COMBAT AND COMPETITION.pdf - Lakes Gliding Club

COMBAT AND COMPETITION
bridge approaches.
Just before my departure from 193, Rastus and Jimmy Simpson
rostered me to lead an eight aircraft show. Typical of them to set this
up - so that their trainee flight commander would join his new
squadron with the advantage of having done it at least once before.
Lesson one - the leader should always pass his cigarettes round at
the start of briefing - excellent psychology and with Jimmy's example
I had been fully converted to the idea. Now, as he gave me a
conspiratorial smile and helped himself from my open case, the awful
truth suddenly dawned. Briefings in future were going to be a major
drain on my duty free supplies. Such were the unexpected burdens of
command!
On my first sortie with 257 the weather clamped at base and the
squadron diverted to Woensdrecht. The night turned bitterly cold and
the black painted ex Luftwaffe huts, amongst the pine woods,
provided little comfort. In the morning, when Toddy briefed us for the
next op, the thought of returning afterwards to our tenements at
Deurne was very welcome.
Minutes later I was standing beside him when we heard the sound
of a diving aircraft and caught sight of a Spitfire, plunging vertically,
high against the blue. Suddenly, and with quite appalling violence, it
began to recover. Both wings folded upwards and broke away. The
fuselage pitched nose down again and fell headlong, throttle wide
open, to crash less than a mile from the airfield.
In the silence which followed we watched the wings fluttering
downwards, above the mushroom of smoke, and a voice said softly:
"Poor sod, what the hell was he up to?"
and another, as if in reply -
"It would never have happened with a Tiffie."
Had anyone spoken - or was it all in the imagination? I looked
round, hoping to find the answer, as Toddy called us to order:
"Right chaps, let's get a move on, press tits in ten minutes".
A favoured explanation was lack of oxygen, an uncontrolled dive,
and a violent out of trim recovery. More likely, with hindsight, that
critical Mach number effects had led to coarse application of nose up
trim with the inevitable tragic consequences.
The move to B89, at Mill, south of Nijmegen coincided with the
opening of the assault on the Siegfried Line. We were up early. Valises
and kitbags stuffed to bursting with the accumulated bits and pieces
of four winter months. A last quick breakfast in the terminal building
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