June 1943
Charter Hall airfield was situated in the lovely Tweed valley with rising ground to the north that was not ideal from the flying point of view. The aircraft that we were operating were the Beaufighters with Rolls-Royce engines, which were certainly not the most satisfactory type for sending off solo inexperienced student pilots. The Beaufighter II was a very good, rugged aircraft, and the Rolls-Royce Merlin was an excellent aero engine, but when married together the result was a bit of a disaster. The single-engine performance was not as good as it should have been, and the aircraft suffered from this tendency to swing on take-off, which could be dangerous if not anticipated in time. As a consequence the first solo flights of pupils were always moments of some anxiety both for the pupils concerned and for the watching instructing staff. Several fatal accidents had been witnessed by them on or near the airfield, and it was a relief when the Beaufighter IIs were replaced by the more amenable Beaufighter with Bristol Hercules engines. It was not possible to fit dual control to the Beaufighters because of the cockpit design, which was, in fact, ideal for a single pilot, so the question of an interim dual aircraft was still an urgent need. It may be remembered that when I was a staff officer at Headquarters Fighter Command I had visited Charter Hall to fly a Bristol Beaufort to assess the type for its suitability for the purpose. I was now gratified to see that Beauforts fitted with dual control were now available and flying as an interim training type before the pupils went solo on the Beaufighter. There was good reason to believe that accident rates at the OTU might well improve. I was responsible for organizing the training programme and supervising its execution. It was intensive and difficult at times as weather quite often prevented flying and even greater efforts were needed as a result. However, I was lucky in having a very good and pleasant station commander and efficient training staff, and time could usually be found for relaxation in amusing and friendly company. As I had learnt on my previous posting to a unit north of the Border, the local Scots people were always hospitable and generous, and Fitzgerald, our senior air traffic controller, was an old hand in the area and was well in with several of our neighbours. He and I spent many happy hours shooting on several of the local estates or at drinks or dinner parties at their invitation It was always a marvel to me that they should all be so friendly and kind when they were subjected to the screaming of our Beaufighter engines day and night over their farms and houses. My responsibilities also ranged to the satellite airfield at Winfield, a few miles to the east, and I had to pay regular visits there, which gave me a welcome excuse to fly backwards and forwards in any type of aircraft I could get my hands on, often accompanied by Fitz and Becky. On 10 and 11 July I took a Martinet and a Beaufort, and later in the week a Dominie, to get to Winfield and back for my regular weekly visits. On the 19th, I flew the Dominie on a sea search for a missing Barracuda from the Royal Navy. After landing I rushed down to Berwick-on-Tweed and joined the crew of the air-sea rescue launch to continue the search. But after a fruitless hour’s patrol we returned to port and no trace was ever found of the Barracuda or its crew.
When an invitation arrived to a dance at Headquarters No. 9 Group Preston, another wing commander from the staff and I flew down to Samlesbury in a Beaufighter. We were pleased to meet several old Battle of Britain cronies, including Freddie Rosier and Pete Brothers, and the beautiful old mansion of Barton Hall resounded to the jollifications and ribaldry until the early hours.
A day or two later, back at Charter Hall, Fitz and I flew up to the Orkneys in a Beaufighter II with Becky to carry out take-off and landing trials at RNAS Twatt, to assess its suitability for the operation of Beaufighters day and night. I reported that the airfield and its approaches were suitable, but that an upgrade of the air traffic facilities would be necessary. The next day I took a visiting staff officer to Grangemouth in the Dominie, and returned in very bad weather, and Fitz had to work hard to talk me down to a safe landing. He always did.
At the beginning of August I managed to get a few days’ leave to go down and see my sister at her home in Longhope, near Gloucester. I had a good reason to get back to Charter Hall, so I got a lift to Honiley, where I had arranged to be picked up. Unfortunately and unexpectedly, the Beaufighter that arrived burst a tyre on landing and the swing resulted in a collapsed undercarriage and a wrecked aircraft. My old chum the station commander very kindly then offered to lend me his Martinet, and I was able to continue on my way, only to have to land at Scorton because of bad weather. I eventually landed at Charter Hall after dusk, and the Martinet had to return to Honiley next day. The following weekend I was invited with Fitz to shoot at Lord Craigmyle’s estate on Peel Moor, Galashiels, and enjoyed a very productive day’s sport and a splendid picnic lunch, with cold Scotch salmon and sparkling wine. The shooting after lunch was a bit haphazard, to say the least.
I was able to get my hands on a Miles Magister, and carried out an exercise of aerobatics and low flying, and finally earned Fitz’s disapproval by landing on the perimeter track alongside his control tower. However, he soon recovered his customary cheerful good mood the next day when we went to visit one of his ladies at Kimmergham, a beautiful house and garden, not to mention the lady concerned. Perhaps it should be mentioned that Fitz was small and dapper and an example of one of Britain’s perfect gentlemen, as well as being a very fine air traffic controller. When I returned to Charter Hall I took the opportunity to fly a Beaufighter VI powered with Hercules engines and the added safety feature of fully feathering airscrews. I couldn’t resist making my final landing with one engine stopped and feathered, accompanied by Fitz’s ‘show-off’ remark from the tower.
