We were still unable to believe our good fortune in having the atom bomb to give us our sudden deliverance. Schofields was barely ready for our arrival so we were allowed a fortnight’s leave. Once again the generous Australians welcomed us, their own sons still absent abroad or as POWs.
When we returned to Schofields each night after our visits to the welcome laid on for us in Sydney, we began to sleep soundly once more and to wake each morning without the thought of decklanding or of engine failure over Japan. I was determined to make life at Schofields like it had been for 804 Squadron at Charlton Horethorne, a holiday camp.
We shared the airfield with a newly formed AI-equipped Firefly night-fighter squadron commanded by Lt/Cdr (A) Derek Empson, RNVR. It was a good outfit, but of course, not now required, like ourselves. For us, the first two months at Schofields was ‘all change’. The four Canadians, Boak, Stock, Geary and Losee, left almost immediately for home. Pye, Dancaster, Kirby and the New Zealanders Sheeran, Glazebrook and Anderson also left. Bill Brewer and Gunson became instructors nearby. Five time-expired members of the original 801 — Saxe, Luing, Thompson, Jervis and Green also left. We then had ten replacement pilots to absorb. These were straight from UK training, or had come through the training school at Puttalam or from Chaser’s 899 Squadron. Only one, Lt (A) Pete Phillips, RNVR, had sufficient experience of flying and the Pacific to be useful immediately.
It is interesting to note that had the war continued, we should have had an impossible task to maintain safe flying standards and to keep up our fighting ability. Most of the latest batch of new boys were the first to agree that they would have been a liability to the squadron and a danger to themselves. We had still not used many of the replacements who had arrived since we had left the UK. Some of them had returned at once. It was obvious to all in Implacable and other BPF carriers that in any future conflict, replacements would require to be trained to a much higher standard and by those experienced at the battle front. There would be no time for training during or between operations.
Eventually the planners caught up with events and they ‘unwound’ Olympic. Stuart, Brewer and several others therefore went home and the special training of new boys was disbanded.
When Their Lordships had called for volunteers from the RAAF to help the Fleet Air Arm during the latter stages of the Pacific War, the response had been overwhelming. To try to reduce the numbers, Their Lordships insisted upon a drop in rank and “only those with more than 500 hours flying need apply”. Almost exactly the same number applied again. The result was that two of the Australians now appointed to 801 at Schofields had been Wing Commanders, three had been Squadron Leaders, and there were four DFCs and one DSO among them. It was clear to me and Norman Goodfellow, who had mercifully not left yet, that we were dealing with a race apart. I asked them whether they would mind forming their own Flight and organising their own flying training programme while at Schofields. They were to ask me only in case they got stuck. This worked very well indeed.
These Aussies were full of brilliant suggestions to make life at Schofields even more entertaining. We arranged flights — up to 24 aircraft at a time — supposedly for official reasons, to places all over eastern Australia. To Mildura — a new wine growing area in the southern outback — to Launceston in Tasmania for Spencer Brown’s wedding, to Point Cook at Melbourne for the Melbourne Cup, and also to places such as Archer’s Field and other airfields round Brisbane near the now famous beaches of Surfers’ Paradise and Ewing Head, to collect more Seafires.
Each afternoon, in the heat of the Australian midsummer, we climbed into three or four Dodge trucks and took the whole squadron bathing to Palm Beach on the Hawkesbury River estuary north of Sydney.
If we wanted a change of scenery, we could take a few Jeeps to any of the other beautiful Sydney beaches, Googee, Avalon and so on. Then there was Bondi. The procedure for getting to Bondi was slightly different. After a tub of oysters for half-a-crown (12½p), washed down by Foster’s ‘Cascade’ Lager, we would get on a tram to Bondi. This in itself was a challenge, for once the green flag let these trams out of their terminus at one end of the track, they made a beeline for the other. The very last thing that they had in mind was to stop en route for passengers. This was because once they did so, the supply of cooling air blowing through the tram diminished to a damp trickle. This was bad for the driver’s and the clippy’s health.
