CHAPTER SIX

Chivenor Revisited

During my final few weeks at Odiham I had organised myself a short introductory course on the 247 Squadron Meteor T7 and had managed to notch up twelve hours on it before I left. I wanted to get a little ahead of the game by being able to report to my new job at Chivenor as a fully functioning Meteor pilot. Besides, it was something productive to do in the dying days of the squadron when the emphasis was more on preparing the Hunters for despatch elsewhere than on producing a flying programme.

I got to Chivenor about tea-time on 30 December 1957. It was an odd sensation seeing the place again so comparatively soon after passing out from it in such an undistinguished way. All the familiar things were there to remind me of my last time at it – the dunes behind Braunton Sands just beyond the airfield boundary, the ramshackle hutted Officers’ Mess just off the main runway, and the wartime make-do sleeping accommodation. But there was one important difference: last time I had been a member of a bunch of hopefuls nervously anxious to satisfy the requirements of the course and successfully graduate. This time I was back, not quite with a full tour under my belt, but at least as a reasonably competent Hunter pilot, comfortable in the knowledge that, finally, I had been accepted as such on 247 Squadron. I was on the staff of the OCU, even though on the supporting fringe.

The Target Towing Flight was part of one of the two Hunter Mark 4 training squadrons now at Chivenor. Both had been given Reserve Squadron status, an attempt, I suppose, to make the effect of the Sandys’ cuts seem less severe. No. 145 (R) Squadron had the TTF as an appendage; the other, No. 234 (R) Squadron, had the Vampire T11s, still in use only for check rides of one sort or another, instrument tests, and dual instruction on cine and the flag. New and effective Hunter simulators had been installed in the twenty-one months that I had been away, and these were proving their worth in getting the courses started smoothly on their three-month training period on the aircraft.

I had checked into the Mess on arrival – looking in the local area for a house to rent would come later – and started off the following morning by reporting to the man in charge of the TTF, Flight Lieutenant Sid Cooper. Sid was also responsible for the Visiting Aircraft Flight and the two entities shared a hut on the northern fringe of the airfield. He was one of those officers who tend to end up in the various nooks and crannies of the Service where responsibility is not acute and life is relatively undemanding. His welcoming words contained the subliminal message that he was content not to be at the cutting edge of things and wanted his pilots to be relaxed, happy, and just do the job without making any waves. This made the flight sound like more of a backwater than I had expected and, as I wasn’t quite ready to sink into an easy-chair in the crew-room and indulge in bridge in preference to flying, I had a slight passing doubt about how I might fit in. Sid then took me to meet the squadron commander who, to my mild surprise, turned out to be my former flight commander, Brian Cox. Brian had left 247 Squadron in September while we were still in Cyprus, and while I was aware that he had been posted to Chivenor I had lost sight of that fact while waiting for my own posting. I was not unhappy to find a familiar figure in charge.

Later that day I went up in the Meteor T7¹ for the mandatory dual check given to all new arrivals on any RAF flying unit. And, over the course of the next week, I was introduced to the target-towing version of the Mark 8 by way of three familiarisation sorties, and then sent off to do my first tow.

I found a bungalow to rent in the village of Georgeham, perched on a hill about four miles from Chivenor and settled mother and child into it. As Esmé had not made any attempt to learn to drive, it was a little isolated for her but, as there were always a few students and their wives renting houses in the village, this was never a serious problem. The students also provided a ready source of baby-sitters and so we did not, over the time we were there, ever have to miss out on the Chivenor social life.

As well as flying the target-towing Meteors the pilots on the TTF were responsible for taking turns at the end of the runway to see that the flags were properly laid out on the ground and for attaching them to the towing aircraft. Basically, the flag was laid flat with the tow cable in lengthy loops beside it. The towing Meteor was then taxied onto the runway and stopped about fifty yards ahead of the flag. The pilot on flag duty then attached the cable eye to a hook at the back of the Mark 8’s ventral tank, checked with the Meteor pilot that the release mechanism was working, reattached the cable and signalled to him that he was clear to go. The aircraft was then accelerated down the runway in the normal way, lifted off steeply to get the flag clear of the ground cleanly, and climbed away at 125 knots. Air Traffic would tell the tow pilot if the flag was in good nick and flying upright. It was always a nuisance if the cable snapped or the flag failed to fly properly on take-off as there would not necessarily be another Meteor immediately available as a replacement.

