L-6MB engines attached when it arrived at Trenton, the wooden wings and fabric covering having rotted away in the decades it spent stored outside. The completed machine has been painted in the markings of Anson II RCAF 7207, which served with No 31 Bombing and Gunnery School at Picton, Ontario. During the morning of 28 June 1942, while on an instrument training flight, this aircraft crashed into the water north of Waupoos Island in Lake Ontario, 10 miles east of Picton, killing Sgt William Craig Rodger of the RAF and Sgt Raymond Cecil Evans Brown of the RAF Volunteer Reserve. The team that embarked on the Anson restoration had just

completed the rebuild of Handley Page Halifax VII NA337, the only restoration of an original Halifax to ever be completed. The team first tackled the steel-tube fuselage frame, ensuring it was straight and corrosion-free. A number of tubes were replaced and straightened in the process.

The manufacturer’s serial number and RCAF tail number of this particular Anson are not known, as it was nothing but a steel frame with two Jacobs L-6MB engines attached when it arrived at the Trenton museum The entire wooden onepiece wing was dealt with next. In most cases, surplus Ansons were sold off to farmers, who generally cut off the outer wing panels to ease transportation. The wings on the Anson II are almost entirely made of wood, built in one piece from tip to tip. A limited

number of manufacturing drawings were obtained from the Aero Space Museum Association of Calgary, but many parts had to be constructed from photos, which added time to the process. Large sections of wing have had to be built to replace either rotten or missing parts. The horizontal stabiliser is an all-wooden structure and was completely rebuilt using some original drawings. The nose section of the mark was originally fabricated using moulded wood, so a new nose was constructed using the same process. In period the noses were built close to Trenton, by Bristol Aircraft Products of Canada at Belleville. The interior has been totally restored including the fitting of all the original radio equipment. The project has been a major challenge to the team, due to the use of differing materials in its original construction. The completed Anson is now on show close to the Trenton museum’s magnificent Halifax, representing a type that was used to train so many Halifax crews.

AEROPLANE AUGUST 2017

30/06/2017 11:41

August 2017 News

Yanks Air Museum collects Warning Star

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TEAM from the Yankee Air Museum (YAM) dismantled the former Chanute Aerospace Museum Lockheed EC-121K Warning Star at Rantoul, Illinois, during late June prior to a move to the YAM site at Ypsilanti, Michigan, which is due for completion in mid-July. The attraction at the former Chanute Air Force Base was the largest aviation museum in Illinois until it closed in November 2015. YAM acquired the aircraft the following March. Initially, the former US Navy machine is due to be displayed outside, next to a B-52 Stratofortress in YAM’s air park, but following completion

ABOVE: Although it was restored relatively recently, the EC-121 — pictured part-way through being dismantled at Rantoul during June — has weathered quite badly. YAM

of work to refurbish a large section of the Ford Motor Company’s old Willow Run B-24 Liberator plant during 2018 the EC-121 will move indoors. The aircraft is due to

be officially unveiled at the Thunder over Michigan show on 2-4 September. “We are honoured to be able to rescue this important piece of US naval aviation

history”, stated YAM executive director Kevin Walsh. “The Warning Star will become the centrepiece of a new exhibition, ‘High Spy and Everyday Espionage’. The YAM has made the herculean commitment to save this airframe and support is still needed to complete its recovery and restoration”. Please go to yankeeairmuseum.org/rescue to contribute. The EC-121, BuNo 141311, was delivered to the US Navy in August 1956, and flew in to Chanute for preservation in June 1983. Between 2000 and 2005, volunteers spent 11,500plus man-hours restoring the aircraft.

CANADIAN SPITFIRE IX FLIES

VINTAGE Wings of Canada’s Supermarine Spitfire IX TE294/ C-GYQQ made its first post-restoration flight at Gatineau Airport in Québec on 7 June. Pilot John Aitken conducted the test flight at low speed with the undercarriage extended, but the fighter has since flown several further times as it works towards certification. The aircraft was due to make its public debut on 1 July in a flypast over Parliament Hill in Ottawa on Canada Day, as the country celebrates the 150th anniversary of the Canadian Confederation. TE294, the history of which was outlined in the news pages of the December 2016 Aeroplane, has been christened ‘the Roseland Spitfire’. It is painted with the serial MK304 and codes Y2-K in tribute to Royal Canadian Air Force unit No 442 Squadron’s Flt Lt Arnold Roseland from Youngstown, Alberta, who was shot down over Saint-Martin-de-Mailloc, Normandy on 13 July 1944. It was 28-year-old Roseland’s 65th operational sortie.

The Vintage Wings of Canada Spitfire IX TE294 painted as the aeroplane in which Flt Lt Arnold Roseland died in Normandy on 13 July 1944. VWOC

Queen’s award for Tangmere museum ON 2 June, Buckingham Palace announced the granting of a Queen’s Award for Voluntary Service to the Tangmere Military Aviation Museum. Since opening 35 years ago, the museum has been staffed entirely by volunteers and has become one of Britain’s most respected and successful aviation museums. On hearing the news, Gp Capt David Baron OBE,

AEROPLANE AUGUST 2017

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chairman of the museum’s trust, said, “I am delighted that the work and enthusiasm of our 150 volunteers at the museum has been acknowledged by this prestigious award. We are all very proud of the museum, and its success could not have been achieved without the dedication and skills our all-volunteer workforce has brought to Tangmere over the years.”

At the museum, the cockpit section from Percival Provost T1 XF840 is being converted into a flight simulator, which will feature an audio soundtrack of the Alvis Leonides engine to help enhance the visitors’ experience of a ‘flight’ in this, the last piston-engined basic trainer type to have been operated by the RAF. Meanwhile, on 22 July an exhibition on Polish and Czech

pilots in Sussex during the war will open, running until 3 September. Deputy director David Coxon says, “We believe that some of the Polish community presently living along the south coast in Sussex and Czech nationals living in the county may not be aware of the vital role their compatriots played whilst serving in the RAF during the Second World War.”

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30/06/2017 11:41

News August 2017

Tony Agar’s Mosquito NFII HJ711 at Elvington. VIA ELAINE WILCOX

NEWS IN BRIEF TRISLANDER ARRIVES AT DUXFORD

The last airworthy Britten-Norman Trislander in the UK, G-BEVT, arrived at Duxford from Guernsey on 21 June, following donation by Aurigny Air Services to the Duxford Aviation Society’s British Airliner Collection.

109E FLIES AT BIGGIN

Messerschmitt Bf 109E-4 Werknummer 3579/G-CIPB, operated by the Biggin Hill Heritage Hangar, made its first flight in the UK at the Kent airfield on 13 June. Pete Kynsey was at the controls of the former Luftwaffe fighter. BEN DUNNELL

FRENCH SPITFIRE MISHAP

Spitfire PRXIX PS890/F-AZJS was badly damaged at LonguyonVillette airfield in eastern France on 11 June, when it nosed over onto its back on take-off. The pilot, former French Air Force Rafale display pilot Cédric Ruet, sustained only minor injuries. BEN DUNNELL

MONOSPAR COVERED

NAM

During late June, the fuselage of Britain’s only General Aircraft Monospar, VH-UTH, was fully fabric-covered for the first time in half a century at the Newark Air Museum. During the coming weeks final detailing work will be completed around the fabric joints before the fuselage is painted.

RNHF SWORDFISH OFF CIRCUIT IN 2017

The Royal Navy Historic Flight’s Swordfish I W5856 will not display in 2017. New valves for the aircraft’s Bristol Pegasus engine are having to be sourced, but it will not be possible to produce and clear them for use on the Fairey biplane in time to participate in airshows this season. If W5856 is able to fly this year, it will be test-flown and undertake conversion of a new pilot in readiness for 2018. BEN DUNNELL

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MOSQUITO FOR EAST KIRKBY TV959 flies in Seattle TONY Agar’s de Havilland Mosquito NFII, HJ711, will move to a new home at the Lincolnshire Aviation Heritage Centre at East Kirkby during the autumn, having spent the past 30 years with the Yorkshire Air Museum at Elvington. Tony expressed excitement at the new home and the additional facilities that will be available there, allowing him to complete work to enable the Merlin 25s fitted to HJ711 to be run in the airframe for the first time in more than 70 years. Tony began the rebuild project back in 1971, and since then has assiduously sourced parts from all over the world. Planning for the move is already under way, and anyone who feels that they can contribute to the cost should do so via www.mossie.org/HJ711.

At Paine Field, Seattle, the recently renamed Flying Heritage and Combat Armor Museum’s Mosquito TIII TV959 made its first flight in the USA on 23 June. The aircraft has been reconfigured as an FBVI and painted in a No 605 Squadron intruder scheme representing NS838. Its maiden post-restoration flight, in a silver finish, was at Ardmore, New Zealand on 26 September 2016 (see News, Aeroplane November 2016).

Djinn completed at Toulouse A team of volunteers from Ailes Anciennes Toulouse, led by former French Army helicopter mechanic Claude Trainier, has recently completed the restoration of an SO1221 Djinn. This minuscule French helicopter relied on compressed air, ejected from blade-tip nozzles, to drive its main rotor. Using this concept, no mechanical link between the rotor and the engine existed, eliminating torque and thereby the need for a tail rotor. Directional stability was maintained by a rudder placed directly behind the turbine. Powered by a Turbomeca Palouste gas turbine, the Djinn prototype first flew in 1953. 178 were built, and used mainly by the Aviation Légère de l’Armée de Terre (ALAT, French Army Aviation) for liaison, medical evacuation and observation tasks. However, the propulsion system limited the Djinn’s performance, especially in hot climates like Algeria, so this

ABOVE: The pretty little SO1221 Djinn is now on show at the new Aeroscopia museum in Toulouse. MAXIMILIAN MEINDL

technology was not pursued in later developments. The newly restored Djinn is a composite machine. After the team had restored another Djinn for the Le Bourget, Paris-based Musée de l’Air et de l’Espace in 2010, the opportunity arose to recover the substantial remains of two additional aircraft, including

major components of serial number 81, as well as a batch of spares. Work on the second Djinn started immediately. Nevertheless, it took six years to complete the ground-up restoration. Painted in ALAT colours, the Djinn has now gone on public display in the Aeroscopia museum in Toulouse.

AEROPLANE AUGUST 2017

30/06/2017 11:42

PROJECT UPDATE

PR Spitfire under way in Sweden

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t an undisclosed location in the Stockholm area, Spitfire PRIV BP923 is being restored to airworthiness. Acquired by Sven Kindblom in the early 1990s, the photo-recce machine has history both with the RAF and the Soviet Air Force. Only 229 PRIVs were built, BP923 being delivered to No 1 Photographic Reconnaissance Unit at RAF Benson, Oxfordshire on 30 March 1942. In August 1942, it was one of three PRIVs selected to fly to the Soviet Union as part of Operation ‘Orator’, in support of convoy PQ18 bound for Murmansk. The aircraft was ferried on 31 August to RAF Wick, northeastern Scotland, continuing

via Sumburgh to Afrikanda near Kandalaksha the following day. Once ‘Orator’ was completed, BP923 was handed over to the Soviet Air Force on 18 October. Between 1942 and 1944, a total of 11 PRIVs were transferred to the Soviets, and BP923 was one of several that served with the 118. Otelnnyj Razvedyvatelnyj Aviatsionnyj Polk (118th Independent Reconnaissance Aviation Regiment). During a sortie to Altenfiord on 4 September 1943, searching for the German battleship Tirpitz, BP923 crashed at Vaddasgaisa in northern Norway. The pilot, Vladimir Solovkin, was killed. Rediscovered in 1972, the wreck was recovered in 1989. Kindblom is well known to Spitfire operators around the

ABOVE: Spitfire PRIV BP923 under rebuild in a jig in Sweden. It will emerge as the only survivor of this variant. JAN FORSGREN

world, having built major assemblies during the past 25 years, and the restoration is now picking up speed. The exact identity of the aeroplane had previously been open to question, but the numerals ‘923’ can be read in two places, including on the rim of the camera opening. No completion date has yet been

set, but when BP923 is finished it will be the sole survivor of a previously extinct Spitfire variant, and the earliest surviving photographic reconnaissance Spitfire. The colour scheme is yet to be decided upon, although Kindblom is considering finishing BP923 in Russian markings.

P-51D unveiled in Italy THE Collezione Marchi-Luciano Sorlini officially unveiled its latest acquisition during the annual open day at San Martino Gusnago airfield in Mantua, northern Italy, on 21 May, in the shape of the ex-Maurice Hammond P-51D Mustang 44-13521 Marinell. The fighter, which was restored by Maurice in his workshop at

Eye, Suffolk, was operated from Hardwick, Norfolk as G-MRLL between 2008-16. It is now registered as N383FJ. Also making its debut at the event was the collection’s former Italian Air Force North American T-6, MM53785/ I-HRVD, which is painted in an RAF livery with the serial KF729. ABOVE: Packed up and ready to go into a container at Duxford in mid-May, Spitfire I P9374 is now registered N92SQ, and flew again at Brookhaven, New York on 26 June. COL POPE

SPITFIRE P9374 FLIES IN NEW YORK

ABOVE: A familiar sight in the UK for many years, Maurice Hammond’s old P-51D Marinell at San Martino Gusnago on 21 May.

DANIELE MATTIUZZO

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SPITFIRE Ia P9374 made its first flight in the USA on 26 June at Brookhaven Calabro Airport, New York State with John Romain at the controls, having left Duxford in a crate on 18 May. The former No 92 Squadron fighter, which first flew following rebuild at Duxford in September 2011, made a world record price for a Spitfire at auction in July 2015, achieving £3,106,500 including premiums and taxes. It is now registered N92SQ and owned by Ronald Lauder, the son of Estée and Joseph Lauder, founders of the Estée Lauder Companies.

www.aeroplanemonthly.com 15

30/06/2017 11:42

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27/06/2017 10:57

Comment

Hangar Talk STEVE SLATER

Comment on historic aviation by the chief executive of the UK’s Light Aircraft Association

I

t was interesting to note that, in an airshow audience survey commissioned by the CAA as part of its review of the more stringent regulations imposed following the Shoreham tragedy, one of the prime concerns expressed was the declining variety of performances. It isn’t helped, as Richard Paver wrote in the July Aeroplane, by the emasculation of civilian classic jet operations in the UK. Soaring costs and reducing display opportunities mean an ever-increasing number of these aircraft are being sold overseas, while all British civil-registered Hawker Hunters still remain grounded post-Shoreham despite the Air Accidents Investigation Branch report having not confirmed any mechanical issues with the aircraft. Why? The CAA restrictions on display airspace are also a factor. These days, many venues are restricted to an ever-tighter ‘box’ with no-fly zones over surrounding buildings and minimum heights above roads and railways. For some lowerpowered or less manoeuvrable aircraft the situation can become virtually impossible. Even for pilots of higherpowered aeroplanes, many of whom fly airshows for personal pleasure, there is a feeling that flying in such constrained conditions is neither comfortable, nor safe, nor fun; therefore, they are turning their backs on some displays. Thankfully there is still no shortage of organisers and performers who are dedicated to offering broad entertainment. The opening display of the season at Duxford experimented with a much wider range of aircraft, from World War One veterans and 1930s racers to the ear-splitting Rafale. The

AEROPLANE AUGUST 2017

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One of many well-attended events at the Jet Age Museum, which has recently been honoured by way of the Queen’s Award for Voluntary Service. JAM

Flywheel event at Bicester used the unobstructed into-wind grass airfield to full advantage, culminating in a spectacular dogfight between Spitfire MH434 and a Hispano Buchón flown by ex-Red Bull Air Race pilots Paul Bonhomme and Steve Jones. Sometimes, even a relatively low-key display can be enhanced by a bit of creative thinking. At a recent Old Warden event, Tiger Moth pilot Scott Butler came up with the idea of using a couple of flypasts to link the initial flying training ‘effects of controls’ demonstrations with the commentary to show how the elementary trainer would have been used. Simple, fun, creative — and added variety. The Queen’s birthday honours list, published last month, gave due recognition to an oft-unsung area of aviation heritage. Sebastian Cox, head of the RAF Air Historical Branch, was awarded the OBE for his services to the RAF and to aviation heritage.

The AHB was first established There was suitable royal in 1919, in recognition of the recognition last month for the need of the fledgling RAF to Jet Age Museum at have an official history of Gloucestershire Airport, too. British air operations in the The museum and its First World War. It volunteers received the subsequently has become Queen’s Award for Voluntary both the custodian of the air Service 2017, an accolade force’s records and official created by the Queen in 2002 diaries, and performs an to mark her Golden Jubilee, important role in offering recognising excellence in official narratives of past voluntary activities carried out actions (often by community classified) to groups. The chair of the help inform Housing current military assessment committee locally built planning. aircraft praised the Jet Age Today based the Museum for promoting including at RAF Gloster and preserving Northolt, Javelin and Gloucestershire’s role whence it Meteor and moved from replicas of the in world aviation Bentley Priory pioneering in 2008, the E28/39 jet AHB is headed by Cox, who and a pre-war Gamecock, the in 1996 became the first JAM received particular civilian to lead the branch, comment from the chair of the succeeding as he did a string assessment committee Sir of high-ranking RAF officers Martyn Lewis for providing an who had previously held the educational resource and post. The honour, as we head “their work in promoting and into the year leading to the preserving the history of service’s centenary, is timely as Gloucestershire’s role in world well as fully deserved. aviation”. Well done all. ■

www.aeroplanemonthly.com 17

29/06/2017 09:35

■

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22/02/2017 14:28

Comment

DENIS J. CALVERT

Flight Line

Recollections and reflections — a seasoned reporter’s view of aviation history

M

any years ago, an American friend related an amazing — if seemingly unlikely — story concerning the Vietnam War in which, as you may recall, both American and South Vietnamese forces used the Douglas A-1 Skyraider and the North American T-28 Trojan in the ground attack role. Observant readers will already have noticed that the USAF ‘star and bar’ insignia is identical in shape to that of the South Vietnamese Air Force; only the colours are different. What my friend told me was that the national markings on these types were, in some cases, interchangeable. The actual insignia was painted on a thin sheet of aluminium, which was slid into a suitably sized metal frame on the aircraft’s rear fuselage. Thus, on any given day, the decision could be taken whether to fly that particular mission on behalf of the USAF or the SVAF. Fanciful? Yes, that was my first reaction, but the possibility that there might be some truth in it stayed with me over the years. My chance to pursue the matter came when I was penning a book review on an American publication on the Skyraider for a UK aviation magazine. At the end, I related this improbable story and asked if any reader could throw further light on it. Months passed. From the 30,000 readers came… absolutely nothing. Then, out of the blue, I had a response from an American Airlines captain who, in an earlier life, had flown USAF C-130s in South-east Asia. He confirmed that the ‘slot-in’ national insignia really did exist on some T-28s and that, while he’d not actually seen it, he didn’t doubt that the same thing was done with A-1s. Confusing the enemy is something air forces have

AEROPLANE AUGUST 2017

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The ‘prototype’ Scott Furlong Predator at Biggin Hill on 19 September 1964. Definitely one of aviation’s more convincing fakes… DENIS J. CALVERT

tried, with varying degrees of success, over the past 100 years. Sometimes, the subterfuge involved is so obscure that it’s more likely to end up confusing the perpetrator than the opposition. The RAF’s use of serial ‘blackout blocks’ is a case in point. Introduced in the lead-up to World War Two,

could just have had some effect in wartime, the authorities persevered with it well into the Cold War period, by which time it had long outlived its usefulness and was fooling nobody. As to the British civil register, until relatively recently registrations were allocated on a strictly sequential basis, with

I noted with glee that the first two production Carvairs were to be G-ARSD and G-ARSF, and that G-ARSE was “not to be allocated” the idea was to suggest, by the use of non-contiguous serials, that the number of aircraft produced was greater than it actually was. As an example, had the RAF decided to order the Scott Furlong Predator*, the initial production run of 100 might have been allocated XY101XY150, XY220-XY249 and XY300-XY319. While this ploy

no exceptions. Yes, The Aeroplane did have Auster Autocrat G-AERO and the prototype Aviation Traders Engineering Ltd Accountant was G-ATEL, but these were not the rule. Any sequence of letters that might be considered even vaguely smutty was avoided with the straightest of straight faces. As a young lad, I can remember

reading the monthly list of new registrations in Air Pictorial and noting with a certain amount of glee that the first two production Aviation Traders Carvairs were to be G-ARSD and G-ARSF, and that G-ARSE was “not to be allocated”. As Frankie Howerd might have remarked, “Titter ye not”. * The fictional VTOL Scott Furlong Predator was constructed for the ITV drama series The Plane Makers, which aired from 1963-65. Carrying the serial XS341 (which was actually allocated to a Northrop Shelduck target drone), its design had more than a hint of Fairey Delta 2 about it. It may not be coincidental that the recordbreaking FD2 WG774 was rebuilt around this time to its new, ogival-wing configuration as the BAC 221. Did the Predator make use of some of the discarded airframe components?

www.aeroplanemonthly.com 19

26/06/2017 16:44

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29/06/2017 12:31

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27/06/2017 11:30

Skywriters

In association with… WRITE TO: Aeroplane, Key Publishing Ltd, PO Box 100, Stamford, Lincolnshire PE9 1XQ, UK E-MAIL TO: [email protected], putting ‘Skywriters’ in the header

★ LETTER of the MONTH ★ In every issue, the writer of our Letter of the Month wins a £25 book voucher to spend with leading military and transport publisher Crécy. Close call in the corridors

On 29 September 1970, I had a most odd occurrence when I was called out from stand-by duty to fly an Argosy to Wildenrath in Germany. It was a very short-notice event, and I was left in no doubt that I had to get there quickly. It was dark by the time we arrived, and we were met by a beflagged staff car and a very irate group captain, who bade me to come with him. He asked if we had brought parachutes with us, and was even angrier when I replied that that was not Air Support Command’s policy any more! We went to the station operations room, and there I met the C-in-C RAF Germany, Air Marshal Sir Denis Spotswood, who briefed me. Apparently the Russians that day had decided to close the three air corridors into Berlin, which were permanently open by treaty. They had announced a danger area in the middle of each, and their intention to hold ‘air exercises’ within those areas. Apparently, the Allies had met that afternoon and agreed that each would fly an aircraft into Berlin that night. My Argosy was the UK’s response for the northern corridor, while a French Noratlas was to fly up the central corridor, and a USAF C-130 the southern one. Needless to say, the Noratlas went tech and the C-130 didn’t show, so we were the only aircraft airborne that night. The weather was dreadful, with thick cloud and heavy rain, but we got airborne from Wildenrath for RAF Gatow in Berlin at around 21.00hrs and set off northwards for the Hamburg VOR radio beacon, which marked the entrance to the northern corridor. We had been given a variety of secret radio frequencies with which to communicate, but our main form of intelligence was coming from a USAF radar station called ‘Stargazer’. We, of course, were conducting ourselves

Making the sparks fly

I enjoyed reading the excellent piece on the White Waltham show in the May edition, and seeing how low the VC10 flew past. I thought this could be more than matched by one act I saw at the Abbotsford show

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under normal international rules, while keeping the military fully informed. As we reached the East German border at Magdeburg the weather cleared, and we felt hugely vulnerable in clear moonlight, much as those bomber crews must have done in World War Two. We had not gone far before my co-pilot Robbie Robinson let loose a torrent of expletives, and said that something was coming towards us. I banked the Argosy sharply to the right, and was presented with a blinding light heading rapidly in our direction. I called ‘Stargazer’ immediately, as this ‘thing’ shot past our starboard side and continued southwards in a great arc. ‘Stargazer’ replied that they had radar contact and that it was moving very fast. It was quite an event, which left us not frightened, but wondering what might happen next. In the event, nothing did. We were able to descend and approached Gatow without hindrance, but for the first time ever I was actually marshalled into the hangar with engines running. I presume that the latter was because the airfield was right on the East German border, overlooked by watchtowers and various other devices. I was taken to a scrambler telephone and debriefed by the air marshal, who told me to “get some rest”. Fearing that more mystery flying was still to come, we went to bed. We were up bright and early, but by that time things had got back to normal, and we just flew back to Benson. I was debriefed further the following week by security people, and we received some pretty weird ’phone calls at home for a while, but to this day I have no idea what it was all about, except that I suspect that we were deliberately fired at by some device or other. Martin Willing

in British Colombia in 1986, when Grumman F-14A Tomcat BuNo 162589 (right) of VF-124 ‘Gunfighters’ did a flyby so low that the tail hook touched the ground and left a trail of sparks. Gerry Manning

On the wings of a Comet

Nice article on the DH88 Comet (Aeroplane June 2017), which was brought back to life by my uncle Ron Paine, a good persuader for getting things done. At the time of the wing rebuild at RAE Farnborough I was employed by the RAF Institute of Aviation Medicine located at the Queen’s Gate end of the airfield. I designed quite a few installations for the institute’s Hunter T7 XL563 (now on display at the FAST Museum), which gave me access to the hangar where the Comet’s wing was being rebuilt. There was a big jig made to support it with a lot of very old ‘apprentices’ working on it. There might have been one or two young ones, though, learning from their masters! The RAE at that time had a very good carpenters’ shop where cockpit training replicas used by the RAF aviation medicine unit at North Luffenham were made to the IAM’s drawings. I was interested to note the skinning construction of the wings using what appeared to be lathes of timber (possibly 2in wide by 0.5in thick) laid diagonally, there being I think two layers, with the lower layer at the opposite angle. A coincidence occurred on the day I left Farnborough for a new job at Llanbedr. As I proceeded around the airfield saying my goodbyes, there was my uncle supervising the loading of the wing onto a low-loader! Keith Paine, Prissé-la-Charrière, France

The editor reserves the right to edit all letters. Please include your full name and address in correspondence.

www.aeroplanemonthly.com 23

29/06/2017 09:40

Q&A

COMPILER: BARRY WHEELER

WRITE TO: Aeroplane, Key Publishing Ltd, PO Box 100, Stamford, Lincolnshire PE9 1XQ, UK E-MAIL TO: [email protected], putting ‘Q&A’ in the header

Are you seeking the answer to a thorny aviation question, or trying to trace an old aviation friend? Our ‘questions and answers’ page might help

THIS MONTH’S QUESTIONS

THIS MONTH’S ANSWERS Helensburgh floatplanes

Q

Fairey Barracuda crews under training at RN East Haven with the curious Albion bus, ‘HMS Spurious’, behind. See Peter Jennings’ question.

Spurious bus

Q

The picture above was sent in by Peter Jennings and shows a Royal Navy Fairey Barracuda of 767 Squadron about to be waved off by the signaller at RNAS East Haven during flight deck training in 1944. Of particular interest in the background is what appears to be a modified Albion bus mocked up to simulate the ‘island’ of an aircraft carrier, complete with funnel and masts and a paint scheme to suit. Known as ‘HMS Spurious’, the vehicle was intended to accustom trainee pilots to the proximity of the island when landing on

a carrier. Can anyone confirm the bus type and state whether other RN training bases had such strange equipment?

Scion prop required

Q

Would anyone know the whereabouts of a propeller for a Pobjoy engine? Robin Brooks of the Medway Aircraft Preservation Society (MAPS) says the prop needs to be a 1930s-period singleblade item, around 7ft 4in long. It is required for the rare Short Scion floatplane under restoration to static exhibition standard by MAPS.

CORRECTIONS AND CLARIFICATIONS • The double-page cutaway contained in the July issue’s Database on the Rolls-Royce Merlin was missing some of the letter keys. Unfortunately, they also seem to be missing from the original! • Going back to the article on the Flying Bulls’ Bristol Sycamore in last November’s issue, Reg Austin writes to say that no helicopters were made at the Banwell factory, which was the home of Bristol

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Aerojets. He says, “When Raoul Hafner, and a few members of his wartime team at Sherburnin-Elmet, joined Bristol in about 1944, they were first accommodated to commence design work at the Banwell factory but were soon moved to Filton as soon as accommodation was ready for them there. The Sycamores were made at Filton until about 1955, when the Helicopter Division was moved to Weston-super-Mare.”

Walter Bell remembers visiting Rosneath, Scotland, as a 10-year-old in 1940 and seeing across the bay a number of seaplanes moored at Helensburgh/ Rhu. As well as two or three Norwegian Naval Air Service Heinkel He 115s, there were nine or 10 Northrop N-3PBs, also Norwegian. He would like to know if that was their main operating base and how many of the latter were operated. Norway purchased 18 N-3PBs in 1940, and with Canadian-trained Norwegian personnel they formed No 330 Squadron on 25 April 1941. The unit was based in Iceland and conducted convoy escort and ASW operations until the N3P-Bs were replaced by Catalina IIIs in June 1943. If seen at Helensburgh ‘in 1940’, were the Northrops flown over to the UK for temporary storage until Norway decided on their future? Norway purchased six He 115A-2/B-1s under a contract signed in August 1938. Following delivery to the Marinens Flyvevåben the floatplanes were involved in opposing the German invasion of Norway in April 1940 before the four survivors — numbers 56, 58, 62 and 64, given British serials BV184-BV187 — escaped to the UK.

A

Damage repair

Q

In the June issue, Tim van der Krabben pondered combat damage and wondered how repairs were done on both sides of World War Two.

A

Former museum historian Ron Lewis provides a comprehensive response from experience and with the help of a 280-page WW2 repair manual. In summary, he says that fabric repairs on control surfaces or larger areas like the fuselage of the Hurricane involved cutting away the damaged area and sewing replacement fabric in place, followed by doping and painting the new material. Damaged metal areas were not treated with adhesive patches but cut away with snips, metal of the same shape being laid over the damage, holes drilled and rivets applied. All damaged areas have to be rounded out so as to spread the stress. Typically, if more than one-third of the width of a panel is damaged, or more than 8in, the entire panel is replaced. Caution is advised to avoid raised surface repairs as these can affect airflow and change the flying characteristics of the aircraft; even raised rivet heads replacing former flush rivets can make a noticeable difference. Ron assumes that a similar approach to materials and metallurgy was applied by ‘the other side’.

Bombers over Guangdong

A

Further to the query from David Newbury in the June issue and the considerable response from readers as to the identity of the Japanese aircraft types, Paul Beston and Rob Greenly both suggest they are Kawanishi E7K singleengine, twin-float biplanes, codenamed ‘Alf’.

AEROPLANE AUGUST 2017

29/06/2017 09:00

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Or visit: www.corgi.co.uk 28/06/2017 09:11

CHARLES MASEFIELD’S MUSTANG

Charles Masefield with P-51D N6356T during its debut summer of UK air displays and air races, 50 years ago.

