The Mammoth Book of Fighter Pilots (5 page)

There were also, it is true, a couple of Shorthorns, but my log-book showed that I had not yet been up in one and the shortage of instructors prevented my being given the necessary dual-control flights. The trouble with a Shorthorn was that it had no nice tea-tray elevator in front with which to judge the correct flying angle, and thus the first impression to a Longhorn pilot was rather perilous, as if he were hanging head down over a balcony. I stationed myself close to the only Longhorn and pestered everyone who came by to let me take her up.

In this way I managed to get in an occasional flight, accomplished safe landings, broke nothing. But progress was distressingly slow. I began to think that perhaps I was fated to remain a Longhorn pilot all my days; at times I even hoped so, for some of the other machines at Gosport were rather terrifying. There were B.E.s of various categories – and the last B.E. I had seen had been the burning wreck at Shoreham – there were Caudrons with powerful 80 horse-power “Gnome” engines, Bleriot monoplanes, Martinsyde scouts and many others. I did not know which I should have chosen for my own; they all seemed wonderfully fast, modern, powerful, and all a trifle dangerous to the eye of a novice.

One fine evening after I had completed a practice flight in the Longhorn, a friendly young instructor took me over to look at a Caudron from close quarters. She was a nice little machine with engine and propeller in front, a small boat-shaped body for two people, and wooden tail-booms running back to the elevator and rudders. She could do about sixty miles an hour when hard pressed.

The instructor climbed up, inviting me into the passenger seat in front of him. It was a bit cramped and I did not at all like the way a piece of cowling, removed to let me enter, was bolted down behind me to prevent my falling
out. I was afraid that if the machine crashed that front seat would become a death-trap. But I said nothing and a moment later the engine was started.

I held my breath as we took off, but except for the engine smelling abominably and making a great deal of noise (it was the first time I had flown behind a rotary engine) I enjoyed the flight thoroughly. I was with an excellent pilot and I felt quite safe after all in the front seat. This was, for me, a new type of aeroplane, a new experience about which I would be able to talk in the Mess. All too soon it was over. I was rather surprised when we landed in the middle of the aerodrome and when, turning round, I saw the pilot getting out of his seat although the engine was still running. I unbolted the cowling at my back and started to get out too, thinking that perhaps something had gone wrong and that I could help. But by now the pilot was standing on the grass, buzzing the engine on and off by means of a switch at the side of the body. He signed to me not to get down but to climb into the pilot’s seat.

“Try the controls,” he said between buzzes.

I tried them. They seemed all right. Lateral control was by “warping” the wing instead of by aileron; it seemed rather stiff, but I supposed that very little would be necessary for normal bank. The rudder control was much lighter.

“She needs a bit of left rudder in the air,” the pilot remarked. “And you can leave the throttle control there –” He indicated the position. “– all the time you’re flying, but hold on to it. Cut it down a little when you want to glide, and use your thumb-switch. Understand?”

I nodded intelligently, thinking it all over and trying to remember some of it for future reference.

“All right,” he went on, “don’t stay up for more than twenty minutes. Off you go!”

“Off I go?” I repeated, unable to believe my ears.

He wagged his head cheerfully and let go of the switch. The machine began to move forward.

I cried out anxiously, but the engine was making a horrible noise and I had forgotten where the switch was. The pilot did not hear me.

“Don’t forget,” he shouted as he skipped out of the way of the tail-booms, “don’t forget that she stalls at forty-two!”

I stared forward helplessly, hopelessly, The machine was bounding over a stretch of uneven ground, swinging wildly from side to side. Which rudder had he told me to use? Left or right? I tried each in turn, gradually discovering how to keep the nose straight while fumbling around with my left hand to find the switch. My fingers encountered the throttle lever, pushed it forward to the position the instructor had indicated. The engine roared with satisfaction. The tail came off the ground, I felt myself being lifted in my seat. Instinctively – already it was becoming an instinct! – I eased back the control stick to prevent the machine from falling on her nose. The bumping and bounding suddenly ceased – merciful heavens, I was off the ground!