If you had been lucky to get on a tram in Sydney, it would eventually arrive at the terminus at Bondi, opposite the beach. The clippy and the driver would then disappear into their air conditioned caboose. We would then undress on the beach and would have our bathe. We would watch the de Havilland ‘Dragon’ overhead watching for sharks, and we would watch all the other beautiful sights around us too, for there were many. We also watched the caboose, for to miss the emergence of the clippy and the driver was to miss the tram home. They would leap into their tram, select full speed immediately and with sparks from the wheels and more from the overhead pickup they would disappear in the direction of Sydney empty of all passengers. The whole scene still lives in Australian memory and is immortalised by the expression “Off like a Bondi Tram”. There was even an Australian offshore racer at Cowes in 1982 named ‘Bondi Tram’.
After the bathe at Bondi and the ‘6.30 swill’, those with any money left could go to Romano’s Club. At Romano’s there was a band, cheap oysters, rich mums and pretty daughters. There were no dads in sight. They were all making money on their sheep stations 400 miles away.
When Christmas leave came up, I stayed a fortnight with the Kater family. They had a smallholding of about 8000 acres 250 miles west of Sydney called ‘Swatchfield’. It was near a small town called Oberon over the Blue Mountains and “half way down the other side”.
John Kater was the middle son of a famous Australian family who owned vast farms in the outback, millions of acres. His beautiful house had a swimming pool, a tennis court and air conditioning. It was surrounded by a 500-yard-wide ploughed firebreak. His nearest neighbour was about 20 miles away — quite close. One neighbour — a Pole — heated up eucalyptus leaves in a ten-ton steel cauldron and condensed the vapour in a pipe running under the local stream. He sold the eucalyptus oil in five gallon drums in Sydney for £50 each at the rate of one per month. It was hard work.
I tried to help John Kater and his men in their task of branding. His land was ‘improved’ pasture. It would keep about 0.25 cattle per acre in food. The cattle had to be driven into the stockade for branding. Without fences and with only rudimentary skill at riding, I was not much use in the rounding-up process. It was a mass of flies, sweat and new swearwords.
John Joly and Pete Arkell often elected to collect our new Seafire XVs and Joly also played much cricket while on leave. He came to fetch me back, two days before I was due to take the squadron 600 miles down to Point Cook for a Balbo for Melbourne’s ‘War Loan’ Pageant.
On the way back to Schofields we had a front tyre blow-out. We carried no spare, for it would surely be stolen. We had to force on to Katoomba, the next town, on the rim. We were down to the brake drum by the time we arrived in the town.
On the way, John told me all the news. Norman Goodfellow had left for the UK to resume law studies. Bill Griffith had taken over as Senior Pilot as planned, and ‘Nat’ Gould had taken over the Aussies as Flight Leader.
Back at Schofields, I and Joly set off to catch up with the squadron on their Balbo to Point Cook. I got as far as Malacoota and both hydraulic pumps went u/s on my Seafire, I had to use ‘emergencies’ to land and I was a day late arriving at Melbourne. Refuelling at Malacoota was from 50 gallon drums parked round the airfield. Australians at Melbourne were, if anything, even more hospitable than those at Sydney. It was a beautiful, clean, Victorian city.
Our new Seafires were Mark XVs. They had an extra 450 horsepower and an auto-change, two-speed supercharger, which maintained this extra power up to 30,000 feet. It also had a properly designed 60 gallon torpedo-shaped belly tank. It had 100 gallons of internal fuel, with proper electric immersion fuel pumps in each tank to prevent vapour locks. It also had provision for small, droppable wing tanks of 35 gallons each. It was fitted for firing six rockets from zero length launchers, and from number 51 onwards, would have ‘sting’ arrester hooks. The propeller was fitted with an extra fine pitch stop. This was set at an angle of two degrees finer than normal It allowed the propeller to fine off to an angle more ‘flat-on’ to the airflow, thus greatly increasing the drag after the pilot cut the throttle when decklanding, and so reducing the length of the float. Later versions had extra-long-stroke oleos on the main undercarriage. This further absorbed the bounce and made three point landings easier. Later versions also had a beautiful ‘teardrop’, fully transparent, sliding hood, with a streamlined windscreen fairing. The latter acted as a rain clearance device, making blower windscreen wipers unnecessary.
On the face of it, it all seemed to be just what we wanted, but in fact, had ‘Olympic II’ gone ahead and had we flown these Seafire XVs, we should have suffered even more losses than with the Seafire III. This was for the reasons which follow.