The firing aircraft were loaded, as had been the standard practice when I went through on the course, and probably long before, with inert-headed ammunition pre-dipped in one of four colours of paint. The colours allowed the four pilots that were normally scheduled to fire on each flag to pick out their own scores afterwards. It was a source of anguish and irritation to those who had already fired on a particular flag if a subsequent firer hit the cable and lost the flag in the sea.

Once successfully off the ground the towing pilot headed for the designated range area just beyond Lundy Island, checking in as he did so with Hartland Point radar. He then flew up and down the range, as directed, at a steady 180 knots. This scintillating task, enlivened from time to time by the odd student whose pattern on the flag suggested that his rounds might hit the Meteor rather than the target, normally lasted for about forty minutes (the students were by now firing in pairs). However, slippages in the programme could drag it out to the point, usually an hour, when fuel usage made it prudent to think about heading back. I found that even the thought of adding up to an hour and a half per trip to my log-book total did nothing to offset the excruciating boredom of towing, and it was always a relief to get back to the airfield, drop the flag, and have a few minutes in the air without the drag it produced. I did keep reminding myself, however, that towing was certainly better than having to sit out the immediate aftermath of Mr Sandys’ cuts in a makeweight ground job.

Forty-three days into this routine things took a distinct turn for the better. Brian Cox decided that he could use another Hunter ‘tactical instructor’ and moved me into this role. ‘I’m giving you a chance to fly the Hunter,’ he said, ‘but if you put one foot wrong – even if I see you taxiing too fast – you’ll be back on Meteors.’ And so, short of the experience of my fellow instructors, all of whom had done at least one full tour on a fighter squadron, I had to turn overnight into someone capable of persuading the students that I knew what I was doing.

I started off by flying as number three on four-ship battle formation sorties with students flying as numbers two and four, and was leading four-ships within a couple of weeks. And a month after my move onto Hunters I found myself thrust into leading twelve aircraft in a battle and close formation sortie – the sort of thing that occasionally happened as a collective celebration of freedom by the instructors between courses. Because 247 Squadron had not had any first-tourists for some time before Chris Lansdell and I arrived together, had received very few after us, and was used as a holding post for experienced pilots in the run up to its disbandment, we newcomers had not been given an opportunity to lead more than a pair on it. We were the perpetual number twos. In fact, it took the experience of being on the staff at Chivenor to bring home to me how casual some of the more senior members of the squadron had been about teaching newcomers the tricks of the trade, or indeed arranging anything approaching a progressive training programme for new pilots. There was, without doubt, a splendid spirit on the squadron but, in retrospect, I think it would not be unreasonable to liken the atmosphere on it more to that of a flying club than an operational squadron. Of course, certain fundamentals were always covered before a trip: we were briefed on call signs, radio frequencies to check in on, told what we were going to practise in the air, and told what fuel states to report to the formation leader as the trip progressed. We didn’t quite have to contend with a ‘kick the tyres, light the fires, and we’re off’ attitude, but the new boys had largely to learn for themselves whatever way they could.

And so life went by at Chivenor with me learning more in my first two months as a tactical instructor than I had picked up on 247 Squadron in twenty. Close and battle formation and cine sorties with the students were interspersed with the usual individual aerobatic and practice emergency trips, the occasional PI, some air-to-air firing, air-tests after major servicing, large staff formation sorties between courses, and a Fighter Command autumn exercise in my first year when the reserve squadrons deployed to other airfields, 145 Squadron to RAF Strubby. And, from time to time, just as a fill-in when help was needed, I flew the Meteor – mostly on towing trips but occasionally with someone who needed to practise instrument flying in the aircraft.

