Flying the Vultee Vengance

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On another forum I've been following a WWII RAF pilot talk about his career.
Joining up after the battle of Britain he learned to fly on the Arnold scheme before being converted on Spitfires when he returned to the UK. He was then sent to the Far East to fly the Vengance because that's RAF logic.

I thought his experiences of the aircraft and his description of life flying in India and Burma would be of interest to the members of this forum so with his full permission I'm going to repost here his experiences.

Mods, if you feel this should be in another part of the forum please move it.

He starts with a description of the aircraft before moving onto flying it and life in the Far East.

So here are Danny's experiences edited only in relation to specific mentions of the forum he originally posted on.


"You men call yourselves the Forgotten Army.....You've not been forgotten.....It's just that no one's ever heard of you !"
(General "Bill" Slim to his troops of the 14th Army in Burma).

Much the same might be said of the Vultee "Vengeance" aircraft which the RAF and Indian Air Force flew in support of that Army during the Burmese campaigns of 1942-44.

A few of our warbirds are still household names, like the "Spitfire" and "Lancaster". (I often wonder why the US does not honour its Douglas SBD "Dauntless" as we do our "Spitfire". Single-handed, that aircraft won them the battle of Midway, and so turned the tide of the Pacific war, which up to then had gone Japan's way after Pearl Harbor).

But most of the aircraft of those days are remembered now only by the nonagenarians who flew or serviced them, and by boys of the time (and later) whose bedrooms were festooned with model aircraft. They and their memories are fading into the mists, and I think it time to put down this memorial of my cantankerous old steed before the same happens to us. I don't think any Vengeance exist in the world today, and photographs are rare, but it was similar in size and general appearance to the US Navy Grumman "Avenger" of the same era, of which examples (at the time of first writing in 2000) were still flying (and much the same size and weight as our Fairey "Barracuda").

A great deal of what follows is no more than hearsay from those days. I had no means then, and have no means now, of verifying what I was told. We lived a happy-go-lucky life, going where we were sent, and flying what they gave us to fly, without bothering our heads about the aircraft's political background or production history. It was there and we flew it. Consequently I cannot guarantee any of my facts. But it was such a good story that it ought to be true. So here goes.

The Luftwaffe had a great deal of success with their JU-87 "Stuka" in the early days of the war. There is a lot to be said for the dive-bomber. Until the advent of modern guided weapons, it was by far the most accurate way to deliver a bomb. And in those pre-atomic days, a miss with the old "iron bomb" was usually as good as a mile. (Unless your target was a city, big enough for a navigator to find and too big for a bomb-aimer to miss - within reason - post-war Bomber Command analysis calculated an average error of several miles.)

But if you need to destroy a bridge, say, or a ship, a bomb a hundred yards off was a waste of time. You needed accuracy, and a dive bomber was then the only way to get it. People bombed low-level, of course, which meant coming in close (giving the defences a fine target), chucking the thing off and hoping for the best. Results were mixed, but still better than high-level, which amounted to scattering bombs all over the countryside in the hope of blanketing the target with some of them.

The well known US Air Corps boast about "a bomb in a pickle barrel from 30,000 feet" (with their new Norden bombsight) was met with derision on both sides of the Pond:

We mocked (to the tune of "John Brown's Body"):

"We're flying Flying Fortresses at Forty Thousand Feet ----We've stowed away inside the bay a teeny little bomb ----We'll drop the damn' thing off so high we won't know where it's gone !"-----(there are many variants and more verses of this which fellow members could supply).

"Precision Bombing" was a myth.

The success of the "Stuka" raised eyebrows in our Air Ministry. Why hadn't we developed such a weapon ? Too late now, of course. Our aircraft factories were busy round the clock with the current types and their successors. But Roosevelt had just announced Lend-Lease and the US Navy had been operating dive-bombers for years.

Better late than never. A specification was drawn up and sent to our Purchasing Commission in Washington. A contract was signed with Vultee (a small Californian firm) to design and build several hundred aircraft ("off the drawing board") to save time. Then we put the whole thing out of mind, and carried on with the war, which was going none too well for us in 1941-42.

End of part 1.

 

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Part 2.

Vultee rolled up its sleeves and got on with the job. Airframes were no problem, alloy sheet and tubing were still in reasonable supply; one aircraft of that era was much like another to build. Engines were another matter. Vultee, like most aircraft makers, bought them in, and with US rearmament in full swing, they were scarce as hen's teeth. Vultee's scouts scoured the land, and struck oil in Galveston (Texas). Several hundred Wright "Double Cyclone" radials sitting on the dockside, quietly rusting away and looking for a good home.

These engines had a chequered history. They had been ordered by the French to power one of their new fighter designs, but by the time they had been delivered, France had collaped. This batch would have fallen into Nazi hands had someone not had the sense to load them back on one of the last freighters to leave Bordeaux for the States.

There they were dumped until Vultee found them. Possession would be nine-tenths of the law and the question of ownership could wait. My guess is that Wright (the makers) had been paid in advance, so they weren't interested, and the French were in no position to ask for their money back. Whatever, Vultee paid the storage charges, carried off their finds in triumph and the production line started to roll.

In due course our man in Washington had a knock on his door. "Your aircraft are ready for delivery". He took a hard look at what he (or his predecessor) had ordered, and turned pale. It looked a proper turkey.

The glory days of the Stuka were two years past. The "cons" of the dive bomber were now as clear as the "pros" had been before. It has to be "built like a battleship", immensely strong, to resist the stresses of the dive and pull-out. Strong means heavy, and you end up with a machine too clumsy to fight and too slow to run away. It can survive only under cover of complete air superiority, which the Germans had (over Poland and France) in 1939-40. In the Battle of Britain they lost it, and the Stuka then became easy meat for the Hurricane and Spitfire.

This thing we'd got was clearly going to be of no use in the European theatre. The great Sir Basil Embry, later C-in-C of Fighter Command, wrote in one of his books that he airtested one and found it inferior to our Fairey "Battle", which had been massacred in France in 1940. I believe Boscombe Down got one and reached the same conclusion.

We suggested to the U.S.A.A.C. that they might like to take it off our hands: the offer was politely declined. A use had to be found for it somehow. A handful were kept in Britain as target tugs ("Skid Row" for a military aircraft).

There was in those days a recognised pecking order for the allocation of military equipment. Anything we didn't want in Britain was passed on to the Middle East. What they didn't need or couldn't use was left on the ship and went on, through the Canal or round the Cape, to the end of the line - India.

You will not be surprised to learn that our white elephants turned up in Karachi, and then passed on to the big RAF Maintenance Unit at Mauripur. They had travelled "CKD" ("completely knocked down"), like flat-pack kits, and (guess what) - the paperwork and assembly manuals had been lost in transit.

The Chief Technical Officer at Mauripur rose to the occasion. He had a hangar cleared, a set of crates opened and the contents spread out on the floor. A giant three-dimensional jigsaw then began: it was a case of "here, Fred, this bit looks as if it should go on there". Gradually an aircraft took shape and at last they only had a few pieces left over. They got the engine running and pencilled in a date for the first flight of their ugly duckling.

They then looked round for a test pilot, but curiously all their regular people seemed to be on leave or had suddenly succumbed to some local ailment. At last a newcomer was found skulking in his tent. His pleas fell on deaf ears. "Pilot, aincher ?" they said, " Aircraft, innit ?" "Fly !" Consigning his soul to his Maker, our reluctant hero strapped himself in and managed to get up and down in one piece. The disappointed crowd drifted away.

End of part 2.

 

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Part 3. (The Customer gets the goods).

Aller anfang ist schwer. Number two was easier and they soon got the hang of it. In the end they assembled enough to equip four RAF Squadrons (45,82,84 and 110), two IAF (briefly RIAF) Squadrons (7 and 8), and a number of Calibration and Special Duty Flights. There must have been several hundred in all.

It went through Marks I - III (with no external differences). I never got to fly a Mk IV, but was told it was much better (I believe they restored the Angle of Incidence at the behest of the USAAC, which would make it a better aircraft, but (IMHO) a worse dive bomber).

All wore the blue and white roundels and fin stripes of South East Asia Air Command ( a red centre might be mistaken for the Japanese "Rising Sun" marking).

The Squadrons which got the things were old Blenheim units in West Bengal, which had been flown out from the UK via the Middle East in '42 when an invasion of India seemed imminent. The Japs had come up from Singapore through Malaya and Burma without slowing, and there wasn't much to stop them now. I think they only halted on the Indian borders having outrun their supply lines. Perhaps they decided to consolidate what they had already won, (which was pretty well all South-East Asia plus a big chunk of China), before taking on any more. It was anybody's guess.

