COMBAT AND COMPETITION.pdf - Lakes Gliding Club

CHAPTER EIGHT IN A QUANDARY
thing. In 1944, five years after we had last seen each other at
Cheltenham, I managed to contact John again. He was on rest, married,
and instructing at Bassingbourne.
I arranged to pop over and visit them before leaving for
Normandy. Days later a letter arrived. It was in a strange hand. John's
Mosquito had suffered engine failure on take off. They had been
wonderfully happy together. She was expecting his child.
More than any other design of its day the Mosquito seemed to have
two quite different personalities. The clean aircraft - fast and lively
- and the other with massive drag from its undercarriage and flaps.
Throttled right back, with the engines crackling and banging, the
approach was steep and the speed well controlled. Similar to the
Typhoon. Most satisfying.
For all that I liked the Mosquito my first love, as ever, was the
single seat fighter and of these ETPS had a fair selection. The Tempest
II was slightly faster than Mk V which I had flown from Lasham but
I missed the Sabre up front. There was a similar loss of elevator control
at low speeds, only more so, and a trickle of power was needed to
three point it neatly. Years afterwards I read that squadron pilots were
advised to wheel it on because of its tendency to swing. But, as far as
I recall, none of us had that problem.
I had a couple of unfortunate experiences with the Tempest II. The
first, when a complete starboard fuselage panel - from the engine
firewall aft to the seat bulkhead - pulled off in a dive. It went with
quite a bang and there was a brief dust storm in the cockpit which
became very cold and draughty. Fortunately there was no further
damage. After I landed, and the remains of the panel had been
recovered, the reason was obvious. The Dzus fasteners had been
rotated into the locking position but a number of them had not been
pushed fully home.
Another time I never even got airborne. The Centaurus died as I
lined up for take off. A fuel line, designed to self seal in the event of
battle damage, had sealed itself internally cutting of the fuel supply.
Had it happened a few seconds later I would have been in dead
trouble. More spectacular was Jumbo Genders' first Meteor landing
after his aircraft had turned itself into a glider. He had suffered
compressor surge and a double flame out at altitude, and had been
unable to relight his engines. He came in high, fishtailing the Meteor
through a series of impossible sideslip angles, and got down safely on
the runway. Considering that he had never flown a jet aircraft before,
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