It was on one of the latter sorties that I had the only ‘flame-out’ in all my years of jet flying. I had just given a group captain student an unusual position leaving him, slightly mischievously, spiralling steeply upward at 30,000 feet with the throttles closed. When I asked him to recover I saw the throttles slam forward so fast that they were almost a blur. The engines couldn’t take it and extinguished – so much for my being slightly unkind to the man. The initial action needed in this situation was to get all the unnecessary electric services off swiftly in order to conserve battery power for an attempt to relight. It was then necessary to exercise patient restraint until one had glided down to thicker air to maximise the chances of getting this. I could almost feel my passenger willing me to get on with it – that terrible desire of the older, more experienced, and more senior in rank, to over-ride the actions of the junior, or at least offer advice, even if the junior is the nominated captain of the aircraft. However, to his great credit, he did neither, and we had two engines running again by 10,000 feet. Later jet-engine design very largely eliminated the risk of flameouts and I only know of one example on the Hunter – when Mick Rogers, one of 247 Squadron’s more spirited characters, managed to do it when pulling up into the vertical in pursuit of a high-flying Canberra.

There was a considerable amount of friendly rivalry between the two Chivenor squadrons, mostly manifested on formal dining-in nights through the medium of the traditional after-dinner games. Some of it seems pretty silly in retrospect but, at the time we all participated happily, sometimes at the expense of our quite costly Mess-Kits, feeling that it was all part of a rich tradition. About a couple of months into my tour Brian Cox proposed to the 145 Squadron staff that we equip ourselves with water-pistols for the next dining-in night and, at a signal from him we should all stand up and let the 234 Squadron lot have a blast from them. The Mess dining room at Chivenor was quite narrow and, for such occasions the room was laid out with two long tables running its length, with about six feet between them. A ‘top table’ for the Station hierarchy joined one end of the long ones together. In this set-up even the short reach of water-pistols could be quite effective. On the night we all sat patiently through the meal, our water-pistols concealed, until the toast to Her Majesty had been drunk, the coffee served, the brandy and liqueurs passed around, and the Mess waiters and waitresses had withdrawn. We then rose as one man and whipped out our pistols. No. 234 Squadron reacted by also arising as one man and, producing hitherto concealed stirrup-pumps, totally outclassed us in firepower. For anyone not old enough to have been around during World War Two it is perhaps necessary to explain that stirrup-pumps – which were issued widely to the populace hopefully to help cope with bomb-induced fires – were hand-pumps that were designed to suck water from a bucket. A leg was attached to the pump in such a way that it projected outside the bucket. On the base of the leg was a plate on which a foot could press as a steadying influence thus leaving hands free to work the pump-handle. Stirrup-pumps could deliver a volume of water far in excess of the output of any water-pistol. We had clearly had a mole in our midst, our plot had been known about, and the tables had been decisively turned on us.

Starting that year, and lasting until March 1959, Chivenor had the task of tutoring several courses of Iraqi pilots. Iraq had bought Hunters, and part of the deal between the two Governments had been that the RAF would train a small number of experienced pilots who would then go home and convert their fellows to the aircraft. It didn’t take us long to discover that our part in this would be no easy task. Most of the Iraqis were enthusiastic about the learning process but a minority clearly felt that taking instruction from us was either beneath their dignity or too much of a bother. Also, none of them was very happy about flying in the cloudy conditions that the rest of us accepted as normal. Accordingly we nursed them along, gently trying to make them feel part of the RAF scene in general and the Chivenor family in particular. But there were limits to what could be achieved and even close nursing could not cover everything. One member of the course suffered a partial engine failure one morning, misjudged his approach, hit a low sea wall some 150 yards short of Chivenor’s runway, and tore off his undercarriage in such a way that the aircraft was slewed through 180 degrees. I caught a snapshot view of it emerging from behind a building ‘flying’ backwards at about ten feet above the runway. It remained in the air for just a few seconds before hitting the ground perfectly flatly and coming to a halt almost immediately. The pilot sat in the cockpit, dazed, until pulled out by the fire crew. He was uninjured, but didn’t want to continue with the course. Another forgot to put his undercarriage down before landing. When the ambulance and fire crew reached his aircraft, which had ground to a halt not far from the Officers’ Mess, he was nowhere to be seen. After a search he was found in the Mess, in his best uniform, sitting reading a newspaper. When asked if he was all right he said: ‘Of course, why do you want to know?’ He protested that he had not been flying and that the wheels-up landing was nothing to do with him. When it was pointed out that his signature was on both the Authorisation Sheet and the Form 700 he demanded to speak with his Embassy. He did not return to the course either and I have often wondered what happened to him when he got home.²