Although the fuel supply system and the instability had been cured — the latter by the heavier engine in front, effecting a better fore and aft balance — there were other characteristics in the early Seafire XV which made it just as dangerous to fly from a carrier on the tasks that we expected.
The Seafire XV’s Griffon produced almost 2000 horsepower in ‘overide’. It still had to be absorbed by a propeller of similar diameter and blade area to that of the Merlin, and at lesser engine rpm. This greatly increased the torque imparted to the propeller’s slipstream, and also greatly increased the tendency for the aircraft to turn in the opposite direction to that of its propeller. As the fin and tailplane effectiveness had remained as before, it was hardly surprising that directional control was extremely poor during take-off in the Seafire XV. Futhermore, the new aircraft suffered from aileron reversal, a serious defect which killed one of our new Australian pilots, S/Lt (A) J. Norton. RANVR.
The effects of torque on the Seafire XV’s lateral and directional handling characteristics were to have many fatal consequences and the increased weight of its propeller made air gunnery difficult due to gyroscopic effects. There would have been no time to change the aircraft back to the Seafire III in any operation such as ‘Olympic II’ and the results, together with the new pilots, would have been catastrophic. (See Appendix 11(m) The Seafire XV.)
By the end of 1945 it had seemed to me that I should do my best to get back to the UK as soon as possible. I had a growing feeling that things were not all right at home. My immobile Wren and I had spent so little time together during our marriage that we had become strangers. I began to think that she might imagine that I was not bothering about her in Australia and that I was not wanting to return. I asked the Captain at Schofields what my chances might be. He told me that the Admiralty plan was now for two and a half year ‘peacetime’ overseas appointments for all those who had volunteered for Extended Service Commissions. As I was one of these — it was all that I had been offered — I would probably not be relieved until early 1947 after Implacable’s return to the UK. I realised that I and my immobile Wren could not possibly last out until then so I requested a ‘compassionate’ appointment back to the UK. These were — and still are — greatly frowned upon in the peacetime Navy, for it was tantamount to tearing up a Naval Officer’s unwritten employment agreement to go wherever he might be sent. It did me no good at all, but I saw no alternative. I pointed out that there were many of my contemporaries in Formidable, Victorious and Indefatigable who had done far less foreign service than I, and had yet returned to the UK a year before. So my relief was appointed. He was Lt/Cdr (A) Jack Routley, RNVR. Jack needed a little time to get used to the Seafire XV, for he had been flying a desk. However, by February 1946 the turnover was complete.
Before I left for the UK, he and I attended the Sydney Opera House one night. Although we were all much thinner from our wartime rations, the ballet in Australia had put on weight during their wartime rest and were only just beginning to get into trim again. We saw “Les Sylphides” — or as the Aussies said: “Lez Silfides”. The ballerina Sylphide was very large indeed.
Every time the principal man lifted her, there were shouts of “two-six” and “eeeeeve” from the stalls. When she landed, her points collapsed and the boards creaked. Clouds of dust rose in the footlights. Even the orchestra — wheezing away — could not keep a straight face.
After I had left the squadron, I heard that 801 had lost one of our original 880 pilots, S/Lt Hugh Smith. The accident had occurred when flying from Implacable on the way to New Zealand. The entire 24 Seafires had made a coordinated attack on a rock off the coast of Tasmania using 20mm ‘ball’ ammunition. Smith’s aircraft had been hit by a ricochet from the cannon shells off the rocks. So it had happened at last.
Following on my ‘passionate request’, I was appointed to command 894 Squadron for the journey home in Indefatigable. The other squadron, from the original 24 Wing, was 887 Squadron — Andrew Thompson’s old squadron. We had about 20 Seafires. In our Carrier Air Group, there were four squadrons. Buster Hallett was our CAG boss. Dennis Holmes — ex-21 St. Vincent course — was 1772 Firefly CO, and ‘Shorty’ Dennison had taken over 887 Squadron from Andrew. There were many ex-880 Squadron pilots in 894 with me, so that I felt amongst friends.
