COMBAT AND COMPETITION.pdf - Lakes Gliding Club

COMBAT AND COMPETITION
wheels and flaps down, and the rear canopy raised, demanded respect
- as the aircraft flicked inverted without any warning - and the heavy
ailerons were a disappointment.
There were many reminders of a changed world. Not least in the
crowded East Anglian skies of USAF daylight ops and Bomber
Command air tests. Day after day the P38s6 from nearby Kingscliffe
assembled overhead, squadron by squadron, before winging their way
to war. We watched them returning - seeing the gaps in their ranks.
One came home with an entire engine missing. Difficult to imagine
how such a massive object could have broken away without total
destruction. He passed low overhead, long after the rest of the wing
had landed, escorted by his wingman and another.
On clear nights East Anglia was lit up by a vast array of bomber
airfields. Each one, with its flarepath and circle of lead-in lights,
resembled a faintly glittering compass. They created a welcome
landscape in the darkness. You could tell when it was like that, long
before your turn to fly, by the relaxed atmosphere in the crew room.
When marginal weather coincided with the heavies taking a break
you groped around, beacon flying, and worried like hell if the flare
path disappeared. With good reason too. No nav aids. Dubious radio
and, unlike the bomber boys, ours was no Drem 7 lighting system. We
had to make do with a few gooseneck flares8 , on a grass strip, and the
river with its constant threat of fog was only a mile away.
Amongst our instructors at Peterborough was Alf Warminger, an
ex Battle of Britain pilot, in due course to become Sheriff of Norwich.
Although neither of us knew it at the time, Alf was a future gliding
colleague who, like myself, would still be active more than 45 years
later. I flew with him on a couple of occasions and it was he who
briefed me for my first flight in a Hurricane. The most clapped out
aircraft ever. It had been built in 1938.
One day cruising southwards in that old Hurricane I managed to
stalk a P38. The air was full of brickwork smoke, burnt blanket
smelling muck, and the visibility at cloud base very poor. Easy to
creep up behind him until my propeller was only feet behind his tail.
I sat there, looking along the length of the twin booms with their big
airscoops and down through the transparent rear of the humpbacked
canopy, and wondered if he had fallen asleep. Suddenly he rolled onto
his back, faster than my ancient steed could ever follow, and pulled
away in a long vertical dive.
As I levelled out another twin boom shape slanted across my bows.
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