A Wellington III C that had force-landed with engine trouble some days before was now fitted with a replacement engine and was ready for air test, so I and my chief flying instructor, with Pilot’s Notes in hand, flew it on air test, and after an hour in the air landed and declared it serviceable and ready for collection by the bomber squadron to which it belonged. The next day I had to take a Beaufighter VI on another air-sea rescue search, this time for wreckage and a dinghy twenty-five miles out to sea from Boulmer. I landed at Winfield at dusk after an unsuccessful three-hour search. On 16 September a visiting staff officer flew in with a Spitfire, and I persuaded him to let me borrow it for a short flight to practise my rather neglected aerobatics. I was enjoying the flight until the Spitfire developed very severe and frightening vibration on top of a loop and the engine nearly stopped, so I made hasty tracks for home. The staff officer said he had not suffered any problem but admitted he had only flown the Spitfire straight and level during his various visits. To be on the safe side the Spitfire went into the servicing flight for investigation, and I flew the pilot to Ayr in the Dominie, and took the opportunity to visit my old squadron at Drem to discuss the training of Beaufighter pilots for the night-fighter role.
On 1 October, my 27th birthday, I was working on the next training schedule, and in the afternoon played in the first rugby match of the season. It was a bit chaotic and no one was very fit, but there was some promise for the future with a little effort on everyone’s part. The supervision of training at Charter Hall continued, with the occasional drama, such as the time when I and my senior QFI had to take the Magister and look for the wreck of a Beaufighter that had crashed up in the hills to the north on the previous night. Three days later Fitz and I had a day’s shooting at Kimmergham, followed by another half day’s shoot around the airfield on the following Saturday. One Monday morning when the station commander and I were discussing the future training programme in my office, the phone rang and air traffic was on to tell the station commander that a pilot under training was in trouble in a Beaufighter, apparently with an engine failure. We both dashed outside, scrambled into his car and tore down the hill towards the airfield. We could see that there was a senior training officer already in the control tower talking over the radio to the pupil, who was only on his second solo, and as we leapt from the car we could see the aircraft clearly on only one engine, flying very slowly over the centre of the airfield. Even as we watched with bated breath, the student pilot could no longer hold the pressure on the rudder bar to keep the aircraft straight, and it veered towards the dead engine, seemed to shudder in the air, rolled over and crashed into the runway with a sickening thump. For a moment all was silent, and then, almost leisurely at first, flames began to creep up around the wreck. The fire crew was there almost at once and sprayed foam on the burning aircraft, and an asbestos-suited fireman walked into the flames, but all in vain as the pilot would doubtless have been killed on impact. The station commander, clearly shaken, asked me to drive him back to his office, where he called in all the senior training staff immediately to examine all the possible reasons for the accident, for it was essential to lose no time in assessing the cause so as to avoid unhelpful speculation among the trainees. In the meantime flying training continued without a break, as was customary.
On the 18th, I took a Beaufighter down to Thelthorpe and picked up Flt Lt Lister, Maisie’s other brother, to take him to Greenham Common to see his father, who was now dangerously ill in Newbury hospital. The next day I flew Eric back to his bomber squadron at Thelthorpe. Seven weeks later Eric was posted missing on a bombing mission over Germany, but his father never heard the sad news, as he had already died.
At the end of October there was a party at my old station at Honiley, and George, who was just back from Africa, and I flew down there in a Beaufighter and met up with old squadron friends. In the middle of November flying was held up by bad weather, and quite a lot of snow had to be cleared from the runway and taxiways. On the 18th, I did a weather and runway check in a Beaufighter, and flying was able to resume. The next day I took the Dominie to Drem with several staff officers to visit the radar station at Direlton. Not long afterwards a new wing commander was posted in to take over command of the satellite airfield of Winfield, and Fitz and I flew over in a Martinet to welcome him and brief him on the stage of training of the senior course now based there. On the return journey I made a bet with Fitz that I would fly him back to Charter Hall below ground level! With a scornful laugh Fitz said, ‘You’re on!’ But he lost the bet: there the Tweed runs in a valley, and I followed the twists and turns of the river a few feet above the water all the way up it to just south of the airfield, where I lowered the undercarriage and pulled up to runway height and landed before anyone knew I was there. On Christmas Eve we all went to a dance and a party at Winfield. On Christmas Day there was a dining-in night at Charter Hall for all officers after they had served the airmen with their Christmas dinner.
On the 28th I received a signal to report to AOC 11 Group, so after travelling down to Bentley Priory by the night train I reported to the AOC’s PA and had an interview with the AVM in the morning. I was delighted to be told that I was to command No. 488 New Zealand Squadron, which was equipped with Mosquito night-fighters.