VIA SIR CHARLES MASEFIELD

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British air racing and airshows hadn’t seen anything like it: a P-51D Mustang howling through the skies. Fifty years on from his record-breaking King’s Cup triumph, Sir Charles Masefield remembers his time with the UK’s first American warbird WORDS: BEN DUNNELL

ONE MAN AND HIS MUSTANG

I

“

t made my career, really”. That might seem like a curious thing to hear Sir Charles Masefield say about a single aircraft he owned 50 years ago. However, the former managing director of British Aerospace Commercial Aircraft, commercial director of Airbus, president of BAE Systems and much else is entirely sincere. As he started out in aviation, North American P-51D Mustang N6356T proved a stepping-stone to bigger things. Quite apart from that, it was a lot of fun. There was success on the air racing circuit, there were invigorating displays, there was film work. And the Mustang was significant in other ways, too. Fifty years ago, airworthy Second World War fighters were barely known in British private hands. N6356T was Europe’s sole flying civilian P-51, affording many their first peacetime sight of the type. No wonder many recall the machine with such fondness as a formative element of their warbird enthusiasm. Having graduated from the University of Cambridge in engineering, the young Charles Masefield wondered what to do with himself. Given the influence of his father Peter, later Sir Peter, flying was a natural step. Charles had flown Chipmunks with Cambridge University Air Squadron, and now he and his good friend Lord (David) Trefgarne hatched a plan to fly the latter’s old Auster to Australia. It then transpired that Beagle — of which firm Peter Masefield had just been made managing director — had

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an Airedale, G-ASBI, that needed delivering to Aviation Services at Parafield near Adelaide, so they took that instead. Along the way in June 1963 they performed a number of sales demonstrations. Their journey back that December was in de Havilland DH90A Dragonfly G-AEDT, which in July-August 1964 they flew to the USA. “Neither of us had got a job”, says Charles, “so we thought, ‘What shall we do now?’” During 1965 the pair set up Sywell-based Treffield Aviation, making tomato and flower deliveries from Jersey with Avro XIXs, and using a Dragon Rapide for weekend joyriding. Something more potent was soon on the horizon.

Having passed through the hands of a number of US-based civilian owners, P-51D N6356T — formerly 44-74494 in US Army Air Force service and 9237 with the Royal Canadian Air Force — arrived in Luxembourg on 28 July 1964. It had been purchased by Benjamin Peck, managing director of freight charter firm Interocean Airways. The smart civilian-schemed aeroplane also spent time in Frankfurt, and was delivered from Germany to Biggin Hill on 6 August 1966. The Luton-based aircraft agent and entrepreneur T. D. ‘Mike’ Keegan took ownership and flew N6356T regularly himself. Charles Masefield recalls that Keegan may have received it in part-exchange for a transport aircraft. Whatever, the intention was to sell it on.

TOP: Fast-forward 50 years: Sir Charles at home with some of his racing trophies and memorabilia. BEN DUNNELL

BELOW: The Mustang soon after its arrival at Biggin Hill for new owner ‘Mike’ Keegan in August 1966. DENIS J. CALVERT

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26/06/2017 16:55

CHARLES MASEFIELD’S MUSTANG

BELOW: Charles’s spectacular Mustang flying became a major feature of air events in 1967. VIA SIR CHARLES MASEFIELD

“I’d seen this Mustang advertised in Flight”, says Charles today, “and David [Trefgarne] had seen it as well. It was sitting at Biggin Hill, and it had been advertised for months, every week. We wondered why no-one had bought it. David said, ‘Well, it can’t be of any interest to us’. We couldn’t afford it, and what would we do with a Mustang? I agreed it would have been nice, but it was ridiculous. Then David asked me, ‘When do you think we should go and see it?’ I replied, ‘As soon as possible’. The pair of us went to Luton, where Mike Keegan was, to see him in his office. We wondered whether it was airworthy: ‘Oh, yes, terrific condition’. It cost £7,500, and the snag was we didn’t have £7,500. “Mike said, ‘OK, how much do you have?’ We told him, ‘Very approximately, Mike — nothing’. ‘What do you mean, nothing?’ We said we didn’t have any ready cash available, but we had noticed that he’d had the Mustang on sale for month after month. How about a lease-purchase deal, where he gave us the aeroplane and we promised to pay him £1,000 a year for five years? To him, that wasn’t a very good deal. Compared with what, we wondered? Eventually he said we could make it £100 a month, £1,200 a year, for five years. We signed to guarantee that. In 1967, for two 24-year-olds, that was a huge amount of money.

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“The only place we could keep it was Shoreham. There were two engineers there, Dick Veall and Jimmy Jewell, who were both absolute fanatics for World War Two fighters. They could maintain it in the evenings and at weekends. “Having read the pilot’s notes, I climbed in. The most powerful single-engined aeroplane I’d flown was a 260hp Beagle Mk11. This thing had nearly 1,700, so I was wondering how it would go. I opened the throttle very slowly on take-off, using full right rudder. But I got it down to Shoreham. “The only way we could afford to pay the £100 a month was if I did displays. In the evenings I practised aerobatics over the coast, and I started off on the show circuit”. Those workups proved interesting. “What I found most difficult, amazingly, was a loop. I’d start at a good height, 3,000ft or something, go round a loop which I thought felt pretty good, came out and I was at 2,000ft. I’d lost 1,000ft — how did that happen? I tried again, making sure the loop was really round. Right speed at the bottom, out of the pilot’s notes — to loop it said 300mph; pulled the right g, and I lost 1,000ft again. Hmmm. “It took me quite a long time to work out that there was a technique

to this. First of all I added 50mph at the start, so 350mph, and instead of evenly pulling round the loop I reduced the back pressure approaching the top and let the Mustang keep climbing a bit while inverted. I found that instead of losing 1,000ft I could gain 500 or 600ft in a loop. Once I’d done that about 10 times I felt pretty confident, and I gradually came down until I was confident of starting at 20ft. The vital thing was always to check I had reached 3,500ft at the top of a loop when inverted — I then knew that on the way down I could let out the slack a bit to finish the loop at ground level.

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“During the first year I think I did 50 displays, because you could do two or three on a Saturday and two or three on a Sunday, getting paid a minimum of £100 per display. Quite quickly the £5,500 was paid off, and we were the owners. Then David said to me that since he hardly ever flew it, he’d drop out of the partnership. I kept it going at Shoreham.” No sooner had the 1967 airshow season started than Charles was off on an unusual assignment, further helping to pay off the purchase deal. “Mike [Keegan] said, ‘I can give you a start’, because the aeroplane was already booked for a film, Dark of the Sun. I could negotiate the price; all he’d committed was that the aircraft would be there. They were paying by the hour — I think it was £100 an hour — and for some reason I found it very difficult to get each take right first time, or even second time or third time! But they were very fussy, of course.” Wilbur Smith’s novel The Dark of the Sun was based around the Congo conflict of the early 1960s. The movie, known in Britain as The Mercenaries, was mainly shot in Jamaica but scenes involving the Mustang were filmed at Bovingdon, Hertfordshire on 24-25 May 1967. For this its dark red livery applied by Keegan was replaced by a rather dirty white scheme with Congolese Air Force roundels.

“That was great fun”, Charles Masefield remembers. “They had laid a simulated rail track on the perimeter of Bovingdon. A train would go along, with Rod Taylor [playing the lead role] on it, and I had to dive at it from different angles. They added the bursts of gunfire later on. We’d break for lunch, and Rod Taylor — covered in blood, in his mercenary fatigues, guns stuck in his belt — and myself in my flying kit would go off to the local pub. Walking up to the bar, everyone was looking at these two ridiculous figures. We stayed in the RAF mess

Island Caterers’ Board Trophy for the highest average speed at 233mph. “Nat Somers, the well-known former racing pilot who by that time had retired from flying, taught me all about air racing”, says Charles. “He watched me race a few times in the Beagles, and offered to tell me the trick. What we were all doing was taking off and flying low, just above the treetops, going up and down with the contours of the ground. He said, ‘All this contour-following is for the birds. You’re going much further than you need to’. “What he explained was to go round the circuit at very low level and zero your altimeter as you crossed the highest piece of ground — for example, 350ft above airfield level. When you landed you then noted what altitude registered below zero on the altimeter and that was what you set before take-off on race day, in this example minus 350ft. On the first race lap you very gradually climbed, aiming to reach an indicated altitude of zero precisely as you crossed the highest point on the circuit. Then you held zero rigidly, so you were flying dead-level round the circuit while the other people were going down below you and up again. That was lesson number one. “Lesson number two was how you turned round the pylons. Nat said that what everyone was doing was

Actor Rod Taylor — covered in blood, in his mercenary fatigues, guns stuck in his belt — and myself in my flying suit would go off to the local pub

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with the station commander, and Rod and Kenneth More, who was also starring in the film, would regale us over dinner with tales.” The other natural thing to do with the Mustang was air racing. “I’d been flying the air race circuit in Beagle aircraft — either an Auster, a Husky or an Airedale — so, my goodness, how about something that really goes?” N6356T’s inaugural race outing occurred on 20 May, just before its repaint into the Congolese colours. The occasion was the two-lap Manx Air Derby at Jurby. The P-51 didn’t finish among the leading places, but did win the

ABOVE LEFT: The summer of 1967, and N6356T is being fettled outside Shoreham’s Beagle hangar. KENNETH H. HARMSWORTH

TOP RIGHT: During its time with ‘Mike’ Keegan, the P-51 was put into this dark red scheme. Unfortunately, the paint soon cracked. VIA SIR CHARLES MASEFIELD

ABOVE: Pilot and mount at the August 1967 Halfpenny Green display. ADRIAN M. BALCH

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30/06/2017 09:32

CHARLES MASEFIELD’S MUSTANG

ABOVE: Two Beagle secretaries helping with the Mustang’s post-1967 paint rub-down. Looking on with the owner is engineer Dick Veall (right).

VIA SIR CHARLES MASEFIELD

TOP RIGHT: Receiving the King’s Cup from broadcaster — and pilot — Hughie Green.

VIA SIR CHARLES MASEFIELD

ABOVE RIGHT: The temporary Congolese markings for the filming of Dark of the Sun, Flight felt, made the P-51 “not half as nicely turned out as it ought to be”. Some onlookers at the time confused them with spurious RAF, or even Irish Air Corps, colours. PETER R. MARCH

flying towards the pylon and trying to go round it as tightly as they could without flying over it. At the same time, they were looking out for other aeroplanes, because that was the most dangerous bit. It got very crowded sometimes around pylons. They weren’t doing good turns; sometimes they got a bit of slip on, sometimes they went a bit wide and so on. “Nat said I shouldn’t do that at all. He said I should fly straight at the pylon and just pass it with my wingtip, and only when I knew I was clear should I focus on the turn. Then you could do a perfect turn, pulling exactly the amount of g that you need and watching the slip ball so it was right in the middle. You were actually going a shorter distance and you could concentrate on the turn. It made a huge difference racing the smaller, slower aeroplanes, but it was perfect with the Mustang because what it actually did was take you on a slightly different circuit. You were overtaking all the time in the Mustang, so you weren’t so worried than if you were trying to clip tightly round a pylon with lots of aeroplanes in your windscreen, trying to avoid them. I used those tricks on the very first race at Plymouth and, lo and behold, I won.” The event at Plymouth’s Roborough Airport on 22 July was the opening round of the 1967 National Air Races series. Apart from

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the P-51, it marked the championship debut of the purpose-built Rollason Beta. The handicappers knew Masefield and his Mustang from the Manx race, but this couldn’t prevent the combination from winning the two-lapper at a speed of 276mph. Says Charles, “I got hammered by the handicappers after that.” The Air Registration Board (ARB), predecessor of the CAA, wasn’t too happy either. Flight reported how N6356T was unable to take part in the second championship round, the Norton Griffiths Challenge Trophy at Teesside on 5 August, being “temporarily grounded […] pending ratification of its American airworthiness certificate”. There the Beta took its maiden win. Thankfully the problem was sorted in time for the series finale, the King’s Cup. Charles had been practising hard. “A few minutes along the coast from Shoreham at Pevensey were some Martello towers, and there were three almost in a triangular shape. I used to go round them with a stopwatch, timing each lap round these towers. First I’d go round pulling 3g at every corner and see how long that took; then I’d do a lap at 3.5g, one at 4g, another one at 4.5g and finally one at 5g. Looking at all the times, I found that 4.5g at each corner gave me the best lap time. I

always pulled 4.5g after that. Some years later I read that in the Schneider Trophy races with the seaplanes they always pulled 4.5g as the optimum.” The 1967 King’s Cup was being held at a new venue, Tollerton near Nottingham. Just 17 aircraft were to contest the six-lap final, its 12.5-mile quadrilateral course being the cause of some adverse comment due to the proximity of electricity pylons and power cables. The Mustang qualified via the four-lap second heat for the Player’s Gold Leaf Trophy. Charles and N6356T had a long wait to start the King’s Cup itself. “I took off a bit more than 20 minutes after the first aeroplane, which was a Hornet Moth. He was on his fourth lap when I was allowed to take off. At the dinner afterwards, John Blake did a fabulous charcoal drawing on a napkin of me in the Mustang, with a bubble coming out of the control tower saying, ‘Mustang, would you hold before you take off just to let the winner land?’ I’ve still got it somewhere. “The average speeds weren’t great — the King’s Cup was 277mph, but on the straights you were probably doing close to 400mph. Of course it was from a standing start, and then a tight circuit round the pylons. I had to lap the Hornet Moth six times. I’d no idea what race position I was in, but when I went round the last pylon to run in to the airfield I could see a

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I’d no idea what race position I was in, but when I went round the last pylon I could see a whole gaggle of aeroplanes ahead... It was fantastic handicapping whole gaggle of aeroplanes ahead. I didn’t know if I was last; I could see that I was going to overtake those aeroplanes, but I didn’t know who’d been ahead of them. Apparently there was nothing ahead of them. It was fantastic handicapping. All of us crossed the line within seconds.” The report in Flight was suitably vivid. “Right up until the Mustang had rounded the airfield pylon for the last time”, it said, “the result was wide open to the observer without a glycol-cooled slide rule. All eyes were on the Mustang; with a speed nearly 50 per cent up on the next fastest, and over twice that of the majority in the field, it was obviously destined to be either first or last…” As they made for the finish, “the ghostly white shape of the Mustang burst on the scene, having streaked wide past everyone”. The competition was headed by the Cessna 172 of John StewartWood, who at least went away as the year’s British air racing champion. Masefield’s winning speed finally beat the 236.25mph benchmark set by Alex Henshaw in Percival Mew Gull G-AEXF back in 1938. Charles’s “altogether nice” Mustang display after the King’s Cup impressed one Flight correspondent, but his mount’s “shabby white finish” less so. Over the winter of 1967-68, it came off. The owner designed a new red and white scheme. “We had to strip the white paint off, then the Keegan

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red, and after that some more white so it was down to bare metal. I rounded up all the secretaries at Shoreham to help wash it down and sandpaper it a bit. I conned Beagle into putting it into the paint shop, because they could spray it in no time at all. It really looked quite swish.” In spite of that, and a record 291mph speed in the first round at Teesside, the 1968 air racing season proved less successful. The Mustang came just 16th and last in the King’s Cup, Flight remarking: “The hearty Merlin has done a lot of full-bore racing and display flying at low altitude and it might just not be producing its usual herd of horses”. The winner was Ron Hayter in Hornet Moth G-ADKM. One of 1968’s low-level shows was especially memorable. “I got invited to do a display at Brands Hatch before the British Grand Prix. We agreed a price, which I think in those days was £150 or something. Then, to my horror, I found that there were only two items for the air display: myself and the Red Arrows. ‘Oh my God’, I thought. Clearly I’d be going first, because no-one can follow the Red Arrows. I was allowed to do aerobatics, but not below 1,500ft. “I held off about three or four miles from Brands Hatch, but unfortunately the order changed. The Red Arrows

were touring and they said they’d got to display now. They’d go first, I’d go second. They started displaying while I held off, and I saw the synchro pair looping in opposition and then disappearing right down, lost to sight from me, below the top of the stands. They departed in a blaze of glory and applause, and I was going to arrive on my own, doing aerobatics at 1,500ft. I’d be laughed off the planet. I thought, ‘Oh, bugger it’, so I looped down underneath the stands as well. “When I’d finished, I flew back to Shoreham, where the police were waiting for me. There’d been an ARB guy at Brands Hatch photographing, just to make sure. There weren’t any rules for the Red Arrows, but there clearly were for me. I got all the paperwork saying I was going to be prosecuted for low flying, dangerous flying, all the rest of it. I went to this wonderful solicitor, Peter Martin, who was the Royal Aeronautical Society solicitor. He was an aviation lawyer, and he specialised in getting his mates out of trouble. I said, ‘Peter, over to you…’ I don’t know how he did it, but Peter got me off.” Charles hardly had any problems with the aircraft. “The exhaust stubs would blow, but I just telephoned Cavalier in Florida and they had new ones parcelled up and sent to me. They were brilliant. The radiator started leaking, and I said to Dick [Veall] that replacing it would be a

ABOVE: The bespoke scheme applied to the Mustang in the Beagle paint shop. A Tiger Club logo was placed just below the cockpit. VIA SIR CHARLES MASEFIELD

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CHARLES MASEFIELD’S MUSTANG

TOP: Getting down to business at a 1968 show, watched by the crew of RAF Whirlwind HAR10 XP341 among others.

VIA SIR CHARLES MASEFIELD

ABOVE: One of the last air-to-air shots of Charles flying N6356T before the Mustang’s 1969 sale to Twentieth Century Fox.

VIA SIR CHARLES MASEFIELD

ABOVE RIGHT: For Patton, the P-51 was given USAAF camouflage with false serial ‘643147’. Ready to leave with it for Madrid-Barajas in early 1969 is Beagle 206 G-AVLK.

VIA SIR CHARLES MASEFIELD

massive job. But there was something called Radweld that you could put in car radiators to stop the leak, so we went down to the local car dealer, bought a tin of Radweld, put that in and it worked like a dream. “I had one hydraulic failure, when hydraulic fluid had leaked out. I didn’t know, or had forgotten, that the tailwheel was hydraulically operated, and when I landed it didn’t go down. The rudder got a bit bent, particularly as I started taxiing across the airfield. It was one of my evening practices, and ‘Pee Wee’ Judge, Beagle’s chief test pilot and a former World War Two Spitfire pilot, came tearing out of the bar — at six o’clock all the pilots used to go for ‘happy hour’ to talk about the day’s flying over a couple of beers — going, ‘Stop, stop!’ I wondered what was wrong, and he climbed on to the wing and shouted into my helmet, ‘Your tailwheel’s not down’. I cut the engine and the guys came out with a jack to tow it in.

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“The only other one was after take-off one day, when I pulled the undercarriage up and the undercarriage lever broke off in my hand. It was magnesium alloy, and it had corroded. I thought, ‘How am I going to get this down?’ It could have been the end. If I’d have had to land wheels-up, I’d have never been able to afford to repair the damage done to the propeller and so on. Luckily, a small stub of the lever was sticking up, and by gripping it there was just enough to latch it into the ‘down’ indent. “Again there was a ’phone call to Cavalier at Sarasota, Florida, and another undercarriage lever arrived in about four days. Amazing for a World War Two aeroplane. If it hadn’t been for Cavalier I would never have kept it going.” The big screen beckoned again in early 1969. “I got approached by a

lovely guy from Twentieth Century Fox, who came down to Shoreham. They were making Patton in Spain, and they wanted to hire my aircraft for the filming, together with me. They’d need to take the Mustang out of its lovely red colour and paint it up. I said, ‘OK, fine’. I flew the aeroplane down to Barajas in Madrid; myself and an American guy were going to share the flying, because after the first week I had to go back to Shoreham to deliver a Beagle 206 to Australia.” In a spurious USAAF scheme, N6356T filmed its part in Patton during February 1969. Ground attack scenes were the order of the day. “The great thing about it was George C. Scott, who played [Gen George] Patton — what a character he was. We were all staying in the Intercontinental, and in the lobby there was a bar, where Scott would be holding court. I’d creep round the edge, trying to get up to my room, and I’d hear this gravelly voice:

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FROM RED RACER TO MUSTANG SALLY ‘Maaaasefield, where the hell d’you think you’re going?’ ‘Just up to my room, George’. ‘No you’re bloody well not. You’re coming here for a drink’. You couldn’t get away from him. He was such a lovely guy, but, my goodness, he knew how to drink. I had Christmas cards from him right up until when he died. “At the end of the filming Twentieth Century Fox said it had gone pretty well, and they’d like to take the aeroplane back to the States to do more with it. They wanted to buy it, so we haggled. I was just about to get married, and with what we sold it for — which wasn’t very much in those days, but a huge amount to me and my new wife Fiona — we bought our first house, and an E-type Jaguar! “Actually, I couldn’t have kept it. The CAA was getting really uppity, saying I had to put it on the British register… Also, there was an engine overhaul coming up. It was nearly out of hours. There was no way I could have afforded to have a Merlin overhauled, so I was beginning to wonder what on earth I was going to do.” With that, Charles’s Mustang flying came to an end. He carried on racing, but in less potent machinery, winning the 1969 British championship in a Beagle Pup 150. Not until 1977 and the brief trans-Atlantic visit of P-51D NL5747 would British spectators again hear a Mustang’s howl. It took several more years for another one to be British-based, Stephen Grey’s example moving to Duxford in 1984. The combination of Masefield and N6356T had been ahead of the game. And how did the Mustang influence his career? “During the years I had it there was always a Royal Air Forces Association display

at Woodford, which I used to get invited up to participate in. The guy who did the briefing and organising was the then deputy chief test pilot there, Tony Blackman. I’d also got to know Tony at Farnborough, because from 1964-70 I was displaying either the Beagle 206 or subsequently the Pup”. In 1969 the government pulled the plug on state-owned Beagle, leaving its employees in the lurch. “The next morning the ’phone went, and it was Tony Blackman. He’d read that Beagle had gone bust, and wondered what I was going to do. ‘I haven’t a clue, Tony’. He’d just taken over as chief test pilot, he needed to recruit some more pilots, and he asked I’d like to join his test pilot team. I said I’d love to… ‘Excellent’, he said. ‘You and I are delivering a 748 to Mexico next Monday.” Charles spent many happy years at Woodford, becoming British Aerospace’s chief test pilot there when Blackman retired in 1978. No wonder he acknowledges the part played by the P-51. “Life is all luck”, he reflects, “and I’ve had luck all my life. Having David Trefgarne as a friend was huge, because without David we’d never have thought of the ridiculous idea of seeing if we could get the Mustang. Without that I’d probably never have had the offer of a job at Woodford, and without that I wouldn’t have joined British Aerospace — my whole career and life would have been different.”

ABOVE: Menno Parsons and Mustang Sally getting airborne at the Newcastle Airshow in KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa, last year. GERARD GRIESSEL/AIRTEAMIMAGES.COM

S

ome years after he’d disposed of the Mustang, Charles Masefield heard from one of its subsequent owners, who told him he’d got it “for a snip”. That ‘snip’ turned out to be US$1 million, somewhat higher than the figure for which Charles sold N6356T to Twentieth Century Fox. But the main thing is that the P-51D has carried on flying. Numerous well-known owners followed: Ed Jurist from 1970-75, David Tallichet from 1975-79, and Bill ‘Tiger’ Destefani until 1987. Destefani raced the fighter, re-registered as N72FT, with the name Mangia Pane. After nearly two decades with Hugh Bickel of Hollister, California — who painted it as 4th Fighter Group machine Iron Ass — and a short period with Long Beach-based Tom Dean, the Mustang was shipped to South Africa for new owner Menno Parsons and flown there for the first time in September 2010. Named Mustang Sally, it has become a regular performer on the circuit there.

A spirited pass during a 1968 Tiger Club display at Shoreham, with Flight correspondent Neil Harrison riding shotgun. VIA SIR CHARLES MASEFIELD

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D-DAY ALBACORES

CHANNEL Outmoded they may have been, but Fairey Albacores of a Royal Canadian Air Force squadron helped secure the English Channel during the months around D-Day WORDS: DAVID NICHOLAS

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ven by the time it entered service with the Fleet Air Arm the Fairey Albacore was something of an anachronism, a monument to conservative thinking when the original specification for a replacement for the Swordfish was written in 1936. The new carrier-borne torpedo bomber first equipped 826 Squadron at RNAS Ford in March 1940 and went into action at the end of May, attacking coastal targets around Zeebrugge. It

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EL STOP is somewhat ironic that this area of the Channel coast off Belgium and northern France was to be where it ended its combat career just over four years later, in the process becoming the last biplane to go to war with the Royal Canadian Air Force.

For much of the war there had been regular skirmishes in the English Channel and its approaches between Royal Navy light coastal forces and

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their Kriegsmarine equivalents. To support the RN motor torpedo boat (MTB) and motor gun-boat (MGB) flotillas, several Fleet Air Arm squadrons were based in southern England for night attack duties. Latterly these flew the Albacore which, armed with a variety of flares and 250lb bombs, proved itself well suited. However, in mid-1943 the Navy found that it required these units for other purposes, so RAF

Coastal Command was invited to assume the task. In the face of no little opposition from the Canadian government, the most available unit, No 415 ‘Swordfish’ Squadron, RCAF at Thorney Island, West Sussex, was selected. It ceased flying its Hampden torpedo bombers later in September. In a very complex arrangement the squadron, commanded by Wg Cdr

BELOW: Painted all-black for its night role, this Albacore in dispersal at Manston carries a full load of flares. The ASV MkII radar aerials on the wing struts and fuselage are apparent. VIA GRAHAM PITCHFORK

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D-DAY ALBACORES

Charles Ruttan DSO, was reorganised on a multi-flight basis. One flight operated the Wellington XIII from Bircham Newton in Norfolk, where the squadron HQ was also located, while the second was re-equipped with Albacores. Three weeks after notification of the change, six crews began conversion at Manston in Kent with 841 Squadron, which in November handed over the last of its aircraft to the Canadians. Painted all black, the aircraft were fitted with ASV MkII radar and VHF radios and could carry up to six 250lb bombs. One pilot, later to command the Albacore unit, was Flt Lt Norman Williamson. “The main task of the squadron”, he said, “was to attack all enemy shipping at night in the area from the Scheldt to Dieppe. The attack was made by dive-bombing, which, of course, necessitated visual contact with the target. This was not so difficult at night as it sounds.”

BELOW: The Albacore was the only biplane to be flown in action by the RCAF during World War Two, but No 415 Squadron achieved considerable success with it on Channel operations. NORMAN WILLIAMSON

The main prey was enemy E-boats that presented a real threat to Allied coastal convoys and had the potential to wreak havoc against any invasion force heading across the Channel for France. No 415 Squadron remained part of No 16 Group, Coastal Command, but ‘A’ Flight — often referred to simply as the Albacore Flight — led by Sqn Ldr D. T. J. Davis DFC had operational control devolved to the Vice-Admiral Dover. As many of the air defence radars along the South Coast could track

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surface vessels in the Channel, once airborne they were directed via VHF radio by the Fighter Command controllers. Codenamed ‘Deadly’, operations began during November, often being controlled by Swingate radar. To further broaden availability, the following month the flight sent a detachment back to Thorney Island. 415’s Albacores, which were flown by a crew of two — pilot and navigator — were soon in action. In early 1944 some RAF crews were posted in. Among them was Norman Williamson, who recalled to the author: “Many of the Canadians were at the end of their first operational tour and were returning to Canada. All the new RAF crews were starting second tours and were fresh from a so-called ‘rest’. Many of the new pilots had never flown a biplane, even a Tiger Moth, and our conversion was done on an old Swordfish I which we kept on the squadron as a ‘hack’. Conversion was simple — you climbed into the back cockpit of the Swordfish and, by standing up, you could just lean over the shoulder of the pilot in front and watch what he did, after which you had a go yourself. After you had done three circuits, you climbed into an Albacore, and having been shown where the bits and pieces were, you got on with it. “The Albacore was a good aircraft for the job, though its speed was predictably lethargic. Its engine was the Bristol Taurus II, the original sleeve-valve engine whose only drawback was an occasional ‘hydraulicing’ of the bottom of the

cylinder when the oil had not been cleared properly before a scrambled start. The normal armament carried was six 250lb SAP [semi armourpiercing] bombs in racks under the lower mainplanes. The bombs were fitted with pressure detonators; the first bomb of a stick went off just before, or on contact with, the water and the pressure wave caused a sympathetic detonation of the rest of the stick, the last bomb exploding at a height of about 250ft. The resulting shower of bomb fragments was sufficient to do considerable damage to any vessel and could tear large enough holes in an E-boat for it to sink in a few minutes.” The squadron’s first ‘star crew’ was Fg Offs D. C. Thomson and A. H. Bartlett, who made two attacks on enemy shipping during December 1943 and early January 1944. On both occasions they found some naval auxiliaries and barges just off the coast at Calais and bombed them successfully. On the night of 20 January they left Manston, with a second Albacore flown by Sqn Ldr Emerson Cowan, on another antishipping patrol carrying the usual load of six 250-pounders. Flying at 2,500ft they were vectored onto two destroyers sailing in line-astern some five miles off the French coast at Le Touquet. The squadron history described the events: “On sighting the destroyers the Albacores turned a complete circle to port before attacking the starboard bow of the leading destroyer. The bombs were released from 1,000ft

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in a dive and three were seen to explode on the destroyer’s stern where a big fire broke out. No flak was experienced during the run-in, but immediately after the bombs were released, accurate flak was encountered. The pilot turned to port after the attack, climbing and taking evasive action, but was then forced to dive for speed as the flak became more intense. They got away safely and returned to base unscathed.” Unfortunately, when attacking the second warship Cowan’s aircraft, X9280, flew into the barrage and was shot down with the loss of him and his navigator. But it had been a significant success despite the loss, and both Thomson and Bartlett were later decorated with the DFC for this action. Enemy night fighter patrols were established to counter the antishipping sorties but the controllers were generally able to broadcast timely warnings, though sadly Flt Lt John Acer’s aircraft did fall victim to a prowling ‘Nachtjäger’ on 7 February. Another of 415’s successful Albacore crews comprised Fg Offs Brasnett and Parnell, who on the night of 15 February were over the Channel when they were directed onto a fast-moving contact near Barfleur. In the darkness, they spotted the fluorescent wake of an E-boat moving at around 35kt and conducted a textbook attack, scoring a direct hit amidships. The battle in the Channel was a cat-and-mouse game and ‘A’ Flight made only two more attacks during the month. However, possibly due to improving weather, the tempo increased markedly in March. The Albacores recorded 16 attacks in the ‘narrow seas’, claiming hits on enemy shipping six times. Fg Offs Peter Mackie and Eric McFarland scored two, hitting a coaster on the

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first occasion, while on the second they were vectored onto an ‘M’-class minesweeper off Cap de la Hague. They hit it with at least one bomb, followed by a terrific explosion. The vessel was enveloped in smoke and a dull red glow. Thomson and Bartlett continued their run of success that month. On 2 March they attacked and damaged a small ship, and the next night Brasnett found success north of Alderney. Shortly after 05.00hrs, as the Coastal Command operations summary noted, they had “sighted four vessels in vic formation course easterly at high speed. Attacked the starboard vessel with six 250lb bombs. A brilliant flash was observed and

The shower of bomb fragments could do considerable damage to any vessel and could sink an E-boat in minutes the wake of this vessel immediately stopped.” Fg Offs Senecal and Burtch attacked the E-boats as well. Their first bomb was a near-miss but halted the vessel before their next blew the stern off another. Thomson and Bartlett dive-bombed a minesweeper off Berck-sur-Mer on 23 March, leaving it on fire. The following day Sqn Ldr Davis, the ‘A’ Flight commander, with Fg Off H. J. Thompson as his navigator illuminated a convoy off Dunkirk with flares, enabling Royal Navy motor torpedo boats to press home a successful attack. Brasnett kept up the pressure on enemy coastal forces when, on the 27th, he attacked a group of three ships, hitting the rear

vessel. However, one of the Albacores was badly hit during a strike on some E-boats, and Fg Off Arthur Hughes later died from his wounds. He was buried in Brookwood Military Cemetery. By this time 415’s Albacores were flying more than 120 sorties a month. April saw further successful attacks on coastal traffic, resulting in one vessel sunk and possibly seven more damaged. Sadly, though, the promising RAF duo of Mackie and McFarland were killed in Albacore X9117 on 9 April when, during a fighter affiliation exercise, they lost control in a steep turn at 500ft and crashed near Bosham, Sussex. In the course of an anti-shipping patrol on 21 April, Fg Off Oliver Mennie and WO Roy Leach were directed by Swingate radar against a group of up to 10 contacts that had been detected off Dunkirk. In the face of a heavy flak barrage they carried on their attack and hit an R-boat, which naval intelligence later assessed to have been sunk. Further south, Fg Off Broughton and Plt Off Hawkins damaged a ship in the mouth of the Somme that same night. In preparation for the invasion, the Albacore flight was concentrated at Thorney Island and increased in size to 20 aircraft. The deadly nature of the E-boat threat was brought home at the end of April when, off Slapton Sands, a group of them attacked some landing ships conducting a D-Day rehearsal and, infamously, more than 700 American troops died. The squadron mounted a detachment at Ford until mid-May, and on the 3rd this element encountered the enemy when Flt Lt Armstrong and Fg Off Cuddon attacked two small ships near Le Havre. Ten aircraft with a dozen crews were detached to Winkleigh in