For whatever reason, they called a halt on the India/Burma frontiers (and were never to come much further West). Front lines of a sort stabilised, panic subsided and the Blenheims were flown back to the Middle East, where they would be more use. But only their junior pilots (and an odd navigator) ferried them, leaving their Squadron and Flight Commanders, and the remaining crews, stranded in India with nothing to fly.

The next step was obvious. It would be nice to think that AHQ Delhi planned it all, but booze-ups and breweries spring to mind ! It was a "no-brainer" to put these windfall aircraft and unemployed crews together. Even so, they still needed replacements for the pilots who had gone back to the Middle East. Another happy accident (as we first thought) supplied them. The story went like this:

In the summer of 1942, it had been decided to form a Spitfire Wing in India. The Spitfire and Hurricane OTUs in the UK were trawled for 36 new pilots to fill most of the junior posts, a W/Cdr Ritchey was to command the Wing; he would travel out with them. The Squadron and Flight Commanders and a nucleus of experienced pilots would travel out separately with the ground crews. All would come together with the Spitfires sent by sea at the same time. We would then fight a Battle of India against the Jap invader. It was a nice idea.

How much of this tale we were actually told, who was doing the telling, and how much was rumour and wishful thinking, I cannot say now. The Wing Commander was a fact. The 36 pilots were facts. The rest seems to have been a fairy tale. Crucially, there were no Spitfires at all !

So the pilots were shared out between the four ex-Blenheim squadrons. As I've said, I ended up in 110 (Hyderabad) Squadron. It seems that in WWI, the Nizam of that State (by repute then the world's richest man) had dipped into petty cash to buy a whole squadron of DH9s for the R.F.C. In return, his name was included with the Squadron number; his crest (a tiger's head) was painted on their plywood sides.

One such crest had been cut out of a crash and was carried round everywhere by the Squadron as a sort of talisman. The artist had given the animal a mournful expression, the troops called it "The Constipated Tiger". (I believe a later Nizam was equally generous to the RAF in WWII, but they did not, AFAIK, collect another "trophy"). As to the "Tiger" panel, it must be stored somewhere still if the white ants didn't get at it.

All this took place in a bit of a rush, we'd landed in India a week before Christmas, done our duty as "waiters" at Worli, spent a few days on the train, and by New Year '43 I'd met my fate for the next three years, It looked like a double-decker bus with wings.

End of part 3

 

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Part 4

The rest of the first day was spent in settling in, and getting to know people. Besides the NCO Navigators and Wop/AGs of the former bomber squadron, there were a few of their NCO pilots: W/O "Doug" McIlroy (NZ) and Sgts. "Reg" Duncan (CAN) and George Davies (RAF) on "A" Flight. As far as I remember, there were no officer pilots, other than "Topper" - F/O Topley - the Flight Commander. But he had two Navigator officers: P/O Robertson and another P/O whom I will not name for reasons which will later become obvious. Reg's dog "Spunky" (which he'd had for a month or so) completed the family. I have a Flight photograph taken in the first few days of '43, which I will post if I ever learn how to do it.

Domestic arrangements were simple. I was allocated a charpoy in the Sergeants' basha (this was long before I made my air-transportable DIY bed), and took a half-share in somebody else's "bearer". By now we'd all got a "tin box" (uniform case) from a local bazaar (Rs20) to secure our kit against theft and the "white ants" (termites) which were a constant plague. This box went under your charpoy.

Stores issued me with goggles, helmet (tropical, cloth) and mask/mike. That's all you'll need out here! (they gave me my own parachute, too). I still had my American "Ray-Bans"; they must have had issue sun-glasses, but I didn't draw any.

The Armoury gave me a Smith & Wesson .38 pistol, and a little cardboard box of 18 rounds. "That's your lot", they said "No more - sell your life dearly !" So back to stores for a lanyard, blue webbing holster, ammo pouch, shoulder strap and belt. The clobber was starting to build up. All this was padlocked into your tin box for the time being, as you didn't need to swagger around armed to the teeth in Bengal.

Next morning we strolled across to the Flights. I looked closely at a Vengeance; it was not love at first sight. The thing was enormous. The Spitfire is really quite a small aircraft. This monster was twice the size. With a 48ft wingspan, it was 40ft long and stood 14ft high to the top of the engine cowling. And now I had better start with a technical description, insofar as I can remember details.

It was a low mid-wing single engined all-metal monplane with two cockpits in tandem. All-up weight was around 14,000 lbs, including a bomb load of 1500 lbs: two 500 lb in an internal bomb bay and a 250 lb under each wing. Two .300 Brownings were mounted in each wing. Much more concerning these guns will be related in a later Post.

An inch yellow line, painted fom the nose along the top of the fuselage to the base of the screen was all the bombsight we needed. Twin .303 Brownings on a hand-held mounting fired back from the rear cockpit (there was nothing to stop you shooting your own tail off !).

This was the Navigator/Gunner's position. He had a swivel seat, a small map table in front of him, above this an altimeter and an ASI. And they gave him very rudimentary dual controls: throttle, rudder pedals (no wheelbrakes) and a stick (detachable and stowed at the side of the cockpit) . No trims and no hydraulic controls. The idea must have been that, if his pilot were incapacitated, the back-seat man could try belly-landing (wheels-down, he'd probably kill them both). We reckoned his best bet would be to fly home, bale out and leave his pilot to it !

He (and the pilot) had, most importantly, a dual hand "wobble pump". This would maintain fuel pressure and keep the engine running if all electric fuel pumps failed. The action was exactly that of a water pump in a caravan.

There was an intercom and a short-range US R/T set. No oxygen was fitted, but then we didn't need it. There was no point in climbing above 12,000 ft for a dive, and there is nothing that high in India if you stay away from the Himalayas.

There was never any question of night flying. We had navigation lights but no cockpit or landing lights. In any case the thing would be very difficult to fly by night because of flame dazzle from the open exhaust stubs. And there were few airfields in India lit after dark, anyway.

The power plant was the Wright Double Cyclone GR-2600- (about 42 litres) -A5B. This was a 14-cylinder aircooled twin row radial, rated at 1600 hp at 2400 rpm and 40 in. of manifold pressure (about +5 lb boost to you and me). This drove a three-bladed propeller (with CSU) of 12 ft diameter.

Total fuel was (as far as I can remember) 220 US gallons, split between five main fuel tank groups and a 20 gallon "trap" tank, which took the fuel pumped from the main tanks and fed it to the engine. The wobble-pump was the back-up for this. In the Mk. 1, all six pumps were immersed electric units, but in later Marks the electric trap-tank pump was replaced by an engine-driven unit (to relief and satisfaction all round).

100 octane was used at 50-60 galls/hr (cruising), giving a comfortable endurance of three hours and a range of around 500 miles. (Yes, I know that Wiki gives totally different figures, but theirs must be "maker's figures", to be regarded in the same light as the mpg figures at the bottom of car adverts ! The Wiki speeds are also IMHO, strictly for the birds).

Oil was fed to the dry-sump engine from a 21-gallon tank just forward of the firewall. Consumption was heavy at 1-2 galls/hr, and had to be watched carefully. Past engine neglect (story elsewhere) could cause a sudden gross rise in oil consumption. There were cases where the whole 21 gallons were used, and the engine failed, on a single flight (there being no contents gauge).

I suspect all this may be boring, and there's more to come, but bear with me, for you (and I !) must Know Our Foe.

End of part 4.

 

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Part 5.

Before we go back to the technical details of the Vengeance, a few more words on the human side of the story.

We lost no time in getting down to buisness. Dual instruction was obviously impossible with the limited controls in the back seat. Really, that didn't worry anyone, for there were no dual Hurricanes - or Spitfires (then) - or most other single-engine things, for that matter. You simply read the book, had a good luck round inside and out, climbed in and off you went.

But they thought they might as well use what they'd got. So the new boy was put in the back seat, put his stick in its socket, an experienced (five hours on type) pilot took off, cleaned up, trimmed it and handed over. My mentor was Reg Duncan, and the date 5th January '43.

I was agreeably surprised. The thing was much heavier on the controls than the Spitfire, of course (is there anything that ever flew which isn't heavier ?), but it was far from the BT-13 feel-alike I'd been expecting. It would turn quite nicely on the stick alone, seemed very directionally stable (that huge fin and rudder), but rather heavy on the elevators. All in all, I could get used to this. Later I found that, for all its bulk and formidable appearance, the thing was completely docile and very easy to fly. I poled around for twenty minutes or so, then Reg took it back and landed. Now I was a fully qualified Vengeance pilot !