Before we left Sydney for the journey home in Indefatigable we attended a memorable victory celebration ball aboard Glory in Sydney Harbour. There were 3,000 guests and I met Murdoch Tait on board, the Senior Pilot of 831 Corsairs. The flight deck was a fun fair and the hangar a ballroom and restaurant. Access to the hangar from the flight deck was by gangways through the lift openings. The lifts were lowered to the half way position to allow this to be done. The aft liftwell was a nightclub and the forward lift had grottoes and caves under it, with a fountain and pond with real live ducks in it. The ducks had been washed in soap before the event, as the Subby i/c ducks had considered them too dirty when he borrowed them from the Sydney Park pond. As a result they floated below their Plimsoll marks, and unless they maintained a speed of about five knots, they heeled over and capsized. They eventually took to the dance floor, where they followed each other in close line-ahead, quacking in time with the music of the Royal Marine Band. We fed them caviar canapés and duck sandwiches. At the close of the ball, the Royal Marines played Elgar’s moving version of the Last Post for all those who could not be with us. Even the ducks stood silent, thoughtful and sad.
It was a fast and uneventful voyage back to Portsmouth. We stopped to refuel at Port Elizabeth and did a Balbo over Cape Town. We also photographed Ascension Island on the way past. At the land-on from this last trip, S/Lt Hatton of 887 Squadron made three attempts to touchdown, but each time drifted over to the port side of the deck, and lost sight of Jimmy Hancock the batsman. On his last attempt he stalled his port wing, hit the batsman’s position with it and went over the side. His aircraft, with its hood open of course, sank immediately and he was not recovered, probably having hit his head on the gunsight. This was the very last landing of all by 7CAG in Indefatigable and it was a sad ending.
We landed at Lee-on-Solent at 1000 on the morning of 15 March 1946. We taxied our Seafire LIIIs to the hangars, left them there, and never saw them again. Before we finally left the airfield on the way back to Portsmouth to collect our belongings and clear customs from the carrier after she had docked, we shook hands with Admiral Sir Dennis Boyd, the Fifth Sea Lord. He had come all the way from London to do so. He was the only Naval Officer to say hallo to any of us. The Mayor of Portsmouth was not even told of our arrival.
Peter Arkell, who returned to his family farm at Butler’s Court and to the Berkley Hunt near Cheltenham, said of this homecoming: “That’s the last we saw of anyone in 880 or 801 until a Fleet Air Arm anniversary 25 years afterwards. I wish I could have flown my aircraft back to our farm. It would be worth a quarter of a million quid by now.”
On my return I was appointed to St. Merryn. The CO of the Course was C-H. The two squadrons at St. Merryn produced Flight Leaders! They instructed us how to carry out and lead ground attacks! Some of the instructors were my ex-pupils. The two Flights — air and ground attack — were commanded by Dicky Law (ex-886 Squadron, 3 Wing,) and by Dick Turnbull. Both were now Lt/Cdrs, RN, but I had now lost my acting half stripe and was a Lieutenant once more, along with everyone else on the course. One of these ‘pupils’ was also an ex-Pacific CO — Lt Doug (Chauncy) Parker, DSO, DSC, and one of Formidable’s Corsair squadron commanders. Needless to say we both enjoyed flying Seafire 17s and 47s and I was given the top grade of ‘exceptional’ as a present from C-H for my passing-out assessment. It was obvious that some of us had been given the course to ‘Mark time’ between appointments.
I then relieved ‘Shorty’ Dennison as CO of a training squadron, 718 at Eglinton in Northern Ireland. There was a Firefly training squadron there as well, commanded by Lt (A) Cedric Coxon, DSC, RN. My Senior Pilot was Lt (A) Don Cameron, DSC, RN, a New Zealander. He had been shot down and taken prisoner twice during the war, once by the Germans and once by the Japanese. He had escaped from the Germans in Sicily by climbing over Mount Etna. He had tried to escape from the Japanese at Okinawa and had found them a different proposition. They beat him senseless every time he was rude to them — which was often — and he came back from the Pacific a pathetic wreck of his former self. However, the RN does not forget its heroes and everything was done to try and get Don back on an even keel after his dreadful war experiences.
On 20 January 1947, Cedric and I took our pupils aboard Implacable just back from Australia. We were flying Seafire IIIs once more. The later versions were required for the RNVR and the very few ‘first line’ squadrons. We accompanied King George VI and Queen Elizabeth and other members of the Royal Family in Vanguard to South Africa. The King and the rest of his family came aboard Implacable and he sat in the Captain’s chair. He asked to see Cedric and me to thank us and our boys for, as he put it in his signal, “your magnificent flypast”. We were very pleased about that.