TOP LEFT: The other element of No 415 Squadron flew the Wellington XIII on longer-range missions over the North Sea with a similar level of success as the Albacores. VIA OWEN THETFORD

ABOVE LEFT: WO Jack Dawkins, an observer on the unit in 1944. CANADIAN FORCES

ABOVE: An Albacore bomb load with armourers. The unit’s previous code letters ‘GX’ are painted on the bomb trolley. CANADIAN FORCES

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Devon on 8 May. Among other tasks they patrolled the amphibious training areas to protect the Allied landing craft from marauding E-boats. These aircraft, which also held stand-by at Bolt Head, were placed under the operational control of the naval HQ in Plymouth, but when airborne were controlled by radar stations in Fighter Command’s Exeter sector. Norman Williamson recalled the move: “About a week prior to D-Day, half the squadron with myself as flight commander was detached to Winkleigh, living under canvas. The aircrews, of course, took all their necessary gear with them in an aircraft. One crew were the proud owners of a motorbike, which they transported slung between the two unconnected legs of the fixed undercarriage. Some of the rest of us had pushbikes and they were simply strapped horizontally on the top surface of the lower mainplane. None of this seemed to make any difference at all to the flying characteristics of the aircraft. I suppose those that saw us thought it a bit odd, but we never had any repercussions any time we did this. We also took our old MkI ‘Stringbag’ hack down to Winkleigh with us to carry luggage and spares, but the pilot had a little trouble en route. He wandered southwards off course in cloud and cut adrift a barrage balloon in the Southampton area! “While at Winkleigh we used to bomb up each evening and proceed to Bolt Head to operate in the area down to Cherbourg and the Channel Islands. Bolt Head, near Salcombe, could not be dignified by the name of ‘airfield’ — it was simply a fairly level patch of grass on the tops of the cliffs, but somehow we managed to get in and out of it with no more aids than the regulation six gooseneck flares.” The Winkleigh element was very active, such as on the night of 17 May when Fg Off Eadie with a US Army Air Force navigator, Lt Pincknes, attacked a group of four E-boats and damaged one of them. Three nights later an RAF radar controller vectored Fg Offs McNeil-Watson and Tyler towards a group of seven E-boats located north of Guernsey. The former tipped his Albacore into a dive from 1,000ft and delivered an accurate attack that sank the last vessel in the line. They must have hit a second one too, as a reconnaissance the next day spotted a damaged vessel

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in the same area. This was followed on the night of the 23rd by two Albacores, flown respectively by Fg Offs Broughton and Wilson, hitting two vessels in a small convoy, resulting in one of the ships sinking. In the hands of Bill Brasnett and Tom Parnell, X8940/NH-R attacked a group of warships north of Port-en-Bessin in the early hours of 24 May. Making a dive attack from 2,000ft they scored a direct hit on the 924-tonne torpedo boat Greif under Kapitänleutnant Horst Freiherr von Lüttitz, which exploded and later sank. This was an effective demonstration of the airburst fusing detonation, as for the first time the bombs were fused with a Type 44 nose fuse that allowed the bomb to burst slightly above the target rather than on impact. Both these young officers were awarded the DFC for their series of successes, the joint citation stating: “On a recent occasion they attacked

a number of enemy vessels off the French coast. In spite of intense anti-aircraft fire the attack was pressed home with skill and daring and a hit was obtained on one of the ships. Some hours later they successfully attacked another enemy vessel. These officers displayed a high degree of courage and determination throughout.” The squadron’s crews had by now become expert in the tracking of enemy light forces and were able to carry out their task for the coming invasion with distinction. A few days prior to the landings, the Thorney Island element returned to Manston, but on 5 June it was given a seemingly bizarre instruction. Norman Williamson explained: “The day before D-Day we received orders to paint three broad bands of white paint on the top and bottom of our mainplanes and on each side of the fuselage. Although we did not know it at the time, this was the

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the aircraft coded NH-E1 attacked a force of three E-boats, causing one to turn turtle, while off Cap Griz Nez a couple of hours later Fg Off Mennie went after six more, his bombs straddling two of them and resulting in significant damage. Despite poor weather the Albacore flight continued its run of success, another E-boat being destroyed on the night of 10-11 June when it disintegrated after a direct hit. Williamson recalled: “The easiest target, of course, was the formation of E-boats, dashing along at 25kt or more. The resulting wake could be seen for miles and the racket their engines made effectively drowned out the sound of our aircraft for their gunners. When attacking such targets we would often get away without a shot being fired at us until the bombs had gone off. “The hardest targets were the slow-movers who heard our approach and reduced their speed to mere steerage way while we vectored back and forth over a target we could not see. We tried many a dodge to make the enemy gunner open fire so we could use the source as an aiming point. The best method we found was to carry a supply of empty beer bottles, which the navigator threw out in the vicinity of the target. The wailing sound made by a pint beer bottle turning over and over from a couple of thousand feet anywhere near the target made the edgy enemy gunners think that the fiends of hell were after them, and they obligingly opened fire!” These attacks were not without a significant degree of risk, and Sqn Ldr Gordon had a close call off Cap Griz Nez when a flak burst overturned his aircraft and he was just able to pull out above the wave-tops. The flight was particularly effective on the night of 23 June when one crew scored a direct hit on an E-boat and another damaged two more of these deadly craft. A third crew attacked another ship. ‘A’ Flight of 415 also had a daytime task. Allied shipping was still vulnerable to heavy German batteries at Cap Griz Nez, so the Albacores would lay a continuous smoke screen to deny the enemy gunners visual contact with the ships. For this,

six smoke canisters were fitted to the bomb racks, which emitted a dense stream of black smoke — the oily smoke made a real mess of the aircraft. A similar task came the way of Williamson. “It was shortly after D-Day that I had an interesting experience. The town of Caen had been surrounded and a small 2nd Tactical Air Force airfield had been set up just outside Carpiquet. The navy used a battleship and a monitor to shell the town of Le Havre for a couple of days preparatory to the attempt to capture it. I was sent down in charge of a detachment of the squadron to provide smokescreens for the capital ships in this operation. “We worked from Carpiquet, I suppose as the first Coastal Command detachment working from the European continent. The airfield was chockablock with Tempests and Typhoons and we came in for much good-natured ribbing, the usual remark being, ‘Are you left over from the last war?’ Most simply could not believe that operational biplanes still existed, much less ones painted in matt black night camouflage.” With the invasion successfully completed, the promise that had been made to the Canadian government had to be fulfilled. No 415 Squadron was withdrawn from coastal strike operations and transferred to Bomber Command. Thus on 11 July 1944 it flew its final Albacore sorties from Manston. The Albacore flight became No 119 Squadron, which formally came into being on the 19th. The change was unexpected, as the unit diary noted: “Bags of flap. It would appear that this squadron was transferred to 6 Group on the 12th, but someone did not tell us about it!” In effect, however, little changed, and initially Sqn Ldr Davis remained in command of this ‘new’ squadron. No 415 Squadron went on to add further laurels to its record, flying Halifaxes until the end of the war. Despite the protestations of the Canadian government, it had achieved real and significant success with the Albacore, and in the process carved itself a unique niche in the history of the Royal Canadian Air Force.

CLOCKWISE FROM LEFT: Albacore crews in a posed pre-flight briefing during the spring of 1944. NORMAN WILLIAMSON

Sgt F. D. Cruickshank checking the controls of one of 415’s Albacores. NORMAN WILLIAMSON

LAC B. A. Dickson adjusts the settings on the gunner’s position. NORMAN WILLIAMSON

The best way of making the enemy gunner open fire was to throw empty pint beer bottles out near the target

recognition marking for all Allied aircraft operating in the vicinity of the Normandy beaches, but to us, who relied on concealment in our matt black bomber with camouflage as the only form of defence, the order seemed to be one of the maddest we had ever received. In the event, there was little enemy surface activity in our area in the few days following the Normandy landings and so we were ordered back to Manston. We were quite glad to go.” At Manston the invasion period was one of sustained activity, with anti-E-boat patrols and more than 100 sorties laying smoke in support of naval operations. As the fleet crossed the Channel on the night of 5 June No 415 Squadron flew four Albacore patrols over the Straits of Dover with other aircraft on call. Five more were carried out the next night. Around midnight Fg Off Parker in

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DECCA DEMONSTRATORS

Flights of the Navigator WORDS: SQN LDR PETER HUGGINS

Development and demonstration of the Decca Navigator system took the company’s representatives far and wide. The late Peter Huggins flew its fleet of aircraft, and in a memoir he recalls some of his rich experiences

ABOVE: Ambassador G-ALZP shortly after its conversion for use by Decca.

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I

joined the Decca Navigator Company in November 1952. During my years with the Ministry of Civil Aviation, I had been doing a lot of work with the firm and got to know many of the staff. I had learned much about the Decca system and its possibilities for air traffic control. Perhaps I had better say something about it. The basic idea was dreamed up by one Bill O’Brien, a quiet American, who used to wander around with a 4ft slide rule and a lost expression. He first took his ideas to the US Navy as a means of navigation, but they were turned down as impractical. He then approached a friend of his, Harvey Schwarz, who was the managing director of Decca Records in the UK. Some tests were done, the Admiralty being shown the system and the accuracy that could be achieved. This was in the late 1930s, with war lurking over the horizon. Given the possible uses of Decca, it was immediately rendered secret and development continued. It was only switched on for seconds at a time in order not to betray the frequencies in use. Shortly before the D-Day invasion was launched it was activated in order that our minesweepers could successfully clear mines from 20-yard channels up to the Normandy beach-heads. Postwar the system was still backed by the Admiralty and the first chain was built, mainly covering the Channel and southern England with the adjacent sea areas. My first priority on joining Decca was to acquire a suitable aeroplane at a reasonable price and arrange for maintenance back-up. We found what we wanted in an Avro XIX, which we bought from the Ministry of Civil Aviation. As we intended to operate from Croydon, we made a deal with a firm called Air Couriers to perform the maintenance and any modifications that were required for fitting the Navigator equipment.

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ABOVE: Avro XIX G-AGWE had been Anson C19 TX201 with the RAF before going to the Ministry of Civil Aviation and then Decca in 1953. This shot of it was probably taken at Croydon a couple of years later. Decca also flew G-AGPB, which was lost in a fatal accident during 1954. PETER R. MARCH

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DECCA DEMONSTRATORS

ABOVE: A view from the Valetta’s cockpit as it overflies Tempelhof airport in West Berlin during 1960, with Peter Huggins in the lefthand seat.

INSTITUTION OF ENGINEERING AND TECHNOLOGY ARCHIVES

It was spring before the aircraft was completed to our requirements. In the meantime, I spent most of my time at London Airport working from an office I had fixed up in Daisybank Cottage (now demolished), where I used to brief and debrief the BEA Viscount crews who were now using the Decca system. I also spent some time flying with Aer Lingus crews on the Dublin-London run. The Avro was fitted up with the Decca Navigator in the cockpit for me to use and demonstrate. In the back was a console for showing it to passengers. It was then necessary for me to employ someone as a crew member to use and demonstrate the cabin display to customers. The Ministry of Civil Aviation was dispensing with the radio operators in its Flying Unit and they were looking for work. I selected one John Humphrey, who had flown with me often as wireless operator. That first year, apart from many demonstration flights to airline representatives in the UK, we spent a lot of time in Germany flying the airways from Berlin to Hamburg, Hanover and Frankfurt. These airways were defined by VORs (VHF omni-directional radio range systems) sited at each end. The VOR was subject to many inaccuracies due to difficulties in siting, resulting

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in aircraft straying into the Soviet zone and causing endless arguments. The Americans who supplied the equipment swore that there was nothing wrong and that the Soviets were just making a fuss. We flew the airways on Decca, keeping exactly on the centreline, and sure enough the VOR was wandering all over the place. We were asked to fly the VOR signals and leave the Decca trace to show where we had been. The result was that we were on the verge of infringing the Soviet zone. I heard from the duty controller at Tempelhof that his Soviet counterpart was panicking in case we entered the Soviet zone, in which case he would have to make a report and lose his weekend off. A lot of high-pressure sales efforts were trying to persuade European governments to adopt Decca not only for shipping but aviation as well. The next Decca chain was installed in France and we took several weeks to check and calibrate it. It was generally quite straightforward, but on one occasion, when demonstrating to the Royal Netherlands Air Force, we had a hydraulic failure and just scraped into Valkenburg aerodrome. The Anson is not noted for its performance on one engine.

Another time we were demonstrating to French Aéronavale crews at Saint-Raphaël. We were having a discussion indoors, overlooking the grass field, when a thunderstorm started and the rain came down in buckets with galeforce winds. I ran outside, started the engines and taxied the aircraft into a hangar, which had been opened for me. The rain went on for several hours until the field was under inches of water. It was useless to think of getting away that day, so we took a taxi into Nice for the night. In the end, it was nearly a week before we could leave. We hired Lambretta motor scooters and combined daily visits to the airfield with a little sightseeing between Saint-Tropez and the Italian border. Eventually the field dried out enough for us to take off, but just before we were about to leave we were recalled to control and told that there was now an air traffic controllers’ strike — only visual flights would be allowed by day. As it was now dark, but luckily a fine night with a full moon, I said I would go and they had no authority to stop me. I took off, flew down the coast to Nice, landed in the moonlight and was helped to park by my friends from Shell. The next day at Nice I was told that no flight plans would be accepted,

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but I could go at my own risk with no radio or radar services available. Fortunately the weather was brilliant, and we flew direct to Lyon, straight over the mountains. From Lyon we proceeded to Paris-Le Bourget, where I had advised our agent of our arrival. We then were told to report to the commandant, who was very acid about the whole thing, threatening to impound the aeroplane and take away the agent’s licence. In the course of his ranting he happened to say that the airfield was closed except for emergencies. This gave me a let-out; I said that this was an emergency as I had intended flying to Croydon, but realised I had insufficient fuel. After a few minutes’ deep thought he accepted the explanation and waved us away. In addition to demonstrating all around Europe, there was always development flying to be done for the new equipment that was constantly being produced. There were still many faults and shortcomings with the current Decca types in use — I was always in the difficult position of telling customers how good it was, then telling the company how many faults there were and asking what they were going to do about it.

During the late 1950s the company got a contract to develop Doppler equipment for the RAF. In order to conduct airborne trials it was necessary to have a larger aeroplane, as the Anson was not capable of carrying all the gear together with the engineers required for evaluation. The Ministry of Supply agreed to loan us a Vickers Valetta, so I went to Boscombe Down to be checked out and was put on the approved list of MoS test pilots.

on the civil register as G-APKR, becoming the first and only civil Valetta. Having so much more room and payload than the Anson it was fitted out as a flying laboratory with several different types of Decca Navigator and Doppler equipment. We were now able to undertake longer trips with more people on board and had several lengthy sessions in Berlin, Rome, Warsaw and the Scandinavian countries. In 1961 the company was developing a Doppler for use in helicopters, so I arranged to take a course with World Wide Helicopters at Biggin Hill, and soon got my licence. We eventually bought a Bell 47A and had our Doppler fitted together with a special mini-Decca for helicopters. Prince Philip came to Wisley for a demonstration flight with me on 7 June 1963. I was asked by the end of August to get rid of John Humphrey, who had been getting ideas above his station and upsetting a lot of people including Harvey Schwarz. It was difficult for me, as I had employed him in the first place. However, a compromise was reached by shunting him into the sales department and

We were on the verge of infringing the Soviet zone. The Soviet controller at Tempelhof was panicking

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In due course we were allotted a Valetta and I went up to Pershore to collect it. I flew it to Croydon, where it was fitted with the Decca Doppler by Air Couriers, and trials began. Croydon was not a suitable field from which to operate the Valetta, and since Air Couriers had now established a base at the ‘new’ Gatwick Airport we moved there. As the loan of the MoS Valetta was due to lapse, we arranged to buy two others from the ministry. I collected these from Pershore and Boscombe. One was cannibalised for spares to improve the other, which was put

TOP LEFT: Valetta G-APKR proved a useful workhorse.

INSTITUTION OF ENGINEERING AND TECHNOLOGY ARCHIVES

TOP RIGHT: Peter Huggins, the author of this memoir, flying the Decca Valetta. INSTITUTION OF ENGINEERING AND TECHNOLOGY ARCHIVES

ABOVE LEFT: Bell 47G G-ARIA was sometimes flown by Peter Huggins, but most often by his Decca colleague Edward Hood, who routinely smoked his pipe while at the controls! INSTITUTION OF ENGINEERING AND TECHNOLOGY ARCHIVES

ABOVE: A plan showing how a Decca Navigator fix could be achieved.

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DECCA DEMONSTRATORS

We had several lightning strikes over Brussels, leaving pin-holes in the wingtips ABOVE: The first version of the Decca scheme applied to Ambassador G-ALZP. Later the Decca wording on the nose was revised.

INSTITUTION OF ENGINEERING AND TECHNOLOGY ARCHIVES

TOP: On the ground at Sondrestrom, Greenland, during the Ambassador’s trip to North America.

giving him an office to keep him happy. I was lucky enough to enlist Mike Dible, a fairly experienced pilot who had flown the Atlantic solo and was an electrical engineer. He was ex-Navy and a competent navigator, unlike his predecessor. My next job was to train him on the Valetta, with which he had no difficulties. We had an accident to the Valetta in late September 1963, which was not our fault. On returning from a flight I landed normally and, though I say it myself, as light as a feather. Near the end of the landing run the starboard undercarriage collapsed for no apparent reason. Our engineers could find no cause. I reported the accident to the Air Ministry and was told that this had happened before on several occasions but even they did not know why. In a way the mishap did us a lot of good. We did very well out of the insurance and it enabled us to get a much better aeroplane. George Errington, whom I had known before the war, was a great supporter of Decca, and suggested that we acquired an Airspeed Ambassador. He had been the test pilot for Airspeed and knew the type inside out. George told us that King Hassan of Morocco was disposing of his Ambassador to buy a jet, and he thought it could be had at a reasonable price if we left the negotiations to him. We were glad to do this, and in November 1963 Mike and I flew out to Rabat to collect the aircraft. George Errington came with us and, as none of us yet had the type on our licences, we took a Dan-Air pilot, Bob ‘Sport’ Martin, to check us out and keep us legal.

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The aircraft spent about six weeks at Air Couriers, where it was fitted with all the racking and cabling required to take the Decca display in the cabin areas and cockpit. BEA had originally operated this Ambassador until it was replaced by the Viscount and sold to Morocco. Field Aviation had refurbished it to the king’s requirements. Behind the cockpit was a large space for luggage, followed in rearwards order by a cabin for eight lesser mortals, the royal suite consisting of two large armchairs and a long bench seat opposite, a WC for men and a ladies’ powder room with full-size mirrors. We disturbed the layout as little as possible. The luggage bay was configured as a laboratory with numerous power supplies and aerial sockets for experimental work. In the front cabin a console was installed to take any form of Decca we wished to demonstrate. The royal suite was fitted with a console between the two armchairs for demonstrations to the most important customers. In the cockpit we had three different Decca displays and room for a fourth behind me at the old radio officer’s station. The Ambassador had been designed as a 54-passenger transport, and some charter companies fitted seats for as many as 60. The maximum we could carry including crew was 17, so — even with the equipment we took — we never reached the maximum permitted weight, except when we took the aircraft to America.

Meanwhile, the Decca Doppler for helicopters was proving of great interest in that particular field, and we were doing a lot of demonstrating. The aerial was no more than a foot from the ground, and without even flying one could slide along the grass and get a reading of half a knot or less. The output was coupled to a speed meter and a cross-pointer meter so it was even possible to hover blind. The larger version of the Decca Doppler was fitted to the Ambassador, and apart from the raw information the output could be fed into the map display in front of me in the cockpit. With a large and presentable aeroplane like the Ambassador, we could carry more crew, and we had a list of hostesses we could call on when the situation arose. We employed a permanent engineer, Ray Kinkaid, a conscientious bloke but inclined to be a bit temperamental if he thought someone was interfering with his work. We were also joined by ‘Nick’ Nicholson as a demonstrator, a delightful addition to the crew — as Shakespeare would have said, “a fellow of infinite jest”. Later, Don Blagborough came to look after the technical equipment. Decca had always been anxious to get into the American market and we had given many demonstrations to airline and military representatives. Now the pressure was on to organise demonstration flights in the USA. After a considerable amount of preparation and liaison with our American supporters we eventually got away on 28 September 1964. I was enormously relieved to have

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Mike Dible with me. He was a first-class navigator and dealt with all the paperwork in an expert manner, something his predecessor could not have done. The route we chose was from Gatwick to Prestwick to clear customs and thence to Keflavík, Sondrestrom, Goose Bay, Québec and Idlewild (as John F. Kennedy International was then called). Having cleared customs and immigration we were told to take the aircraft to LaGuardia. The process is obviously very easy if you have the necessary contacts. I saw our agent back-hand a fistful of dollars to the right person and we were through with no problems! Taking the aeroplane from Idlewild to LaGuardia was amusing in retrospect. I had never flown in that area before and it was pitchdark with all the illumination from the lights of New York and the surrounding district. Having taken off, the radar picked me up and gave me a course to steer. The controllers and pilots used familiar landmarks unknown to me, so I was somewhat surprised to be told on the radio, “Call me passing the penitentiary and the bridge”. Not having a clue what they were talking about, I had to ask for further instructions. When we taxied out the next day in daylight, I think we created a record as everyone stopped talking until someone asked, “What is it?” No-one had ever seen an Ambassador in the US before and it caused quite a stir. They did not know what to call us and they had never heard of Airspeed. As the design had

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been taken over by de Havilland, which they had all heard of, and the registration was G-ALZP, we became known on the airways as “de Havilland Zee-Pee”. In all we spent a very pleasant 11 weeks travelling between Canada and the Gulf of Mexico before setting course for home at the end of November. We left LaGuardia on 21 November and flew to Moncton and Goose Bay. At Goose we ran into some trouble with oil coring on one engine due to the intense cold; this involved having to cut out blanking plates of various sizes for the oil cooler and making a test flight each time to check the result. We performed five such flights before being satisfied. Departing Goose Bay at about two in the morning for Sondrestrom, we saw the sun for two or three minutes as it poked above the horizon. On leaving Goose we were told to change frequency to call Gander on HF. There was no reply, of course, but Renfrew came in loud and clear. We got our heads down for an hour or two at Sondrestrom, having been met by the Danish airport manager. He said we were lucky to be there on such a nice day as the temperature was only zero Fahrenheit! At Sondrestrom they had a splendid heater called a Chinook, provided by SAS, with trunking to the cockpit and cabin and bags to enclose the engines. When we climbed into the aircraft in the morning it was hot enough to take off our coats and the engine oil temperatures were 40°C.

It was an easy trip back to Gatwick. In spite of an aircraft bung-full of strange boxes, we were waved through customs as if we had just done a local flight. Things then lapsed into a steady routine of testing new equipment and demonstrating to prospective clients in locations ranging from the north of Norway to Prague, Rome and Madrid. I think it was in the Valetta that I had to go to Prague, after the usual briefing for anyone going east in those days. I don’t think the Czechs took their Communism very seriously. There was a statue of Stalin with all the workers behind him carrying the tools of their trade, which was known locally as the ‘bread line’. In the hotel there was a bedside radio apparently tuned to only one station. On opening it up to find out why, I discovered it contained a microphone. We had another flight with Prince Philip and the Royal Flight crews at Benson. Doppler development continued with sorties to 20,000ft and frightening low-level runs at Larkhill down almost to ground level. I was reminded by Don Blagborough of a trip to Cologne when we ran into a violent thunderstorm over Brussels. We had several lightning strikes leaving pin-holes in the wingtips; the turbulence and freezing rain were the worst I had met for many years. I vaguely recall someone behind shouting, “Turn round” — I believe it was Jan Stark, one of our midEuropean contacts. I was not unduly worried as I had my third VHF tuned to Cologne, which was not far away, and they were giving CAVOK — no low cloud and 10 miles’ visibility. By 1970 the Decca Navigator was running into trouble, the company having spent a lot of money on trying to make a success of the Dectra system for Atlantic navigation in spite of advice to the contrary. The writing on the wall was still a bit hazy but I could see it coming into focus. As a precaution I got myself a conversion course on the Bell JetRanger, operated by BEA Helicopters at Gatwick. At that time I was running the Decca Navigator Company flight operations department at Gatwick. Sure enough, I was told one day that it was to be shut down as no more development was envisaged. It took me a week or two to close the department satisfactorily, and thus ended my 18 years with Decca. It had been a fascinating and valuable experience.

LEFT: The Ambassador on the ground at Gatwick in July 1968, accompanied by some other classic propellerdriven airliners headed by L-1649A Starliner LX-LGY of Luxair. ADRIAN M. BALCH

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HURRICANE P3717

Hugh Taylor’s Hurricane I P3717/ G-HITT in the hands of Stu Goldspink.

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E! IV US CL EX Returned to flight earlier this year, Battle of Britain combat veteran Hurricane I P3717 is an exceptional survivor. Now operating from Old Warden, it pays splendid tribute to the achievements of those who flew this very fighter on operations, but also the work of its owner Hugh Taylor, and his late stepdaughter Sophie WORDS: GORDON RILEY and DARREN HARBAR PHOTOGRAPHY: DARREN HARBAR

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HURRICANE P3717

RIGHT: P3717 at Hawker Restorations’ facility in Milden, Suffolk, during June 2013. BELOW RIGHT: Stu Goldspink in the Hurricane’s cockpit with Matt Pettit of Bygone Aviation on the wing.

J

ust a few years ago, it would have been thought a fanciful dream. Now, though, the Shuttleworth Collection’s Old Warden Aerodrome is home to a unique set of no fewer than three airworthy Hawker Hurricane Is, two of which are Battle of Britain veterans. The most recent arrival, Hugh Taylor’s P3717, is a very special aeroplane indeed. It was built by Hawker Aircraft as part of a batch of 544 Hurricane Is ordered against contract number 962371/38. This was the third order placed with the parent company, and it included an additional 44 replacement aircraft to make good operational attrition suffered during the early months of service. Production was split between the Hawker factories at Kingston, Brooklands and Langley, the aircraft bearing serials between P3265 and P3984. P3717 fell into the ninth serial block comprising 40 aircraft, P3710 to P3739. Powered by a Rolls-Royce Merlin III, number 144660, the metalwinged P3717 was allocated to No 19 Maintenance Unit at St Athan, south Wales, on 13 May 1940. There it was taken on charge on 3 June and designated as a reserve aircraft. Its first unit was supposed to be No 238 Squadron, to which it was assigned on 18 June, but whether it ever reached the squadron is doubtful as two days later it was re-allocated to No 19 MU. It is very probable that this was simply a case of the paperwork not reacting quickly enough to the fast-paced changes in squadrons and equipment following the evacuation from Dunkirk at the end of May. P3717 remained at St Athan until it was issued to No 253 Squadron, taking up the code letters SW-P on arrival at Kirton-in-Lindsey, Lincolnshire, possibly on 13 July. The squadron had been based at Kenley in Surrey for ferry duties during May 1940, its pilots delivering replacement Hurricanes to the squadrons fighting in France, although for a three-week period ‘A’ Flight of 253 was detached to Poix, France, where, despite claiming 11 enemy aircraft destroyed, it was badly mauled. Following this 253 was withdrawn to Kirton-inLindsey on 24 May to regroup, with temporary detachments based at Ringway and Coleby Grange for training purposes. By the end of July 1940 the Battle of Britain was in full swing and 253

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was brought back up to operational status, initially moving from Kirtonin-Lindsey to Turnhouse on 21 July, then to Prestwick on 23 August and finally back into the thick of things on 29 August when it returned to Kenley, one of the main No 11 Group sector stations. Commanded by 25-yearold Sqn Ldr Harold Starr, 253 was unusual in that the flying personnel included another senior pilot of the same rank, 32-year-old Sqn Ldr Tom Gleave. He had himself been in command of the squadron from 9 June, Starr taking on the role when he joined the unit at Turnhouse on 10 August. The two men were close friends, with Gleave leading ‘A’ Flight and effectively sharing command of the squadron. This unusual arrangement came to an abrupt end on Saturday 31 August 1940 when Starr’s Hurricane, L1830, was shot down during an interception patrol over Sandwich, Kent, crashing near Grove Ferry at 08.25hrs. Gleave himself went down in flames while attacking a group of Junkers Ju 88s later that same day. His Hurricane (P3115) crashed near Hazel Wood, Mace Farm, Cudham at 13.02hrs and he was admitted to Orpington hospital having suffered severe burns prior to bailing out. He was one of the first patients treated by Sir Archibald McIndoe at the Queen Victoria Hospital, East Grinstead, and became the first and only ‘Chief Guinea Pig’.

Gleave was finally invalided out of the RAF in 1953 with the rank of Group Captain, and returned to East Grinstead for further reconstructive surgery. He joined the Historical Section of the Cabinet Office where he remained for the next 30 years, being elected a fellow of the Royal Historical Society and becoming air historian and deputy chairman of the Battle of Britain Fighter Association. He died in 1993. Eighteen Hurricanes (the full complement should have been 26) of No 253 Squadron landed at Kenley shortly after lunch on Thursday 29 August. They were to take the place of the exhausted pilots of No 615 Squadron. P3717 took off from Prestwick in the hands of Plt Off D. B. Bell-Salter at 10.35hrs and landed at Kenley at 13.10hrs as one of the first group of six Hurricanes, the second six landing five minutes behind them. The squadron’s introduction to the Battle of Britain came very quickly. At 16.00hrs, with the Hurricanes barely refuelled, Gleave and ‘A’ Flight were scrambled to patrol the airfield. The standing patrol proved uneventful and P3717, once more in the hands of Bell-Salter, landed back at Kenley at 16.45hrs. Luftwaffe raids started shortly after dawn the following day, Friday

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30 August, with a series of probing attacks that never reached their targets, the Fighter Command airfields in the south-east of England. However, from 10.00hrs Albert Kesselring's Luftflotte 2, based in the Netherlands, Belgium and northeastern France, launched three main attacks each a half-hour apart. They had been fragmented all over Kent and Surrey by 11.30hrs, with no fewer than 48 Observer Corps posts reporting air activity overhead. P3717, flown by Plt Off W. M. C. Samolinski as ‘Blue 2’, was one of 14 aircraft scrambled at 10.50hrs when No 253 Squadron was ordered to patrol over Maidstone, ready to face any threat to Kenley or Croydon. The two flights soon became separated and they were ordered to return to base, where they were to orbit while a further five aircraft — led by Tom Gleave in P2631 — took off at 11.25hrs to join up with them. Samolinski had joined 253 on 16 July having been part of the first Polish course on No 6 Operational Training Unit at Sutton Bridge, which began on 23 June. He was flying V7470 on Thursday 26 September 1940 when he failed to return from combat over the English Channel, it being likely that he crashed into the sea. When no attack materialised, 253 was vectored south towards Brighton where it joined Hurricanes of No 43 Squadron from Tangmere and

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Spitfires from No 222 Squadron based at Hornchurch. As they headed south-west, the emergency section led by Tom Gleave and accompanied by Flt Lt George Brown (P3802) and Plt Off C. D. Francis (L1965) lost touch with the main formation. They ran into a large group of Messerschmitt Bf 109s, and although Gleave scored hits on two of them, both Brown and Francis were shot down, Brown being wounded but Francis killed. The words of the squadron operations record book (ORB) for

“‘B’ Flight at once attacked the bombers, which included He 111s, Do 215s and possibly Ju 88s, but observed no results with the exception of Plt Off Nowak (‘Green 3’) who probably destroyed a Do 215 (this pilot maintained that this bomber was a Ju 86). ‘A’ Flight, who were behind and below, followed in the attack and ‘Yellow 3’ (Plt Off Greenwood) fired all his ammunition into a He 111 which force-landed, four of the crew being seen climbing out. A series of individual fights took place, chiefly with Bf 110s

ABOVE: Airborne out of Turweston, Stu Goldspink begins to delight in P3717’s handling.