Back to details of the beast itself. The electrical system (24v DC) was unremarkable in itself, but the fuel pumps gave us heart-stopping moments. They were immersed in the tanks, the fuel kept away from the electrics by seals of the new wonder material - neoprene. This was fine in theory, until Sod's Law kicked in (if a thing can go wrong, it will). The fuel got past the neoprene to the sparks, a circuit shorted, the main fuse blew, all the pumps stopped, the engine quit and the pilot bawled "PUMP!"

The back-seat man didn't need telling twice. Swinging his seat sideways, he set to work with both hands on the "wobble", a few long seconds and the engine would pick up. Then they had just the trap tank fuel (perhaps 20 minutes) to get down. The pilot made doubly sure to get in first time, for there was no certainty that, if he had to go to full power on a missed approach, the pump would get enough fuel to the engine. Naturally, this meant that you always flew with a passenger, for a lone pilot could not hope to land unless he had three hands.

In the early days, everyone had to "wobble" home at least once (and luckily we were never far from a strip - they were all over West Bengal). Then a replacement engine-driven pump for the trap tank solved the problem. Tail-end Charlies no longer displayed their blistered palms as badges of honour.

In retrospect, I now wonder how that "mod" was put in so quickly. Perhaps the Double Cyclone (which was used in many American types) had a standard power take-off for this purpose, and the VVs simply blanked it off till they needed it.

Having got the thing into the air, liifted wheels and flaps, and quietened the engine down a bit, you stretched out in the luxuriously large cockpit and surveyed your domain. With canopy open, there was a beautifully cool breeze. And (sometimes) wearing a Mae West, over that a parachute harness, and over that the seat harness in an aircraft on whose wings you could fry eggs, you were suitably grateful.

Climb was slow in comparison with what we fighter boys had been used to. In formation with a bomb load it felt like zero - 500 ft/min, I suppose. Life was simple when you were on your own. You had trims on all three axes, and quite a bit of dihedral on the outer wings. Trimmed, it would more or less fly itself. The engine was cruised at 1850 rpm (the magic figure for all the American radials I flew) and enough boost (32-34 in) to give about 160 mph. At that, the engine rumbled along contentedly, albeit rather roughly. The Wright "Cyclones" were never as smooth as their arch-competitors, the Pratt & Whitney "Wasp" family of engines, but none the worse for that.

A mixture control on the throttle quadrant "leaned out" the engine to run smoother and save fuel. The two-speed supercharger was always left on "low". Now there was nothing to do but watch the fuel and engine, and navigate.
Watching the fuel sometimes meant running a tank dry to check the exact rate of consumption. The engine would cut. No drama: a change of tank and a booster pump would shortly restore normal service. Your pillion passenger resented these episodes (especially over shark-infested waters) and would make that clear with many a lurid oath.

When not on "ops", there was a lot of spare passenger room around and behind the back seat (more if the guns had been taken out). I believe the record was five on board (plus kit). This was very dangerous; these extra people had no restraints (often no parachutes) and were bound to be injured in any but the slightest accident. But all this was long ago, before Health & Safety had been thought of.

Dogs travelled from time to time. The animal was put in a parachute bag (that wonderful all-purpose brown canvas holdall) and zipped in with just his head sticking out. He couldn't get out or move about the aircraft, and the bag plus dog could be carried about by the straps. Hopefully he was parachute-bag trained ! As a rule he seemed to fly very well and to enjoy the experience.

No one worried about what all this extra weight in the back might be doing to the C of G. Having no guns or ammo helped, of course, the pilot simply trimmed nose-down and accepted a less stable ride.

End of part 5.

Much more to come.

 

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Part 6

The next stage was to get myself a crewman. Actually, it wasn't quite like that. I was told that at home, the drill was (on bomber crews) that the new nav was supposed to wait, like a wallflower at a dance, until a twin-wing prince came over and popped the question. If the deal was done, the pair then went round selecting the rest of their crew.

But that presupposed similar levels of experience all round. In our case, the ex-Blenheim navs and wop/ags were all battle-hardened veterans from shipping strikes over the Channel and the like, and the squadron had taken a fair hammering. They were not going to be picked over by this intake of sprogs fresh out of training !

So it was that Sgt Keith Stewart-Mobsby (Wop/Ag - and hereinafter "Stew") came over and said "You're my Pilot - any objection ?" It seemed that the deciding factor had been that he wanted a British pilot this time - being fed up with the Wild Colonial Boys he'd had before, As I was the only new one in town, it had been Hobson's choice for him. It worked out fine, and we stayed together, off and on, till the end.

The next day we flew so that I could settle myself in the aircraft and we could have a good look round the area. There was the usual tendency to swing left in the early part of the take-off run, but it was easily controllable. We had a tailwheel lock, but it wasn't necessary and most people left it unlocked all the time. Once the tail was up, you had complete control with that enormous fin, and the rare pleasure of being able to see fairly well over the nose (come to think of it, it was the only time you could do so, except when you were pointed straight down).

The acceleration was poor; there were always complaints about the long take-off run, but eventually you wound it up to about 95 mph (a bit more if you were bombed-up), eased back into a three-point attitude and lumbered off reluctantly into the sky. Much like a 747 out of Heathrow today! - (don't you just look at them inching across the sky, and wonder: "How on Earth"?)

Putting it back was not difficult, provided you came in on a wide curve (no "Spitfire Approach" here !), and slowly, with a fair amount of power on. Attempts at glide landings (to see over the nose) almost always ended in very heavy "arrivals", as it would "mush" into the ground on round-out.

Training started at once. Really it was simple, we had to learn to dive-bomb and to fly any position in a box-of-six which was to be our normal tactical formation. A range was set up on a big sandbank (it was the dry season) on a bend in the river Damodar, about 30 miles from Madhaiganj. Who supplied the observers, and what equipment they had, I do not know. There must have been two of them at a safe distance, with lines of sight at right angles and some form of theodolite.

We went to work on this range right away. All we were concerned about was results, and with practice these became quite good. Four 11½ lb smoke bombs were carried on a rack under the left wing, and dropped one per dive. The trip to the range took about 15 minutes, and by then you'd climbed to bombing height of 10 - 12,000 ft.

The trick was to fly up to the target in such a way as to be vertically above it when you rolled over. The best method was to keep it in view, running along tight against the left side of the fuselage from the nose back until it slid under the wing, count ten and go over, crouched, standing on your rudder pedals on the way down.

The steeper the dive, the better the result. You "throw" your aircraft at the target much as a darts player "throws" his wrist at the board. You must not forget to (a) use the dive brakes and (b) pull out in good time. As to what constituted "good time" we experimented, pulling out high to start with and then reducing until we'd established the lowest safe height. This was reckoned to be when the altimeter passed 3500 ft above ground, although the aircraft would be lower at this point, as the instrument lagged by several hundred feet.

Having planted your first bomb and swung round to see where it had gone, you climbed up and dived three more times, then home. As such a climb and repositioning took you ten to fifteen minutes, two or three aircraft could space themselves out and use the range together.

These sorties lasted little more than an hour and formed the greater part of our training. We improved with practice: at the end almost all bombs would go in a 100-yard circle.

End of part 6

 

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Part 7

There was nothing in the RAF's accumulated stock of wisdom about dive bombing, and we'd had to work it all out for ourselves. There was a story (for which I cannot vouch), that late in '42 one of the other squadrons had been visited by a couple of types who had done a dive-bombing course with the US Navy in Pensacola. They intended to go round all the Squadrons to lighten our darkness with their "gen"; they preached the nose-over method and brought along some form of tubular (telescopic ?) bombsight which they had been given in the US.

A sceptical audience of 82 Sqdn ? - (I believe they got their VVs first, in late '42) - heard them out. "Show us", they said. They gave one of the "experts" a VV and he rigged up his patent sight in it.

Unfamiliar with a VV and concentrating on his bombsight, he forgot to open the dive brakes. His attentive class gloomily surveyed the smoking hole and decided that it might be better to do it their way. Wing-overs are much more comfortable than push-overs and the yellow line was all the bombsight we needed (the other "expert" being rather discredited, retired hurt).

Having said that, I believe that the "Stuka" was nosed-over (not so bad if you're only diving 60-70 degrees), and Wiki tells me that they had some kind of window in the cockpit floor through which they sighted their target.

I cannot see the point of this, the area you can see on the ground through a window on the floor has to be relatively small compared with that (say 25 square miles or more) at 10,000 ft, which is blanked off by the mass of aircraft you're sitting on. And what about the 500 kg bomb which was carried right in your line of sight ? The only way to do it would have been to fly nearly up to the target, turn sharply on to it, hope it pops up in the window and nose dive on it. And were you trying to fly formation and gawping through this window at the same time ?

As I have said, we had decided that on operations we would always fly in box-of-six formation, and we did trips to Calcutta (Dum-Dum) for fighter affiliation exercises with the Hurricanes from Alipore.

