大象传媒

Before picking up a new crew I had to go to Telaviv for a few weeks convalescence, it was a most enjoyable break. I managed to get a lift back in a Dakota only to find that in the meantime we had moved to Shalufa, close to Port Suez, they were trying to get away from me! This was a better airfield with concrete runways instead of taking off across the rolled out sand. Across the other side of the Suez Canal was Shandur where they had Marauder aircraft and we had a couple of trips just to see what they were like. Whilst I was waiting for a new crew I met up with a tour expired W/O Cantwell who offered me some flying as a passenger when he went to various units for spares or flying tests. He told me to sit in the Perspex nose where the navigator usually went, this I did and off down the runway we went holding the aircraft down to ground level and then shooting up like a rocket to avoid the hills that lay to one side of the airfield. His landings were just the same, coming in close to the end of the airfield and then dropping like a stone, I must admit it sowed seeds of doubt as to whether I was going to like this flying business. He would from time to time give me exercises to carry out, using the dual set of controls in the navigator鈥檚 compartment. One day, just when in my mind I was becoming a future candidate for something akin to the Red Arrows, he took all the trim off the aircraft and frightened the life out of me, I thought the bottom had fallen out.
By this time the new crew were ready for me to join them and a new crew we certainly were, bouncing down the runway with spectators in the control tower taking bets as to whether we would run out of runway or go round again. We got by without any major mishaps and settled down really well in the end. We were still under canvas, sleeping, eating and going on leave together, once again I was in luck and we got on great as a crew. Geoffrey Simpson (Pilot), Jackie Horrocks (Navigator) Bernard Myers (Airgunner) and Tom Smith (WT). One of the interesting incidents with this crew was when we had just landed from a night exercise and the visibility was poor due to a sand storm. We had turned off the perimeter track on our way to dispersal when we got to a stage where we decided that we had not much idea where we were going, so we left the aircraft and found our way on foot. When daylight came and visibility had improved it turned out that we had taxied through a narrow gap into a quadrangle of buildings and the plane had to be towed out tail first.
Eventually we were posted to Cairo West, next door to us was an American airfield Payne Field. It was here that we got raided by a gang of Arabs on camels during the night who stole most of our belongings, our flying kits everything. They went through a row of tents on the edge of the airfield and nobody heard a thing, mind you it probably paid us not to wake up for there were footmarks along each side of the beds so somebody had just been waiting for us to move. Although we were close to Cairo the airfield was open to the desert on one side. Police with tracker dogs came and recovered some small belongings that had been discarded, one of these small effects was our navigators flying log book which had high value Egyptian bank notes between the pages so he was pleased to get that back complete with cash.
A few days later, out of the blue, came the news that we were going back to the UK to take a conversion course on Dakotas and then on the East for supply dropping. We flew back home then eventually to Viceroy Court of all places, where we spent the night before going on to Harrogate and the Majestic Hotel.
We never did get out to the East, VJ day came and saved our bacon and that more or less was the end of flying for me, not very exciting was it? But looking back it was a whole lot of life packed into a few years. One of the main fears was one of failing, in retrospect most incidents can gain a humorous side while some have a lasting sad impression that comes back time and time again.

1813163 T J Smith

漏 Copyright of content contributed to this Archive rests with the author. Find out how you can use this.