P3717, flown by Plt Off Samolinski as ‘Blue 2’, was one of 14 aircraft scrambled on 30 August 1940 when No 253 Squadron was ordered to patrol over Maidstone 30 August 1940 make sobering reading: “Fourteen Hurricanes took off Kenley 10.50hrs followed by five more at 11.25hrs when an attack on Croydon and Kenley appeared likely. The squadron was first ordered to patrol Maidstone, but the flights got separated and were ordered back to orbit base, where they were joined by the other five aircraft. They were then vectored off to the south, where, at 18,000ft near Redhill, they saw three formations of nine bombers escorted by 30 fighters, Bf 110s and Bf 109s.

and Bf 109s which had come to the rescue of the bombers. ‘Blue 1’ (Flt Lt Cambridge) delivered a beam attack which developed into a quarter attack. Finally when the Bf 110 was in a gentle dive with the port wing streaming smoke, he gave it a long burst from astern, causing the starboard engine to pour out black smoke and driving the enemy aircraft into a steep dive. When Flt Lt Cambridge pulled out of his dive at 2,000ft the enemy aircraft was still going straight down.

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HURRICANE P3717

Samolinski in P3717 was credited with the destruction of a Bf 110. His combat report states, ‘I attacked from astern and slightly above, and saw my bullets entering wing and fuselage’ ABOVE: British skies are now graced by two Battle of Britain veteran Hurricane Is — P3717 leads Hurricane Heritage’s well-known R4118. The former wears its original No 253 Squadron codes from 1940, and the latter those it carried during the Battle with No 605 (County of Warwick) Squadron.

“‘Blue 2’ (Plt Off Samolinski) attacked a Bf 110 from above and astern, silenced the rear gunner, and saw his bullets entering wings and fuselage, sending it down in a spiral dive. He made a similar attack on a second Bf 110, silencing the rear gunner. ‘Blue 3’ (Sgt Innes) made a head-on attack from 800 to 75 yards. As he broke away he saw parts breaking off the machine which then rolled over and dived towards the ground. “Sqn Ldr Gleave, leading the emergency section, attacked the Bf 109s which were trying to get on the tails of our fighters. He saw one dive away with smoke pouring from the port wing and a second one turned on its side with the nose up and slid away out of sight, giving him the impression that the pilot had been knocked out. None of the other pilots observed any material results from their fire, though several saw their bullets going into enemy aircraft. “Sixteen Hurricanes landed Kenley approximately 12.10hrs.” No 253 Squadron’s casualties that day were Plt Off Jenkins killed, Flt Lt Brown injured and Plt Off Francis missing. Three Hurricanes had been lost. The unit’s enemy casualties were three Bf 110s and a He 111 destroyed, two Bf 109s and a Do 215 probable, and a Bf 110 damaged.

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Samolinski in P3717 was credited with the destruction of a Bf 110 south-east of Uckfield at 11.15hrs. His combat report states, “I attacked the first one from astern and slightly above, giving a six-second burst silencing the rear gunner, and saw my bullets entering wing and fuselage. Enemy aircraft dived in a spiral towards ground.” P3717 made it back to Kenley, landing at 11.40hrs, but not before another of the Bf 110s had damaged it to such an extent that it had to be sent to No 13 MU at Henlow, Bedfordshire, a major Hurricane repair facility, the following day. Repairs were carried out quickly and it was allocated to No 48 MU at Hawarden near Chester on 3 September, arriving a week later. The machine was allocated to No 257 Squadron on 12 September, the same day on which Flt Lt ‘Bob’ Stanford Tuck took command of the unit. Although nominally based at Debden, 257 was also operating from Castle Camps and Martlesham Heath at this time, aircraft being ferried from base to base as the need arose. Coded DT-R, P3717 made its first op with the unit, a patrol from Martlesham Heath over Chelmsford in the hands of Plt Off North, at 15.50hrs on

Wednesday 18 September. The next day the squadron carried out a convoy patrol, on which P3717 was flown by Plt Off Capon, taking off at 13.20hrs and returning at 14.40hrs, the same pilot flying it on another convoy patrol later that afternoon. Friday 20 September saw Plt Off M. Chelmecki taking part in an X-raid patrol in the morning before flying to Debden with other aircraft that afternoon, coming back to Martlesham Heath in the early evening. Chelmecki and P3717 took off on the Saturday morning for an X-raid patrol that was swiftly cancelled. The squadron continued on to Debden where it remained for the day, returning to Martlesham Heath after another X-raid patrol between 18.00hrs and 19.15hrs. There was no flying on Sunday 22 September due to bad weather, but precisely what happened to P3717 on Monday 23rd is not clear. Chelmecki was posted back to No 17 Squadron at North Weald that day and 12 Hurricanes under the command of Stanford Tuck flew to Castle Camps at 07.05hrs, arriving 25 minutes later. Unfortunately the squadron ORB does not list all of their serials and P3717 is not among those identified. The unit scrambled at 09.20hrs to join Nos 17 and 73 Squadrons above Debden and was ordered to

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patrol over Southend and Gravesend at 20,000ft. Having been warned of approaching enemy aircraft coming in from the east at 5,000ft, the squadron lost height, but when passing through 13,000ft it was ordered to climb back up to ‘Angels 20’. At that very moment it was attacked by a large group of single-engined fighters — probably all Bf 109s, although it was reported at the time that they were both Bf 109s and Heinkel He 113s, a propaganda type based on the He 100D-1 and which never actually existed. Tuck ordered the squadron to break up and engage, managing to shoot down a Bf 109 himself. All pilots returned safely apart from Sgt D. J. Aslin, who bailed out of P2960 and landed near Detling at 09.52hrs. According to its Form 78, P3717 suffered FBO(2), meaning Flying Battle — Operations, damage on Monday 23 September. It is believed that it nosed over on landing short of Castle Camps after it and its pilot, Plt Off Jan Pfeiffer, were bounced by Bf 109s. Confusingly, it is recorded that Plt Off Andrews used P3717 for circuit practice during the morning of Thursday 26 September while the Martlesham Heath CO, Wg Cdr A. D. Farquhar DFC, flew it on a non-operational local flight lasting 45 minutes that afternoon. Whatever happened to it that week resulted in

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the airframe needing repairs. It was duly dispatched to de Havilland, part of the Hurricane Repair Organisation, on 28 September suffering from Cat B damage (beyond repair on site). Exactly a month later, on 28 October it arrived at No 22 MU at Silloth in Cumbria for storage, having been allocated to that unit on 21 October. The Hurricane remained stored there until 20 January 1941 when it was assigned to No 43 Squadron. The ‘Fighting Cocks’ were being rested at Drem, Scotland, with a detachment at Crail, the CO being Sqn Ldr T. F. D. Morgan. There was little activity to report and P3717 led a relatively uneventful life before being transferred into the hands of the trainee fighter pilots of No 55 OTU at Aston Down, Gloucestershire, on 24 April. A note on its movements card that it was allocated to Air Service Training, a major repair and overhaul contractor, on the very same day is somewhat puzzling. P3717’s next confirmed move was to No 8 Service Flying Training School at Montrose, Scotland on 12 June 1941. Just over a fortnight after that it was dispatched to RollsRoyce at Hucknall on 28 June for conversion to MkIIA standard

A FAMILY AFFAIR

Hugh Taylor at the wheel of his magnificently original Alfa Romeo 8C 2300 (above), a 1934-vintage example that competed in the Indianapolis 500 both pre- and post-war — and, by contrast, his late stepdaughter Sophie wingwalking on one of the Utterly Butterly Barnstormers team’s Boeing Stearman Kaydets (below).

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HURRICANE P3717

ABOVE: R4118 in front of P3717 at their Old Warden home. Both aircraft are currently operated by Bygone Aviation for their respective owners.

BELOW: The restored P3717 during one of its early flights. A public display debut followed at Old Warden on 17 June (see page 97).

by the installation of a Merlin XX and other modifications, becoming a ‘new’ Hurricane in the process. The venerable MkI had been selected as one of the first batch of 40 Hurricanes being upgraded for dispatch to the Soviet Union. Upon conversion it was sent to No 22 MU at Silloth on 4 October and probably flown south to Cardiff to arrive at the packing unit of No 52 MU on 10 October, being allocated to the Soviets a day later. Details of its actual dispatch to and arrival in Russia are not known, but it seems as though it was one of the first to arrive in the winter of 1941-42. Service details are also unconfirmed, but its crashed remains were recovered from the Kola Peninsula and brought back to the UK by Jim Pearce. Its remains were acquired from him by Steve Milnthorpe, an engineer in the textiles industry from Hinckley, Leicestershire, on 28 October 1990. Upon delivery Steve catalogued the parts he had acquired. There on the battered centre section was the original manufacturer’s plate, which proved the identity to be that of P3717. He had a genuine Battle of Britain survivor, complete with an awarded kill, in his workshop. For

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the first two years Steve continued to make further contacts within the relatively small Hurricane restoration world and improve upon his knowledge of the type’s construction techniques. With help from Tony Ditheridge of Hawker Restorations, Geoff Rodwell of Autokraft, Chris Chippington of the Imperial War Museum, Peter Rushen of The Fighter Collection and many more he began to obtain the missing components needed to restore his Hurricane to static condition. The fuselage structure was very nearly complete when, after 10 years’ work, Steve sold the entire project to Tony Ditheridge of Hawker Restorations at Milden, Suffolk. Hawkers set about the task of bringing the aircraft up to full airworthy condition, which included restoring the wings. During its time with Hawker Restorations, the project was sold to Hugh Taylor, and registered G-HITT in his name on 19 December 2008. Although structurally restored to the later Russian MkII configuration, the aircraft has been painted in its original markings as P3717/ SW-P of No 253 Squadron. Much of the structural work was completed at Milden before the aircraft moved by road to Turweston, Northamptonshire, on 10 February 2015. Oxfordshire-based Bygone Aviation then took on the massive job of getting P3717 back into the air. Despite the aircraft looking almost complete when it arrived at Turweston, a lot still needed to be done. A fair few engineering tasks were required and the small matter of collating and sorting the paperwork and documentation produced by the many years of restoration work remained. With that in hand, the paperwork then needed presenting in

such a manner that the permit to fly could be issued. Even though it was assisted by extremely helpful and proactive individuals within the CAA, this still took nearly two years to complete! With the process finished, at Turweston on 21 March 2017, Stu Goldspink successfully took P3717 back into the air for the first time in more than 70 years. The fighter’s much-rumoured arrival at Old Warden occurred on 9 May, bringing the strength of resident airworthy MkI Hurricanes at the Bedfordshire airfield to three. There P3717 joined fellow Battle of Britain veteran Hurricane R4118 owned by Hurricane Heritage (which is also operated by Bygone Aviation), alongside the Shuttleworth Collection’s Sea Hurricane Ib Z7015. The Taylor family has tasked Bygone Aviation with the role of operating the aircraft from Old Warden in 2017. The Hurricane will be a living reminder of the sacrifice and valour of the young men who flew the type during World War Two. It will also serve as a tribute to Hugh and a memorial to his stepdaughter Sophie, who sadly passed away on 29 April this year. Hugh Taylor set up Hawker Hurricane Ltd in 2008 and has always been a big collector of classic items. He has an extensive range of classic cars including a beautiful Alfa Romeo P3, and some wonderful classic boats. Sadly, Hugh is most unwell with Alzheimer’s disease, which means that he has been unable to see the Hurricane project come to fruition. It is for those reasons that the Hurricane will be operated this year as a tribute to Hugh and a memorial to Sophie. Hugh’s wife Jennie is now managing Hugh’s collection, which includes the Hurricane and a Bücker Jungmann. In an interview with Aeroplane, Jennie shared Hugh’s passion for his collections.

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HURRICANE P3717

“Hugh has always been a modest man who liked to live his life under the radar. He didn’t want to be known, but people always wanted to know about him. I’m so proud of my darling old boy. His Alzheimer’s has progressed to such a degree that he is completely unaware of the Hurricane now. He knew last year, but the disease has taken a very strong hold now. “What really mattered to him was that things had to be collectable and he was concerned about the provenance of things. When he was involved in a restoration, be it a painting, a pen-knife or a Hurricane, it had to be restored faithfully and sympathetically. When it came to buying the Hurricane he didn’t want a more fashionable-to-own Spitfire, and thus sought a Hurricane project as he recognised its significance during the fighting of the Battle of Britain and felt it needed more recognition. When it came to the Hurricane restoration, Hugh was always making sure that attention to detail was maintained and that the aircraft was as original as was possible. “My late daughter Sophie always pulled everything out of the hat. She was an incredible young woman and, despite being ill, she was instrumental in liaising with Bygone Aviation and getting the Hurricane finished and back in the air. Whilst I was busy caring for Hugh, it was Sophie who kept all the balls in the air, and with such passion and drive that she was effectively the one who decided

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the future of the aircraft. We were seriously considering selling the Hurricane, but Sophie stood firm and said we should see the project to the end, and keep her flying as a tribute to dear Hugh. Little did I know at the time that this would end up being a tribute to them both. “Had Sophie not have pushed me, then the story would have been very different. Sophie loved aeroplanes from a young age, and joined the Air Training Corps at 11 years [old] and later [went] to Utterly Butterly, wingwalking on a Boeing Stearman for a couple of years. She was a daredevil, amazing, and when she and Hugh met they hit it off immediately and would spend many hours enthusing each other talking aeroplanes. It therefore wasn’t so strange when she took over the Hurricane. The whole thing has been a wonderful journey, and still is a wonderful journey. We have ‘Hitty’ up in the sky this year, and that has to be the ultimate achievement.” It is fitting that the Hurricane’s first official outing was to provide a flypast and memorial display for Sophie’s funeral. The aircraft overflew the actual funeral and then, later in the day, gave a sympathetic display overhead the wake. With Stu Goldspink at the controls, G-HITT provided the perfect memorial to a remarkable young lady. Clearly moved by the sight of the Hurricane,

Jennie told us, “As the Hurricane flew away into the sunset and silence prevailed, I heard a comment from one of the guests who said, I bet she [Sophie] was wing-walking on that.” EDITOR’S NOTE: The operations record book extracts featured in this article have been edited for house style.

TOP: As if on a two-ship patrol, the Hurricane Is airborne over south-east England. ABOVE: P3717 peeling elegantly away from the cameraship aircraft.

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SIX-DAY WAR

The FIGHT for AIRFIE

How Arab and Israeli fighters clashed in the skies over a ke

ABOVE: Hunter F73 708/J Royal Jordanian Air Force TOM COOPER

RIGHT: Egyptian Brig Gen Shalabi el-Hinnawy, commander of the United Arab Command’s air forces (wearing cap and glasses) and UAC commander-inchief Lt Gen Abdul al-Moneim Riyadh (back to camera) shake hands with Lt Col Hashem Manhal al-Azawi, CO of No 11 Squadron, Iraqi Air Force, during a visit to Rashid AB, Iraq, on 1 June 1967. In the background is a row of MiG-21F-13s. SHALBI EL-HINNAWY COLLECTION

E

very nation and every war has its heroes. Some attain the status of national legends, while many more remain unknown forever, except within narrow circles. Despite their catastrophic defeat in the June 1967 Arab-Israeli War — better known as the ‘Six-Day War’ — the Arab militaries had their own heroes from that conflict. Over time, one became better-known to the Western public. Part of the reason was that the person in question was not an Arab. Another was that following the 1967 defeat, many Arab heroes were treated with the utmost injustice by their superiors and discharged from service. There is an old saying that no plan survives an encounter with the enemy. In June 1967, the Egyptian military’s planning fell apart before the war even began. With Egypt being the military powerhouse of the Arab world, this meant the contingency planning of all its allies began disintegrating too. Following a misinformed Soviet warning about Israel preparing an invasion of Syria, and three weeks of growing tensions, Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser was determined not to act as an aggressor. Against the advice of his military and intelligence services, he decided not to start a war, but ordered his military to receive the opening Israeli strike — and only

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then hit back. Corresponding orders were issued not only to the United Arab Republic Air Force (UARAF, the official designation of the Egyptian Air Force from 1958-72), but also to the Iraqi Air Force (IrAF), Royal Jordanian Air Force (RJAF), and Syrian Arab Air Force (SyAAF). All were under the nominal command of the United Arab Command (UAC), a military body formed to coordinate an Arab war against Israel. In an attempt to diminish the effects of the Israeli Defence Force/ Air Force (IDF/AF) attack, from 2-4 June 1967 the UARAF withdrew the majority of its combat aircraft from the Sinai and the Suez Canal

zone to air bases further west, where, according to intelligence provided by Moscow, they were expected to be outside Israeli reach. At the same time, the IrAF began deploying its aircraft to Jordan. Thinking they would have enough time to do so, the Iraqis moved slowly. As of the morning of 5 June, they only had about a dozen Hawker Hunters at H-3 airfield in the deserts of western Iraq. Expecting reinforcements from their eastern neighbours, the Jordanians recalled their pilots from conversion training on Lockheed F-104 Starfighters in the USA, but otherwise did very little, except for asking the government of the

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ver a key Iraqi airfield during 1967’s Six-Day War

FIELD H-3 Islamic Republic of Pakistan to grant permission for two of its pilots seconded to No 1 Squadron, RJAF, to fly combat sorties against Israel. The Israeli strike on the morning of 5 June hit home hard. As wave after June 1967 wave of IDF/AF fighter-bombers continued pounding Egyptian air bases, prompting one panicky report after another, officers at the high command in Cairo were paralysed with indecision. While the UARAF commander-in-chief, Air Marshal Mahmoud Sidki Mahmoud, never regained control of his force, Nasser’s minister of war, Field Marshal Hakim Amer, began making telephone calls and spreading a mixture of chaotic orders and lies. Jordanian sources said it was one of Amer’s orders that put King Hussein’s military on a war footing with Israel. Supposedly, it stated that the Israeli strike on Egyptian air bases had been unsuccessful, that it had resulted in the destruction of 75 per cent of the IDF/AF aircraft involved, that a counter-attack by the Egyptian Air Force was under way, and that it ordered Jordan’s military to open a new front by launching an offensive into Israel. Day1

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Amer could not have issued such an order at the time the Jordanians say he did, but the Jordanians did nothing for several hours. Their top officers quarrelled with the Egyptians at UAC headquarters about what to do next — and how — and waited for other allies to go into action instead. For the RJAF, the war thus began with a missed opportunity. Its major radar station near Ajloun had a good view of what was going on over Israel, and its fighter pilots were demanding permission to strike Israeli air bases. However, their commanders failed to react while there was still time to do so. When they did, it turned out that the main ammunition depot at Mafraq — then the RJAF’s major air base — was locked, with the keys still in Amman. This is how the Iraqis came to go into action first. Around 12.15hrs Baghdad time, eight Hunters of No 6 Squadron, IrAF, launched from H-3. Based on faulty intelligence, the target for five of them was Kfar Sirkin, an old airfield in central Israel that by now was used as a paratroop school and a dispersal site for some Israeli transport aircraft. The other three were earmarked to attack Lod International Airport. To make their navigation easier, the Iraqis followed the old ‘H’ pipeline constructed by the British in the

WORDS: TOM COOPER

1930s. After all, this connected H-3 with Mafraq AB, and then with Ramat David AB in Israel. Descending to low altitude well before entering enemy-controlled territory, the Iraqis caught the Israelis by surprise. Not a single interceptor, not one surface-to-air missile (SAM), nor one shot from the air defences molested the first three Hunters. Using 72 unguided rockets, their pilots claimed the destruction of seven Douglas C-47 Skytrain and Nord 2501 Noratlas transports. According to Israeli sources, this ‘Jordanian’ attack resulted in the destruction of the Noratlas registered 4X-FAX, and a civilian Piper Super Cub.

ABOVE: By June 1967, several Jordanian Hunters had received kill markings commemorating claims from clashes with Israeli Mirages in 1964 and 1966. This is Flt Lt Farouq Abdeen in the cockpit of the Hunter F6 with which he claimed a Mirage shot down on 13 November 1966. FAROUQ ABDEEN COLLECTION

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SIX-DAY WAR

RIGHT: Three Egyptian Air Force Tupolev Tu-16s — serials (40)27, (40)87 and (40)92 — overflying Cairo in early 1967.

NOUR BARDAI VIA TOM COOPER

BELOW: A formation of Israeli Defence Force/Air Force SO4050 Vautours. Two such aircraft were lost in aerial engagements over airfield H-3. IDF

The attack by the last two Hunters in this formation was spoiled by two MIM-23 HAWK SAMs fired by the Israeli SAM site that was protecting Tel Aviv. These forced the Iraqis into evasive manoeuvring. Although the other Iraqi formation failed to find Lod and make its attack, all eight Hunters returned safely to H-3. The RJAF finally launched four Hunters a few minutes after their Iraqi counterparts had passed overhead. Also based on incorrect intelligence, their target was nonexistent; there never was a ‘Netanya AB’ in Israel. Unsurprisingly, despite reaching the area without attention from hostile air defences, the Jordanians wasted their effort by unleashing their unguided rockets at the compound of the ABC Pharmaceutics Factory, killing one civilian worker and injuring several more. As the four Jordanian jets returned from Netanya to Mafraq, the RJAF launched two additional formations. One went to make a further strike on Israel, while the other flew top cover over the West Bank. The first four-ship flew straight into a hornet’s nest and was caught by at least four Dassault Mirage IIICJs that had been scrambled from Ramat David in reaction to earlier Iraqi and Jordanian attacks. The Hunter flown by Capt Wasfi Ammari was shot down: the pilot ejected over Jerash but made a hard landing, suffering back injuries that ended his RJAF career. The Israelis returned the favour with the first of a series of air strikes on Jordan. Eight Dassault Mystère IVAs attacked Mafraq and destroyed 13 Hunters on the ground, including the aircraft flown by the commander of No 1 Squadron, RJAF, Maj Firas al-Ajouni, who was killed. In turn, they were engaged by Hunters flown by Jordanian pilot Ihsan Shurdom and the Pakistani Saif-ul-Azam. They shot down at least one and perhaps two Mystères, and damaged

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another before running out of fuel and deciding to land at Amman International. The airport offered no safety. Before long, it was hit by four IDF/ AF Mirages and then four Dassault Ouragans. These destroyed four Hunters and several other aircraft, effectively taking the RJAF out of the war. Although an attack on H-3 was not part of their pre-war planning, the Israelis were determined to prevent further Iraqi operations by knocking out this airfield, too. Correspondingly, while further Mystères and Ouragans were still busy ravaging Mafraq and Amman, four SO4050 Vautour twin-engined fighter-bombers from Ramat David were ordered to attack the westernmost Iraqi base. Following the ‘H’ pipeline, the Israeli formation approached H-3 about an hour after the return of some Hunters that had attacked Kfar Sirkin, and the arrival of several MiG-21FLs from No 17 Squadron, IrAF. Indeed, by the time the Vautours appeared in the skies, two of the MiGs were already airborne again. Although the MiG pilots did their best to hinder the Israelis, they were fighting against the odds. Their aircraft were not cannon-armed, while their poor R-3S (AA-2 ‘Atoll’) air-to-air missiles proved unable to distinguish hot engine exhausts from the background of the rocky desert soil. As a consequence, the Israelis were able to press home their attack and destroy three MiG-21s, one Hunter, a de Havilland Dove and a single Antonov An-12 transport parked on the ground, while suffering no losses in return. With this, the first day of the June 1967 Arab-Israeli War for

the UAC drew to a close. From the Arab standpoint, it ended with the destruction of most of the RJAF, and severe losses for the IrAF. However, the Iraqis were still full of fight and determined to continue battling the Israelis.

5

For the morning of 6 June 1967, the UAC headquarters in Amman and the June 1967 Iraqi military high command in Baghdad agreed that the IrAF should launch a series of air strikes on Ramat David AB, which the intelligence identified as the primary source for attacks on Iraq and Jordan. At dawn, six Hunters from No 6 Squadron launched in a westerly direction: four with the task of attacking Israeli ground forces advancing into the West Bank, and two against Ramat David. These were to be followed by four Tupolev Tu-16 bombers of No 10 Squadron hitting the northernmost Israeli air base in a series of single-ship attacks, so as to keep it under constant pressure. The initial four Hunters made an undisturbed rocket attack on an IDF mechanised formation near Jenin. The other two apparently missed Ramat David, and rocketed two villages nearby. The first Tu-16 climbed to 25,000ft (7,620m) while approaching Israel, and its crew reported releasing bombs against the Israeli air base. However, it seems that the excited Iraqi navigator lost his way, and thus the string of bombs ploughed through an Israeli military base near Taamach, 6.2 miles (10km) south-east of Afula. The next two Iraqi Tu-16s were less lucky — both were forced to abort due to technical difficulties and return to Habbaniyah AB. Da Day2

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The fourth Iraqi bomber approached Ramat David undisturbed, but missed by a few degrees. The crew decided to climb, extend over the Mediterranean Sea and return for another attempt. However, around 08.35hrs, for unexplained reasons and despite a clear order from UAC HQ not to attack non-military targets, its crew disgorged a stick of bombs over the centre of Netanya, hitting the main street and causing a number of civilian casualties. Shortly afterwards, the bomber was intercepted by two Mirage IIICJs. The Iraqi rear gunner, 1st Lt Sabih, opened fire with his two 23mm cannon, forcing the interceptors to break and reposition, while his pilot, Sqn Ldr Hussein Mohammed ‘Kaka’ Hussein, entered a right-hand turn and a descent that brought him directly over Ramat David — at the very moment the Israelis were preparing for their second attack on H-3. Still pursued by two Mirages, the Tupolev thundered low over the Israeli air base, its gunners opening fire from their barbettes before the aircraft was hit by one of two missiles fired by the fighters. Hussein reported via radio that his Tu-16 was still controllable and that he was attempting to escape in an easterly direction. However, the bomber soon crashed into the IDF base near Megiddo airfield, killing its entire crew as well as 11 or 14 Israeli reservists on the ground. Now four Vautours — this time escorted by two Mirages — launched towards H-3. Once again, the Israelis followed the ‘H’ pipeline in order to make navigation easier. They reached their target just as the two Hunters that had attacked Ramat David earlier that morning were about to

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land, while a pair each of MiG-21s and Hunters were on take-off. The Israelis missed the two Hunters that were airborne, but one of them attacked the Hawker fighters that were rolling down the runway. Under pressure to get into the air as soon as possible, the Iraqi Capt Abdel Wahed Yuzbaki, a veteran of the Kfar Sirkin raid on 5 June, pulled too hard and too early on his aircraft’s stick. His Hunter stalled, yawed and struck H-3’s main water tank. The pilot was killed instantly.

The Tu-16’s rear gunner opened fire, while its pilot entered a turn and a descent that brought him directly over Ramat David — at the moment the Israelis were preparing for their second attack on airfield H-3

crashed seconds later. He had actually attacked the Hunter of 1st Lt Namiq Sa’adallah, short on fuel after the long flight to Ramat David. Sa’adallah’s aircraft was damaged, and the pilot injured, but he managed to land safely back at H-3. Meanwhile, the two MiG-21FLs made a wide turn before accelerating to attack the Israelis as they were withdrawing to the west. His armament limited to two R-3S missiles, Maj Khalid Sarah engaged the enemy flight lead, but the Israeli made a skilful avoidance, dragging the MiG in front of a Mirage. The latter’s pilot claimed the Iraqi as shot down by a short burst from his 30mm cannon. Sarah’s MiG-21FL took a hit that caused its braking parachute to deploy, but a hard break saved his life and his aircraft: the Iraqi managed to land safely. Maj Mumtazz Abdel Ali as-Saydoon attacked another Vautour, but both of his missiles missed the low-flying Israeli, prompting the Iraqi pilot to complain bitterly about the poor quality of Soviet-made missiles upon his return to H-3.

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Following the second Israeli strike on H-3, the Iraqis decided to withdraw June 1967 their aircraft from this exposed and poorly defended position. A column of Jordanian vehicles carrying the surviving pilots of No 1 Squadron, RJAF, to Iraq — including Shurdom and Saif-ul-Azam — found H-3 nearly abandoned on the late afternoon of 6 June. They had to continue their journey all the way to Habbaniyah in western central Iraq. The Jordanians and the sole Pakistani arrived there in small, scattered groups on 6-7 June. Early the latter morning, the Iraqis woke them up and ordered them to join their own pilots. Habbaniyahbased Hunters of Nos 6 and 29 Squadrons were to continue flying Da Day3

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BELOW: The wreckage of Israeli Noratlas 4X-FAX, destroyed by Iraqi Hunters at Kfar Sirkin on 5 June 1967. IDF

The other three Iraqi fighters engaged the Israelis, provoking a hectic dogfight. 1st Lt Wallid Abdul-Latif as-Samarrai attacked the Vautour of the Israeli formation leader, but was in turn attacked by one of the Mirages, which suffered an engine stall. Undeterred, Samarrai went after the Vautour once more and claimed it as damaged by cannon fire. The experienced Israeli said he had outmanoeuvred the Hunter and hit him in return: supposedly it

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SIX-DAY WAR

ABOVE: Iraqi Hunter pilots with their mounts at Rashid AB in 1966. Of interest are the large redpainted surfaces on the nose and fin: they were to serve as a means of visual identification for aircraft from different Arab air forces should they encounter each other in the skies over Israel.

VIA ALI TOBCHI

ABOVE RIGHT: In the course of only two combat sorties on 5 and 7 June 1967, Saif-ul-Azam (left) and Ihsan Shurdom claimed five Israeli fighters as shot down.

