大象传媒

This is a humorous story about my training as a pilot. We were training out, this was a flight that we took at Redeer in Alberta, and of course, during, you just have to go out on solo trips, all sorts of things: a triangular trip; and on this particular trip as I was flying along in Oxford, airspeed Oxford that鈥檚 what the plane was called, and I was going along, one of the Engines stopped working. Now fortunately the Oxford will fly on one engine, and, flying along nicely but I had to put the throttle up slightly to get the other engine to keep the height. Around half way round the course, so couldn鈥檛 turn back, the other engine conked out, so I鈥檓 left with no engine, but the airspeed oxford is a wonderful airplane, it will glide but it won鈥檛 crash, but obviously with one engine you have to land somewhere. Now, how you land a plane when you鈥檝e got a plane with no engines, you look down, I was about three or four thousand feet high, and at that height, you look down and you look for the place you land, and once you鈥檝e decided you can鈥檛 change your mind, you look for a nice big open field, find out which way the wind鈥檚 blowing, and you go across the fields, keep turning across the field, going down all the time, and when you get to a couple of hundred feet you turn into the field and land.

This is what I was doing, I鈥檇 picked the field from above, and when I got to about 5 or 6 hundred feet, I could see properly it was a ploughed field, and obviously, I was going across the furrows, there was nothing I could do, nothing whatsoever, I held off and held off, there was nothing I could do until I was almost on the ground, the wheels touched and of course the back wheel came down and when that hit the furrows the plane sort of went in two. A farmer whose field I鈥檇 landed on saw it come down, came down to meet me, took me into his house, I said I was alright and we rang up the squadron where I was stationed and one of the officers said 鈥淪tay there, I鈥檒l come and find you.鈥� About an hour or so later he came out and we went to have a look at the plane and he said 鈥渙h well, you鈥檝e done very well to land here, you鈥檝e done excellent to land here, but why did you land in a ploughed field.鈥� I said, 鈥渋t鈥檚 your fault,鈥� he looked at me and said 鈥渕y fault?鈥� and I said 鈥淵es, I have got a book that says that at certain times of the year, certain fields look exactly like the one I鈥檝e just picked and that it鈥檚 a good place to land.鈥� So he laughed and said 鈥測ou could be right, you鈥檙e ok that鈥檚 the main thing, you haven鈥檛 really done any damage to the plane actually, except it鈥檒l probably never fly again. So he said it鈥檚 good.

So where else鈥�

I was in Canada 18 month, I was in the air force 5 years, I was a flight mechanic air frames I was stationed in Lottemouth, I remustered for a pilot when I went into the air force, they said yes, ok, I did all the training. I was there for 2 years before my course came through, I did my first part of my course in Regina, I did some more training in REdeer, where this happened, then I came back to England, by that time the war was nearly over, so I did no operational flying. I flew Lancasters in England, then the war was over and I got demobbed. Unfortunately, the only thing that I lost was my log book with all my flying things. My wife was in the ATS and trained RADAR people in the ATS. She was a sergeant. We knew each other prior to the war, after the war we got together and got married in 鈥�47. I鈥檓 82. We鈥檙e from Manchester, by the way, but have been in Stockton 30 years.

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