1934 to 1935
Now exams were passed, school was finished and it was time to start making serious efforts to get into the flying game. Father again was of great help, but despite his efforts there was little sign of positive progress. But in the interim he did give me a temporary job in his building company and also arranged for me to work as an apprentice at the Gloster Aircraft Company at Brockworth. Here I had to start work at 7.30 a.m., which meant leaving home at 6.30 on my bike and cycling through the length of Gloucester city to reach Brockworth. However, I did not mind and was thrilled at being close to real aeroplanes; besides, the ten shillings that I was paid each week came in handy. At the slightest excuse I would help to open the huge hangar doors and help the servicing crews to push out the Hawker Hind medium bombers that were being built at that time under contract by Gloster Aircraft Co. for an overseas customer. Once out on the tarmac, although it was not part of my job, I would busy myself around the aircraft, cleaning and polishing, until the chief test pilot came out to fly it.
Hiding round the corner of the hangar, I watched enthralled as Gerry Sayers taxied out, and with a thrilling roar from the Kestrel climbed away from Brockworth over the Cranham Woods, the silver wings of the Hind reflecting in the sunlight. I watched as long as I dared, but much to my disappointment had to creep back to my job in the hangar before the Hind landed. While I revelled in my experience at Brockworth, my father got to know two aviation enthusiasts in Gloucester. One was a pharmacist and the other a garage proprietor, both of whom flew out at Staverton at the Cotswold Aero Club. So he kindly took the trouble for me to meet them out at the club in the hope that that they might be able to take me flying. I used to cycle the seven miles out to Staverton whenever I had a spare moment, always hoping to scrounge a flight with one of them. They were very kind and sympathetic, but flights were difficult to come by and in great demand. However, I did succeed in getting one flight in a Gipsy Moth and on another occasion in a French Desouter monoplane, an early cabin light-aircraft. I enjoyed them both, but far preferred the open cockpit of the Moth and feeling the wind rushing through my hair and making the flying wires sing.
I am the first to admit that I was shy by nature, and it was a great credit to me that I persisted in making myself useful around the club, cleaning and oiling the machines and pushing out the aircraft on a flying day. I was prepared to talk to anyone who I thought could teach me anything about flying and maintenance of aircraft. With ever-growing confidence and familiarity with the club environment I lost some of my shyness, and on one occasion I was introduced to the famous one-armed, one-eyed pilot Stewart Keith-Jopp, who later, when in the ATA, flew a Hurricane to France for the British AASF and delivered Spitfires to squadrons at home. He was quite a hero-figure to me, and he encouraged me to take some flying lessons. This was, of course, what I most wanted to do, and quoting Keith-Jopp I went to my father and asked him if it would be possible. Generous and sympathetic as always, he managed to find the money, no doubt at some cost to his own interests, and agreed that I could have ten hours of dual flying instruction.
So it was that in August 1935 I was on my bike to Staverton and reporting to one of the club instructors for flying lessons in the Gipsy Moth G-ABER. I well remembered the first flight when I nervously but firmly first took over the flying controls and the instructor came through on the Gosport communication tube and told me that he could feel me gripping the control column as though it was an axe handle. ‘Just finger and thumb and a gentle touch will give you a much better feel of the aircraft’s sensibilities and it will respond accordingly.’ I never forgot that advice, and it served me well in all my flying years, when it did not take me very long to gain confidence in handling a wide variety of difference types of aircraft.
A week after my first dual flight and a few more lessons we took off from Staverton and followed the Fosse Way to a grass field just north of Cirencester. After two dual circuits and landings at the field the instructor climbed out of the rear cockpit of the Moth, did up the safety harness and sent me off on my first solo flight. I suppose this was the most thrilling moment of my life, but I must admit I felt it was also a decisive moment of truth as well. I realized that my whole flying career was at stake, and although I was not afraid of crashing I was very apprehensive that I might make a cock-up of the landing and break this lovely machine that had been placed in my care. The grass of the field was lush and long, and I could feel the drag of it on the wheels as I taxied out and turned into wind.
The far hedge looked awfully close, and I thought it a bit unfair that I had been brought out here by my instructor away from the familiar surroundings of the aero club airstrip for my first solo, as I found that the strange environment made judgment that much more difficult in flying an accurate circuit. However, the sheer thrill of the moment made the adrenalin flow to sharpen my concentration, and with cool confidence I opened the throttle and the little Gipsy engine responded at once. I corrected the slight swing on the rudder bar as the nose moved slightly from the gap in the hedge on which I had chosen to line up, and as my speed began to build I eased the Moth into the air with that firm but gentle backward pressure on the stick that I had learnt and remembered. Airborne and alone at last, I enjoyed a wonderful feeling of thrilling exhilaration as I looked along the wings and felt rather than heard the singing of the flying wires and the slipstream clawing at my face round the small windscreen, and the moment gave me almost painful joy and wonder that it was in my own hands to get the Moth to do my bidding. In my excitement of the moment I forgot that I was supposed to be doing a circuit, and found I was already half-way to Gloucester. In a slight panic I gently turned the Moth around and anxiously scanned the countryside for the field of my departure. To my relief I soon spotted the farm that had been our turning point on our first circuit, and I set up my approach from there as the instructor had demonstrated. It was easy now to line up on the wheel tracks we had made previously in the long grass, and checking my height, throttling back the Gipsy engine and with a quick look at the spring-balance air speed indicator on the right-hand wing strut I knew I had got it about right, and although I floated a little way I managed a satisfying landing. I taxied back to where my instructor stood looking bored and quite unconcerned, but nothing could spoil my moment of triumph. After six flights and four and half hours dual I had gone solo. On the return flight back to Staverton I was in a magic dream, and the celebration shandy back in the clubhouse bar made me feel really confident and grown up. But the best feeling came over me on leaving the clubhouse, when I happened to hear my instructor say in response to a question from within, ‘Oh, he’s a natural pilot!’ I obtained my pilots’s licence on 25 September 1935, but did not fly at Staverton again until 1 June 1936, when my logbook showed I took my first passenger, Suzette Corps. As far as I know, Suzette never flew again.
You could say that it was Hitler and the Nazis that gave me my real break. By the middle of 1935 the British Cabinet, urged into action by the military leaders, responded at last by authorizing an expansion of the armed forces.
Too late to act as a deterrent to Germany, but at least it improved the capability for our own defence when the time came. Deficiencies were particularly evident in the Royal Air Force, and the Air Ministry called for applicants to join as direct-entry sergeant pilots. My application must have been the first to arrive in the Air Ministry, and as my service number showed I was the tenth of all the NCO pilots to be selected.
I was accepted on 26 August 1935, and was instructed to report to the Bristol Flying School, Filton, for elementary flying training. My cup brimmed over!