SAIF-UL-AZAM COLLECTION

BELOW: Hunter F59B 694 No 6 Squadron, Iraqi Air Force TOM COOPER

combat air patrols over H-3 and along the highway to Amman, via which an Iraqi armoured division was deploying to Jordan. The first such CAP was launched at around 07.00hrs, but it returned to Habbaniyah without making contact with any Israelis. The next got airborne around 10.15hrs Baghdad time. It consisted of four Hunters flown by Flt Lt Saif-ulAzam with 1st Lt Ihsan Shurdom in front, followed by Iraqi 1st Lt Samir Yousif Zainal leading young 1st Lt Galeb al-Hameed al-Qaysee. The plan was to fly a CAP over H-3, then land and refuel there before flying another patrol and returning to Habbaniyah. Despite the enthusiastic reports from its pilots, the IDF/AF was not convinced that its first two strikes on H-3 had been successful. A third was ordered for the late morning of 7 June, with the intention of shutting down the airfield once and for all. Taking their opponents more seriously than ever before, this time the Israelis decided to send four Vautours escorted by four Mirage IIICJs. By sheer accident, the Israeli formation appeared over H-3 from the west at low altitude around the same time as four Hunters were approaching the same piece of airspace at high altitude from the east. A major air battle was inevitable. Advised of the Israelis’ appearance by the Iraqi airfield commander on the ground, Saif-ul-Azam dived towards the enemy, ordering his formation members to arm their

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guns and jettison their drop tanks. The Pakistani and his wingman manoeuvred behind two Vautours, while the two Iraqis attacked the rear pair of four Mirages that were in the process of bombing H-3’s runway. Still in a dive, Azam decided to swap his formation: he and Shurdom were now to attack the Mirages, Zainal and Qaysee the Vautours. The Mirages were faster: upon releasing his bombs, their leader turned and pounced upon the rear Iraqi pilot. Qaysee’s aircraft received a hit that caused him to spin out of control, straight into the main fuel tank of H-3. Undaunted, Azam attacked the same Mirage, forcing its pilot to eject. Breaking off to the right without looking back at his first target, the Pakistani spotted a Vautour approaching head-on, but below his flight level. He inverted his Hunter, went into a dive and pulled back on the stick. Almost blacking out from the g-forces, he found himself barely 150ft (46m) behind the Israeli aircraft and overshooting fast. Instinctively, Azam extended his airbrakes, put his throttle to idle, aimed and opened fire. As soon as his shells hit their mark, the Pakistani broke hard left to avoid the debris. Zainal got behind another Vautour and took aim. The big Israeli fighterbomber began smoking heavily; both crew members ejected shortly before it hit the ground. Zainal pursued the surviving Israelis to the west, claiming hits on another Vautour before he

needed to return to H-3, short on fuel. Azam and Shurdom recovered to Habbaniyah instead. With this epic dogfight, the saga of Israeli air strikes on H-3 during the June 1967 war was over. The result was not favourable for the Arabs, and even less so for the Iraqis. They lost about a dozen aircraft destroyed and damaged, and were forced to withdraw from H-3. Nevertheless, thanks to help from Pakistani and Jordanian pilots, Iraqi Hunters shot down a Mirage and two Vautours, while suffering only one loss in return in the course of three combats over this airfield. Curiously, Pakistani Flt Lt Saiful-Azam was later credited with downing three Israeli fighters over Jordan and Iraq. Highly decorated in Amman and Baghdad alike, he remains well-known in Pakistan although he switched to the air force of Bangladesh once the latter country became independent in 1971. The fate of most of his Iraqi and Jordanian colleagues, however, was far less glamorous. Except for Shurdom — and with no reason — nearly all were accused of cowardice and treachery by their Iraqi superiors, and severely reprimanded. On 8 June, in one of the worst injustices suffered by any Arab pilot in the June 1967 war, at least four Jordanian Hunter pilots deployed in Iraq were even discharged from the RJAF.

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RYAN SCW

STARLET GO M FROE TH

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GOLDEN AGE In 1938, with the so-called ‘golden age of aviation’ nearing its end, the new Ryan Sports Coupe was placed on display at a trade exhibition in Chicago and attracted many admiring glances. Having been shipped to Europe from Australia for a tour, the same is true of Steve Carter’s SCW-145 version WORDS AND PHOTOGRAPHY: RICHARD PAVER

A

most unusual and very rare historic aircraft made its first appearance in the UK last September when Steve Carter brought his beautiful Ryan SCW, VH-SCW, to the Goodwood Revival. Steve has owned and flown this machine in Australia since 2012. He flies commercially for an Australian domestic airline and is a very regular visitor to the UK. In 2016 he decided to transport VH-SCW over to Europe so that it could be displayed at several airshows. The aircraft, which is in superb condition, won third prize in the Freddie March Spirit of Aviation concours d’elegance at the 2016 Goodwood Revival. It was kept at Lee-on-Solent through the winter and into the spring. For 2017 the Ryan’s first public appearance was at the Shuttleworth Season Premiere, followed by the Abingdon Air and Country Show and La Ferté Alais. I caught up with Steve when he transited through Headcorn on his way to the French show, flying a short air-to-air sortie around the Bewl Reservoir in Kent. His good friend Will Greenwood, owner/pilot of Yak‑3 G-OLEG, occupied the left-hand seat and flew the Ryan for the photos as he is a very experienced close formation pilot. The Ryan SC (Sports Coupe) was a three-seat cabin monoplane conceived by T. Claude Ryan to capture sales in the personal aircraft market that was growing rapidly in the USA during the late 1930s. The prototype first flew in 1937, but only 12 were ever built as Ryan quickly became heavily involved in making military ST trainers for the US Army Air Corps, a far higher priority with the prospect of war looming. When SC production started, Ryan originally proposed building 100 airframes and allocated construction numbers 201 to 300. Steve Carter’s example, c/n 211, was the 11th airframe off the line

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LEFT: Steve Carter in his Ryan SCW-145, accompanied by Will Greenwood in the left-hand seat, overflying the Bewl Reservoir. The cameraship was flown by Rob Davies.

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RYAN SCW

ABOVE: All who have flown the SCW-145 praise its handling qualities to the heavens. RIGHT: The SCW wears an exact copy of the Civil Air Patrol 3rd Task Force badge.

in 1938. Its original registration was NC18916. Today, VH-SCW is one of five known to be flying in the world and is the only one of its type to be based in Australia. A further example, c/n 205, is owned by Pierre Duval in France, while seven other survivors are based in the US. Roger Thiel’s c/n 203, kept near Washington DC, c/n 201 on static display in the EAA Museum in Oshkosh, and Steve Carter’s c/n 211 remain fitted with their original Warner Super Scarab 145hp sevencylinder radial engines, hence the SCW-145 (Sports Coupe, Warner 145hp) designation. The majority of SCs have had those units replaced with more widely available Warner 165hp powerplants, which enjoy greater parts availability and fewer running maintenance issues such as the greasing of rocker covers. A couple of others have been given more

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modern flat engines, including the 13th example built in the 1950s from spare factory parts. During the war NC18916 was impressed into service by the US Army Air Force and designated as an L-10, with serial 42-107412. Based in Florida, it flew on liaison duties with Air Transport Command at Morrison Field in West Palm Beach, and with the Civil Air Patrol (CAP) from Lantana airfield. While operating there it became the subject matter of a popular cartoonist and CAP pilot, Zack Mosley. Bestknown for his syndicated aviation cartoon strip ‘The Adventures of Smilin’ Jack’, Mosley’s art described life in the CAP, and helped in its recruiting drive. The Ryan’s colour scheme today is loosely based on the CAP markings from World War Two. During that time, it would not have been painted, remaining in natural metal with base grey dope-finished fabric surfaces. The nose emblem is an exact copy of

the Zack Mosley-designed CAP 3rd Task Force badge. Steve Carter says: “Following her war service, my aircraft was sold off and passed through the hands of a series of owners. In 1989 it was damaged following a loss of power on take-off at Santa Paula. Although I purchased her in flying condition in 2012 and then shipped the aircraft to Australia, she was considered unairworthy due to a poorly repaired main spar. I contracted Field Air at Ballarat to investigate further engineering improvements in order to return full strength to the cantilevered wing. The wing is attached to the fuselage by three tapered pins, one at the leading edge and the others on the top and bottom of the spar. The stressed skin covering the surface of the wing forward of the spar is an integral part of the strength of the wing and in effect creates a D-section monocoque main spar. Due to the persistence and patience of Cameron Wright and the skill and dedication

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of his engineering staff at Field Air — Simon, Marc and Robbo — this Ryan has been restored to grace the southern hemisphere skies. “During this period, I decided to do that little bit extra and attempt to preserve the aircraft for another 80 years. Keith from Aeropaint Australia in Horsham painstakingly stripped, polished and painted the aircraft. His attention to detail and pride in workmanship was impressive. Meanwhile, Mark from Griffs Trim Shop in Ballarat did a brilliant job re-upholstering the internal trim and leatherwork. Borg Sorensen freshened the engine by installing a reconditioned crankshaft, while Parafield Instrument Facilities restored the Pioneer and Weston cockpit gauges, returning them to period condition. “Recently an article in a magazine asked, ‘do we restore aircraft or do they restore us?’ I would agree with the latter. It has been a long journey, but a most enriching experience — the people I have met and have been inspired by, and the friends I have made. Amazing too, the wealth of information that is out there. Russell Williams’ antique aircraft knowledge and the resource available from the San Diego Air & Space Museum are two examples of this. Most importantly, witnessing the dedication and willingness of those involved in resurrecting a piece of aviation heritage is an experience in itself, and I’m sure it’s occurring in hangars and workshops all over the world. Thank you to everyone who has assisted.” In respect of the Ryan’s handling qualities, Steve comments: “The aircraft flies as well as it looks. At 1,600-1,700rpm it flies at 90-95kt true at 1,500-2,000ft. What I like about her are the docile and elegant flying characteristics, which include excellent forward visibility on the ground and passive stall manners due to the 6° of wingtip wash-out and a carefully designed, balanced wing. For the pilot, the centre of effort is close to the centre of gravity, which makes for lovely handling. It has high performance, and extremely light and responsive controls make flying the Ryan SC a double pleasure. Its delightfully quick take-off, fast climb, high cruising speed and slow, featherlike landing characteristics set a new standard of performance.  “There’s an excellent balance of effectiveness between the controls, while the aeroplane's inherent

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LEFT: One of the cartoons featuring the SCW drawn during the early war years by Civil Air Patrol member Zack Mosley. VIA STEVE CARTER

stability permits indefinite flying with hands and feet off the controls. The light wing loading and outstanding stability and control mean normal landing approaches are at a very low landing speed. The aircraft’s landing characteristics permit a safe descent even when you level off quite high since there is no tendency to fall off, but instead a steady, slow settling onto the ground in landing position. This important characteristic is the same when the aeroplane is landed either with full flap in effect, or without use of the large perforated centre-section flap. “The flight qualities at and near the stall are worthy of special note. It is nearly impossible to stall the aeroplane without intentionally

forcing it into one, yet, when the stall is reached, the nose drops only slightly below the horizon, and aileron control is maintained throughout. When forced into a spin, the aeroplane recovers instantly when the controls are neutralised.” And what of further 2017 appearances? Steve intends once again to take the Ryan to the Goodwood Revival, and a week later on 16-17 September it should be at Lee-onSolent for the 100th anniversary celebrations of the former HMS Daedalus. There are currently no firm plans for 2018 and beyond, but Steve did say that there had been a lot of interest in the Ryan from the Czech Republic, so it may spend some time over there.

BELOW: A good view of the unusual engine cowling arrangement as owner Steve Carter fettles the Ryan on the ground at Headcorn.

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meets

A classic Barnstormers Flying Circus standing-on-the-wing display with Tiger Moth G-APVT, the venue Middle Wallop in 1973. ADRIAN M. BALCH

BARRY TEMPEST In nearly 65 years of flying, one of British aviation’s true characters has completed more than 2,300 displays — and seems to have a story from most of them WORDS: BEN DUNNELL

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he British air display scene would be very different without Barry Tempest. Since his first show as a pilot, nearly 60 years ago, he’s been involved in some capacity. He was perhaps the ultimate ‘poacher turned gamekeeper’, the colourful flyer who became a Civil Aviation Authority inspector. Now he’s back to poaching, aiming potshots at his old employer over its new airshow charges and regulations. He still flies, too. Just the day before our interview at his home in the Northamptonshire village of Kings Cliffe, he’d been at Old Warden for the de Havilland Moth Club Charity Flying Weekend, taking passengers for flips in a Tiger Moth. The Tiger is a constant in Barry’s life: he’s flown countless examples, had one collide with him and, through no fault of his own, crashed another. It’s also the type that takes us back to the start of his aviation story, because he learned to fly in one.

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Barry was born in Bradford, West Yorkshire, in 1938. His family moved to Norfolk post-war, and at the age of 10 he took up aeromodelling. That led on to gliding with the Air Training Corps, learning to fly on the classic Slingsby Cadet and Sedbergh. A hearing problem dating back to childhood scuppered his ambition of joining the RAF, but there were other routes into aviation, even if it seemed unlikely at the time. This was when one Elwyn McAully entered the picture. “He’d been in the Merchant Navy”, says Barry, “and he was now a contract air traffic controller for the US Air Force at Sculthorpe, which was five miles from my home. He was a private pilot who’d learned to fly in a coownership flying group down south, and he wanted to continue flying. At that time there was no club-type flying in Norfolk — the closest was at Cambridge or Ipswich, and those were conventional flying clubs

The early days of the Fakenham Flying Group: Bill Higgins (left) and Barry (right) on the day of their flying tests with chief flying instructor Flt Lt Z. W. ‘Danny’ Kaye (centre). VIA BARRY TEMPEST

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As the pilot of the Rapide jump aircraft used by the Army’s Red Devils freefall team, Barry went to a parachuting contest in the south of France, and while there made this static line jump out of a French Air Force Nord Noratlas. VIA BARRY TEMPEST

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AEROPLANE MEETS… BARRY TEMPEST

RIGHT: The immediate aftermath of the collision at Westonsuper-Mare in July 1972, as Barry in borrowed Rothmans Aerobatic Team Stampe G-AYGR and Colin Goodman in Tiger Moth G-ANMO fall to earth. It remains quite incredible that the three occupants of the two aircraft survived, and that all of them flew again, Barry very soon indeed.

ELFAN AP REES VIA BARRY TEMPEST

BELOW RIGHT: In the back seat of Ormond HaydonBaillie’s CT-133 G-OAHB at Westonsuper-Mare in 1975, about to take the ride of a lifetime from what was really too short a runway for the Silver Star. During the subsequent display, an unserviceable water-sensitive valve in the ‘T-bird’s’ floor caused Barry to be soaked during a hesitation roll by water created by the aircraft’s pressurisation system, but he enjoyed the trip nonetheless...

STU MITCHELL

charging conventional prices. ‘Mac’ wanted to form a co-ownership group. He put a handwritten notice in the local barber’s. Within an hour I was knocking on his door. “We had a meeting at a hostelry in Fakenham. Twenty-five of us put £25 each into the kitty, and we bought a Tiger Moth from John Crewdson for £325. We arranged to borrow a farmer’s field, where the farmer kept his Auster Autocar, and we operated from there. I provided a tarpaulin from the construction company I was working for to cover the Tiger’s cockpits, we had some sheep hurdles to keep the cattle off it — the undersides of the wings were liberally spattered with cow dung at the end of a day’s flying — and we bought a 50-gallon barrel of 73-octane fuel and a five-gallon drum of oil. That was it. That was the Fakenham Flying Group. “We had no instructor. My first instructor was a captain in the US Air Force, and he had no British instructor’s rating. His name was Cecil Rhodes, nicknamed ‘Dusty’; he’d been a wartime USAAF instructor, and at Sculthorpe he was an aircraft commander on the KB‑50J tanker. He made it quite clear that flying with him couldn’t count, but he’d teach us to fly. After about eight hours’ flying with ‘Dusty’ he said, ‘You’re ready for solo, but I can’t send you’”. Barry was due to travel to Bradford on a family visit, so he took a day off to go to Yeadon and was sent solo on a Tiger by the chief flying instructor (CFI) of the Yeadon Aero Club, Arthur Carvell. He was on his way. “I got my PPL right at the back end of 1957”, Barry continues, “by which time we had a proper instructor who did my general flying test. He was a Pole who’d stayed in the RAF, and he was known as ‘Flt Lt Z. W. Kaye’ — that was the Anglicised version of his surname, which was utterly unpronounceable. Because he was Kaye, obviously he was known as Danny. I shall never forget, we were doing maximum-rate turns, and he said, ‘That is not good enough. You roll on the bank. You add the power. You roll on more bank. You add more power. You pull, and you’re on full power, and you pull harder and harder and harder, and when you see the tail of an aircraft in the windscreen you slacken off because it’s your own’. He had an attitude towards wanting the very best that people were capable of.

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The Tiger Moth ate the Stampe’s rear fuselage. The propeller went very close to my back. We were about 150ft up, and the whole shooting-match just fell A wonderful instructor. He was killed, tragically, flying a Varsity in 1960.” Building his hours up, Barry became an instructor, and joined the Tiger Club. He’d always been interested in aerobatics, and during 1958 he flew his first powered airshow with one of the Fakenham group Tiger Moths in aid of a local vicar’s appeal to repair his church roof. “I charged him £25 — illegally, because I was a PPL — and it cost me £2.50, an hour’s charge for the Tiger”. In the Moths and a friend’s Olympia glider, Barry’s display proficiency and experience mounted. The many RAF and USAF open days held around East Anglia in that era were a happy hunting-ground. Not long before the loss of Danny Kaye, ‘Mac’ McAully had lost his life, practising an aerobatic routine at Little Snoring on 12 May 1960. The group was henceforth known as the McAully Flying Group, and it exists to this day. So does the aerobatic trophy created in his honour. Its first recipient in 1962 was Charles Boddington, who Barry got to know

well. “We talked and realised that we could do more displays as a pair than we could separately”, Barry recalls. “In 1963 we set up the Barnstormers between us, and gathered on a voluntary basis fellow pilots, aircraft owners, groundcrew, clowns, a resident doctor, an electrician, publicists, team photographers, eventually wingwalkers — you name it. It lasted for 40 years.” With huge numbers of flying clubs then staging their own airshows all around Britain, the Barnstormers were extremely busy. “Of course, we were capable of providing a dozen different slots to mesh into the odd military item, the odd specialist aerobatic item. At one show I did 10 slots, in six different aeroplanes. You’d never dream of doing that now! “At one display at Netherthorpe, not far from Sheffield, we were running short of time. Somebody else had started a Turbulent for me to fly in streamer-cutting, and I was running to the aircraft with a canvas satchel round my neck, unwrapping toilet rolls. You must take the first

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three turns off otherwise the adhesive means it doesn’t unroll. A little, aged, Yorkshire lady in the crowd looked at what I was doing and, in a shrill voice, said, ‘Eeee, I knew flying were dangerous…’ “One thing we pioneered was the Barnstormers Expo. David Boddington, Charles’s brother, was one of the best model aircraft designers around and editor of several aeromodelling magazines. We got the idea of combining model and full-size airshows over two or three days, with huge marquees for the model aircraft traders. It started at Sywell, we went to Cranfield, and it ended up at Leicester. Eventually it stopped because the costs escalated out of sight. “Stemming out of that was a wonderful routine. There was a guy who did a lot of the model flying in the Battle of Britain film, Jack Morton, who built a 40 per cent-scale Tiger Moth painted in Barnstormers colours. We got together and talked

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about doing not merely a formation, but formation aerobatics. Of course, it’s done now by Chris Burkett and Mike Williams, but this was years ago. With him flying the model at full chat, I could formate on him. If he pulled the slackest loop that he possibly could, and I flew a really graunching loop, we could go round together. But stall-turning was where we made the mistake. You always stall-turn with the torque reaction — as you view it from the rear, if the propeller’s turning anti-clockwise that means the torque reaction is in the opposite direction, so you stall-turn to the right. The model turned the other way, and what we didn’t brief was that I would position myself on the right-hand side of his model. When I stall-turned, I had a remarkably close view of the model, about 10ft apart, doing the same thing…” Barry had left his job as an estimator in the construction industry to become the full-time CFI of the newly established Peterborough Aero Club at Sibson. It left time for airshows at weekends, so when ‘Manx’

Kelly asked him to join the Rothmans Aerobatic Team of Stampe SV-4s during the 1971 season, he felt able to accept. Not having done much in the way of close formation aeros, “for the first month”, he says, “I was frightened stupid”. It turned out to be a happy year, learning much from Kelly and Neil Williams, but with doubts about Rothmans’ long-term commitment Barry didn’t feel he could continue beyond that. He did fly a Rothmans Stampe again, but it didn’t end well. The occasion was a Barnstormers display at Weston-super-Mare on 30 July 1972. “We normally operated four aircraft in the flour-bombing routine, which put one aircraft over the target, one crosswind, one downwind and one on base. It was not difficult, using peripheral vision, to keep an eye on the one behind or the one ahead. I had, for a time, been flying a Tipsy Nipper in that particular routine. To liven it up I would tip in to the dive and execute a diving aileron roll, then stabilise, take the flour bag out, drop it, pull out and off we’d go. Well,

TOP: Doing the limbo during a 1969 Barnstormers display at Newtownards, County Down, in Tiger Moth G-ANMO. Despite its later involvement in the Weston collision, like many a Tiger this one rose again, and today flies with Aero Legends. VIA BARRY TEMPEST

ABOVE: Just one of the many amusing moments for Barry during the filming at Sibson of 1972’s Morecambe and Wise Christmas show for the BBC. The Stampe was G-AZNN, later G-OODE. BBC VIA BARRY TEMPEST

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AEROPLANE MEETS… BARRY TEMPEST

ABOVE: Steen Skybolt G-KEST was the machine in which Barry wrapped up his display flying career in 2013. He still co-owns and flies the aerobatic biplane today, though.

VIA BARRY TEMPEST

the Nipper went unserviceable, and I shouted across to Manx Kelly, ‘Can I borrow ‘Golf Romeo’?’ That was the Stampe I had flown the previous year. Manx could see we were short of an aircraft. He said, ‘Yes, take it, no problem’. With my satchel of flour bags I hared across to the Stampe. I took off on time with the other aircraft. However, they managed to get the Nipper going, so we had five aircraft. “I had briefed Colin Goodman, the chap who was flying the Tiger, that if I wasn’t flying the Nipper I wouldn’t do an aileron roll in the dive. If I got the Stampe I’d do a flick roll. But a flick roll has a disadvantage — you’re pulling to a high angle of attack, and you lose a lot of speed. Before I tipped in, I looked behind and Colin was probably 200m, at least, behind me. In I went and flick-rolled. As I recovered, he ate my rear fuselage. The prop went very close to my back. It got tangled up with the rudder and elevator cables. My left wings and his right wings were demolished. “We were about 150ft up, and the whole shooting-match just fell. I saw the ground coming up… I thought I was going to die. I don’t remember the impact, because I was knocked out. The son of the airfield manager there, a chap called Rick Rickards, was the first on the scene. He undid my harness and dragged me out. The wreckage was on fire because a piece of fabric was caught under the exhaust. When I came to, which I did after three or four minutes, I looked up and all I could see were the Barnstormers’ groundcrew. I thought, ‘F***ing hell, I’ve crashed into them and we’ve all gone to heaven!’ I was still convinced I’d died.” Colin Goodman and his front-seat passenger, a pilot for the Army Air Corps’ Blue Eagles helicopter team, were more seriously hurt, but both

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recovered to fly again. Goodman, who overcame neurological injuries and monocular vision, even went back to displaying with the Barnstormers. Having escaped with bruising and mild concussion, Barry returned to Weston a few years later. As an experienced display pilot, he’d been asked by the CAA to do a report on Ormond Haydon-Baillie’s flying. “They were worried silly about him. He’d got a reputation for being the wild man from the woods, and he was flying some very heavy metal at a time when there wasn’t much heavy metal on the civilian circuit. They wrote to Ormond, asking whether he would mind taking Mr Tempest as a passenger in his [CT-133] Silver Star during a display. He said I could do it at the weekend — he was doing a Barnstormers show at Weston. “He landed there, we met up, and we had about a half-hour to talk it over. I asked, ‘Weston’s a bit short. What is your take-off distance required?’ He said, ‘Five metres more than we’ve got. We’ll finish the takeoff roll on the grass at the end, and we’ll go through that housing estate’. And we did! I felt the rumble as the wheels went from tarmac to grass, literally a millisecond before we were off. He sucked the gear up while it was still on the ground to get rid of the drag, and as we went through this housing estate I could see washing on the lines. The slipstream must have created merry hell behind us. “We did a standard jet display… and on landing we took all bar 10 yards of the runway. He put the wheels down on the first metre. He could fly that aircraft beautifully. Ormond asked, ‘What do you think?’ I told him, ‘I thought it was brilliant. On the other hand, I am going to write recommending that you use

runways sufficiently long for the aircraft’. ‘I’m prepared to accept that’, he said. Ormond really was largerthan-life. I was ever so sad when he died. He was a wonderful showman”. Wensley Haydon-Baillie later gave permission for Barry to have his late brother’s famous ‘Black Knight’ emblem painted on his flying helmet. Barry treasures memories of the characters he’s encountered through aviation — Morecambe and Wise, for example. In a sketch called ‘Dawn Patrol’ for their 1972 BBC Christmas show he played a German pilot, the Black Baron, otherwise known as Ritter von Scheissenhausen. “It all stemmed from the fact that Ernie Wise lived in Peterborough. Ernie was going past Sibson in his Rolls one day, out for a Sunday afternoon drive. He saw the aircraft, and came and told me that they were thinking about doing this First World War skit. Would it be possible to do anything for them? We set it up, and within a fortnight we’d got a contract. We did it with a Stampe, G-AZNN, that was then based at Sibson, and a Barnstormers Tiger Moth. “They were wonderful to work with, really hilarious. And John Ammonds, who was the producer of those Christmas shows, was a brilliant man. The idea was that the two of them were in a Tiger Moth, mocked up with a machine gun in the back cockpit. We had a spare Tiger fuselage, which we mounted on a rig where you could roll it inverted. It was the old blue-screen/yellow-screen filming technique. The Stampe comes in and intercepts the Tiger; they say, ‘We’ve frightened him off ’, but I’m sitting feet underneath them. My German helmet goes up through the Tiger Moth’s floor, and Eric picks up the Pickelhaube — ‘Jesus, he’s close’ — and throws it over the side. Then they juggle this grenade, which falls over the side and drops onto the Stampe. The Stampe peels off, smoke going everywhere. It was very entertaining, with a mock Spandau gun made out of balsa wood, and paper markings stuck onto the aircraft with wallpaper paste. In the credits it says, ‘Filmed on location in Peterborough, France’.” In 1979, flying a Tiger Moth wingwalking display over the River Trent in Nottingham, Barry used up another of his nine lives. “There was a big railway bridge, over which I had to climb… As I came back over the bridge at 100ft, I had to lose 80ft to get down to my display height of 20ft. What I didn’t know was that the

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people in charge of the bridge had not told the river board that they were putting up a pair of derricks, because they were going to do some work on it. They had strung a half-inch steel wire from bank to bank, about which they were going to wind a telephone line. I hit the wire with my undercarriage, there was a pitching moment nose-down, the wings said goodbye — I was briefly in a parasol monoplane — and the propeller totally disintegrated. I thought, ‘This ain’t going to go anywhere except down’. “The girl on the top wing saw the cable moments before we hit it. She flipped her harness, and as the aircraft decelerated she swallow-dived off the top wing into the water, landing 10m ahead of the aircraft. I went to the bottom of the Trent strapped in: main harness, back-up harness, helmet. I couldn’t see a bloody thing. But a bubble came out of the gap between my bonedome and my helmet, and I followed it up. I’d have been swimming around and drowned had I not followed that bubble.” Barry’s daughter Helen soon started wingwalking herself. “She’d been pestering me to do it since she was five. I kept putting her off. She was 15, it was half-term holiday, and there was a press day at Weston Park near Cannock. The girl who was to do it fell off a horse and broke a collarbone; the other girls couldn’t get away from work in mid-week. I said, ‘Helen, how do you fancy having a go on the wing?’ She was so chuffed at the thought. We took the family, because it was such an occasion. At

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that time she was the youngest person to do it. I thought one trip would be enough, but of course it never was. From then on she flew voluntarily on Barnstormers shows probably half a dozen times a year”. Helen never looked back. She later spent nearly 20 years with Vic Norman’s AeroSuperBatics wingwalking teams, sometimes with her father flying her on the Stearmans. After spells as a freelance instructor, air taxi and ferry pilot, and CFI of the Leicester Aero Club, the CAA came calling on Barry’s services. A job with them made financial sense. Starting in late 1984 as an operations officer, later a flight standards officer, in the general aviation department, he gradually increased his involvement with airshow regulation. But of course he continued display flying, sometimes adopting one of his new alter egos. Barry’s son John, himself a private pilot and a very accomplished engineer, thought his father’s crazy flying routines were getting just too crazy. “He told me, ‘You’re cutting your margins’. He was right. It was time for me to back off. So I invented ‘the relations’”. Amongst others there was the Bedouin sheikh Col Yasser Verifat, in full Middle Eastern garb, and Col Ivor Bolokov, Hero of the Soviet Union. Their antics in Tiger Moths kept airshow audiences entertained for many years. Having retired from the CAA in 1998, Barry carried on airshow flying. His main steed in latter years was a Steen Skybolt, in which he still owns

a share. He no longer displays it, though. “When I was 75, my son said, ‘Dad, you’ve got to pack it up. You’re not as good as you were’. I thought he was mad, but I slept on it, and the following morning I said, ‘You’re right’. I packed up there and then.” What he’s far from packing up is his interest in the air display industry, especially in the wake of the CAA’s reaction to the Shoreham accident. In both his role looking after regulatory affairs for the Historic Aircraft Association, and as an interested spectator, he tries to keep the pressure on. “Without a doubt there are people out there who would like to say what I’m saying”, Barry remarks, “but daren’t. That’s a shame. The thing that really gets up my nose is the lack of consultation since Shoreham. That is indefensible.” It goes without saying that a piece like this can barely scratch the surface of someone like Barry. I mean, we’ve got this far without even mentioning his competition aerobatic successes, film work in Lindsey Walton’s ‘Bf 108’, visits to the Confederate Air Force — where he flew their Tora! Tora! Tora! Japanese replicas — and a whole lot more. Thankfully he’s writing an autobiography, which promises to fill in the gaps. It’s not quite finished, but no-one can blame him for taking his time. There’s a lot to cover, after all. Until then, how does Barry sum up his career? “I was there, really, as a gifted amateur”, he says. “But I derived an enormous amount of fun from it”. And it was fun watching him fly, too.

BELOW: Weston Park, Staffordshire, in 1981: the then 15-year-old Helen Tempest’s first wingwalk, with father Barry piloting. Tiger Moth G-AIXD was a Barnstormers display aircraft for a long time, in fact right up until the mid-1990s. VIA BARRY TEMPEST

BELOW LEFT: ‘Col Ivor Bolokov’ ready for another Tiger Moth crazy flying exhibition. PETER R. MARCH

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HOOKS’ TOURS

Mike Hooks began his aviation photography career in 1945 with a simple box camera, moving on to an Ensign folding camera in about 1948, and later to a Voigtlander Vito B. He converted to colour in the 1950s, and went on to build one of the UK’s most extensive archives of Kodachrome transparencies

WORDS & PHOTOGRAPHY: MIKE HOOKS

SUD CARAVELLE

This month we feature the very elegant Sud Aviation Caravelle, France’s first jet airliner MAIN PICTURE: Air France’s first jetliner was Caravelle I F-BHRC (c/n 5) Anjou, delivered on 9 May 1959 and converted into a Series III in 1961. Pictured on the wet Zurich tarmac in May 1967, it was sold to the Senegal government as 6V-AAR in December 1971, and after withdrawal from use was used for ground instructional training at Dakar.

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Caravelle VIN I-DABZ (c/n 82) Spica of Alitalia at Zurich in May 1967. Built in 1961, it was delivered on 4 February 1962 and spent 13 years with Alitalia before its sale in November 1975 to Sociedad Anónima Ecuatoriana de Transportes Aéreos (SAETA) as HC-BAI. The aircraft ended up being scrapped.