Our gunners aimed at the Hurricanes as they came in on their mock attacks, they both had no end of fun. We pilots sweated like pigs, hauling our lumbering monsters round in steep turns. The first exercise finished right on top of Alipore; the last Hurricane gave us a bravura display, putting his aircraft into a spin and holding it in all the way down to his circuit.

We were to land at Dum-Dum to refuel before going back to Madhaiganj. Unfamiliar with the airfield, I committed an embarrassing faux-pas, being the last man to land. The layout was the usual runway with a parallel taxi track to the side. But there was a lot of work in progress and there was more than one parallel track. Not expecting this, I'd not taken any particular note of where the man in front of me had turned.

To cut a long story short, I turned off, missed the first (proper) track, which looked small and insignificant, and took the next. When that looped round, heading off the airfield, the penny dropped. I was on a contractor's access road. I stopped, stuck.

There was no room to turn round and the VV had no reverse gear. I shut down and sent (mutinously muttering) "Stew" back on foot to confess. He didn't have far to walk: my absence had been noted. "Where's Danny?" - "He landed behind me", said Number Five, "so he must be on the field somewhere". The Flight truck raced back up the taxiway and found us

They had to fetch a tractor and towing dolly to haul me out, ignominiously, tail-first back down the track to the flight line. The Boss was not well pleased, time had been lost, the word "idiot" may have been used. Others chuckled that, as a rule, aircraft got lost in the air - not on the ground !

As a change from bombing practice, formation and these fighter affiliation exercises, we had occasional training cross-countries, usually to Calcutta where we could combine them with shopping trips (and a night at the "Grand"). One fine morning we had a change in the shape of a special navigation exercise.

Our Engineer Officer wanted one aircraft flown intensively, so as to build up flying hours to intermediate inspection time (which I think was 110 hours). This would give him a foretaste of the troubles he might expect when the rest came along in turn.

Accordingly, each dawn one crew was sent off to fly this aircraft some 200 miles North to the foothills of the Himalayas on the borders of Nepal. At the appointed spot (Lake Supauli) we would be about 80 miles South of Everest, and at a cruising height of 10,000 ft , would see the range of Himalayan giants from 20,000 ft upwards over the horizon, given clear weather.

We were ordered not to fly any closer over the border into Nepal, as the Gurkhas believed that their Gods would be offended thereby, and upsetting a Gurkha is not a good idea.

We were lucky on our day (5th Feb), the weather was perfect. Stew was issued with a RAF camera and threatened with painful death if he should drop it over the side. The trip was uneventful, couldn't find the lake (nor could anyone else - must have dried up), but I was sure of my position and we flew W-E while Stew took several good shots. I have a very small print in my logbook (printing paper was scarce) , as a memento of the only time I saw Everest in almost four years in India - and I never went to see the Taj Mahal. Missed opportunity !

End of part 7

 

[Ascent]

Part 8

A little later in February, the C.O. (it would still be S/Ldr. Lambert) opened his post one morning to find a letter from the Canadian High Commission in Delhi. This informed him that Sergeant-Pilot "A", RCAF, had been gazetted Pilot Officer "A" w.e.f.......

"A" was hauled in, mystified. He hadn't applied and knew nothing about it. The C.O. hadn't been asked for an opinion, never mind a recommendation. Feeling miffed, he referred to AHQ Bengal (Calcutta), only to be told curtly to mind his own business and get on with it.

Still fuming a week later, he got another letter, this time from the Australian High Commission. Sergeant-Pilot "B", RAAF, etc. More followed. It seemed to us that the Dominion Governments had decided on a policy to commission all their Sergeant-Pilots in India. As a Briton, I was the odd man out.

Up to then, I'd been quite content to remain an NCO. I'd been a bit disappointed when I got my wings without even having been considered for a commission. But I'd settled down and, had I stayed in the UK, would have hoped, had I lived (more than doubtful), to rise to Flight Sergeant (one year) and Warrant Officer (two years) on time promotion. But this latest business seemed most unfair.

I went to see the C.O. "Why not ?" he said wearily, "Everybody else is getting it - I'll put you up" (my misdemeanour at Dum-Dum seemed to have been forgiven). It was a formality from then on. I was called for interview with the AOC of 221 Group in Calcutta, a kindly old AVM (Williams, I think), He satisfied himself that I didn't drop my aitches, and could probably use a knife and fork, and signed me in. Thus are careers made........OCTU ?........ What's that ?

Nothing happens overnight. This took place in mid-February, but my commission did not come through till early October (backdated to May). I was still with 110, but now back from Chittagong (where we'd flown our first few ops in May) to Digri, in West Bengal for the monsoon months (June - mid October), when we couldn't operate (and they had paved strips, so we could at least fly).

I took the stripes off my shirts, inherited a pair of P/Os shoulder cuffs from someone who'd just gone up to F/O, and invested Rs28 (£2 - £100 today) in a posh new cap from Bright & McIvor's in the "Grand" Hotel arcade. Aside from moving my kit into my first own room (basha!) in the RAF, that was it. Really, it didn't make all that much difference.

Of course, I took my new cap round to a photographer in Calcutta right away, for the "commissioning portrait" which everyone sends home to Mum (and which usually only appears in public on your obituary - supposing you to have been important enough to rate one). Years after her death, I came across it again and it now graces my mantelpiece. I look at the solemn young face across the void of seventy years. Truly: "Age shall wither them, and the years condemn".

Now I was really in the money. To start with, I was credited with six month's back pay as a Pilot Officer. At Rs500 a month it was almost double my pay as a Sergeant, and more than double what a new P/O would get at home. You'd think they'd deduct my Sergeant's pay before handing over the balance. But Indian bureaucracy doesn't work like that. They paid me the whole Rs3000; it was then up to the UK to get its money back (some Rs1700) if it could (it took them two years!).

Then I got a full UK uniform allowance, about £90 - say another Rs1300. My outgoings so far were one cap (Rs28). Nemesis would come years later, when I went back to the UK and had to kit myself out in blues. Meanwhile the windfall had to stay in my paybook, for there was nothing to spend it on.

We had no Bank accounts out there in those days. Our accumulated pay was entered in a Pay Book (similar to the ones we'd had as Sergeants). It would be entered up by any RAF Accountant Officer (from whom we drew cash as required).

Even if we'd had Bank accounts, I don't think anyone would have touched our cheques with a barge pole - certainly not the Grand Hotel ! Only the major cities would have UK bank branches (Lloyds had a presence in India, and there may have been other home banks). You needed to devote a whole morning or afternoon to the simplest transaction, for Indian bureaucracy in full flow is a sight to behold.

You started with clerk "A", who gave you a "chit" to take to Clerk "B", who gave you a brass tag to take to Clerk "C", who made an entry in a ledger and gave it back to you to take to Clerk "D", who gave you another chit to take to the Cashier. (This might not be in the right order, but you get the general idea).

That worthy regarded you and your chit with the utmost suspicion and reluctantly the cash changed hands (and that was just a deposit !) All this would be supervised by a couple of burly guards armed to the teeth. I suppose that the idea was that only the most determined fraudster would persist in such a rigmarole; the rest would give up, retire to the street outside and recline in the shade of the nearest tree.

End of part 8

 

[Ascent]

Part 9

I trust you'll bear with me for a while, for I have to put a number of jumbled memories into some sort of order before going on to the more interesting bits which follow.

After I finished flying in '54, I closed my logbook and don't suppose I opened it again for fifty years. Then when I composed my "Jottings" over the last ten years or so, I relied solely on my memory for a "broad brush" recall of events, both for my own satisfaction and that of the family (I did not get on line until last summer, and only started to post on this thread in January).

Now my posts have to face scrutiny by knowlegeable and critical readers, I've had to open the book again to check that my "Jottings" are not in conflict with it.

First shock: March '43 has vanished ! (no, the sheet has not been ripped out to conceal some nefarious deed - all the times carry forward seamlessly, and it's all fully countersigned). I've just dropped off the radar from late February to the last week of of April. Right at the back of my memory some half-forgotten fragments begin to come together. Here goes:

It must have been a few days after I got back from Calcutta; a Hoogly mossie had done its worst; I went down with my first dose of malaria. That's not news out there. Then I developed jaundice - a not unusual sequel. (Just for interest, Google "Jaundice" - they show a nice pic of the greyish yellow colour I turned - it is also the exact shade of our UK issue tropical kit after a wash or two).

I was hospitalised - no surprise - but in Dehra Dun ! Dehra Dun is five hundred miles away as the crow flies. There were British Military Hospitals in Calcutta - only 150 miles away. I had no reason at all to be in Dehra Dun.

