大象传媒

CHAPTER 5

After 9 days we arrived back in the River Mersey in a howling gale and had to lie at anchor for a day off the coast of Anglesey due to the difficulty of navigating past sunken ships in the river. We were held for five days at 7PRC (Personnel Reception Centre), a hotel in Harrogate, before being posted to ACOS (Aircrew Officers School) near Hereford, where we were taught how to behave like officers! and the elements of administration, etc.

Next I was sent to 11 EFTS, a Pre AFU unit at Scone, a small village near Perth in Scotland, where we were attached to an acclimatisation unit flying Tiger Moths. Here we were supposed to get used to the weather conditions in which we would fly from now on. It was a very different and difficult state of affairs compared with the crystal clear air that prevailed most of the time over the Prairies. It was February, cold and damp and even the accommodation was uncomfortable after our relative luxury in Canada. Fortunately this only lasted 10 days and we were glad to be posted South to 18 AFU unit at Church Lawford near Rugby.

Here we were introduced to the "Oxbox" or Airspeed Oxford a twin engined trainer. It was whilst here that I got lost on a solo navigation exercise. I had set out to fly a triangular course via Cricklade and Bourne but after a short while found the visibility very hazy. Having flown round a large cloud to avoid losing sight of the ground I found myself unable to match up anything on the ground with what was on my map. Soon I decided that discretion was the better part of valour and decided to send out a distress call on channel D for Darkie, asking for a bearing. It sounded as if all the airfields in England answered me and as Little Rissington was the loudest signal I asked them for a heading. They said that at the moment I was flying dead overhead! I could still not see the airfield because of the haze, so they fired a very light vertically and I was then satisfied that I could descend and land. I was more than pleased to be on terra firma. One day while at Church Lawford I managed to find enough time to fly home to Warrington. I found the easiest way was to follow the LMS railway line all the way to Crewe and then up to Warrington. Having arrived over home, I made suitable noises by revving and cutting my engines hoping to draw the attention of my mother and father, little knowing that they were away for the day! An interesting fact was that we found that by flying close to the high radio masts at nearby Rugby, we could receive the 大象传媒 long wave radio signals superimposed on our own communication channels.

Six weeks later we were sent on to 15 AFU at Castle Combe in Wiltshire. This was a small airfield, close to the very attractive village which was later to become well known as the setting for the film Dr Doolittle. We were again flying Oxfords and it was a pleasant posting. It was here that I first saw prototype jet aircraft flying from one of the several nearby airfields. Hullavington was not far away and Colerne and South Cerney almost overlapped our circuits. Dances were held at the village hall and life was good. I only spent a month on this station and during this time spent a short time at Watchfield near Swindon for a 4 day SBA (Standard Beam Approach) course on Avro Ansons. This consisted of blind-flying figures of 8 over the airfield wearing red goggles. The windows of the cockpit were coloured green and this resulted in being unable to see out of the aircraft, but still able to see the instruments. After lining up on the approach, one had to make a satisfactory landing. The positioning of the aircraft was established by keeping a steady note on the radio signal. If you wandered to one side or the other you began to hear either dots or dashes and the correct point to start descending was indicated by the superimposition of the marker beacon tone.
Towards the end of May the war in Europe ended and there was much celebration. One evening we made a night flight around a number of airfields to watch the festivities. Rockets and verey lights were everywhere and the blackout that had been in force for the whole of the war suddenly disappeared.

Soon we became worried where our next posting would be. The war in the Far East was still going on but it seemed likely that there would be sufficient aircrew already operational to fill the present requirements. There was no talk of demobilisation yet and it seemed likely that we could be used for motor transport duties or other undesirable jobs. However I found myself sent up to a holding unit at Morecambe in Lancashire, where I spent a few days before being issued with mosquito net, mosquito boots and a "digger" hat. This gave me the unpleasant impression that I was on my way to Burma. Once on board the troopship Arundel Castle sailing from Liverpool, we were told that we were being sent to Australia by way of the Panama Canal to be part of 300 Wing, attached to the British Pacific Fleet. On board with us there were several thousand Australian and New Zealand ex-POWs released from German prison camps. They were a fairly lively lot.

After leaving Liverpool our first port of call was the port of Colon at the entrance to the Panama Canal. Everybody went ashore to see the bright lights, beer and women There was some difficulty getting everyone back on board again in time to set sail the next day. Police parties were delivering drunks back to the ship for hours. Matters were made worse when everyone then decided to jump overboard for a swim in the lake (Gatun Lake) at the entrance to the canal. Rope climbing nets were lowered into the water and eventually we got under way. Sailing through the canal was an impressive experience. The engineering had been a remarkable feat with whole hillsides blasted away to allow the waterway to traverse the isthmus and all the construction carried out in a malarial and tropical climate. After sailing into the Pacific we saw no land until we reached Wellington and its attractive harbour. It was July and not very warm but we eagerly went ashore only to find that on a Saturday everywhere was very quiet and nothing much open except a few bars. The bars must have done very well that day with a thousand or more ex-POWs with a great deal of back pay in their pockets as well as the money that some had won gambling at the two-up schools and crown and anchor boards which were a daily feature of the voyage. In fact one of the ex POW soldiers said he would pay for drinks for anybody off the boat who would drink with him. After a after "schooners" of Cascade beer, which for some reason caused the face to glow red, some of us set off for a climb up an adjacent hillside amongst the pine trees, from where we had a good view of Wellington harbour below.

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