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The Yugoslav Air Force received serial 7601 (c/n 241), a Series III converted into a IVN, on 8 February 1969. This image was taken at Heathrow that April; it was re-serialled 74101 in September 1970, after which the aircraft was sold to Aerotour as F-BVSF. Later it served Europe Aero Service and Corse Air. Withdrawn from use, the airframe went to Stockholm-Arlanda, and was broken up in September 1974.

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Originally delivered to Air France in April 1966, Caravelle III F-BNKB (c/n 208) was leased to Air Inter from August 1966 and bought by them in January 1975. Seen at Paris-Orly in June 1967, it was sold to Altair as I-GISE in April 1982 and stored. The aircraft is today used as a pizzeria in Sant’Egidio alla Vibrata, Italy.

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Surrounded by service vehicles at Geneva in August 1989, Europe Aero Services’ Caravelle 10B3 F-GCJT was originally OY-STE with Sterling, from whom it was bought in April 1980. Sold to Air City as HB-IKD in November 1989, it became F-GHMU in December 1990 and later passed to Air Toulouse before being withdrawn from use. It is currently displayed at the Ailes Anciennes Toulouse museum.

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v

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16

DATABASE IN-DEPTH PAGES

Development

VICKERS VARSITY

Technical Details

WORDS: DENIS J. CALVERT

In Service

Varsity T1s WL629 and WJ917 of No 5 FTS at Oakington in very close formation on 5 November 1969. BAE SYSTEMS

● Versatile ‘flying classroom’

Insights

● RAF service career ● Other operators ● An instructor’s viewpoint

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Varsity VK 501 Royal Jordanian Air Force CHRIS SANDHAM-BAILEY

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DEVELOPMENT VICKERS VARSITY First Varsity prototype VX828 in flight. BAE SYSTEMS

Vickers’ versatile ‘flying classroom’

T

he Vickers Varsity has its origins in Specification T13/48, which required “a crew training aircraft by 1952 to replace the Wellington T10”. It went on to state that the aircraft “will be used by day and night in the following training roles: (a) Air navigation/bomb aiming (b) Pilot training (c) Signals training”. Unusually, the RAF envisaged a new design rather than an adaptation of an existing aircraft to meet the requirement. That said, the Varsity was the extrapolation of a long line of development that started in 1933 with Vickers’ tender to B9/32 for a twin-engined day bomber — the Crécy, later rechristened the Wellington.

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This had already led to the Viking civil airliner and the Valetta military transport, and the Varsity’s addition of a tricycle undercarriage with steerable nosewheel brought the basic formula more or less up to date. As will be seen later, the Varsity might not have been the end of the line, but the success of the company’s Viscount airliner strongly suggested that the commercial future lay in all-new development. The concept of a single aircraft to meet these different

crew training roles was novel but achievable, as the Varsity’s service over some 25 years would prove. The prototypes of the new design were allocated Type 648 in the Vickers scheme of type numbers, with production aircraft being Type 668. The name Varsity corresponded neatly with the RAF’s intended use of the aircraft as a ‘flying classroom’, as well as tying in with Vickers’ history of alliterative aircraft names, which ranged from the sublime (Virginia, Victoria and Vulcan

Its equipment for the training role was felt to be satisfactory, and the layout of the crew and training stations deemed excellent

— yes, Vulcan) to the slightly ridiculous (Vespa). The use of a large cabin made possible the provision of a number of crew stations for the various training roles envisaged. A contemporary Vickers document wrote of a normal flight crew of three: first pilot, second pilot/navigator and radio operator, plus a complement of up to four trainees. The pilot and co-pilot sat side-by-side in a cockpit offering dual controls and good visibility to the outside world. The radio (W/T) station was behind the pilots, the pupil’s and the instructor’s positions facing aft, each with the radio equipment in a crate mounted in front of it. Further rearwards in the main cabin and behind the main spar was

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DATABASE VICKERS VARSITY

Initial production: WF324-335 (12), WF369-394 (26), WF408-429 (22) Contract for 50 aircraft: WJ886-921 (36), WJ937-950 (14) Contract for 67 (50) aircraft: WL621-642 (22), WL665-692 (28) • WL693-709 (17) were originally contracted, but cancelled in December 1952 • A contract was also issued for 33 aircraft: WW303-305 (3) and WW306-335 (30), but all cancelled by letter in December 1952 Single aircraft, built to replace WJ900, which went to the Swedish Air Force: XD366

demonstration was neat, competent and polished, but was inevitably eclipsed as a spectacle by that of ‘Bee’ Beamont cavorting in the prototype Canberra. Second prototype VX835 made its maiden flight on 29 January 1950 and, like VX828, would be used for several years by Vickers on trials and testing. There is continuing reference

to a third prototype, VX838, but no evidence that its construction was ever started, let alone completed. VX828 and VX835 passed through the Aeroplane and Armament Experimental Establishment (A&AEE) at Boscombe Down in the summer of 1950 for initial clearance trials. Performance proved to be broadly in

Insights

Other identities: • WJ900 became Swedish Air Force Tp 82 82001; it never served with the RAF • WF415 became G-APAZ in April 1957 for Ministry of Supply/ Smiths Aviation Division; crashed 27 March 1963 • WF416 became Royal Jordanian Air Force serial VK 501, King Hussein’s personal transport and the only ‘VIP Varsity’ • WF387 became G-ARFP in September 1960 for Ministry of Aviation/Smiths Aviation Division autoland trials; later reverted to WF387 and used by Short Brothers at West Malling • VX835 later became the testbed for the Eland turboprop • WJ897 to civil register as G-BDFT (fatal crash 19 August 1984) • WJ945 to civil register as G-BEDV (active until 1986, registration cancelled June 1989) • WL626 to civil register as G-BHDD (not actively flown on civil register)

In Service

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Prototypes: VX828, VX835 (2) • Intended third prototype VX838 was not built

agreement with predictions, with a rate of climb of 1,640ft per minute and a realistic ceiling of 26,800ft. Its equipment for the training role was generally considered satisfactory, apart from the H2S and “awkward” loading of the practice bombs, and the overall layout of the crew and training stations was deemed “excellent”. The first production Varsity, designated as the T1 and carrying the serial WF324, flew at Weybridge on 21 May 1951. A Vickers flight test report dated 28 September 1951 covering handling and performance concluded reassuringly that, “these trials […] showed that there is virtually no difference between the prototype and this machine.” The RAF wanted the Varsity in service as quickly as possible, and ordered the type in large numbers. In fact, it over-ordered, and subsequent cancellations brought the total built to just 163 (see table). Initial aircraft were made at Weybridge, and it appears that the first 36 examples (some references say the first 15) came off the line there before production switched to Hurn. Vickers was, in late 1951, suffering from its own success. The Viscount had already been ordered by BEA and was showing great promise, while the Valiant, the first of the ‘V-bombers’, had entered its flight test programme. With both these types gearing up to

Technical Details

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VARSITY PRODUCTION

Development

a navigating station arranged for two H2S (navigational radar) trainees with a separate seat for the staff instructor. A 3ft H2S radar scanner, as fitted to front-line bomber types such as the Avro Lincoln, was provided in the nose. A sextant dome (astrodome) was mounted in the roof above the instructor’s seat, which could be adjusted to form a platform for access. Behind the flight crew was a side-by-side practice bombaiming station for pupil and instructor, their prone positions being accommodated within the ventral pannier (otherwise known as the gondola, cell, nacelle, container or ‘basement’) that characterised the Varsity. Access to the pannier was via two hinged flaps in the main floor, while racks for 24 practice bombs were located in its midportion. The Varsity design emerged from under wraps in April 1947 when an artist’s impression was issued, while a model of the new type was on show on Vickers’ stand at the Le Bourget Salon in June. Compared with the Valetta, the Varsity was a slightly larger aircraft overall. Wingspan was increased by 6ft 3in, wing area by 92 square feet and all-up weight by 1,000lb. As related, it featured a Viscount-type tricycle undercarriage, which at least made it representative of the nosewheel-equipped multi-engine types its students would fly later in their service careers. Power was provided by two Bristol Hercules 265 radial engines (in the two prototypes only — production aircraft would use the Hercules 264) housed in low-drag cowlings and featuring ‘petal’ opening to ease maintenance. Design and construction of two prototypes was undertaken in VickersArmstrongs’ works at Weybridge. First prototype VX828 took to the air from Wisley on 17 July 1949, piloted by ‘Mutt’ Summers with ‘Jock’ Bryce in the right-hand seat. Early flighttesting revealed no nasty surprises, and the machine appeared at Farnborough in September of that year. Its

ABOVE: The nosewheel of VX828 lifts as it begins a demonstration at Farnborough in 1949. AEROPLANE

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DEVELOPMENT VICKERS VARSITY

full-scale production, the decision was taken to offload Weybridge and to expand the works at Hurn (now Bournemouth International), and to centralise Varsity production there. At first, fuselages continued to be produced at Weybridge and were shipped to Hurn by road to be mated with Hurnproduced wings and tailplanes. Even so, there was

With Viscount and Valiant production gearing up, the decision was taken to expand the works at Hurn and centralise Varsity production there a degree of sub-contracting on Varsity airframes as Viscount activity built up, this including the manufacture of the outer mainplanes by Saunders-Roe.

VARSITY PROJECTS

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everal new designs put forward by Vickers to meet other requirements, military and civil, were based on the Varsity — or, at least, incorporated significant elements of it. As early as March 1948, the company proposed the VC3 “twin-engined civil transport [with] 24, 27 or 34 passengers”. This was essentially the Varsity rethought as a civil airliner, with tricycle undercarriage, a 37,000lb take-off weight and the three-man crew housed in what the Vickers brochure described as “a commodious control compartment”. With the turbine-powered, pressurised Viscount clearly indicating the way forward for the civil market, the VC3 was destined to remain a paper aeroplane.

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WF386 was the first Varsity assembled at Hurn, making its maiden flight there on 29 November 1951. In time, Hurn took over full responsibility for Varsity production and was, by

Later in 1948, Vickers put forward a Varsity-based offering as a replacement for the military Valetta. This featured a tricycle undercarriage with the attendant advantages of a “horizontal floor when at rest”, a 40,000lb take-off weight, rear loading doors under the tail unit and an uninterrupted cabin floor with the wing spar passing underneath. This project, too, failed to find favour with its intended customer. Another modified Varsity design was proposed during late 1950 to meet a then current Air Staff requirement for a short-range maritime aircraft. This would have had the machine’s take-off weight further increased to 42,500lb, uprated Hercules 274 engines and a true bomb bay capable of accommodating sonobuoys, depth charges, marine markers and the like. A visual bomb

ABOVE: A cartoon drawing that illustrated the menu for Vickers-Armstrongs’ staff annual dinner and concert at the King’s Arms Hotel, Christchurch on 6 December 1951. BROOKLANDS MUSEUM

early 1953, completing more than one aircraft a week. Indeed, all 161 production Varsities were produced between May 1951 (WF324) and January 1954 (WL692).

aimer’s position was located in the nose, eight 25lb rockets could be carried on rails under the wings, and a Bristol Type 17 turret with two 20mm guns was installed on top of the forward fuselage, behind the flight deck. Vickers said it could have a prototype of this derivative ready in “18 months from the receipt of the order.” In the event, there was no order and the design would never be built. This brought to a close a line of Vickers development that started with the Wellington and ended with the Varsity T1. Neither of these aircraft — nor, indeed, the Viking and Valetta that came in between — could ever be called a world-beater, but each was there when it was needed, did the job it was designed for, and would go on to have a suitably long career.

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TECHNICAL DETAILS VICKERS VARSITY AEROPLANE

Development

Servicing of an early No 201 AFS Varsity at Swinderby shows well the easy-access ‘petal’-type engine cowlings.

Technical Details In Service

Conventional but dependable

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and includes drawings of trainer, ambulance and troop carrier variants while adding, “the basic aircraft lends itself to photo-reconnaissance and since, to special order only, carriers for six 500lb bombs can be fitted under the wings, it makes an equally effective weapon as a medium bomber”. As it turned out, though, the type was only built to one production standard as the Varsity T1, and the RAF found other aircraft far more

unobstructed” cabin space from the cockpit to the toilet (a gender-neutral Elsan closet and separate urinal) at the rear. In fact, the main spar passed through the fuselage and created a sizeable step that would not look out of place at Aintree, although headroom when clambering over the spar was still adequate. The entire cockpit and cabin were suitably lagged against noise and heat absorption and were fetchingly

Some aircrew members recall remaining in the bomb-aimer’s compartment for landing, an experience generally described as ‘terrifying’ suitable as a medium bomber — not that this stopped various examples later being converted for a variety of roles never envisaged by the designers at Vickers. The airframe was of stressed-skin construction, supported by open frames and stringers in the fuselage and chordwise formers in the wings and tail surfaces. The ovalsection fuselage gives what was described as “virtually

finished, as Flight reported in April 1952, “in buff and cream” colours. Under the main floor at the forward end was the bombaimer’s compartment, accessed through a folding trap-door. Two couches were installed. While undoubtedly of use for bomb-aimer training, some aircrew members have fond memories of using the position to ‘watch the world go by’ on a long

flight. Others recall remaining in the compartment for landing, an experience generally described as ‘exhilarating’ or even ‘terrifying’. And yes, you’re quite right — it wouldn’t be allowed today. Behind the couches was racking for 24 25lb practice bombs, stowed in four rows of six. The cockpit is generally described as roomy, comfortable, well-ventilated and air-conditioned, and with the benefit of a Mk9 autopilot. It would, however, be stretching a point to call it ergonomic, a word whose meaning would have raised blank expressions in the Weybridge design office. Sideby-side dual controls were fitted. Flying and engine controls were grouped conventionally on the pedestal, with electrical switches for the various services mounted on a panel in the roof, above the windscreen. Less frequently used controls were to be found on console panels under the side windows. Flying controls, which were rod-actuated, consisted of a

Insights

E

verything about the Varsity’s design says ‘conventional’, to the point that even specification T13/48, to which it was built, describes it as a “trainer version of military transport to C9/46”, the Valetta. A contemporary Vickers-Armstrongs brochure (undated, but surely late 1949 or early 1950) on the Varsity offered it as “a modern twin-engined multi-purpose military aircraft” before going on, in a typically British self-effacing manner, to state that it was “at least comparable with the best of present-day piston-engined aircraft.” Concessions to modernity included the fact that it was of all-metal construction (early Vikings had retained fabriccovered, geodeticconstruction wings) and had a tricycle undercarriage, while suitable attention had been paid to accessibility and maintainability to meet the RAF’s intended high utilisation in the training task. The brochure clearly envisaged the Varsity as having a wide range of roles,

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TECHNICAL DETAILS VICKERS VARSITY

ABOVE: Trainee navigators hard at work inside a No 201 Advanced Flying School machine. AEROPLANE

hand-wheel and an adjustable rudder bar for each pilot. The control columns were forward of the instrument panel, and were attached to the handwheels by shafts passing through the instrument panel. Controls for the Smiths electronic autopilot were on the port console. Each pilot’s seat had a 25g harness and was fully adjustable. The cockpit’s deep windows gave what a Vickers brochure described as “a feeling of spaciousness and lightness”. The fixed flat windscreen panels in line with the pilots were of sandwiched laminated glass, and direct vision panels were provided. Windscreen wipers were fitted to the main panels. Two exits were provided for parachute escape. The first was the inward-hinging door in the underfloor aft of the nosewheel bay that could also serve for crew entry (although it seems rarely to have been used for this purpose), while in the port rear fuselage was a side door that opened

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SPECIFICATIONS: VARSITY T1 POWERPLANTS:

Two Bristol Hercules 264 14-cylinder radials, 1,950hp (2,000hp for five minutes) each

DIMENSIONS:

Length: 67ft 6in (20.57m) Height: 23ft 11in (7.29m) Wingspan: 95ft 6in (29.11m)

WEIGHTS:

Empty: 26,806lb (12,159kg) Maximum take-off: 37,500lb (17,010kg)

PERFORMANCE:

Maximum speed: 252kt at 5,000ft Recommended cruising speed: 183kt at 10,000ft Still air range at 183kt: 1,275 miles (2,052km) Maximum range on full fuel load at 10,000ft: 2,450 miles (3,943km)

inwards. Stowage was provided for dinghies in the port engine nacelle and in the fuselage. The cabin was not pressurised, but sufficient oxygen was provided for a crew complement of 11 for a five-and-a-half-hour flight at 30,000ft. The wing, which spanned 95ft 6in (or 95ft 8in — both

figures feature in official publications), had an incidence of 4° and an area of 974 square feet. Hydraulically operated split flaps extended along the underside of the wing from wing root to inboard of the Frise-type ailerons, which went virtually to the wingtips. The two Bristol Hercules 264 radials

drove 14ft Rotol propellers, fully feathering and with a 70° pitch range. Accessibility to the powerplant was given high priority at the design stage, and the cowlings were in two main portions, hinged at the firewall and opening outwards. Fuel — 1,140 Imperial gallons’ worth — was housed in six crushproof tanks in the inner and outer wings, and Graviner fire protection was fitted. The undercarriage was forward-retracting and hydraulically operated, with twin wheels on all units. The wheels were of small diameter, allowing the aircraft to sit close to the ground. Unusually, the main gear doors were closed (retracted) when the landing gear was locked down. The undercarriage arrangement initially caused problems with mud being thrown off the twin nosewheels to obscure the bomb-aiming window in the pannier, although this was solved by the provision of mudguards. Dunlop hydraulic brakes were fitted, with two independent systems.

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TECHNICAL DETAILS VICKERS VARSITY Development Technical Details In Service Insights

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IN SERVICE VICKERS VARSITY

WF370 was an early Varsity delivery to No 201 AFS. In September 1970 it was one of three examples destroyed in a hangar fire at Finningley. AEROPLANE

One of the RAF’s great trainers

P

roduction Varsities started to come off the Weybridge line in quantity in the autumn of 1951, and 18 had flown by the end of that year. Several early aircraft were used on acceptance trials. Third production example WF326 went to the A&AEE in August and embarked on tropical trials. It staged to Khartoum, where the cabin air

conditioning proved inadequate to cope with the ambient temperatures, and groundcrews complained of the risk of burns from the casings of the 25lb bombs they were loading into the racks in the pannier. The first unit slated to receive the Varsity in Flying Training Command was No 201 Advanced Flying School (AFS) at Swinderby, south-west

THE STOLEN VARSITY

A

strange story around No 2 ANS concerns the ‘disappearance’ of Varsity WF426 during an unauthorised flight from Thorney Island on 25 April 1955. Perhaps overdramatically, Pathé News headlined its report of the incident, “Stolen British bomber crashes in France”. Late in the day, an RAF airframe fitter, who had been taking private pilot flying lessons but

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of Lincoln. The need was considered urgent, as the Wellington T10s then in use there were ageing and barely representative of the new generation of ‘heavy’ multiengine types with which the RAF front line was being re-equipped. The Canberra had lately entered squadron service and the ‘V-bombers’ would follow within just a few years, the Cold War was

without showing much aptitude, gained access to the cockpit, started engines and taxied out. Realising what was happening, other groundcrew attempted to block the runway with a vehicle, but failed to prevent his take-off. A second Varsity crewed by a staff pilot took off in pursuit and (according to contemporary news reports; normal caveats apply) followed the errant Varsity as it headed north over Sevenoaks and into the London control zone in a “nightmare 200ft above the city” chase.

becoming ever hotter, and the RAF was in an era of expansion that would require a rapid scaling-up of the aircrew training programme and the re-opening of several wartime airfields. No 201 AFS existed to provide pilots and navigators to Bomber, Transport and Coastal Commands. The early ’50s was a time when RAF aircrew were a mix of

Despite the pilot of the pursuing Varsity, Flt Lt Johnnie Smiles, getting close to the other aircraft over the vicinity of the Crawley/Horsham area of Sussex and a crewman signalling from the astrodome for it to land, all these efforts were to no avail. Eventually — and after several hours’ flying — WF426 crashed into a farmhouse in France, close to the Belgian border near Onnaing, just after midnight on 26 April. Sadly, three people on the ground were killed, along with the Varsity’s ‘pilot’.

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Development

benefiting from time in the air to practise their own speciality. Pilot circuit training (‘circuits and bumps’) generally used the satellite airfield at Wigsley, five miles to the north, to keep the Swinderby circuit reasonably clear. With the standard fuel load of 750 gallons, a Varsity could complete most if not all of a

was replaced, although the new Valetta T3 would be flown for ‘pure’ navigator training for some years. A memorandum dated 24 January 1952 recorded: “RAF Swinderby is now equipped with 18 aircraft. It is receiving all production aircraft and […] an establishment of 36 is expected”. For the three

The Varsity’s modernity, coupled with a rethought and revised course at Swinderby, reduced student aircrew wastage considerably weeks ending 18 January, 1,117 flying hours were achieved, using a maximum of 10 aircraft per day. It went on to note, “One aircraft completed 25 landings in four hours, and this is typical”. The training syllabus was built around the student pilots, with other student crew members

day’s training sorties without the need to refuel. The first year of Varsity operation from Swinderby demonstrated good aircraft reliability, although some problems were encountered with brakes, tyre wear and the Hercules engines’ reduction

gear. Aircraft utilisation was high, individual Varsities often achieving six landings an hour and up to nine flying hours per day. Pilots new to the Varsity found the nosewheel steering something of a novelty, but taxiing with the aid of this feature and the Dunlop toe brakes soon became second nature. The Varsity exhibited good single-engine performance; student pilots typically went solo after nine hours of dual instruction and were introduced to asymmetric landings early in the course. Its modernity, coupled with a rethought and revised course at Swinderby, reduced student aircrew wastage (the dreaded ‘chop rate’) considerably.

Insights

commissioned and noncommissioned, although the pendulum was swinging towards the former. Such was the pace of expansion that the intake included wartime aircrew who had left the RAF for pastures new but had rejoined on short-service engagements, and officers who had been ‘flying a desk’ for some years but who were keen to get back to real flying duties. Signallers (radio operators) also trained at No 201 AFS, and student crews were formed early in the course, although they were unlikely to stay together beyond its completion. The first Varsity delivery to Swinderby was of WF328, which arrived on 1 October 1951 and was promptly coded ‘A’. Early examples were used to convert instructors to the new type, and the first Varsity course commenced in late November. By April 1952, the school’s final Wellington T10

ABOVE: WF419 of No 5 FTS at Oakington in March 1972. DENIS J. CALVERT

In Service

TOP: No 5 FTS Varsities over Cranwell during the ‘farewell’ sortie on 22 October 1974. KEY COLLECTION

Technical Details

ABOVE: Training exercise sorties to Germany were a common feature of life on No 5 FTS. These three Varsities, with WJ912 in the old white, grey and Dayglo scheme leading WL676 and WJ974 in red, white and grey, were at RAF Gatow, Berlin, in July 1972. RALF MANTEUFEL

BELOW: Varsity T1 WJ946 No 115 Squadron, RAF CHRIS SANDHAM-BAILEY

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IN SERVICE VICKERS VARSITY Instructors appreciated the full dual controls — everything but the nosewheel steering could be controlled from either seat — which allowed them to take over if the student pilot got into a potentially dangerous situation. Student navigators got their bombing training on cross-country sorties of longer duration, the load of 24 practice bombs being dropped on one of the many coastal ranges. A flag-waving tour of the Far East Air Force was made early in 1953 by No 201 AFS’s WJ939, which routed

It was a good mount for navigator training, but most of its equipment would have been familiar to the navigator of a WW2 bomber Swinderby-Abingdon-LuqaHabbaniya-MauripurNegombo-Sabang-ChangiTengah-Seletar. This was an early demonstration of the Varsity’s long-distance capabilities and at its completion AVM McEvoy, Assistant Chief of the Air Staff (Training), pronounced himself “very pleased with the performance of the aircraft.”

RAF VARSITY UNITS Unit Base(s) Role/notes No 201 Advanced Swinderby Pilot, navigator, signals training; Flying School redesignated No 11 FTS No 1 Air Electronics Hullavington, AEO training School/Air Electronics Topcliffe School/Air Electronics and Air Engineers School No 1 Air Navigation Hullavington, Navigator training; School Topcliffe role transferred to No 6 FTS No 2 Air Navigation Thorney Island, Navigator training; School Hullavington, role transferred to No 6 FTS Gaydon No 3 Air Navigation Bishops Court Navigator training School No 6 Air Navigation Lichfield Navigator training School Armament and Martlesham Trials Instrument Heath Experimental Unit Bomber Command/ Lindholme Navigator/bomb aimer training Strike Command Bombing School Central Flying Little Instructor training School Rissington Central Navigation Shawbury Air traffic controller training and Control School Central Servicing Winthorpe Communications Development Unit RAF College Cranwell Advanced multi-engine and navigator training Fighter Command Bovingdon Communications, VIP flying Communication (WL680) Squadron No 1439 Flight Hemswell Support of Operation ‘Grapple' nuclear tests; aircraft said to have been painted orange overall Electronic Warfare Watton, Wyton Electronic warfare research Support Unit/ and development, EW aircraft Electronic Warfare modification (WJ916) Engineering and Training Unit

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In RAF service over the years, the Varsity acquired several nicknames, some rather more complimentary than others. The most common — and enduring — was ‘the Pig’, a name that surely reflected the aircraft’s porcine looks but that was also justified, some say, by the pig-like squealing of its brakes on landing.

By the time of the Queen’s Coronation Review at RAF Odiham on 15 July 1953, Varsities had started to re-equip other units. The five Varsities in the fourth rank of the seemingly endless static lines had one each from Nos 1, 2 and 3 Air Navigation Schools (ANS) as well as two from No 201 AFS. In the flypast, formations 9 and 10 each comprised six Varsities, again a mix from the same four units. Operating for the occasion out of Thorney Island, the two formations passed overhead Odiham at 15.43:50 and 15.44:00

Unit Base(s) Role/notes RAF Flying College/ Manby, Advanced aircrew training, College of Air Strubby officer/refresher training Warfare No 4 Flying Training Valley Multi-engine training; Varsity School element transferred to No 5 FTS in 1962 No 5 Flying Training Oakington Multi-engine training School No 6 Flying Training Finningley Navigator training, formed out School of No 1 ANS and No 2 ANS Advanced pilot training No 8 Flying Training Swinderby School No 11 Flying Training Swinderby Navigator training; role School transferred to No 2 ANS Maintenance Andover Communications, VIP flying Command (WL680) Communication Squadron No 23 Maintenance Aldergrove Crew ferry/hack (WJ898, WF382 Unit coded ‘23MU’) No 1 Radio School Locking Radio operator training; role transferred to No 2 SoTT No 2 School of Cosford Air radio apprentice training Technical Training No 51 Squadron Watton, ELINT, SIGINT operator training Wyton No 97 Squadron Watton Radar research and development No 115 Squadron Tangmere, Radar, radio calibration Watton Watton Radar, radio calibration; No 116 Squadron re-numbered No 115 Squadron No 151 Squadron Watton Radar research and development; re-numbered No 97 Squadron No 173 Squadron Hawarden Crew ferry No 187 Squadron Aston Down Crew ferry No 192 Squadron Watton SIGINT operator training: re-numbered No 51 Squadron No 527 Squadron Watton Radar calibration St Mawgan Station St Mawgan General station duties, transport (WF330) Flight

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IN SERVICE VICKERS VARSITY

T

No 3 ANS ceased such activities much earlier, having disbanded in April 1954. On 1 May 1970, No 6 FTS at Finningley took on responsibility for the RAF’s navigator training, in doing so inheriting the aircraft fleets, including Varsities, from the two schools it replaced. WF383 became the first of a handful of Varsities delivered to the Central Navigation and

Control School (CNCS) at Shawbury in April 1952, where they served to train navigation instructors and staff navigators, and to provide refresher courses. The RAF Flying College at Manby similarly saw its first Varsity delivery early in 1952, to join a motley collection of types used by the RAFFC on advanced instructional duties, the unit later taking on the provision of

Insights

he RAF set Varsities to some decidedly secretive work. The type was employed by No 192 Squadron and its successor, No 51 Squadron, to train new ‘special operators’ in gathering radar signals intelligence (SIGINT). Exercises up and down the UK were followed in the syllabus by so-called ‘Baby Crawl’ deployments to West Germany, during which the aircraft operated out of Gütersloh for missions along the edges of the ADIZ (Air Defence Identification Zone) on the western side of the Inner German Border. On these flights, trainees destined for operational work aboard SIGINT Canberras and Comets were able to listen in to Soviet radars. Stationed at Watton and then Wyton alongside No 51 Squadron was another interesting outfit. In June 1969, the operations record book of the Electronic Warfare Support Unit (EWSU) described its function thus: “…to maintain a quick reaction capability to engineer and install electronic systems in No 51 Squadron aircraft to meet specific tasks as directed and to train personnel in the operation and servicing of these systems”. It went under several names, subsequently becoming the Electronic Warfare Engineering and Training Unit (EWE&TU) when combined with the Signals Air Radio Laboratory (SARL), and operated a number of Varsities. WJ911 was the SARL research aircraft for a time, fitted in 1970 with AN/ALR-8 and AN/ALR-27 countermeasures receiving equipment. Later there followed WJ916, used for EW development. Sortie details are not contained in archive files, but certainly WJ916 was a regular visitor to Germany during its time on the EWE&TU’s strength. The author has heard recollections of this aircraft being subject to a close guard while on the ground at Gütersloh or Wildenrath, while on other occasions it would taxi, engines running, straight inside a hangar on returning from missions. Andover XS644 took over WJ916’s duties with what was now the Electronic Warfare and Avionic Unit (EWAU) in 1977. Ben Dunnell

In Service

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CLANDESTINE OPS

the specialist navigation course from CNCS. With these units at full strength, the RAF had achieved its major reequipment plans for the Varsity — or, at least, with the main training units. The Hurn production line continued to turn out Varsities at a rate of one a week through 1953, making possible their issuing to other RAF units. The Bomber Command Bombing School (BCBS) at Lindholme received its first examples early in 1953. Formed in October 1952, BCBS had an initial strength of eight Varsities, which served alongside a larger number of Avro Lincolns. This was the time of build-up for the service introduction of the RAF’s ‘V-bombers’, with a consequent need for specialist training for aircrew members. An RAF ‘nav/radar’ navigator destined for the ‘V-force’ would attend a 10-month course at BCBS, to give him the expertise to operate his radar scope and the navigation and bombing system, and carry out his bomb-aimer duties. By the end of the decade, the peak of the build-up had passed and the scale of the training task at BCBS reduced considerably. The Varsity served with a handful of numbered RAF squadrons. No 116 Squadron, part of No 90 (Signals) Group, received its complement of Varsities from spring 1953 and employed them for many years in the flight checking role on behalf of the Inspectorate of Radio Services (IRS, or ‘IRIS’ to its friends) at Medmenham. Based at Watton, its aircraft checked and calibrated navigation aids at RAF airfields in the UK and further afield including those in the Middle East and Far East. The unit was renumbered as No 115 Squadron on 21 August 1958 and continued to fly the Varsity. Its replacement in the shape of the Argosy E1 started to arrive from January 1968. Eight Varsities were still on strength in mid-1969, but by August 1970 the last had been retired. Also stationed

Technical Details

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Probably the most secretive RAF Varsity was WJ916, on approach to Gütersloh in September 1975 while with the Electronic Warfare Engineering & Training Unit. GÜNTER GRONDSTEIN/SPOTTING GROUP GÜTERSLOH

Development

precisely, proceeding at a leisurely 166mph. No 201 AFS was redesignated as No 11 Flying Training School (FTS) on 1 June 1954, although it carried on its training task, still based at Swinderby. This was part of a general renumbering of Flying Training Command units, a raft of AFSs becoming FTSs. This was, though, a time when the command was slimming down (what the RAF PR machine would surely refer to today as ‘rightsizing’) in the wake of the end of the Korean War, with the peak requirement for aircrew training now over. No 11 FTS disbanded on 7 June 1955, but the Varsity continued its multi-engine aircrew training role with a number of units, initially No 4 FTS at Valley and culminating with a long spell at Oakington with No 5 FTS. The latter received Varsities in March 1962 and continued flying them until the end of 1974. If one accepts the scientific definition of ‘a generation’ as 25-and-a-half years, it is correct to say that the Varsity trained a generation of RAF multi-engine pilots. Other early Varsity users were No 1 ANS at Hullavington, No 2 ANS at Thorney Island and No 3 ANS at Bishops Court. Deliveries to these units started in July 1952 and were broadly complete 14 months later. None of these three schools used the Varsity exclusively; all had the Valetta T3, while the first two additionally flew the Handley Page Marathon T11 — not that it lasted that long in Flying Training Command service. They provided trained navigators to meet the RAF’s (then) insatiable needs; the service had a requirement for the training of 3,000 aircrew during 1952. The Varsity provided a modern and serviceable mount for navigational training, but it is equally true that most of the aircraft’s equipment would have been totally familiar to the navigator of an RAF World War Two bomber. Nos 1 and 2 ANS continued to train navigators until 1970.