Why, and how did they get me up there ? I don't think jaundice is infective. Was I "walking wounded", fit for train travel ? Don't know. All I know is that I was in hospital there for two ot three weeks, and then they passed me on for a fortnight's recuperation to Chakrata, about 80 miles to the West.

Both these places are semi Hill Stations in the foothills of the Himalayas, perhaps 4000 ft up and therfore some 10-15 degrees (F) cooler than Bengal, which would be hotting up nicely by then. Does a cooler climate assist recovery from Jaundice ? Don't know.

Nothing much special about Dehra Dun, except that even today it seems to have more than its fair share of hospitals, and the Indian Army "Sandhurst" was there.

Chakrata had a small "cantonment" ( a military camp with married quarters); we were billetted in former OR's MQs - like Hullavington). They had a very skilled camp barber, he was reputed to be able to shave, with a cut-throat razor, a sleeping customer without rousing him from slumber (didn't try it - would you !)

I arrived back In the last week in April, and Stew and I flew a few more training exercises. In May, he vanishes. Where ? Could he have got malaria ? Quite possibly. I should remember, but I don't. From the 8th, my regular crewman was a P/O Robertson (nav), and it was with him that I went to war on the 12th. Stew does not appear again until 5th July, when we'd pulled back to Bengal from the Arakan for the Monsoon, and after that "we were not divided".

While I'd been away, 110 (maybe just one flight) went on a week's detachment to Dohazari - in Arakan a bit south of Chittagong - and flown one or two sorties (I only found this out from Wiki - I don't remember anyone telling me about it at the time - Odd ?) And again, what was the point of sending them across there just for a week ? (it might have enabled them to say that 110 was the first VV Squadron to go into action - which it was - but little else).

End of part 9

 

[Ascent]

Part 10

The day came when the Squadron was pronounced ready for action, and ordered to move up on detachment to Chittagong, then just a small port on the East of the Bay of Bengal, close to the Burmese border. The plan was to land en route at Jessore (in present Bangladesh) to refuel.

"A" Flight mustered seven aircraft (I think they had eight, one must have been u/s). We packed ourselves, our kit, the ground crew's kit and toolboxes in the aircraft and started up.

Mine cranked-up all right, but had no hydraulic pressure. This was a known fault with a known cause and a known remedy. A pressure relief valve had stuck and needed a wallop with a hammer handle on a tender spot. But this was high up on the front of the engine firewall, and of course a panel had to come off to get at it.

This was a stepladder job on account of the height of the engine. So it was a case of shut down, get the steps, take off the panel, thump valve, remove steps, start engine to confirm success, shut down, replace panel, take away steps and start engine once more.

This would take at least twenty minutes; the flight commander (Flt. Lt. Topley - "Topper") decided not to wait, but took th other six off as planned, leaving me behind to follow if my aircraft could be fixed.

It was, and I got into the air half an hour late. It was a gin-clear morning, navigation was easy, and I mapread happily along, hitting all my checkpoints "on the nose". "Robbie" had expected that he'd just be coming for the ride like the rest of the formation (the other Nav was in the lead ship with Topper), and had made no preparations to navigate. So he was quite happy to leave it to me.

After an hour, I reckoned that Jessore should be about five minutes ahead, but was puzzled to see specks milling about on the horizon where the airfield should be. Who might these people be ? By now our flight must be on the ground refuelling, or had already taken off for Chittagong.

It crossed my mind that the airfield might be under attack (at that time we had little idea of the Jap capability in the air). I dropped down below the strangers and approached warily. Soon I was relieved to recognise the VV trademark - its tail-down "sit" in the air.

They were our six, now strung out in the circuit for landing. Unnoticed, I tacked on to the end of the line (good thing I wasn't a Jap!), landed and parked. Topper climbed out, counted his chicks and did a double-take. He'd one more than he started with ! My neighbour sat morosely on his aircraft wheel. "Where have you lot been?"

"Well might you ask", was the gist of the reply (plus a bleep or two). Flying in a loose formation of six, they'd all been happy to leave the navigation in the hands of the lead crew. Topper's navigator was a P/O, a very nice son of a vicarage who shall be nameless. He'd set about his job in best textbook fashion with protractor, dividers, charts, Dalton computer, pencil and rubber (might even have had his nav bag with him to put iit all in).

There were two good reasons why this was unlikely to work. Dead reckoning requires an idea of the en-route winds. He'd relied on a forecast which was no more than a guess, and a bad one at that. And the panel-mounted US compass his pilot had to fly on was a boy-scout affair. You couldn't fly a course within five degrees (even supposing the thing to be accurate to that extent). I believe the Mk IV had a P.8 compass in cockpit, but Mks I-III didn't.

So they got good and lost, and had wandered around helplessly until by pure luck they found something on the ground they could recognise on the map, and mapread back to Jessore. Of course, there were no radio aids, no D/F and no way of checking drift. I think they must have been blown off well to the south, for there were plenty of railways on track from Calcutta to Jessore (and the fantastic "spider's web" junction at Rhanagat, 50 miles before Jessore which no one could miss).

All the other pilots had been too busy flying formation to mapread (it is not healthy to be poring over a map while flying close to your neighbour). And the other back-seat people (all gunners, I think) had just enjoyed the ride, assuming that their betters (?) in front knew what they were doing.

Topper's nav should have done what I did, just mapread along from point to point. You'd think this first experience would have taught him, but no. We refuelled and set off for the second leg. Now from where we were you can't not find Chittagong. You just fly south-east across the Sunderbands (the huge delta of the Ganges and Bramahputra) until you hit the coast, then follow it round till you get there.

The Sunderbands are thousands of square miles of swamp and a maze of waterways, largely uninhabited and mostly uninhabitable. It was a desolate place, and our nav became increasingly concerned that there was nothing to check his position or track in this featureless landscape.

At last his nerve broke; a plaintive voice came on the R/T : "Can anyone pinpoint me,
and give me a Course for Chittagong ?" (in fact it didn't really matter what Course he flew, all he had to do was to carry on south-east till he reached open sea, and the rest would be child's play. As for a pinpoint - forget it !)

Everybody froze, for he had committed a double crime. In operational areas, we used hand signals, R/T was not supposed to be used except in dire emergency - as the Jap could D/F you - and "Chittagong" was a free gift to him. Even now an English-speaking Jap monitor might be signalling to a fighter base to arrange a welcome party for us there. He should have said "to our destination", or "to our airfield", or something like that.

But now the cat was out of the bag. Someone told him to damn' well fly south, and he did. And when he hit the coast, he couldn't go wrong, just follow it. All the gunners scanned the skies with extra care and we were very relieved to get to Chittagong without finding a hostile reception committee. It was not an auspicious start.

Topper was an excellent Flight Commander and normally made intelligent decisions. How on earth had he come to entrust the navigation of his whole Flight to this well-meaning but essentially incompetent operator, without checking his flight planning ? And he would be an experienced pilot-navigator himself (as we all were), well able to keep an eye on the landmarks which were plentiful in the early part of the trip, and able to see things going wrong from the start.

It had been pure luck that all six hadn't ended forced-landed in the bundoo ( although they should have had enough fuel to get back to Calcutta if on ETA Jessore they had no idea where they were). And then why let his nav get in a quite unnecessary panic on the second leg ? It was a mystery to us.

Anyway, that was the end of proper navigation, from then on our navs were
used as gunners and nothing else. For the next three years, nobody navigated my aircraft but me (come to think of it no one had ever navigated for me!).

A few days ago I dug out daughter's old school atlas, and made some rough distance measurements. As the crow flies, I reckon Asansol (near enough to Madhaiganj) to Jessore to Chittagong at about 280 nautical miles. Say two and a quarter hours' flying time. I logged just over three hours! Where had we been? And Asansol to Chittagong straight across the Bay is only 260 n.m. It was well within range. Why didn't we fly direct ? Perhaps it was the single-engine pilot's deep-rooted aversion to flying over open water !

End of part 10

 

[Ascent]

Part 11

I broke off my technical description of the VV, so I'd better fill in the rest of the remaining details I remember, and then you can forget all about it and we can get back to the more interesting things (where we went and what happened to us when we got there).

They used an inertia starter. A small, heavy flywheel was wound up by an electric motor for twenty seconds or so, building up enormous kinetic energy, then clutched through reduction gearing to spin the crankshaft. The engine (usually) fired, coughed, banged, fired again and settled down to a discontented idle at 7-800 rpm.

There was a "live-line" hydraulic system, always under pressure (2000 lb/sq.in.) with engine running, with its emergency hand pump in the pilot's cockpit. This worked the undercarriage, which retracted in the popular American way, rearwards with a quarter turn to fit flat into the wing.