My immediate reaction was one of far greater apprehension than I had experienced upon my first solo. Then, for all my ignorance, I had really been quite comfortable in a Longhorn seat. Now everything was unfamiliar. I could not see ahead; there was a flame-spitting, whirling mass of cylinders and propeller in front of the frail boat in which I squirmed. And wherever I looked there seemed to be struts or wings to obscure the view – except of the departing earth. I held the stick firmly in what I judged to be a neutral position and watched the speed gauge.

I found the switch at last, but now I deemed it wiser to go on. I had very little spare flying speed. If I tried to land I should come down like a cast-iron pancake, smashing the machine to matchwood. Besides, there was a line of trees ahead – about the only thing I could see – somehow I would have to get over them before finding safety. No use getting upset, I had to make a circuit of the aerodrome if I wanted to live to tell that young instructor what I thought of him. Clutching desperately at the throttle and stick I was borne aloft thinking upon Elijah.

Compared to a Longhorn this Caudron was speedy and climbed remarkably fast. In no more than ten minutes I had reached a height of one thousand feet. She seemed to be climbing too fast. I peered hastily at the speed gauge. It was very hard to see, for the cockpit was dark and my eyes were half blinded by the sunset (probably my last) over the Solent towards which I was flying – towards which I was being unwillingly carried. At what speed, I wondered, had that awful man told me she would stall? Was it forty-two? Anyway, I was taking no risks. Well above forty-five for me. I pushed the stick farther forward –
Trial by Jury
, slightly parodied, came into my head in tune with the engine’s beat:

“She might very well stall at forty-five,

In the dusk with the light behind her.”

The light was certainly behind the instruments; I had to guess my speed by the feel of the machine, a lesson it was just as well I should learn then and there. Dusk? Yes, that was coming; unless I hurried the light would be bad for landing, I should bounce like a tennis ball. I tried a turn. It succeeded better than I had hoped. And of a sudden I felt a new confidence coming to me. This was fine, this was real flying, better than Longhorn. I made another turn. The light was on the instruments now, I felt much happier. Height two thousand feet, speed fifty-one, revolutions per minute one thousand and fifty; everything smooth and comfortable. I looked out of the boat and down.

Fort Grange was directly underneath; the aerodrome a little to my left. Ahead the houses of Gosport; in distant Portsmouth lights were already beginning to twinkle in the streets. I throttled down, buzzing the engine to keep the propeller turning. The machine glided slowly but extraordinarily steeply, I found; it was so nearly a dive that I watched the ground over the top plane. The summer air grew pleasantly warmer as I came lower, and greatly daring I essayed a turn on the glide. It was easier than I had thought, for there was not a bump or a pocket in the air on this quiet August evening.

Above the sheds, still a good fifty feet up, I straightened out, began calculating my landing point. A sidelong glance at the tarmac showed me the young instructor looking up from among a group of other pilots. He was very tall and therefore known as “Tiny.” I hoped that he was proud of his pupil. I felt angry no more. Rather I wanted to laugh and shake him by the hand. I was glad that he had had confidence enough in my abilities to send me off upon this delightful machine. . . .

The landing held all my thoughts. Shakily I buzzed the engine as though I were sending out an SOS, drew the stick back gently, gradually, guessing the distance to the ground. The rush of wind died away; the nose came up steadily; the tail sank. I looked at the air-speed: dangerously near to the fatal forty-two mark, then just under. The machine sank a little, slowing down. And but for the rumbling of the wheels and the scratch of the tail-booms over stones beneath the grass, I should not have known that I had landed.

xi

There followed a spell of exceptionally fine weather, during which I was sent up two or three times every day for short flights on the Caudron, the Longhorn, or occasionally on one of the Shorthorns. But in spite of my new confidence I was still very cautious in the air, and on the ground I found myself always listening for useful hints that might be dropped by those Winged Heroes, the fully-fledged pilots. There were plenty of minor crashes, but none so ghastly or so close to me as that first one at Shoreham, and I fancy that those of us who had survived the moral effect of that disaster were no longer much disturbed by other people’s misfortunes. And yet some of
the mysterious happenings to experienced aviators filled me every now and then with anxiety for the future. There was a limit it seemed to the wisdom of even the best pilots; what on earth – or in the air – could I be expected to do in circumstances with which they themselves did not know how to deal?