At the end of July I was offered the opportunity to train up to be one of three aerobatic display pilots that the OCU had been asked to provide that year and, whenever I had the opportunity over the next few weeks, I went off to work up a five-minute aerobatic sequence. I did four sessions of my planned display routine above 7,000 feet, the minimum height laid down for normal aerobatic sorties, before I decided that I was sufficiently consistent to come lower. Oddly, although Chivenor had begun to receive the new dual-seat Hunter, the T7, as I was beginning my work-up, my performance was not checked by means of a dual sortie at this safe height, as had become the practice several years later when I found myself again performing solo aerobatics. I just lowered my height progressively on my own initiative to 4,000 feet, then 3,000, then 2,000. As I had a reasonably well-developed sense of self-preservation I practised at each level until everything I did, particularly the heights and speeds at various crucial points on each manoeuvre, was exactly as it should be. In early September I was practising down to 1,500 feet and I carried out the fourth flight at this level over Chivenor so that Dick Ellis, the Wing Commander Flying and CFI, could check me from the ground. Then, finally, just before appearing in public at RAF St Eval’s Battle of Britain Open Day, I did a practice at 1,500 feet in a T7 with Mike Hughes, my (courageous!) flight commander, to be given clearance to come down to the display height of 500 feet.

I carried out most of my practices at the lower heights over the disused airfield of Winkleigh, about 20 nm to the south-east of Chivenor. I wonder now at the tolerance of the people who lived near it as no one registered a noise complaint during or after any of my low level and very noisy appearances there. Such tolerance was still the norm in 1958 but it lasted just long enough for the post-war generation to find their voices.

At the end of my first year on the staff at Chivenor I was assessed as being ‘Above Average’ as a pilot. This gently massaged an ego somewhat bruised by the assessment with which I had left the place on my way to 247 Squadron, and by the begrudging acceptance that I initially got there. It is just possible, of course, that all members of the staff were seen in these terms – something that could arguably be justified by the truism that there is no better way to improve in any pursuit than to engage in teaching it.

The Hunter sorties at Chivenor averaged forty minutes each and so, despite flying two, three, or even sometimes four times a day, my hourly total didn’t mount as fast as it had been doing on 247 Squadron – once we got the drop tanks, that is. However, in April, 1959 I got another opportunity to fly with four drop tanks and to go further abroad in a Hunter than hitherto. The Indian Government had contracted with Hawker, via the British Government, to buy several squadrons’ worth of Hunters and to have them delivered. The RAF undertook delivery and the task fell to the Ferry Flight at RAF Benson. As this unit didn’t have anything like the number of pilots needed for it, reinforcements were sought from the Hunter outfits around the United Kingdom. Chivenor supplied two of the three pilots required for an early April four-ship delivery to be led by a Ferry Flight pilot. I was more than happy to be nominated as one of the Chivenor pair and both of us set off eagerly to Benson to embark on this new experience.

We were required to report there in time to spend a few days with the flight, being briefed, sorting out maps, and familiarising ourselves with the route we were to follow. When these preparations were complete, we went over to Hawker’s factory at Dunsfold, picked up four Hunter F56s, as the Indian-destined aircraft were designated, and flew air-tests in them the following day. The air-tests revealed a few faults that required rectification before we could leave and it was not until late in the afternoon three days later that we got away. The plan was to refuel at the French Air Force Base at Orange and spend the first night at RAF Luqa in Malta, but the lateness of our departure from Benson, and the slowness of the refuelling process at Orange forced us to stop overnight there.