(Why were they so keen on this odd arrangement ? You have the extra weight and bulk of the bevel gear needed; this has to be fitted in underwing projections (the "knuckles"); * these in turn must mean some extra drag and loss of some lift - and for what ?) Were there any British aircraft which used this idea ?

Incredibly, the lockable tailwheel also retracted - an unnecessary complication in an aircraft with absolutely no need for it ! (Neither the Spitfire nor Hurricane had them). Hydraulics also powered flaps, bomb doors, cowl gills and the dive brakes.

These last are the most important fitments on a dive bomber, and the Vengeance had splendid ones. Massive grids extended above and below the wings * On the upper surfaces the grid was hinged on the front,* so airflow would tend to force it shut. On the lower, the hinge was at the rear, with the opposite effect. Top and bottom were coupled, so the forces cancelled out.

These brakes could be opened at any speed, partially or completely, and when fully open restricted the terminal velocity to about 300 mph (knots did not come in till much later). They did not interfere with control or trim in any way, for they were well clear of the wing surfaces when fully extended and so did not obstruct the airflow over or under them.* This low terminal speed gave us plenty of time in the dive to draw a bead (in our case the yellow line) on the target.

Two unique design features improved dive stability. The angle of Incidence was zero, the Vengeance being AFAIK the only dive bomber designed from the outset to dive vertically. The side effect was a comical tail-down "sit" in the air in level flight.* A Vengeance "dragging its a###" could be recognised miles away.

Flying slowly, as in coming in to land, this combination of tail-down attitude and long nose meant no forward vision. We had to put up with that, after all the Spitfire had been almost as bad. In the same way the fin was fitted without the usual small offset to compensate for the gyroscopic effect of the propeller.

With powerful dive brakes and these novel features, the Vengeance made an excellent dive bomber. In a vertical dive, it was smooth and stable (with only 20 seconds to line up, you don't want your nose swanning about round the target). Judged purely as a flying machine, it was useless. Ponderous, awkward and slow, all was forgiven for the sake of that dive. One-trick pony it may have been, but it did its one trick very well indeed, and that was all that mattered to us.

Before my first flight, I'd spent an hour or two in the cockpit and had a good look round. Getting up there in itself was no mean feat. The book method was to climb a series of hand and footholds up the fuselage to the rear cockpit, or for the pilot to step onto the wing and go forward.* Sounds easy, but try it with a parachute on and a red hot aircraft after hours in a tropic sun !

Pilots had worked out a better way. Put your chute up on the leading edge above the wheel. Then right foot up on the wheel, left foot in the "stirrup"* on the oleo leg, right hand up on your chute, a quick scramble and you're on top. Stroll across and climb in.

There was a sketchy set of Pilot's Notes (from Vultee I think) but all I recall is a table of Engine Limitations and some doubtful advice about What to Do when the U/C Won't Come Down (their "last resort" idea was: "reduce speed as far as possible and yaw the thing vigorously from side to side !") In my limited experience, this struck me as a fair recipe for a spin, but later I was to learn that it was impossible to get the Vengeance to stall cleanly, and I don't think anyone ever managed to get one to spin.

The first impression was of immense space - you could really stretch out in the cockpit - and in the heat that was most welcome. I tried to make sense of what I could see. My US training came in useful, for the layout of controls and instruments was typically American (higgledy-piggledy - "like a pawnbrokers' shop window"). A long nose stretched out in front, blocking out all forward vision. There was a primitive ringsight for the front guns, with its "bead" a couple of feet in front of the screen,* and the yellow line bombsight mentioned already.

I didn't like having to go back to hydraulic toe brakes, much preferring the British compressed-air system used on the Master, Hurricane and Spitfire, and on some of our heavies, too (?) with a bike-style lever on the control column (much more controllable, IMHO). There was a separate pull-out handle for the parking brake.

The flying controls were standard; the stick could be locked by a lift-up stay; the bomb release button was on the top of the throttle, transmit button on the stick. There was a normal four-point harness with centre box.

End of part 11

 

[Ascent]

Part 12

Our errant Columbus was well liked and soon forgiven. Pilots smirked inwardly at having their private opinion of navigators confirmed, and resolved to place their faith in themselves and their maps in future. What my nav Robbie thought of his colleague, he kept to himself. Besides, this chap had been the source of much innocent merriment more than once already, for his was a trusting nature.

About this time there had arisen a rumour to the effect that the RAF was about to introduce a double-wing insignia for Navigators (then still called "Observers"). This was not wholly improbable. Their American counterparts, after all, did wear a double wing like pilots.

And not only in the RAF did this rumour gain credence. The stallholders dealing in such wares in the Calcutta bazaars picked it up, and sensed a business opportunity. If there is a potential demand, why not create a supply ? It became a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Someone had to be first; our hero came back from Calcutta wearing a magnificent double "O" wing. I can't swear to it, but it might even have been in gold lace - all flying badges are in "drab silk" (with the exception of mess kit miniatures).

The C.O. told him smartly to take it down. The rumour was baseless and soon died out. But this poor chap seemed fated to be "taken for a ride" in the bazaars, for he fell prey to the con-men there again. He was coming up on time promotion (six months) for his F/O, and needed a new pair of rank cuffs for his shoulder straps. Brand new P/Os got free hand downs from new F/Os, but as it took two years warime service to reach Flight Lieutenant, and not many people had got that far since commissioning, second-hand F/O cuffs were much harder to find.

Now a F/O's rank braid is 5/16 in wide. An Indian braid weaver somewhere made a mistake, and set up his loom for 7/16. They ran off a hundred yards or so before the error was discovered. No use good stuff going to waste. Put it on the market, don't suppose it will make much difference to the customer.

They were right ! Our friend appeared with a pair of these massive stripes on his shoulders. He was mockingly congratulated on his promotion to Air Commodore. His cuffs soon joined the pretty wings in the bin, to general amusement. Luckily he was a resilient character, and endured the ribbing with good grace.

At Chittagong there was an accommodation problem. Our few officers could be fitted in the Mess on the station. But there was no room for the influx of aircrew NCOs. We were dumped in a transit camp in the town. As the Squadron came to readiness at dawn, we had to up at first light and out to the airfield, long before breakfast in the transit camp.

A bunch of hungry and resentful sergeants faced the prospect of flying the Squadron's first operation without even a mug of tea. Our M.O. (Dr "Pete" Latcham - I'm glad he survived the war) was rightly indignant. He got hold of an empty and cleanish four-gallon can, borrowed a blowlamp from the engineers, scrounged the makings of a brew from somewhere, and made the best mug of tea we'd had for a long time. He couldn't get much in the food line for us except emergency rations: "Ship's biscuits" and a tin of jam (plum, I think). Not much but better than nothing. Well done, that man! I'll always remember that "breakfast". As it happened, we didn't fly that day. But the fur flew, and from next morning there was early breakfast for us in the Transit Camp.

Looking back, I cannot see the sense of waiting so late in the season and then sending us forward. As I've said, we flew up to the Arakan on 12th May; I flew my first three "ops" on the 15th, 16th and 17th of the month, then - nothing! Clearly, the monsoon had broken and by 5th June we'd flown back to Bengal.

Our kind of dive bombing is not feasible in hilly country with a base down to 500ft and torrential rain. The onset of the monsoon (in those pre-climate-change days) was predictable almost to the day. IMHO the Squadron was as well trained as it would ever be when I got back to them in April. Why hadn't they used us then? Don't know - never will know, like so many other things in war.

Although our time out there that first year was so short, it was not without incident. We saw our first Mosquito aircraft there, and gathered awestruck round the famed "wooden wonder". Probably a PR version, it had taken a bit of flak over Rangoon, and had come up from there "at 200 mph on one engine", as we told each other in hushed amazement.

We wouldn't have been so impressed had we known of the nasty trick the Mossie had up its sleeve - namely to self-destruct in mid-air without warning, when the glue which was supposed to hold it together - didn't! But this disconcerting problem did not arise until the following year, and was eventually resolved by the development of tropic-proof glues.

As the first VV Squadron to go into operation (that week at Dohazari in March), we were graced by a visit from the AOC 221 Group - the same AVM who had rubber-stamped my recommendation in February. If his gaze had chanced on me (which I doubt), then he had forgotten me. He was a charming elderly gentlemen of the old school.

Too old a school! Casting an eye over a back cockpit, his gaze fell on the twin machine guns poking up. "Ah", said he, "you have Vickers G.O.s, I see". We were shocked. These would have been the guns he'd had in the back of the Wapitis and Hawker Harts he'd flown in his young days up on the NW Frontier. They look nothing like Brownings, as I knew all too well after the hours I'd spent at Newquay, pulling the Vickers to bits and trying to put it together again! It didn't inspire confidence.