The newly forming squadron at Gosport was being equipped with B.E.2c. Aeroplanes. A pilot whom I knew and liked was sent to bring one from a depot near London. When he landed he became at once the centre of an admiring crowd, for the B.E. with its latest improvements and its 90 horsepower engine was a novelty and highly thought of. The pilot gave a half-humorous account of his flight.

“It was very bumpy over Winchester,” he announced, “and the dirty beast tried to spin on me!”

Exclamations of interest were followed by many questions. How had it started? What was it like, how serious had it been, what had he done to correct it? His answers were calmly given, but they were not very clear. I at least could gather little or nothing from them; a spin remained something mysterious and deadly, a danger from which there was no salvation, which attacked one suddenly and for no reason in mid-air. I must watch for signs of that spin as a traveller through unexplored country might watch for a savage ambush.

The little Caudron, however, was perfectly safe; she had never been known to spin. Providing one did not stall her, she would give no trouble. She was strong, had a low landing-speed, required a comparatively short run for taking off and was more or less fool-proof in the air. Her one weakness was that whirling incinerator of an engine. But in spite of occasional trouble, I developed a great affection for the little machine. In her I made my first long cross-country flights and enjoyed my first two forced landings. I say “enjoyed” retrospectively, because I managed to bring them both off successfully, not because I was at all happy at the time they occurred.

xii

It happened one day that, when I was about to leave on a cross-country flight in the Caudron, a letter had to be delivered urgently to a senior officer at that moment inspecting the reserve Squadron at Shoreham. With some formality and many cautions not to tarry on the way, I was entrusted with the despatch.

To say that I was pleased to revisit in so smart a machine the scene of my first trembling solo would be far short of the truth. It mattered not to me that the despatch was of no real importance and that a copy was being sent by post; at being selected to perform this mission I was as elated as if I had won the Derby Sweep. It was a glorious morning, the engine sang a crackling paean of triumph; I flew via Fareham, Chichester, Arundel and Lancing. After much climbing, the Caudron reached a height of four thousand feet; below me small puffs of cloud drifted slowly astern. I felt rather reckless in thus flying above them, they gave such an impression of altitude; but I was beginning to know the look of the country from the air. I could distinguish between a railway and a river, between forests and factory chimneys.

Everything went well on the way out and I reached Shoreham in good time, looking down proudly before commencing the glide. Some of the less fortunate pupils of my day were still being taught there. I fancied I could discern one or two of them in the drooping Longhorns slowly circling the aerodrome. I switched off and dived earthwards – dived, because gliding in a Caudron, except that it was delightfully slow, resembled in angle of descent the “Death Dive” of the newspapers. Over the sheds I buzzed the engine a good deal and did one gentle turn of a spiral so as to make sure of having an audience, then straightening out, came lower and – glory be! – made a very decent landing.

To complete the impression of efficiency I taxied in very fast, and in a Caudron that meant with the tail off the
ground to avoid the braking effect of the tail-booms in the grass. More by luck than by good judgment, I switched off in the nick of time, fetching up on the edge of the tarmac, my propeller almost touching a Longhorn’s rudder. A few yards away a group of officers stood watching; I spied my senior officer amongst them. Wishing to complete my performance as smartly as possible, I sprang lightly from the pilot’s seat, forgot the control wires which ran aft to the tail and, tripping over a cable, fell flat on my face. I began to regret that all the pupils were now assembled in front of the sheds; I could see wide grins on several familiar faces. However, picking myself up I limped clear of the Caudron with a barked shin, and hastened to deliver my despatch to the senior officer. He smiled, thanked me warmly; and when he added that I had made a very nice landing and that he hoped I had not hurt myself, I felt as proud as though I were the dying patriot reporting to the Emperor at Ratisbon.