That was a mistake: we took a taxi into town, stayed over long in a pleasant little bistro drinking French beer, and much too late in the night had to walk the five or so miles back to the airfield. After too few hours’ sleep we were up, getting briefed and planned for the next leg of the journey to Malta. We took off at 0800 hours, and one and three-quarters hours later we touched down at RAF Luqa where we were provided with a standard RAF Transport Command packed lunch box for breakfast: a pork pie, a cheese sandwich, an apple and a slice of fruit-cake. I list the contents of the package only because I always afterwards blamed the pork pie for how I felt later in the trip.

We took off as soon as we had been refuelled for a direct flight to RAF Nicosia. On the climb we passed through a wisp of cloud no more than a few hundred feet thick and I felt a touch of vertigo – a reminder perhaps of the effects of alcohol from the evening before on one’s balancing mechanism, itself very susceptible to the accelerations that the body is subject to in the air. Fortunately the sky was clear at our cruising height, the visibility perfect, and so the effect was fleeting. About an hour later, however, as we passed abeam RAF El Adem in Libya I was not feeling at all well. When our leader asked if all was in order with fuel states and oxygen adding that, if we had any problems, we could divert into El Adem, I thought that I would like nothing better than to divert and get on the ground as quickly as possible. However, that wish was opposed by the thought that if I landed I might not have felt well enough to climb back into my aircraft for the final 500 nm to Nicosia until at least the following day. And that could have initiated an exposure of folly that I did not wish to court.

With some distance still to go to Nicosia I was feeling very decidedly unwell. As waves of nausea advanced and receded I alternated between optimism about being able to hold out until landing, and a feeling that neither hope nor resolution were going to save the day. I watched the cloudless coast of Cyprus, discernible from nearly 200 nm grow closer with a terrible slowness – my misery turning our cruising speed of 9 nm per minute into the slowest of slow motion. When at last we started the descent to Nicosia I knew beyond doubt that I was not going to make it. As no fighter pilot would dream of carrying a sick-bag the problem was how to be decently ill within the confines of the cockpit. I wondered if I could use one or both of my cape-leather gloves but threw the idea away as impracticable. I thought of using the outer shell of my helmet – we had a cloth interior housing earphones, and a separate hard outer ‘bone dome’ – but that would have been too difficult to get off with the canopy closed, and too difficult to hold while manoeuvring to land. Sadly there was no happy solution and I had no choice but to face the not inconsiderable embarrassment of handing my kit to the ground crew at Nicosia for cleaning.

We spent a quiet evening in the Mess there, all four of us interested only in getting to bed early – and were fit and ready the following morning for the next leg of the trip to Tehran. However, because of some difficulty in getting flight-clearance from the Iranian authorities for our Indian aircraft we didn’t get away until mid-morning on the next day. We were following what was known as the ‘CENTO’³ route, an agreed aerial path for NATO and CENTO military aircraft that went north out of Cyprus and almost overhead Ankara before turning right for Tehran.

The border between Turkey and Iran is about 170 nm long with Russia to the north and Iraq the south, and the CENTO route aimed for its middle. A belief was prevalent among military aircrews that the Russians interfered electronically with navigation aids in the area of the border but, as we didn’t have any means of interrogating any aids there, this didn’t worry us. With a reasonably accurate forecast of upper level winds we could be pretty sure of staying well away from hostile territory even if we could not see the ground. In fact, the sky was clear and we were able to pick out without difficulty from height, and against the general sepia-coloured background, unmistakable major features (such as large military airfields) and, most importantly, Lake Van, a very useful waypoint not far from the border with Iran.