He asked the usual question: was there anything we wanted that he could try to get for us? "More bombs, Sir", growled a grizzly old F/Sgt Armourer - we'd been dropping them faster than we could be re-supplied. (Possibly that was why we stopped so suddenly after only three days). Slightly taken aback, the great man consulted his Staff and promised to look into it; then they all piled into their Anson and flew back to Calcutta.

End of part 12

 

[Ascent]

Part 13

Akyab, occupied by the Japanese since '42, is a sizeable island off the Burmese coast. It had a small port, an airfield , a radio station and a well built jail. The Japs threw out the occupants of the jail ( don't suppose they minded too much) and took it over as headquarters and their main barracks. There was an important bridge at Narigan which was an attractive target, too.

Akyab was a useful base for the Japs and they defended it. It was the only place I met that they had heavy AA, which could reach us at 10-12,000 ft as we came in. Low down, they seemed to have plenty of light Bofors-type guns. (The rumour was that these were Bofors guns, left behind in full working order - with ammo - by the Army in the '42 rout. But this may be a base slur on our gallant gunners).

As I've mentioned, my first three sorties were all to Akyab. I'm hazy on the details of the First Arakan campaign, but from what I remember, the Army hoped to push the Jap back south and retake Akyab before the '43 monsoon. Fat chance! The Jap counter-attacked and the Army was hard pressed to hang on where they were.

Consequently, we'd no opportunity to do what we did best, which was to hit well dug in Jap defensive bunkers to assist the Army when they were on the offensive, (this would turn out to be be our major task in '44). The Jap didn't need bunkers now; he just employed his usual tactic of infiltration and encirclement which had served him so well so far. And of course you never knew exactly where he was at any one time, so you couldn't bomb him.

So, to start with, we had to go to where we knew he was, and that was in Akyab. Memory is a strange thing. I remember all the details of our first strike on the jail, but absolutely nothing about the second (Narigan bridge) or the third (Bume radio station) attacks on Akyab, other than that I must have gone there as it's in my logbook.

But the Jail sortie will do very well to begin with. And this description of it will do as a template for every VV operation which followed, for the modus operandi was always the same. Off we go, then.

I've said that we normally put up only six aircraft at a time. On this single occasion, we scraped up twelve - six from 110 and six from 82 Sqdn. 82 ("Out of the blue came Eighty-Two!") were to go in first. As a new boy on 110, I flew the 6 position, which would mean I would be the last man of all to go down. As I never flew in a 12-ship strike again, this was the only time I was able to watch all the action from the air.

Topper was leading our six. We came in from the North at 12,000 ft with 82 ahead. It was afternoon. As we reached the island, the heavies opened up. Our two formations were "weaving", flying a slow zig-zag with a course change every twenty seconds or so. This confuses the gun predictors, so the flak bursts were 2-300 ft off to the side, but uncomfortably accurate for height. We overflew the island, then turned left in a wide sweep over the mainland, flying right round until we reached Akyab again, but this time coming out of the haze and gloom of the eastern sky.

It was a clever ruse (if it was a ruse - perhaps the 82 leader had simply misjudged his first run-up). Later intelligence confirmed that the Jap had put out an air raid warning the first time. But as we didn't bomb, they assumed that we were going on somewhere else and sounded the all-clear. Second time round, we caught them napping, sitting with their evening rice.

The jail was a bomber's dream target. Built on the cart-wheel plan, I suppose it was 2-300 ft across. It was unmissable. It must have been the largest building on the island. As the last man on the line, I could allow myself room to watch the action. 82 were a mile ahead, so I watched them all go down. They were like beads sliding down a string, three spaced out at a time. I could see the bomb flashes dead on target, billowing up in smoke and dust.

Then it was our turn. Topper waggles his wings. This is the signal for the rear "vic" to drop back and move into echelon starboard. A few seconds later, he waggles again and opens his bomb doors. All open theirs. 3 and 6 (me) swing across into echelon on 2 and 5 respectively. Now we're all in a diagonal line like a skein of geese. (This formation change is made only at the last moment, for although it looks nice on the newsreels, it leaves you practically at the mercy of an attacker - and it advertises your imminent attack to any watcher on the ground).

Mechanically I go through my drill: Canopy shut, check bomb doors open, bomb switches "live", trims neutral, 2100 rpm, mixture rich, gyros caged, cowl gills closed, straps tight.

The first three go down. A few seconds later 4 goes over, settles in the dive and puts his brakes out. 5 puts his out as he rolls over. I put mine out, throttle back to a third and then roll. This gives us an extra bit of spacing for safety.

After that, it's simply "doin' what comes nacherly". Rolling over, I throw my head back and look straight down on the dust cloud over the jail - or what's left of it. Then it's just a matter of sighting down the yellow line and "flying" it onto the target. Feet braced on my big fat rudder pedals, I sense the dive is as near vertical as dammit - you can feel it with practice. Topper has done us proud, for this is a follow-my-leader operation, and if he's off vertical, then the whole thing will be a mess.

I can see 4 and 5 ahead for a few moments, then 4 pulls away from my field of vision. Bomb flash. I'm snatching quick glances at my altimeter, which is spinning like a broken clock, one sweep of the "big hand" every two or three seconds. 5 pulls away, keep line on target, bomb flash, 5000 ft, check line, 4000, check, 3500, press button (on throttle grip) and pull, pull, pull for dear life - literally - five seconds too late and you're dead.

End of part 13

 

[Ascent]

Part 14

Things go dark and I'm crushed down in my seat by "G" for a few moments, then I relax a bit and vision clears. Brakes in, we're in a 40-degree dive from a thousand feet, still with most of the 300 mph we picked up on the way down.

The sky looks like a Dalmatian dog, for light AA has been pumping away merrily for a minute or two. Surprised, it dawns on me that they're still firing at us. I feel quite indignant. Poor little me, what have I done to deserve being shot at like this?

This dangerous reverie exasperates the battle-hardened Robbie behind. "Get weaving, Skipper", he roars, sees a gun position on the ground and gives it a long burst to distract the gunners from their aim. That wakens me up.

No time to ruminate - jink and get down on the deck as fast as you can! At this point I should explain that aircraft come out of the dive heading every which way, depending on where they were facing when they pressed the button, and that has been affected by the amount of "weathercocking" which they'd had to do on the way down. It was rather like a Red Arrow "bomb burst", only in sequence.

So you had to pick up your bearings, decide which way was home, and pull round onto it. It must have life more difficult for the AA, as no two of us were following the same path, and this was all to the good.

Now I'm sailing over the tree tops and out of most harm's way. Not entirely, any Jap with a rifle or LMG is going to try a potshot if he sees me in time and in range. It was not uncommon for aircraft to come back with small arms hits.

Dive bombers are a very hard target for AA. Before diving, they can weave as we did to keep out of trouble. Diving, they are well nigh impossible to hit. Pulling out, they are going so fast and low that aimed fire is ineffective. All the gunners can do is to put up a barrage through which they hope we might fly. If they get one it's pure luck. Having said that, I must admit there were cases of people just not pulling out of a dive. No one could say whether they'd been hit or not. The probability is that they were concentrating too hard and left the pull-out too late. The margin for error was tiny.

Once level, you can open your canopy and close bomb doors to reduce drag - but not while you're still pulling "G" in the turn onto the home straight! In a dive, the two internal 500 lb bombs, if simply dropped from the racks, might hit the front wall of the bay, or drop into the arc of the prop. Either way would be disastrous.

To avoid this each bomb is carried in a fork pivoted at the front of the bay. Round the bomb is clamped a "trunnion band" which carries the two "trunnions" - projections which engage in slots on the ends of the forks. Released, the bomb flies out and then off - safely - for you! (the Stuka used the same idea).

On pulling out, centrifugal force will continue to hold these forks out against the pull of "bungee" cords, even after the bombs have gone. There's always one who's too keen to pull in his doors - and traps them against the forks! Everything about a VV is massive - no damage is done. Following crews enjoy the spectacle of a big daddy-longlegs, slowed down by the dangling forks and half-open doors. It can take quite a while before the penny drops in the cockpit concerned.

Topper slows down to let the people behind catch up and get back into position. Here the dive brakes come in handy - you can come charging into the formation and pull up on the spot like a car in traffic.

When all are back in position, we climb to 1500 ft and the hang-up check starts. On the leader's waggle signal, all open doors. 6 leaves position and sweeps 20 ft under 1 - 5. He and his gunner scan every bay and wing for a bomb which should have gone - but hasn't. 6 goes back in position, 5 drops down and checks him. As all is clear, nothing need be said, and R/T silence is maintained.

In the gathering dusk, the flames in the exhaust stubs burned longer and brighter every minute. Chittagong airfield was tricky to get into at the best of times. The approach came over the docks, and you had to dodge the ships' masts to get down to the runway. All twelve landed safely.