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IN SERVICE VICKERS VARSITY at Watton and flying in the ELINT role monitoring radar and radio transmissions ‘of interest’ was No 192 Squadron, which used Varsities for a short period in the mid-1950s (see page 87). A later operator was the Central Flying School (CFS) at Little Rissington, which needed a replacement for its Valetta C1s. WJ919, the first aircraft of an initial batch of four, was delivered in February 1960 when the Varsity Flight was formed within Type Squadron (later renamed as the CFS’ No 3 Squadron), the first flying instructor training course starting on 27 April. In fact, CFS ‘trappers’ (examiners who visited other RAF training establishments to standardise instructional methods) had trained on the Varsity — and many other types not represented in the CFS fleet — as early as 1955, using ‘loaned’ examples detached temporarily to Little Rissington. Further afield, a CFS Varsity provided support for the school’s Jet Provost team, the Pelicans, on its October 1960 trip to West Africa. The Varsity ended its service with CFS in 1974, but no fewer than 26 examples of the type

ABOVE: A three-ship of brand-new No 201 AFS Varsities — WF370, WF334 and WF331 — up from Swinderby in January 1952. AEROPLANE

had been on strength at one time or another during the intervening 14 years. Among these was XD366, the final production machine. It arrived on 6 May 1960 and served for nine years before being retired at the end of June 1969, to end its life on the Little Rissington fire dump. As late as May 1974, the No 5 FTS training task at

COASTAL PATROL

I

n 1968, plans were drawn up to assign Training Command Varsities a new wartime role, to augment RAF maritime squadrons under the Coastal Command Varsity Plan. Their role would be anti-submarine reconnaissance patrols over inshore focal areas around the UK, in the Straits of Gibraltar and overhead convoys to protect shipping. No 5 FTS at Oakington undertook training sorties to Gibraltar with a maritime operations instructor from RAF St Mawgan aboard to co-ordinate training. Exercise ‘Strong Gale’ in 1969 was used to demonstrate this new capability, but the results were seemingly disappointing. The Varsity crews were rated “mainly untrained and unbriefed”, while the Varsity’s navigation aids and communications equipment were said to be “inadequate”. The same memorandum notes ruefully that the option of updating the Varsity’s tactical navigation capability had not been proceeded with on cost grounds, and that “a proposal some years ago to fit depth charges using external carriers was also turned down.” It is unclear how far training proceeded, but Varsities were nominally to be attached to the maritime squadrons at St Mawgan, Ballykelly, Kinloss and Machrihanish (No 206 Squadron, detached from Kinloss) for wartime employment alongside the Shackleton.

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Oakington was still running at full tilt. That month, more than 1,100 flying hours were achieved on the unit’s Varsities, with air traffic control at Oakington recording 4,461 aircraft movements and 824 more at its Waterbeach satellite. No 5 FTS’ 100th ‘long course’, snappily called 100 Course, was under way in summer 1974, with 101 Course running a couple of months behind it. In their later stages of training, Varsity pilots continued to make overseas flights to broaden experience. During June 1974 11 such sorties were made, all to Germany. By this time, though, the writing was on the wall both for No 5 FTS as a unit and for Oakington as an RAF airfield. The intention had been to re-equip the school with the Scottish Aviation Jetstream, 26 examples of which had been ordered for the RAF without any clear plans for how they would be deployed, and for No 5 FTS’ flying training task to be transferred to Church Fenton. The school’s final full course on the Varsity, 102

Course, was completed in autumn 1974, just as the type had started to be replaced as a pilot trainer by the Jetstream T1, with 1 (Jetstream) Course under way. Refresher flying courses with the Varsity went on for a bit longer. In fact, the Jetstream’s service introduction was to prove problematic, and the type was temporarily grounded following a crash at Little Rissington on 4 November 1974. This fact, coupled with a temporary surplus of trained multi-engine pilots, led to the decision to close Oakington and disband No 5 FTS before a course was ever completed there on the Jetstream. With no further employment in sight, the Varsities were flown out of Oakington during the final months of 1974. Many went to No 5 Maintenance Unit at Kemble, while others were dispersed to serve the needs of station fire sections. As a farewell to the Varsity, a formation of 12 aircraft was put up over Cambridge in June 1974, and a final ceremonial flypast made by five aircraft led by Sqn Ldr C. Blake, OC Varsity Refresher Squadron, on 22 October. The formation overflew the RAF College at Cranwell, its return leg continuing via Linton-on-Ouse, Brampton and Alconbury. The last Varsity to leave Oakington departed on 4 November, piloted by the station commander. This event marked the virtual end of the Varsity’s training role, but not of all its service flying activities. Generally accepted as the last flight by an RAF Varsity was that by WF382 to Gatow on 4 July 1977. This aircraft had achieved 8,143 flying hours and 5,146 landings between its first flight on 19 March 1952 and its delivery to Berlin, where it was intended to be used for crash and rescue practice. In the event, it would be saved for preservation.

Generally accepted as the last flight by an RAF Varsity was that by WF382 to Gatow on 4 July 1977... it was saved for preservation

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IN SERVICE VICKERS VARSITY

Once deliveries were complete to the RAF’s main intended operators of the Varsity, several aircraft trickled down to secondary use. It is perhaps interesting to note that only two Varsities were ever exported (at least, as flying examples), just one was re-engined and two made it onto the civil register, not counting three further preserved examples

THE TURBOPROP TESTBED

Varsity WF416 served initially with No 201 AFS, but was sold to the Royal Jordanian Air Force in 1956 as (unlikely though this might seem) a VIP

Keen aviator King Hussein flew the Varsity the day after it arrived in Jordan and pronounced himself well pleased

ABOVE: VK 501 was King Hussein’s personal aircraft, converted by Eagle Aviation Services at Blackbushe from ex-RAF WF416. AEROPLANE

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aircraft for King Hussein’s personal use. Eagle Aircraft Services at Blackbushe carried out the conversion, the most obvious external sign of which was the removal of the under-fuselage pannier, a modification that added 5kt

Insights

KING HUSSEIN’S VIP TRANSPORT

In Service

ABOVE: VX835 on the power of its starboard Eland only. AEROPLANE

Technical Details

Second prototype Varsity VX835 was converted in 1953 to become a flying testbed for Napier’s 3,000hp Eland turboprop, initially with the new engine in the starboard position only. The Varsity’s existing engine mountings and firewall made it impossible to produce a suitably narrow and streamlined cowling for the new engine, which measured only 36in across. The first flight as such was in the summer of 1954, and the aircraft appeared at the Farnborough show that September, by which stage it had Elands in both positions. With 6,000hp at the pilot’s command, the twin-Eland VX835 was gloriously overpowered and the aircraft, while retaining its basic natural metal RAF scheme, had ‘go-faster’ lightning bolt cheatlines applied to the cowlings. It operated for some years from Napier’s Luton facility, at one point being fitted with a large spray rig to simulate icing conditions.

to the cruising speed. The main royal compartment was constructed in the rear cabin, with two comfy seats and two full-length couches along with a well-equipped galley. At the rear was the toilet, although ‘bathroom’, in the best English sense, would be a better description for the degree of luxury. A second compartment in the front fuselage provided seating for nine other, lesser, members of the entourage. Close attention was paid to soundproofing and air conditioning, while the cockpit was rethought and received much new equipment including VHF radios. Hand-over at Blackbushe by Eagle’s chairman Harold Bamberg took place on 18 October 1956, after which the aircraft, now in a highgloss white/grey livery and serialled VK 501, took off for the Jordanian capital Amman, staging via Nice, Luqa and Nicosia. On arrival, it was met by keen aviator King Hussein, who flew it the following day and pronounced himself well pleased.

Development

OTHER OPERATORS

ABOVE: The plush interior of King Hussein’s ‘VIP’ Varsity would be unrecognisable to the countless servicemen who received their training inside the more spartan RAF aircraft. BROOKLANDS MUSEUM

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IN SERVICE VICKERS VARSITY The sole Swedish Air Force Tp 82, serial 82001, during its final flight on 28 March 1973, when it flew to Linköping and the Flygvapenmuseum. F 8 VIA BERTIL SKOGSBERG

ABOVE: RAE Varsity T1 WF379 at Abingdon on 16 September 1978. Modifications include the extended nose and radome, and changes to the pannier.

SWEDISH ELINT PLATFORM The second ‘export’ Varsity was WJ900, diverted off RAF contract for delivery to the Swedish Air Force (Flygvapnet) for electronic intelligence-gathering duties. As such, it never saw RAF service. Designated Tp 82 (where ‘Tp’ indicates ‘transport’, surely a cover designation) in Swedish service, the Varsity received the serial 82001 and replaced two DC-3s previously used for intelligence duties. It was delivered in January 1953 and operated throughout its time with F 8 at Barkarby. The author was privileged to have the opportunity to interview two ex-Swedish Varsity aircrew at the Flygvapenmuseum at Linköping in June last year. A first question was why the Varsity was selected for this role. Its advantages, I was told, were that it could reach 7,000m altitude, that it had a large cabin to accommodate the planned equipment — and that “the English sold it very cheaply.”

AUTOLAND TESTING Two Varsities were transferred to the Ministry of Supply (later Ministry of Aviation) and put on to the British civil register for use by Smiths Aviation Division at Staverton. WF415 took up G-APAZ in April 1957 and was repainted in a fetching airline-style scheme. It was used in the development of an automatic landing (autoland) system for potential civil and military use, and is credited with more than 600 ‘hands-off’ landings. Its flying career came to a tragic end on 27 March 1963 when, during a training sortie from Staverton involving a single-engined approach, it lost power on both engines and crashed onto a house in Tuffley Avenue, Gloucester. The aircraft ended up perched atop the roof, but with both wings severed. The nose and

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Around six Swedish pilots were qualified on the Varsity, all of them normally flying transport types (F 8 was a transport wing) but being taken away occasionally for these special Varsity missions. Normal flight crew was a pilot and a flight engineer, with three operators in the main cabin, one of them in the pannier, which the Swedes referred to as ‘the bar’. The equipment fit was standard and did not vary by mission, with ELINT — particularly the monitoring of radars — rather than communications intelligence (COMINT) being the assigned task. The Varsity acquired sensors on the pannier, aerials on the fuselage and a large ‘sword’ aerial that was deployed after take-off from a slot in the rear underfuselage. 82001 had 3,984 flying hours at its retirement, its final flight being on 28 March 1973 when it flew to Linköping and the Flygvapenmuseum. It remains on display there to this day.

cockpit area had taken the full force of the impact, and both pilots were killed. WF387 became G-ARFP in September 1960 and was used alongside G-APAZ, completing is secondment to Smiths in 1968 before reverting to military markings and being issued to Short Brothers &

Harland at West Malling. This aircraft, which Smiths promoted in a 1962 advert as “the first […] in the world to be equipped with an automatic landing system at triplex level”, was recognised by the lack of a ventral pannier, removed during civilianisation at Cranfield.

ABOVE: The final resting place of G-APAZ of Smiths Aviation Division, atop a house in Gloucester; the sad and fatal conclusion of a singleengined approach to Staverton on 27 March 1963. GLOUCESTERSHIRE CONSTABULARY

DENIS J. CALVERT

ABOVE: Sqn Ldr Neil Dawson makes the final working sortie in RAE service by Varsity WL679 on 2 August 1991, including an overflight of its Farnborough base. It was delivered to Cosford for preservation on 27 July 1992. KEY COLLECTION

BRITISH MILITARY EXPERIMENTAL ESTABLISHMENTS The Empire Test Pilots’ School at Farnborough used five Varsities, first prototype VX828 arriving in 1952 and later being joined by WF381, WF387, WJ937 and WL681. The Blind Landing Experimental Unit at the Royal Aircraft Establishment (RAE) Bedford employed at least two Varsities, WF417 and WL665, while the Royal Radar Establishment (RRE) had several, some recognisable by their elongated radomes. WL679, a veteran of RRE service but by that time on the strength of RAE Farnborough, made the last working flight by a Varsity in military markings on 2 August 1991, when it flew a final sortie from its base. Just under a year later, on 27 July 1992, it was flown into Cosford for the Aerospace Museum, in what was the last Varsity flight of any kind.

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INSIGHTS VICKERS VARSITY Development

A CFS Varsity trio, led by WJ949, taxies at Little Rissington in August 1968. ADRIAN M. BALCH

Production

An instructor’s viewpoint

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view apart from the huge engine cowlings. There were two sets of flight instruments with the centre section given mainly to engine controls and displays. The roof panel included a selection of light switches for trainees to learn to operate in the dark when night flying. For some reason, the RAF always assumed that

It was quite a conventional aircraft to operate. Noisy at take-off power, it flew off at 75-85kt and climbed in a fairly flat attitude you'll do. Off you go to the Varsity Flight’. That selection procedure was hardly the case with my new-cohort Varsity trainee — one Nigel Bacon, who had just come off a Hunter tour as a fighter pilot. “The flight had two Varsities. To enter the aircraft via the port fuselage door a ladder was needed, which then had to be pulled in and stowed using rope attachments to secure it to the starboard side of the cabin. The door itself was large and was swung to and closed from the inside. The Varsity was the only aircraft I've flown where the cockpit checklist started, ‘Ladder in and stowed, door closed.’ “Inside it looked wide and big with a cargo area leading up to the cockpit, and it also had a small under-floor bomb aimer’s station for practice bombing. However, it was basically a transport aircraft. “The cockpit was spacious with a generally good external

light or electrical failures would happen! “The Hercules 264 engines had contra-rotating propellers. The propeller on the port engine rotated clockwise and that on the starboard anti-clockwise, as seen from inside the cockpit. This gave the advantage that the thrust line from each was

slightly nearer the fuselage when flying at a high angle of attack and, in turn, this meant it was slightly easier to control should there be a sudden engine failure at low speed, such as after take-off or when climbing at high power. “It was quite a conventional aircraft to operate. The engines started easily and taxiing was straightforward, with nosewheel steering. However, it was quite large and care was needed to stay in the centre of taxiways. Noisy at take-off power, it flew off, depending on weight, at 75-85kt and climbed in a fairly flat attitude in climb power setting. It was easy to synchronise the engine rpm so that any ‘beat’ was cancelled. “The engines were subject to ‘coring’. This could occur when climbing in cold air when the oil pipes cooled in the airflow and the oil

Insights

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“I was allocated to the piston Provost stream and this suited me, having previously been trained on the type. However, two months before the end of the six-month course the flight commander came to me and said, ‘You've flown two engines, haven't you? They need someone to instruct on the Varsity and

In Service

very opportunity should be taken to ‘sell’ the aircraft to the student, and full use should be made of its performance to impress him. He may have been disappointed at his selection for multi-engine training, and the enthusiasm of his instructor can go a long way towards interesting him in this new class of flying.” So said the Air Ministry’s June 1961 Varsity T1 flying instructor’s handbook. Even then, every student pilot wanted to go fast jet. However, many who trained or instructed on the Vickers aircraft have fond memories of it. Sqn Ldr Terry Gill MBE, a qualified flying instructor and ETPS graduate, flew the Varsity at the Central Flying School, then at the School of Refresher Flying from 1961-63 and on flight trials at RAE Farnborough from 1964-67. Here, he gives his personal impressions of the aircraft. “Following a tour flying the Canberra B2 and B6 with No 249 (Gold Coast) Squadron in Cyprus, my next posting in March 1961 was to the Central Flying School at RAF Little Rissington in the Cotswolds, to learn to become a flying instructor. The station was the highest in the RAF, being 500ft above mean sea level, and prided itself as being the ‘highest and best’. It operated Gnats, Vampires, the Varsity and piston Provosts, together with Meteors, Chipmunks and an Anson.

Cutaway

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“

ABOVE: A fine example of a Varsity cockpit is that of WJ945, now at the Cornwall Aviation Heritage Centre after many years at Duxford, and the subject of extensive restoration. DENIS J. CALVERT

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INSIGHTS VICKERS VARSITY flowing through them became cooler and thicker around the inside of the pipe. This left a thinner small core of oil, in its centre, getting ever hotter when it reached the engine. If unchecked, this could lead to loss of oil pressure, and the engine overheating and possible seizure. The drill was to close down the engine, feather the prop and then descend to warmer air and preferably to land. So, great care was needed to monitor the temperatures and pressures, as no-one wanted to suffer coring on both engines! I never experienced coring on the CFS course, but did so later with a student. “At the end of our extended course in October 1961, I was posted to the School of Refresher Flying at RAF Manby, near Louth in Lincolnshire. This was a lodger unit at the College of Air Warfare and its purpose, as the name suggests, was to get aircrew who had been on a ground tour back to flying standard before posting to a transport conversion unit and squadron. Piston-engined aircraft were flown from Manby, with jet refresher courses available on Vampires and Meteors at the neighbouring satellite, RAF Strubby. “Here, the Varsity course had a straightforward syllabus and lasted up to three months. We would convert students to the aircraft, including asymmetric flying with feathered overshoots and landings, get them to solo standard and then concentrate on instrument flying and regaining an instrument rating before practising flying airways routes. As some students were not familiar with variable-pitch propellers we spent some time practising power changes. ‘To increase power, set rpm first then throttle. To decrease power, set throttle first then rpm. These procedures minimise stress on the engines.’ “Typical sorties included a selection of the following: start-up and taxi, run-up, take-off and climb, cruise, standard turns, steep turns (45° of bank), stalling, critical speed

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ABOVE: One of several Varsities used by the ETPS at Farnborough was WF381, lost in a crash during asymmetric flying practice near Tangmere on 19 October 1959. CHILTERN IMAGE SERVICE/ALAMY

and engine failures at safety speed or above, asymmetric flying, and overshoots and landings (two-engine, flapless, single-engine). Sortie length varied from one-and-a-half to three-and-a-half hours, but most lasted about two hours, logged from take-off to landing. “For practice engine failure/ asymmetric training, it was important not to delay the engine fire/feathering drill as the drag of a windmilling propeller could cause a rapid speed loss. So, unless on final approach for landing (when it was best to continue for landing), the general order of

emergency radio call as necessary. These actions take much longer to read than to do, but stress was placed on getting the procedure correct rather than risking a mistake through haste. Practice engine failures were always carried out at or above safety speed in level flight, in the climb or in the descent. Actual feathering was normally done only above 3,000ft, and below that height touch drills on the ‘dead engine’ were practised. The ‘failed’ engine throttle was then increased to a zero-thrust condition. “Stalling and recovery were conventional. At the weights

It gave the feel of a large aircraft and introduced pilot trainees to the use of a second pilot to assist with flying events was: control the aircraft — fly wings level, level off (if in a climb) and fly in balance; check for engine fire; increase power as necessary to maintain a safe flying speed; warn crew and call for the emergency drill checklist; identify the failed engine; carry out the feathering drill (but close the throttle of the failed engine gently in case you have grabbed the wrong throttle!) then feather the propeller of the failed engine by pulling the rpm control through the feathering gate and shut off fuel cock for the dead engine; visually check the propeller has feathered; then make an

we flew, the stalling speed would have been about 65-75kt, depending on weight and flap selection. Stalling with full flap could result in a wing drop, usually the left wing, especially if some engine power was on. Increasing speed restored aileron control and recovery was then straightforward. “I was only at Manby for about 15 months before selection in 1963 for the Empire Test Pilots’ School, which was then at Farnborough. After completing the ETPS course, No 22 (Fixed-Wing), I was posted to the Instrument and Electrical Engineering Flight at

Farnborough. I flew about 30 hours annually in its Varsity, mainly on ad hoc trials such as a take-off director trial, a take-off and landing monitor trial and a UHF data link trial. “All told, I flew about 400 hours in the Varsity and it was always a pleasure to fly. I once flew it from Farnborough to Idris in Libya, via Nice overnight on the way down and Monaco overnight on the way back; a seven-hour trip each way, which was most enjoyable. “While the Varsity may have been expensive to run and operate, it did give the feel of a large aircraft and introduced pilot trainees to the use of a second pilot to assist with flying, to monitor the flight instruments and fuel gauges, to read the checklist, to keep a good look-out and to be a general dogsbody. It was easy to take off, fly and land, but quite hard to fly accurately for a whole training sortie. Asymmetric flying could be easily demonstrated and practised. It had both a good safety record and a good serviceability record. As such, it was well-suited as a twoengined training aircraft and provided a good lead-in to the larger transport aeroplanes then in use. It was very suitable to get qualified pilots back into military flying after completing a ground tour. Incidentally, I learned that while these aircrew might forget all sorts of things on their refresher courses, they never forgot how to land!”

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VISIT CORNWALL AVIATION HERITAGE CENTRE AND SEE NEWQUAY’S NEWEST 5 STAR ATTRACTION! Climb aboard many of our classic aircraft from the 1950s onwards. Talk to our knowledgeable volunteers and hear all about the roles aircraft carried out. A great day out for both young and old Indoor and outdoor exhibits Rated 5 star on TripAdvisor WWW.CORNWALLAVIATIONHC.CO.UK Cornwall Aviation Heritage Centre, HAS 3, Aerohub 2, Newquay, Cornwall TR8 4JN (follow the signs for RAF St Mawgan) “Simply brilliant - if you love aircrafts then visit here! it’s a breath of fresh air compared to the ‘do not touch, stay off’ policy of every other museum of its kind”

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Events

TOP LEFT: Sea Fury, Hunter and Rafale — a memorable fighter formation. TOP RIGHT: SPAD XIII and Bristol F2B combined for a never-beforeseen airshow pairing. ABOVE LEFT: The Yak-3s of Will Greenwood (left) and Georges Chauveau power into the air for the ‘Normandie-Niemen’ 75th anniversary salute. ABOVE RIGHT: Salis and sons make for a Piper Cub-mounted 80th birthday tribute to father Jean. ALL PHOTOS DAVID HALFORD

Meeting Aérien de La Ferté-Alais

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irthdays and anniversaries were among the main themes for the 45th ‘Temps des Hélices’ Meeting Aérien on the Plateau de Cerny near La Ferté-Alais, on the annual Pentecôte holiday weekend. The most significant for participants and public alike was the 80th birthday of Jean Salis, marked not in some of the more macho aircraft on hand but by a formation flypast of five Piper Cubs accompanied by a calypso version of ‘Happy Birthday to You’, Jean Salis in the lead trailed by his sons Edmond, Baptiste, Franck and Jean junior. They dipped their wings on landing, possibly as a mark of respect to Jean’s father Jean-Baptiste, whose memory still animates the site. This year’s Meeting was indeed notable for the number of pilots of ‘mature’ years in the flying display. They included 83-year-old Jean-Pierre Lafille,

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ABOVE: A great La Ferté moment, courtesy the Air France Boeing 777 and the Patrouille de France. DAVID HALFORD

conducting the Blériot XI-2 ‘Pégoud’ in tandem with Robert Villanova in the Morane H, and the 88-year-old JeanMarie Saget, former Dassault chief test pilot, leading the 13-ship formation of CAP aircraft. These creations of Auguste Mudry, in collaboration with Claude Piel, were some of the most successful aerobatic mounts of the post-war period.

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Marking the centenary of Mudry’s birth in July 1917, the flypast included examples of the CAP 10s, 20s, 222s, 232s and 332s that put France back at the forefront of aerobatic competition (‘voltige aérienne’), thus regaining the pre-eminence it enjoyed in the 1920s and ’30s with Morane-Saulnier aircraft. The line-up of pilots flying behind Saget was a roll-call of some of the finest aerobatic exponents France has produced, including world and national champions of both sexes. Heavy rain on Friday had turned much of the Ile-de-France region into a series of impromptu streams, and it returned to bring Saturday’s programme to an abrupt halt at around 16.30hrs. Fortunately, Sunday saw the full five-and-a-half-hour flying display in all its variety, with a capacity crowd. The show’s biggest scenario boasted 10 T-6s in the Pearl Harbor dive-bomber

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stream, backed by the usual pyro and P-40N, while the Vietnam War came with two Skyraiders flown by Brunelière and Bailly, plus a pair of T-28s and a Reims Skymaster. Hopes of seeing Will Greenwood’s Goodwood-based Yak-3M take centre stage in the ‘NormandieNiemen’ set-piece were dashed as he was limited to a couple of passes, after the Amicale Jean-Baptiste Salis (AJBS) CASA 352 launched its parachutists and was then ‘shot down’ by the other two Yak-3s and Yak-11, but the zip with which all were flown is always infectious. The Casques de Cuir’s Bristol Fighter and the Memorial Flight’s SPAD XIII kept well away from the World War One scrap, displaying separately but sedately. The Caudron G.III, the aircraft featured in the AJBS emblem, became the focus of a separate display unrelated to WW1. This retold the story of French aviatrix Adrienne Bolland, the first woman to cross the Andean cordillera, from Mendoza in Argentina to Santiago in Chile. Flying an aircraft with an operational ceiling of just 4,500m across the Andes — where the highest peaks reach 7,000m — with only 40 hours’ flying experience and inadequate clothing and maps would seem impossible, but by all accounts she was a ‘bloody difficult woman’ and somehow, reportedly including pre-flight help from a medium, made it through in four hours on 1 April 1921. High-energy action came in shovelfuls from the French Air Force’s Capt JeanGuillaume Martinez and his Rafale C solo demonstration. It first joined the homage to Hawker’s Sydney Camm, the duo of Swiss Hunter T68 and Patrice Marchasson in Christophe Jacquard’s Sea Fury FB11, for a couple of passes before breaking away for its own stylish display. The weekend also marked the return of another Camm-conceived aircraft, Jan Friso Roozen’s Hurricane IIa, damaged after the 2015 show in a landing accident at Dijon. With the cancellation of Saturday’s later programme, Sunday saw not one but two civil airliners displaying. The first was an Airbus A330-300 from the budget airline XL, which uses it for flights to the Caribbean and Indian Ocean territories. Following displays by the Breguet XIV replica and the Air France-marked DC-3, an Air France Boeing 777-328ER appeared from the north-east, with the Patrouille de France as close escort. Breaking away for a separate display after two flypasts, the 777 had Antoine Chabbert — son of commentator Bernard — in the right-hand seat. Just one of the many memorable items that made for a most enjoyable weekend. David Halford

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Simon Hargreaves powers the Sea Vixen round Duxford’s M11-end corner, during the jet’s last display for some time. BEN DUNNELL

Duxford Air Festival

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he Duxford Air Festival was a departure for this venue. Anyone who’s complained about the IWM shows offering too many regular home-based performers had no call to do so here, as a wide variety of items was presented from First World War machines to modern multi-role combat types, with much else in between. Jets were a very prominent feature. Impressive though the RAF Typhoon was, it was completely overshadowed by the French Air Force Rafale — dynamic from start to finish. Simon Hargreaves brought Naval Aviation Ltd’s awesome Sea Vixen on Saturday, but alas its belly landing on returning to Yeovilton naturally prevented his planned return the next day. The Norwegian Air Force Historical Squadron SB Lim-2 (MiG-15UTI) ended up as another Saturday-only act, a road accident close to the airfield late the following afternoon leading to a request from the emergency services for noise restrictions to be applied. The Great War Display Team’s whirling, pyrotechnic-accompanied routine was extremely well received. As they formed up to the south, on Sunday we were treated to the post-restoration public debut of Roy Palmer’s Sopwith Pup in the hands of ‘Dodge’ Bailey,

28–29 MAY

whose climb after take-off was most impressive. Completed last year by the Historic Aircraft Collection, the Pup had remained grounded during Saturday’s strong winds. One of the highlights was the inter-war air racing trio of Shuttleworth’s DH88 Comet with two Mew Gulls, the Shuttleworth original and David Beale’s replica. A superb UK debut item followed, namely the Norwegian Spitfire Foundation’s Noorduyn UC-64A Norseman. It would be interesting to establish with certainty when a Norseman last appeared in the UK. Here it was accompanied by a Canadian utility design from a decade later, the Aircraft Restoration Company’s Beaver. Each day’s conclusion took us back to more familiar Duxford fare, John Romain and Pete Kynsey flying a magnificent Spitfire Ia pair courtesy of the IWM and Comanche Fighters. With a four-and-a-half-hour programme and several Duxford ‘firsts’, the Air Festival had lived up to expectations. John Dunnell The Norwegian Norseman gave a spirited account of itself. BEN DUNNELL

BELOW: ‘Dodge’ Bailey takes Sopwith Pup N6161 into the air. BEN DUNNELL

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Events A Vietnam-style ‘wall of fire’ accompanies the Bronco’s attack run, as OH-6 and UH-1 look on. PETER REOCH

RAF Cosford Air Show

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irshows are about more than just the flying. Which is just as well, given the dark, blustery — and, at times, rainy — conditions at Cosford. There were some most interesting ground displays. A stand proclaiming “RAF Fylingdales at your service” was keen to talk ballistic missile early warning and showed a panel from the old ‘golf ball’ dome, while a Dutch outfit was looking for crowd-funding to turn a Boeing 727 into a conference centre at Maastricht. Cosford’s runways, at less than 4,000ft, inevitably limit the aircraft types that can land, although Airbus Atlas C1 ZM401 flew in to provide the most impressive Seeing the BAe EAP outdoors was a real treat. PETER REOCH

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static exhibit. Elsewhere, Cosford’s own fleet of Jaguars — now non-flyers — produced a line-up that would have done Coltishall proud, while the RAF Museum’s Hurricane and EAP made for a welcome sight in the open air. The six-hour flying display was certainly varied. Highlights included the BAE Systems Avro XIX G-AHKX, which Peter Kosogorin displayed beautifully in the adverse conditions, and the SAR routine by Andrew Whitehouse in Whirlwind HAR10 XJ729/G-BVGE. The BBMF appeared overhead Cosford with four Merlins. Sadly, these were installed in three Spitfires and a Hurricane; the first