We stopped overnight in Tehran, parking our aircraft in a military enclave within the civil airport. We were met by the British Air Attaché and driven into town to the hotel he had booked for us – and which he probably used for every transiting RAF crew. It was a dull dark place that smelled strongly of kerosene and stale smoke from eastern tobacco, and might just have ranked as one-star had it got into any hotel guide. None of us was in favour of eating in it that evening and so decided to go out to a restaurant and perhaps seek some local colour. We also wanted some warmth for it had got quite chilly as the sun went down, a phenomenon that had probably as much to do with Tehran’s altitude of 4,000 feet above sea level as the time of year.

Unfortunately our Ferry Flight leader, who seemed to know his way about, was determined to set the itinerary for our evening out, and was clearly in no hurry to find an eating spot. He led us further into town and down some rather dubious alleyways to a stout wooden door set into a high wall. He knocked loudly on this and, almost immediately a small panel opened. A pair of eyes gave us the once-over and their owner, presumably concluding that we looked like reasonable prospects, opened the door and admitted us. Inside was a vaulted hallway that led to a fairly large room with a small dance floor, a three-piece band and a well stocked bar. The only other occupants at the time were two men and half a dozen girls. It didn’t dawn on me immediately, nor on the other two temporary ferry pilots, that we were in a brothel, but when it did the only thing that prevented us from leaving hastily was the fear that we wouldn’t be able to find our way out of the labyrinth of alleys and back to the hotel. Our leader was totally relaxed. ‘Best sort of place in Tehran to get a decent drink,’ he said, taking one of the girls onto the dance floor. The rest of us clustered uncomfortably together at the bar, not at all sure of ourselves in this unfamiliar territory but trying desperately not to look too much like the proverbial ‘innocents abroad’. Our demeanour, obviously not what was the norm in the place, eventually led one of the girls to approach us and ask if ‘You no like Irani girls?’ in a manner clearly intended to raise doubts about our manhood. By this time the room had got quite full of potential customers for the girls’ services and the two men who had been in the place when we first arrived – two American oil-men as we had earlier discovered – were getting into a serious argument about the size of their bill. The appearance of hitherto unseen bouncers who were clearly not going to let them go without full settlement suggested that it really was time for us to leave. Our leader, by now, was lying on the dance floor calling on us to join him in looking up the skirt of the girl he was with. ‘Look, no knickers!’ he yelled at us. We grabbed him, lifted him to his feet, and beat a retreat without much dignity but with great dispatch. The hotel’s food seemed quite adequate after that.

The following morning we left for Sharjah, another flight of one and three quarter hours’ duration. With an absolutely clear sky and good visibility on the ground for the entire trip we had no worries about navigation. As we headed steadily south-south-eastwards we had a clear view from the comfort of our cockpit cocoons over a wide swathe of the land below, mostly comprising mountainous terrain, with peaks rising in places to over 12,000 feet, and most of it looking not at all like the sort of territory one would want to have to bale out over. We saw the Gulf – at the time variously known to the littoral states as either the Arabian or the Persian Gulf depending on local perspectives – long before we reached it and had no difficulty picking out the location of RAF Sharjah on the sandy shore some 50 nm across the Strait of Hormuz.

Sharjah was a bit of a shock for anyone used to landing on smooth tarmac. The runway surface was oiled and rolled sand, rough and really not well suited for high-pressure tyres filled to 400 pounds psi. The airfield buildings were in much the same style as those we knew at Chivenor, the only solid structure being the old fort that not very long before had provided accommodation for passengers disembarking for an overnight stop from Imperial Airways’ flying boats en route for points further east and south. The heat and humidity were almost unbearably oppressive and we survived only by downing a few very welcome beers under one of the fans in a corner of the Officers’ Mess hut. Overnight it rained heavily necessitating a re-rolling of the runway by the Station steamroller before we could even think of taking off.

Our next stop was the Indian Air Force base at Jamnagar situated on the southern shore of the Gulf of Kachchh about 120 nm south of the border with Pakistan. On arrival we were not permitted to open the aircraft canopies until we had assured the authorities, by spraying ourselves with cans of disinfectant that had been supplied to us in Cyprus, that we were not importing any infections. We were then handed a printed sheet giving us an up to date list of all outbreaks of notifiable diseases in the surrounding administrative area, and allowed to get out while the planes were refuelled.