While calling in at Freetown on the way, who should come aboard to see us but Dennis Kirby, complete with pith helmet and fly swot. He was then an Assistant District Commissioner. He is now an international banker.
On the way back, I was a trifle ill. As I was not allowed to fly, I organised a small regatta at Dakar. The Commander helped by allowing sailing practice in the ship’s dinghies, cutters and whalers. One morning, while at anchor in Dakar harbour, it was the Royal Marine’s turn for a little sailing practice. I watched the cutter, with about 20 men on board, set off from the port gangway. The Petty Officer Seaman at the tiller knew even less about sailing than the Royal Marines. As he steered across the harbour, close-hauled on the starboard tack, he ruined the chances of success by setting the jib in the hove-to position each time he went about. The cutter accordingly sailed sideways at about half a knot, and the 20 Marines were beginning to wonder why the cutter came back with a crash each time to the same place it had started from, after a quarter of an hour’s hard sailing. To make matters worse, the boat was getting lower and lower in the water. None of this seemed to be worrying the Petty Officer Seaman who continued to shout orders, such as “avast” and “belay” and “what the fuckin ‘ell” from his position of advantage in the stern.
I leapt aboard when the next crash alongside came and tried to sort things out. I found that each man was holding at least one rope. Some were holding two. Others had ropes round the bottoms of their boots and tied up over their shoulders. They all seemed to be bearing immense loads. Nothing was made fast, so had I given the order “How” — like Chief Petty Officer Willmott at St. Vincent — the sails, masts and everything would have come down with a run and the boat would have stopped.
As each Royal Marine was now standing in two feet of clear bilge water, his boots submerged but still glistening, it was first necessary to bale out the boat. The dry planks had obviously not felt water since Implacable had left Scapa with us in 1945.
In spite of such vicissitudes, the French only just won the regatta. The Captain’s gig happened to have a fair turn of speed and took them and us by surprise. Cedric also performed well in one of the 14 foot sailing dinghies. The French had, however, caught us napping on a number of items. They had lightened their boats by removing all floor boards and buoyancy tanks, oars, water billycans, sea rations, lifebelts, spare crew and bilge water. They had also painted their boats with enamel and all had racing-smooth bottoms. Their sails were of a light material straight from the boards of an expert colonial sailmaker. They also knew the course. We had taken on board a fair measure of entente cordiale at lunch and few of us knew the course. However, we cemented a few friendships back into place at Dakar. It was not before time, considering what the two Navies had done to each other during the war. However, the RN had to learn how to be a peacetime Navy all over again — unlike the French — and we RNVR types had to begin again from the bottom rung of the ladder, and learn how to be sailors.
The Royal Navy has now learned to sail. Up to 1953 it had considered that it was unnecessary for a Naval officer to learn such things. However, after several near collisions between ‘Windfall’ (ex-German) yachts at Cowes and ‘Cowslip’ — the Duke of Edinburgh’s Flying Fifteen — which were well publicised in the daily papers, the CO of Dartmouth was ordered to procure some proper yachts. Standards improved and by 1963 it was safe to invite RN officers aboard a yacht, something that had never been possible before.
On the way back to Gibraltar, a signal came from the Admiralty to summon me to an interview for selection for the Empire Test Pilots School (ETPS). This is what I had requested. It would teach me a bit about flying and it would open up a whole new career. It would give me a chance to help the RN find out what it wanted, before abortions such as the Skua, Barracuda or Firebrand were unloaded on its unsuspecting squadrons. It was certain that no Naval prototype of the future would ever be right first time and that I and others like me would be kept busy for many years to come. It would also give me a better chance of a permanent commission in the Navy or, if not, a chance of a good civilian test-flying job if I wanted one.
Trying to discover peace after six years of war is a turbulent and insecure business. I found that there was much jostling for position in the new, peacetime Navy, and also in my domestic position at home. I found that I had returned from Australia too late, on both counts, to secure my position. Although I could do little to remedy either, I could at least preserve my second love — flying. After 600 hours in the Seafire I still loved it — for all its faults. It still remains the most beautiful of all aircraft and I wanted nothing more than to be able to continue to fly it.
I was left £50 in my grandmother’s will. I spent it on a skiing holiday with Boris Morris. A few weeks after, I joined the Empire Test Pilots School at RAF Cranfield in Bedfordshire, and life became an adventure again.