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JUNE post-major service flight of Lancaster PA474 was still awaited. Part of the US Air Force’s Exercise ‘Saber Strike’ bomber deployment to Fairford, an Ellsworthbased B-1B made a single pass just as the rain really got into its stride, while B-52H 61-0021 from Barksdale managed two passes under better conditions, memorably (if perhaps unintentionally) juxtaposed on the first with B-17G Sally B. The Italian Air Force energetically displayed a Tornado from 311° Gruppo/ RSV in one of the most garish schemes yet seen on the type. Surely the most inventive element was the battlefield support set-piece, a plausible and highly animated air battle with pyrotechnics. This started with the re-enactment of the January 1968 action when four North Vietnamese Antonov An-2s on a mission to bomb a US radar site in Laos were intercepted by a UH-1D ‘Huey’ flown by an Air America pilot who gave chase, his crewman using an AK-47 rifle from the cabin door. After 20 minutes, two An-2s had crashed, although the other pair escaped. This scenario, although on a slightly smaller scale, employed civil-registered warbirds in the shape of An-2 HA-MKF from Popham, the Vietnam veteran OH-6A and UH-1H of MSS Holdings, and Tony de Bruyn’s ever-popular OV-10B Bronco. A great family show. Shame about the weather. Denis J. Calvert

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The Sea Hurricane and the two Battle of Britain veteran Hurricane Is formed one of the display items of the year. BEN DUNNELL

Shuttleworth Classic Evening Airshow

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n English country idyll, and three Hurricane Is wheeling through a peerless evening sky — it could only be Old Warden. The post-restoration public display debut of Hugh Taylor’s P3717, initially in formation with its fellow Battle of Britain veteran R4118 from Hurricane Heritage and the Shuttleworth Collection’s own Sea Hurricane Ib Z7015, was reason alone to make the pilgrimage at the height of midsummer. What came forth on the hottest weekend of the year so far will rank among the season’s finest showpieces. Through three-ship passes and a short tailchase, the harmonic

sound of early Merlins fitted the relaxed evening mood. Then Stu Goldspink and P3717 were given free rein, his marvellous routine of vertical aerobatics, elegant rolls and low, close passes the perfect expression of this magnificent machine. This wasn’t the event’s only ‘first’. The other aircraft in the Hurricane Heritage fleet, Harvard IIb FE511, was itself a newcomer, its silver scheme catching the last rays of light. And it was a joy to see the marvellous Aeronca C3 G-ADRR of Colin Essex puttering along on its inaugural show outing. Following as it did the two Hawker Cygnet reproductions

Shuttleworth Fly Navy

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he first Shuttleworth Collection Fly Navy show last year is regularly cited as the highlight of that season, so the follow-up ‘RNAS Old Warden’ event was always going to be eagerly anticipated. With a preliminary line-up that seemed set to surpass even last year’s nautical spectacular, the late withdrawal of several star acts due to unserviceability this time around makes any comparisons between the two invidious. But with the batting running so deep at Old Warden, the show still delivered by the bucket-load. Missing were the Sea Vixen (see News), the Royal Navy Historic Flight’s Swordfish W5856 and two other heavy-hitters, Kennet Aviation’s Skyraider and The Fighter Collection’s Corsair, but true maritime heft was still on show in both the static and flying. The Royal Navy sent Merlin HM2 and Wildcat HM2

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JUNE and the ANEC II, the vintage light aircraft enthusiast enjoyed a real treat. The rest of proceedings contained familiar Shuttleworth fare, but who’s complaining? The only visiting acts were Hurricane PZ865 and Spitfire LFVb AB910 from the BBMF, meaning we saw four Hurricanes in rapid succession, if not together. It was nearly 10 o’clock by the time the ‘Edwardians’, on this occasion the Bristol Boxkite, Avro Triplane and Deperdussin, brought things to a close. The return of Shuttleworth’s evening shows is cause for celebration, and this one demonstrated why. Ben Dunnell

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JUNE Sea Hurricane, Wildcat and Bearcat during the Shuttleworth Fly Navy finale. BEN DUNNELL

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Events

Event Planner August 2017 UK

05

Dundrum Bay, Newcastle, County Down: Newcastle Festival of Flight — www.visitmournemountains.co.uk

06

Old Warden, Beds: Shuttleworth Edwardian Pageant Airshow — www.shuttleworth.org

05

10-13 12-13

12-13 17-20 18-20

18-20 19

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19-20 19-20 20

24-25 26-27

26-27 26-28 27 27

East Kirkby, Lincs: East Kirkby Airshow — www.lincsaviation.co.uk

Ashton Court, Bristol: Bristol International Balloon Fiesta — www.bristolballoonfiesta.co.uk Maldon, Essex: Military and Flying Machines — www.militaryandflyingmachines.org.uk

Tower Festival Headland, Blackpool seafront, Lancs: Blackpool Airshow — www.visitblackpool.com

Eastbourne seafront, E Sussex: Airbourne — Eastbourne International Airshow — www.eastbourneairshow.com

Billing Aquadrome, Northampton, Northants: Northampton Balloon Festival — www.thenorthamptonballoonfestival.co.uk

Eshott, Northumberland: Northumberland’s Wings and Wheels Festival — www.nwwf.live Herne Bay, Kent: South-East Air Show —baypromoteam.co.uk

Old Warden, Beds: Shuttleworth Collection Flying Proms — www.shuttleworth.org Biggin Hill, Kent: Biggin Hill Festival of Flight — www.bhfof.com

Headcorn, Kent: Combined Ops — www.headcornspecialevents.co.uk/combined-ops/4588791648 Seething, Norfolk: Seething Charity Air Day — www.seething-airfield.co.uk/airday2017.php Clacton seafront, Essex: Clacton Airshow — www.clactonairshow.com

Dunsfold Park, Surrey: Dunsfold Wings and Wheels — www.wingsandwheels.net Rhyl seafront, Denbighshire: Rhyl Airshow — rhylairshow.co.uk

Kent Showground, Detling, Kent: Military Odyssey — www.military-odyssey.com

Bruntingthorpe, Leics: Cold War Jets Open Day — www.bruntingthorpeaviation.com/open-days Little Gransden, Cambs: Little Gransden Air and Car Show — www.littlegransdenshow.co.uk

31-03 Sep Bournemouth seafront, Dorset: Bournemouth Air Festival — bournemouthair.co.uk

NORTH AMERICA

04

Quesnel Regional Airport, British Columbia: Quesnel Skyfest — www.quesnelskyfest.ca

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Abbotsford International Airport, British Columbia: Abbotsford International Airshow — www.abbotsfordairshow.com

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Genesee Park, Seattle, Washington: Boeing Seafair Air Show — www.seafair.com

Barnes ANGB, Massachusetts: Westfield International Air Show — www.westfieldairshow.org

Bountiful Skypark Airport, Woods Cross, Utah: Warbirds over Utah — www.vintageaviationmuseum.com Camarillo Airport, California: Wings over Camarillo — wingsovercamarillo.com

North Avenue Beach, Chicago, Illinois: Chicago Air and Water Show — www.cityofchicago.org/city/en/depts/dca/supp_info/chicago_air_and_watershow.html

Villeneuve Airport, Edmonton, Alberta: Edmonton Airshow — www.edmontonairshow.com Rivière-du-Loup Airport, Québec: Festival Aérien

Selfridge ANGB, Michigan: Selfridge Open House — teamselfridge.com

New Garden Flying Field, Toughkenamon, Pennsylvania: Festival of Flight Air Show — www.newgardenflyingfield.com/index-8.html

Atlantic City Beach and Boardwalk, New Jersey: Atlantic City Airshow — airshow.acchamber.com Madras Airport, Oregon: Airshow of the Cascades — www.cascadeairshow.com

Brunswick Executive Airport, Maine: Great State of Maine Air Show — greatstateofmaineairshow.us Dover AFB, Delaware: Thunder over Dover Open House — www.dover.af.mil/ThunderOverDover CFB Greenwood, Nova Scotia: Air Show Atlantic — www.airshowatlantic.ca

Lancaster Airport, Pennsylvania: Community Days — lancasterairport.com Ottumwa Regional Airport, Iowa: Fly Iowa — flyiowa.org/fly-iowa-2017

Prince Albert Airport, Saskatchewan: Celebration of Flight Air Show — www.princealbertairport.com Brantford Municipal Airport, Ontario: Rotary Charity Airshow — rotarycharityairshow.ca

MAINLAND EUROPE

04-05

Midden Zeeland, The Netherlands: Zeeuwse Luchtvaartdagen — zeeuwseluchtvaartdagen.nl

05-06

Kętrzyn Wilamowo, Poland: Mazury AirShow — mazuryairshow.pl

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helicopters, and Duxford-based Plane Sailing provided its Catalina, pilot Derek Head giving the most enthralling PBY display anyone present could remember. Historic helicopters are a rare breed, but were well represented here by the ex-Argentinean Army UH-1H Iroquois G-HUEY, flown by Mark Fitzgerald, and Wasp G-CBUI with the former Royal Navy Sharks display team leader John Beattie at the helm. Three examples of the Gazelle, the type flown by the Sharks from 1975-92, were in attendance and performed a formation departure after the show. The sweet sound of a sleeve-valve Centaurus came courtesy of Anglia Aircraft Restorations’ Fury ISS ‘SR661’/ G-CBEL, with Richard Grace at the controls, while two previous generations of Hawker naval product, Nimrods K3661 and S1581 of the Historic Aircraft Collection and TFC and the Shuttleworth Sea Hurricane, Z7015, represented 1930s-40 carrier fighters after the Air Leasing-operated Seafire III PP972/ G-BUAR was sidelined to the static line-up. The 1944-built machine — which served on both HMS Stalker and Attacker — suffered a heavy landing on arrival in gusty conditions, in a style so often seen in archive film of this nautically gnarly type alighting onto pitching carrier decks during World War Two.

Stauning, Denmark: Stauning Air Show — stauning-airshow.dk

Bautzen, Germany: Flugtage Bautzen — www.flugtage-bautzen.de

Schaffen-Diest, Belgium: International Old-Timer Fly-in — flyin.dac.be Ursel, Belgium: Wings and Wheels — www.wingsandwheels.be

Chotěboř, Czech Republic: Chotěboř Freestyle Aerobatic Airshow — www.airshowchotebor.cz Roskilde Airport, Denmark: Roskilde Airshow — www.airshow.dk

Patriot Expo Center, Moscow; Alabino Testing Grounds and Kubinka AB, Russia: Army 2017 International Military-Technical Forum — www.rusarmyexpo.com NOTE: Public airshow at Kubinka 25-27 August only Luleå AB, Sweden: Nordic Airshow — www.forsvarsmakten.se St Stephan, Switzerland: Hunterfest — www.hunterverein.ch

Albstadt-Degerfeld, Germany: Flugplatzfest — flugplatzfest.lsv-degerfeld.de Bensheim, Germany: Flugtag — www.sfg-bensheim.com/flugtag Cham-Janahof, Germany: Chamer Flugtage — www.ssv-cham.de Albert-Picardie, France: Meeting Aérien

Sliač AB, Slovakia: Slovak International Air Fest — www.siaf.sk

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ABOVE: Richard Grace put on a beautiful show over Old Warden in the Fury ISS. BEN DUNNELL

An altogether more purposefully pelagic fighter, TFC’s Wildcat, was given a punchy workout by Dave Southwood, and led the show-closing ‘Balbo’ in a first-time formation with the Sea Hurricane and Stu Goldspink in TFC’s Bearcat. While flying in the formation’s second section alongside Howell Davis’s Hawker Demon and the collection’s Lysander, the Bristol Mercury in Shuttleworth’s Gladiator developed a serious misfire, pilot Paul Stone making a flawless forced landing in an adjacent field. Commentator Steve Slater was rapidly able to inform the large crowd that both pilot and biplane were intact, a happy conclusion to another heartstirringly grand Old Warden occasion. Tony Harmsworth

AEROPLANE AUGUST 2017

30/06/2017 09:16

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29/06/2017 14:10

Reviews

REVIEWS RATING ★★★★★ Outstanding ★★★★★ Excellent ★★★★★ Good

★★★★★ Flawed

★★★★★ Mediocre Enough said

The latest books and products for the discerning aviation enthusiast BOOK of the MONTH Canberra Boys

by Andrew Brookes published by Grub Street This series’ formula is now familiar, but no less appealing for that. Like the previous ‘Boys’ books, it does not attempt to be a complete or definitive Canberra history — other volumes cover that ground. Instead, the accent is on those who operated the English Electric classic in its myriad roles. There’s a lot of text here, some of it very entertaining. Take Ed Elton’s pithy description of standing QRA with No 16 Squadron at Laarbruch on the Canberra B(I)8 as “whiling away the time with Playboy, bridge, eating, moaning and sleeping and occasionally doing some target study”. The accounts from several different individuals of the Suez crisis make for especially interesting reading, no punches being pulled as to

When the Navy Took to the Air by Philip MacDougall published by Fonthill

Subtitled ‘The Experimental Seaplane Stations of the Royal Naval Air Service’, this volume details the early R&D work of the RNAS, which started with the establishment of an airfield on the Isle of Grain, Kent in 1913. Other stations followed. Eastchurch concerned itself primarily with landplanes, Calshot with flying boats, Felixstowe with seaplanes and Cardington, Kingsnorth

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the limitations of training or equipment. Argentinean and Indian Canberra veterans offer their memories, along with some USAF B-57 pilots, though RAF recollections dominate. In the B-57 chapter, ‘Warner-Robbins AFB’ is one of the few typos I could spot. Image quality is variable. There are plenty of excellent, and pertinent, shots of RAF Canberras from personal collections; others, however, have been scanned at too low a resolution, and the (badly reproduced) photo on page 161 claiming to be an in-service RAAF example is clearly the ex-RAF TT18 now with the Temora Aviation Museum. We can forget that, though, for Canberra Boys is a thoroughly good read, and a most insightful one. You’ll learn more about the Canberra from this than from any number of average type histories, and the words-to-purchase price ratio makes it excellent value. How about an updated edition when more can be said about No 39 (1 PRU) Squadron’s final years of PR9 operations over Iraq and Afghanistan? Ben Dunnell ISBN 978-1-910690-33-8; 9.2 x 6.1in hardback; 208 pages, illustrated; £20 ★★★★ and Pulham (frequently and unaccountably referred to in the text as ‘Pulhan’) with airships. For whatever reason — and here one might suspect inter-service rivalry following the RNAS’s loss of its identity with the formation of the RAF on 1 April 1918 — little has been documented concerning the service’s achievements or the stations at which several significant technical advances were made. This title puts the record straight (or, at least, straighter) with accounts of developing aeroplanes that could be taken to sea, of perfecting weapons that would bring down Zeppelins with their seemingly vulnerable hydrogenfilled envelopes, and of early experiments to allow a seaplane to take off with, and then launch, a 14in torpedo. This is a fascinating account of the formative years of flying, when the aeroplane was being developed into

what was potentially a war-winning weapon. Photos, all in black and white and contained in a 16-page section, are well reproduced and equally interesting. Denis J. Calvert ISBN 978-1-78155-572-9; 9.2 x 6.1in softback; 160 pages, illustrated; £18.99 ★★★

From Jet Provost to Strikemaster by David Watkins published by Grub Street

The ever-popular RAF basic trainer and its light attack derivative are more than deserving of a volume all to themselves. First impressions of this one are good. At a time when some aviation books are still laid out in a way that would have looked dated 30 years ago, the design is extremely smart and modern without being fussy, and the paper quality excellent. In his efforts to produce what the sub-title describes as a “definitive history”, the author has interviewed many JP and Strikemaster ‘veterans’, their recollections both peppering the main text and forming a lengthy ‘From the Cockpit’ section towards the rear. JP display teams are discussed at length, and there’s a complete production list. The text generally reads well, and is very comprehensive in its treatment of these illustrious British aircraft. Unfortunately, the whole package is let down badly by unacceptably poor photo reproduction. Each chapter begins with a double-page image; all of these, without exception, have been blown up far larger than the scans can take. Even bearing in mind the vagaries of quality that are to be expected when dealing with archive imagery, something has gone wrong with the scanning or repro of quite a lot of the other shots used, too. This is a shame, for the photographic selection itself is absolutely first-class. BD

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30/06/2017 09:26

Reviews ISBN 978-1-910690-35-2; 9.7 x 7.3in hardback; 224 pages, illustrated; £25 HHH

Patrolling the Cold War Skies by Philip Keeble published by Fonthill

At first sight, this could be your standard RAF pilot’s account of flying jets (PR Canberra, Phantom, Tornado F3) in the Cold War. It’s only when you settle deeper into the reviewer’s armchair that you realise the difference — Keeble tells the story as it really happened, with full admission of the occasional near-disaster and a good degree of self-deprecation. Don’t get me wrong; his account is at all times suitably technical yet well explained (even for the non-specialist reader), but it is also irreverent and tinged with the dark humour so typical of RAF aircrew. The result is a truly great read, which will appeal to a far wider audience than most such titles. I truly believe — even though it was surely no part of the author’s aim — that it is likely to inspire and draw more would-be pilots into the RAF’s aptitude testing and aircrew selection procedure than any traditional, sanitised account. Read how ‘Keebs’ applied for, and was not selected by, the Red Arrows, how he carried out the supersonic interception of a USAF WC-135 inside the Falkland Island Protection Zone, a whole chapter of ‘Tornado F3 Dodgy Moments’, a Canberra story intriguingly entitled ‘The Night my Navigator Exploded’, and many others. You will enjoy (and that’s a statement of fact, not an editorial edict). DJC ISBN 978-1-78155-596-5; 10.1 x 7.0in hardback; 256 pages, illustrated; £30.00 HHHH

Wings over Sinai

by David Nicolle, Tom Cooper and AVM Gabr Ali Gabr published by Helion & Co The Suez crisis of 1956, when Britain, France and Israel intervened militarily in Egypt over the nationalisation of the Suez Canal, was most definitely not this country’s finest hour. Here, in a volume written by a Brit, an Austrian and an Egyptian Air Vice-Marshal who flew

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Vampires in what the authors call the ‘Suez War’, is an account from an Egyptian standpoint of the short conflict, its causes and its outcome. It relates how the Egyptian Air Force (EAF), still in the throes of re-equipping with more modern aircraft of Soviet origin to replace its mainly British front line, fought against better-equipped and numerically superior forces. It analyses the air action on a day-by-day basis and includes tables showing aircraft losses on both sides. These, it states, were nowhere near as crippling on the Egyptian side as is usually claimed. Significantly, the authors insist that the EAF was “a match for Israel”, albeit “hopelessly ill-prepared” when pitted against British and French forces. Photos, nearly all in black and white and depicting almost exclusively EAF aircraft, are acceptably reproduced (but no more), and there are six pages of colour profiles. With good detail, an extensive bibliography and copious endnotes, this deserves a read. DJC

must necessarily be but a skim through the history of these fascinating aircraft. Not until page 163, for example, does the story reach SR-71 deliveries to the USAF; the main text ends on page 201, the type’s operational career being given only cursory treatment. There appears on a rapid read-through to be nothing especially wrong with Hamilton-Paterson’s book, and it may act as a useful primer to someone with little or no prior ‘Blackbird’ knowledge. If that doesn’t apply to you, though, our recommendation would still be to seek out Paul Crickmore’s various outstanding tomes. BD ISBN 978-1-786-69120-0; 5.7 x 7.9in hardback; 224 pages, illustrated £18.99 HHH

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Blackbird: The Untouchable Spy Plane by James Hamilton-Paterson published by Head of Zeus

“Most accounts of the SR-71 family of aircraft”, the author writes at the start of the first chapter, “are designed for the specialist aerobuff or ‘Haynes Manual’ end of the market”. This slightly dismissive statement introduces a book that most definitely does not seek to compete with them. Rather, Hamilton-Paterson — best known in aviation terms as the writer of Empire of the Clouds — offers a history of the A-12, YF-12A and SR-71 that is intended to appeal to the more general reader. In this he is largely successful, and he does well at setting the various ‘Blackbird’ programmes into the wider contexts of the Cold War. However, such a small volume

The Guild of Aviation Artists will hold its annual Aviation Paintings of the Year exhibition at central London’s Mall Galleries from 17-23 July. More than 400 original works from 130 artists will be on display, making for interesting viewing for the casual visitor or art buyer alike. Following the official opening on Monday 17 July by guild vicepresident and former de Havilland test pilot Desmond Penrose, visitors will be able to find out more about the techniques and styles used by the artists whose works are display, while walkabout tours and painting demonstrations will be held from Tuesday 18 July onwards. For more information visit www.gava.org.uk. Shown in the image above is one of the works on display, ‘The Gordon Bennett UK Air Race, July 1911’ by David Ellwood. Opening times: Saturday by invitation only; Tuesday-Saturday 10.00-17.00hrs (10.00-20.00hrs on Thursday); Sunday 10.00-12.30hrs Admission: free; catalogue £5

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26/06/2017 17:41

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30/06/2017 15:38

Archive

Ben Dunnell explores The Aeroplane’s outstanding archives to cast new light on past stories

By

ROYAL APPOINTMENT Archive images of Prince Bernhard highlight some of this controversial Dutch royal’s wartime flying activities

K

ing Willem-Alexander, the reigning Dutch monarch, calls flying “a hobby”. It was widely known that he had spent many years, both during his time as Prince of Orange and now as king, flying regular scheduled services for first Martinair and then KLM Cityhopper. What only became publicly apparent from a recent interview was the extent of this commitment. Willem-Alexander had done his part-time job twice a month, and now KLM is retiring the Fokker 70 he’s converting to the Boeing 737. There is, of course, a family connection here. Willem-Alexander is the grandson of Prince Bernhard of Lippe-Biesterfeld, consort of Queen Juliana. It is with good reason that the German-born Bernhard, who died in 2004, is often remembered in connection with controversy. His prewar membership of the Nazi party and other National Socialist organisations, the revelations in the 1970s that he —

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while holding the post of inspectorgeneral of the Dutch armed forces — had accepted bribes from Lockheed in return for influencing military aircraft purchases, and numerous other stories have clouded his reputation. However, there was little doubting his commitment to the Dutch cause during the Second World War. Somewhat against his wishes, Bernhard ended up exiled in London after the German invasion of the Netherlands in May 1940. His German background initially gave rise to some degree of official suspicion, but when investigation could find no evidence of active support for the Nazis, attitudes towards the prince were relaxed. From that November onwards, he headed the Dutch Royal Military Mission, performing something of a liaison role, but he wanted to broaden his — and Dutch — involvement in the war effort.

This was where aviation reentered Bernhard’s story. He had started learning to fly in Germany during 1934, doing so on a Klemm Kl 25 as a member of the Deutscher Luftsportverband (German Air Sports Association). This Nazi organisation was set up to train pilots at a time when Germany was still officially forbidden from possessing a military air arm. Bernhard flew the Klemm from an airfield near Potsdam. However, this came to an end on 7 October with a crash into the Seddiner See. Both the prince and his instructor Hans Mössner escaped from the water, but Bernhard’s flying activities were temporarily over. They resumed in Britain. In 1941 he undertook basic training on the DH Tiger Moth with No 1 Elementary Flying Training School at Hatfield, going solo and thus gaining his military pilot’s wings. During that time he is reported to have expressed an interest in buying Chilton DW1

ABOVE: HRH Prince Bernhard (right) being handed his overcoat following arrival at an unknown airfield in Beech D17S PB1 during 1943. AEROPLANE

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Archive RIGHT: The prince about to undergo instruction in the rear seat of an RAF Miles Master advanced trainer during 1941. PA IMAGES

G-AFGI, then sitting at Broxbourne following the death the previous July of its owner, Fleet Air Arm pilot SubLt Francis Dawson-Paul, in combat with No 64 Squadron as part of RAF Fighter Command. However, he is not thought to have flown it. Bernhard did, however, pilot the Miles Master as his RAF training moved on to the advanced stage. A letter dated 19 August 1941 from Air Marshal William Sholto Douglas, then Air Officer Commanding-inChief of Fighter Command, reported: “HRH is a qualified pilot and has some 200 hours flying to his credit. He has already flown the Master, as well as a number of light types of British aircraft.” Douglas wrote that letter because, as he said, Bernhard “wishes to learn to fly Hurricane aircraft”. Agreement was reached whereby he would do so with No 56 Operational Training Unit at Sutton Bridge, Lincolnshire. “His instruction”, Douglas stressed, “is to be undertaken by the best flying instructor available at the unit”. While there, one Flt Lt M. A. Payne was to act as his equerry. “It is anticipated”, the letter went on, “that subsequently HRH may wish to obtain further experience and flying practice in the Hurricane and that he will visit Sutton Bridge for that purpose from time to time.” In response to another letter from Douglas, Bernhard — his letterhead describing him as the chief liaison officer to the Royal Netherland Forces, located at Stratton House in Piccadilly — wrote: “I am very grateful to you for arranging my visit to the OTU. I am very much looking forward to the proposed visit…” Unfortunately, no details of the prince’s Hurricane conversion are to hand, save that it happened. On 28 December 1941, HQ Fighter Command requested authority for Bernhard “to be permitted to fly” Spitfires, following instruction by No 61 OTU at Heston. The Air Ministry responded that it had “No objection”, except that he be restricted to local flights as opposed to cross-countries. Experience on powerful taildraggers would be no bad thing, for Bernhard — now an honorary air commodore — was soon to receive

one of his own. Flying the Beechcraft Model 17, the ‘Staggerwing’, was no walk in the park. The Dutch government-in-exile ordered the machine on 29 May 1940. Since it was to be based in the UK, the D17S (c/n 420) was finished in RAF camouflage and roundels. On arrival in the UK, the Beech was taken to the de Havilland-operated civilian repair facility at Witney, Oxfordshire, for assembly. It flew from British soil for the first time on 30 November 1941. Since the biplane light transport was to be flown by Prince Bernhard for official duties, it was given a unique identity: PB1. No other serial was carried. The prince soon started piloting his personal ‘Staggerwing’ on visits to assorted airfields. It was the second such machine to wear RAF roundels, the first having been impressed into service during May 1941. YC-43 Traveler serial 39-139 (c/n 295), procured for evaluation by the US Army Air Corps, was shipped across the Atlantic in 1939

Bernhard could not understand why the Allied ground advance was not pushing on into the Netherlands, and arranged a meeting with Field Marshal Montgomery at his Brussels headquarters. He flew there in the Beech 104 www.aeroplanemonthly.com

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for operation by the US air attaché to London. In RAF service it became DR628, joining No 24 Squadron at Hendon. There have been reports that Bernhard used DR628, which was pictured extensively by The Aeroplane, prior to his own ‘Staggerwing’s’ arrival. While these cannot be discounted completely, it appears unlikely, and there is no supporting evidence in the unit records. PB1 was not the prince’s mode of transport when he flew to RAF Castletown, in the northern Scottish Highlands, in September 1942. Instead he took his other regular mount, Spitfire IIa P7891, then with the Central Gunnery School. His arrival nearly came to an unhappy end when the aircraft went onto its nose. However, its distinguished pilot was unharmed, while P7891 was repaired and returned to service. Bernhard was at the airfield in Caithness to visit No 167 Squadron, flying the Spitfire Vb, which now contained one flight made up of Dutch pilots. This had come about in large part on the prince’s own initiative. The following June, the unit was re-numbered as No 322 (Dutch) Squadron, the first of its kind in the RAF, although many of its pilots were of British or Commonwealth origin. As for Bernhard himself, there were opportunities to partake in wartime combat flying as a supernumerary crew member, such as the sortie he

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flew in a US Army Air Force B-24 Liberator on 21 June 1944 to bomb a German V1 storage and launch site under construction at Siracourt in the Pas-de-Calais region of northern France. The 489th Bomb Group B-24H in question, 42-94925 Misfit, was thereafter renamed Royal Carriage in his honour. But for the most part ‘Staggerwing’ PB1 remained his steed of choice. The Aeroplane photographed Bernhard with the Beech, now in a revised camouflage scheme with orange Dutch triangle insignia on the nose, at an undisclosed location some time in 1943. He was making one of the many visits he undertook with Sholto Douglas, who had become a good friend. Unfortunately the glass-plate images, one of which is reproduced at the start of this piece, are not dated and do not appear to have been published in the magazine. It was in PB1 that Bernhard — who had just been made commanderin-chief of the Dutch armed forces — undertook an urgent flight on 5 September 1944. Contradicting reports of imminent liberation, caused by the hurried departure to Germany of Dutch Nazis as Allied troops swept through Belgium, the prince was hearing from the Dutch underground resistance that German forces in the Netherlands were holding firm. Bernhard could not understand

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why the Allied ground advance was not pushing on, and arranged a meeting with Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery at his Brussels headquarters. He flew to the Belgian capital in the Beech. Bernhard received no satisfactory explanation from Montgomery, nor any indication of the plans being formulated to launch a large-scale assault on the Dutch city of Arnhem — the ill-fated Operation ‘Market Garden’ — in order to cross the Rhine there and make rapid gains in Germany, rather than liberating the whole of the Netherlands first. When Allied troops finally crossed the border into Dutch territory on 11 September, Bernhard piloted the ‘Staggerwing’ to newly liberated Maastricht. It was the first time he had been back to the Netherlands since 1940. Even so, he returned to London dissatisfied that there seemed to be no immediate plan to free the country’s territory from German control. The situation had changed significantly by 20 November, to the point where Bernhard was able to set up his headquarters in Breda. Perhaps more than ever, the Beech proved a usefully rapid communications aircraft as the prince flew to meetings with senior Allied commanders and their

staff — Montgomery in Belgium, Eisenhower in France. But this fine machine was soon to fall victim to the enemy. PB1 was parked in the open at Evere airfield near Brussels on 1 January 1945 when Luftwaffe Fw 190s and Bf 109s made a surprise attack as part of Operation ‘Bodenplatte’. The Beech was among some 60-odd aircraft destroyed on the ground there. The ex-USAAF Stinson L-5 he had also begun using, later registered PH-PBB, was a rather slower, less elegant form of transport. Prince Bernhard carried on flying for many years after the war, and on 12 September 1980 he was able to watch another ‘Staggerwing’ sporting what had been his colours. British historic aircraft operator Robs Lamplough had painted his D17S, N18V, as PB1 (albeit with DR628 carried under the wings) and flew it in front of the prince at Hilversum. That aircraft, not surprisingly, appeared at several Dutch events when it was on the display circuit. While N18V hasn’t been seen for some time, the Royal Netherlands Air Force Historic Flight preserves the aforementioned L-5, and DDA Classic Airlines flies DC-3 PH‑PBA, acquired by Bernhard in 1946 as the first post-war Dutch government transport and flown regularly by the prince himself. Reminders of his involvement with aviation thus abound.

TOP: The beautiful lines of the ‘Staggerwing’ when viewed from head-on, this example being YC‑43 39‑139 following its impressment into RAF service as DR628. Despite some suggestions that Prince Bernhard may have used this aeroplane before his own D17S was delivered, there is no evidence to back this up. AEROPLANE

ABOVE: Air Marshal William Sholto Douglas (right), then Air Officer Commanding-inChief of Fighter Command, with Bernhard and two others. AEROPLANE

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DATABASE DATA BASE DH84 Dragon

PLUS…

BRITISH AIRLINERS:

Dunkirk: this summer’s film blockbuster

Saunders-Roe’s jet flying boats… and more

Alitalia’s MB326 jet trainers

RAF ‘Stringbags’ against the Kriegsmarine

EDITORIAL

EDITOR Ben Dunnell E-mail: [email protected] NEWS EDITOR/EDITORIAL ASSISTANCE Tony Harmsworth E-mail: [email protected] GROUP EDITOR Nigel Price REGULAR CONTRIBUTORS Ian Bott, Denis J. Calvert, Mike Hooks, James Kightly, Chris Sandham-Bailey, Steve Slater, Barry Wheeler DESIGN Craig Chiswell Chiswell Creative, Forest of Dean, Gloucestershire

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