From Jamnagar we flew low-level to Delhi, diverting more than a little from the direct route to help ourselves to an aerial view of the Taj Mahal. This privileged look at a spectacular monument would have been fine but for the diving and wheeling kites – birds large enough to do serious damage to any aircraft striking one – thick in the air over and around it. After a bit of fierce manoeuvring in the interests of bird avoidance we were more than delighted when our leader gave up his attempt to show the place to us and set off along the railway-line leading in the direction of our destination. Again the weather was ideal, and we had a magnificent view of the land we were flying over, close enough at a few hundred feet above the ground, and slow enough at 360 knots, to see it all in its dusty, occasionally colourful, and decidedly non-European glory.

We spent the night in New Delhi, this time in a rather good hotel as the Indian Government and not the Air Ministry was paying. And the following morning we flew the last few hundred miles to the Indian Air Force maintenance base at Chekari, just outside Cawnpore, to hand over the aircraft. Chekari was an extraordinarily interesting repository of aircraft old and new. Just about every piece of concrete around the edge of the airfield had aircraft parked on it, many of them of World War Two vintage. Inside the hanger that quickly swallowed our aircraft were dozens of French-built Ouregons, a post-war fighter-bomber already heading for obsolescence. Nothing much outside the hangers seemed to be in a ready-to-fly state, and there didn’t seem to be a great deal to distinguish the place from an aviation museum such as Duxford has become at home.

We had reached Chekari shortly before nine in the morning and had completed the business of handing-over our aircraft by ten. We were informed that a DC3 – the redoubtable Dakota – was being prepared to take us back to Delhi and were told where to find it. By this time the sun was becoming hot and we were becoming thirsty. We found the aircraft and also a man with a bicycle who offered to go and buy some soft drinks for us. The DC3’s port engine was being run and we could see that the ground crew clustering around it were not happy. Soon we saw why. What looked like a filter was taken out, examined, and small bits of metal were removed from it. While this was going on we sought a bit of shade and waited for the return of our emissary to the source of drinkable fluid. When he came back, proudly dangling four bottles of a pinkish liquid from his handlebars, we were rather put off by the suspicious-looking particles swimming in them. We took the bottles but didn’t drink from them until late afternoon when we were feeling so thoroughly dehydrated that we were more than ready to dismiss the thought of rotten stomachs, or worse.

The engine-running test had got nowhere and, as afternoon merged into evening all work on the aircraft had been abandoned. We were left sitting by it wondering if we had been forgotten and trying to decide where we might find someone to consult about an alternative to the deserted Dakota. The Air Traffic Control tower seemed like a good bet and, to our relief, we found an Indian Air Force crew in the flight-planning room briefing themselves for a flight to Delhi in a C119, an American-built twin-engined transport, considerably more modern than the DC3. We attached ourselves to them, stuck close, and flew back to Delhi in the cockpit with them – a remarkably sizeable space and the only part of the aircraft where the engine noise was at a tolerable level. Four days later we were on our way back to the United Kingdom in an Air India Constellation – one of the last of the large piston-engined inter-continental airliners still in service.

When I got back to Chivenor I found a posting notice waiting for me informing me that I was going back to a front-line Hunter squadron, No. 19, and I was to join it on 19 May. This was extraordinarily good news and I was delighted, not least because I had always been slightly concerned that my employment as a tactical instructor at Chivenor lacked official sanction and could be rescinded at any time. However, this did not stop me thoroughly enjoying my second spell at the OCU. I had been lifted by it well out of the new-boy status that 247 Squadron had kept me in over-long. I had been recommended during it for a Permanent Commission by Chivenor’s Station Commander (and had been awarded it by a Board held at the HQ of Chivenor’s parent Group, No. 12); and, above all, I had been taught the value of a meticulously professional approach to fighter flying. I left, aware that I owed a great deal to Brian Cox for affording me the opportunity to escape from the backwater of target-towing and gain some very valuable experience on the Hunter instead.