大象传媒

The war had ended, now the job was to bring back to the UK our liberators (B24s), which were to be converted and used to transport troops back to England from the Far East, etc. We were coastal command, 111 OTU, and the aircraft we were to bring back, was Nan Charlie, EV880. Prior, we took it out on our last ten hour combined airtest/patrol, and were lukcy enough to return to Windsor Airfield, Nassau.

On take off, as often happened, we had a blower fire, which I managed to clear, and continued on our flight. The heat from the fire, I later discovered, had softened one of the three compression springs, which held the nipple connecting the Exhaust Manifold to the Turbo Supercharger in position on one of the inboard engines.

During my checks, when dawn came, I noticed a leak, which was visible from this exhausts system. Unknown to me, in addition to the exhaust gases leaking out from this engine turbo stystem, the upper twisted position of this nipple was causing some of the hot gases to enter the engine compartment. Of course, we wre on our way back to base by now, so continued and landed safely.

After I reported the problem, a mechanic later called me to return to inspect the reported fault.

It had only been a matter of a short extra flying time, and we'd have gone for good! The exhaust gasses entering this engine had burnt out the feathering pump motor, also one of the engine mountings, and almost burnt through the bottom of the engine oil tank.

Had this tank burnt through, we'd have had a fire, with no possibility of feathering the engine to shut down, only cutting fuel, ignition, etc, with no chance of putting out the resulting fire. The wind milling engine would of course have destroyed itself, having lost oil, but before this, the rubber fuel tanks behind this engine, in the wing, would have ignited, with catastrophic results, and we'd have gone down into the ocean.

Being very wary, I went out of my way to go over this aircraft, before we made the trip back to the UK flying the following route: Nassau to Bermuda, overnight stay and refuel, then a long-ish trip to Gander, then Reykjavik, Prestwick, Lossiemouth.

Almost as soon as I had got my head down at Gander, we were wakened and informed that as Iceland had ten-ten clouds, we had been re-routed to Lagans, in the Azores, and needed to be ready to leave shortly. Taking off from Gander, at 0940 GMT (4.40am) it was reported from the crwew, in the rear, that we had a "blower" fire. As soon as I could leave the controls, I went to the rear to inspect the problem. I could see the whole of the starboard wing was on fire, unlike Torching, or a blower fire, which could be extinguished by adjustments of the Turbo boost -- this was something different.

It turned out that the cause of this was that for the trip to Nassau-Bermuda orders were for full main tanks, no auxiliaries. These were filled by the ground crew around 6am, but when I came out to do a pre-flight check at 8am, fuel was leaking into the wings and flight deck. The problem was by then the sun over Nassau was up, and the aircraft very hot. I dashed up on the wings to release the filler caps, fuel gushing out, releasing the pressure, refitting these after. What I didn't know was that this had caused a split in one or more of the sixteen neoprene tanks, so as we climbed out from Gander after takeoff, the fuel was leaking out, igniting from the turbo exhaust, causing flames from along the starboard wing edge and flaps. This lit up the airfield like daylight. Fortunately, our forward airspeed was keeping the flames from igniting the actual wing.

What could be done? If we'd returned to land, ourselves and many other aircraft, etc, would have gone up in flames! We were carrying 2360 imperial gallons of one hundred percent octane fuel.

My solution was to level off, fly so for about an hour, which cleared the leaking fuel, remaining at a low level, until I thought it would be safe to climb again. Lucky, a good choice -- we made it to the Azores okay.

Later, we lost an engine after leaving Lagans, dropped from ten thousand down to around 2,500 on 75% power, but we managed to get down at RAF Valley. I never thought a lot about this fire, until now -- I considered the lost engine more of a problem?

These weren't the full stories of what other incidents happened on the total seven day flight, before we delivered the B24 to the waiting modifying crew at Speke Airport, who would convert it for Troop Transport. The rest of what happened to Nan Charlie I know not, except that very many of these same aircraft crashed in the Pyrenees, on their returning flights, reported in the news papers of those days!

I still have my original logs for this flight, plus photos and lots of other details available for inspection.

PS: the flight engineer is responsible for an aircraft. He takes it over when he signs the form 700. The captain is obliged to follow his guidance!

THIS MEMOIR WAS GIVEN TO JOHN YOUNG OF 大象传媒 SOUTH EAST TODAY, FOR INCLUSION IN THE SITE, BY REG MOORES. MR MOORES UNDERSTANDS THE SITE'S TERMS AND CONDTIONS.

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