Climbing down, I felt a tinge of self-satisfaction. I'd done my first "op". I'd struck a blow for King and country in return for their two years' investment in my training. From now on it would be payback time.

I really don't need to describe any more sorties, for the procedure was always the same. Only the targets differed, and from now on they would be mainly Jap bunker positions. As I've said, the two other strikes I flew to Akyab must have been carbon copies of this one (except that there were only six of us each time), but I can recall absolutely nothing about them.

Then the rains came and that was the end of our first "campaigning" season. It would be late October before we went back.

End of part 14

 

[Ascent]

Part 15

Now might be a time to pause and recall a few details. First, what about the poor devil in the back? He had to go down "with his back to the engine", as he might be called on to man the guns as soon as we pullled out from the dive, should an "Oscar" bounce us - none ever did in fact, but you had to be ready for them all the same.

Half a mo' - you said your canopy was closed? If his was, too, the guns wouldn't be much use, would they? This difficulty had been foreseen (on all the front- line Squadrons), and dealt with by an unofficial "mod". (It was wonderful what you could get away with in those days; you didn't have to seek Higher Approval if you wanted to do a bit of DIY on your aircraft).

The last (curved) section of the canopy was a nuisance. When folded forward to free the guns, the gunner lost most of the room over the nav table, and it wasn't as easy for him and his pilot to shout at one another with that thing in the way (we didn't bother with the intercom much). It wasn't as if he was left out in the cold, as it were, for he still had the straight section of canopy over his head to keep the rain off.

So take the curved bit out and dump it! If you look at almost any pic of a "fighting" VV, you'll see that that bit is missing - it was "parade wear". (The OTU may have kept them in, but not sure). Were they ever put back? I suppose you would have to when the monsoon came, otherwise the guns would get wet (and the back of the VV fill with water!)

Another example, Vultee was worried that a pilot might close the throttle on landing with the mixture control well forward (leaned out) . Accordingly they fitted a one-way catch on the mixture control which enabled the throttle to push past it on opening, but would pull it back (into rich mixture) on closing.

Of course the thing was a damn nuisance in formation, for as luck would have it the best mixture setting was just at the point on the quadrant where your throttle was being jiggled to and fro. It was always getting in the way, and you had to keep resetting your mixture. Find a file, get rid of it!

Now what about the back seat man? At least he couldn't see his altimeter on the way down: he just had to trust his pilot and hope for the best. He had another problem in the early days. The guns were pivoted on a mounting, but the attachment wasn't quite strong enough in shear (with the whole load downward). Curiously, we had trouble with the front gun fixings too, but that is a story for another day.

In a dive, the pivot sometimes gave way and the twin guns fell into the gunner's lap. The weight pinioned him to his seat, garlanded with ammo belts, till they got down and somebody could release him.. I don't think any of them suffered much worse than a bruising (the armourers soon beefed the attachments up).

While not suffering much harm, it must have been rather uncomfortable (and just think what the effect might be, should you come to a sudden stop (crash landing, say), if it happened. 200 lb of steel battering ram a foot or so away level with your head wasn't a pleasant prospect.

From Wiki I read that the IAF believed that there had to be someone in the back seat on every dive, as otherwise the C of G would move forward and make the pull-out harder. Some straight-in accidents were ascribed to this. All I can say is that I never heard of it - but then IIRC I never dived solo myself. A good handful of trim should have sorted it out.

Talking of trims, I recall that, on one or two occasions, half way down in the dive, I spotted, out of the corner of my eye, the elevator trim wheel (the size of a dinner plate, easy enough to see) slowly winding forward (nose-heavy!) of its own volition. I grabbed it and hauled it back. It was just what you didn't need, midway in the dive.

Other people had had this experience, too, and it only seemed to happen when you were carrying a full load. But as it was very rare, and no one knew what it was or what to do about it, it was decided not to bother, but just put the word round as a case of a "watch it, chaps!" Perhaps something like that might account for the OTU "stoods" tent-pegging in (Did we warn them? Might have done. AFAIK, they'd only use practice bombs, anyway, so the problem shouldn't arise).

As a compensation for these minor inconveniences, the rear seat occupant didn't really have much to do. In formation, he would waggle his guns about a bit from time to time to show willing. Stew started off by testing his guns (as they'd taught him at gunnery school), by firing a burst into the side of the dispersal pen when we started up.

As this scared all the groundcrew witless (and me!), meant that he'd have to clean the guns himself when he got back, and was of no value at all (what was he going to do now if they were u/s? - we'd be rolling in a few minutes), he was ordered to desist.

On a sortie, everyone in the back had to act as a gunner, irrespective of rank or aircrew trade. And as all the pilots were in formation, the only one navigating was the leader. Although we'd all been to the briefing and tried to remember whatever jaw-cracking name of the place was that we were supposed to attack, in practice we were all in the invidious position of Christopher Columbus, who: "Didn't know where he was going when he set out, didn't know where he was when he got there, and didn't know where he'd been when he got back." (But Christopher made out all right, and so did we).

End of part 15

 

[Ascent]

Part 16

Hang-ups are rare, but can be very dangerous. If you have one, you try to get rid of it safely by chucking the aircraft about over water or open country. If it still refuses to budge, you have a difficult decision. In theory, if the switches are "safe", the thing should be harmless and you can land with it - or even crash with it, (as I proved the following year}. But it ain't necessarily so.

Shortly after I left Khumbirgram on posting to 8 Sqdn. a crew was killed there when a wing hang-up dropped on landing and exploded when it hit the runway. I think 8 Sqdn. were still "working up" far back in Bengal at the time, so details of the affair were sketchy and took some time to reach us.

It is difficult to imagine how this came to happen. Did the pilot not know he had a hang up? Impossible, you'd say, from what I've been telling you about the hang-up check a few posts ago.

Confession is good for the soul ! The whole of my tale about the jail sortie is perfectly true. But it's actually a composite of my first VV strikes (where in truth we just formed up and went home after bombing) and later ones when this mandatory check had been introduced. (It seemed neater for me to tell the two parts of story in one piece, as it were, as I didn't intend to tell it again - mea culpa!)

So in the early days, not only did we not do any checks, but a practice had sprung up whereby the bomb switches were left "live" after we'd bombed until landing and switch-off. There was some method in this madness.

When a bomb drops, a loop in a wire "fusing link" is held back in the rack by a solenoid bolt which closes when the rack is switched to "live". The other (two) ends of this wire "link" run through holes in a sort of "safety cap", and locks this onto the end of the bomb fuse on which it is loosely threaded. (Same way as a split-pin locks a nut).

This cap protects the detonator inside from accidental impact, (but not from idiots with hammers and chisels!). Incidentally, there are two fuses to a bomb, nose and tail.

It is amazing what blows this cap can survive and still do its job. If a bomb is dropped "safe", the solenoid bolt stays open, the fusing link goes off with the bomb, so the cap stays on the fuse, still held by the wire. It can now go down 20,000 ft into the ground and (should) not go off.

But if the bomb has gone "live", the wire is held back in the rack; the cap has lost its locking. "Windmill" vanes are machined round its circumference, it is loose on the thread, the airflow spins it off in a moment, away we go.

That is rather a cumbersome explanation, but it brings us to the point. If you return the switches to "safe" after dropping your bombs, the solenoids withdraw, the links fall out and are lost. Why should that matter?

Because, if you come back with no links, there is at least a possibility (worse, even suspicion) that you have stupidly "bombed safe". With your links "all present and correct", you're in the clear. Also, you don't need new links for the next lot of bombs (there may even have been a shortage of links - it's exactly the sort of small, cheap, insignificant thing we would be short of), and it's one less job for the armourers. Leave the links in (switches "live").

Good idea? So we thought. And now we can see what might happen. Suppose you have an unnoticed hang-up, it falls off as you land. That's it ! How could it come to be unnoticed on a wing when the pilot rejoined the formation? Only if he were the last man, and it was on an outside wing, it might be possible that no other pilot would notice it. But then, couldn't a gunner on an aircraft ahead, looking back, spot it?

Supposing he did know, he would certainly have done his best to get rid of it, failed and concluded that a landing was safe - it wasn't!

The switches would have gone back to safe, of course, but the trouble with a hang-up is that you never know just how things are in the rack. The bolt may have jammed in the closed position (rear door in my very old car jammed a few months ago, very similar mechanism; main agent estimate £500 [ouch!]; friendly auto-elec chap down road: 3hrs @ £20 = £60 - fixed). And how securely is the claw still holding your bomb? You don't know.

In this way we lost two good men. In fact, it was a risk too far (my log tells me I've done it myself on one occasion, I was lucky). Really, the only sensible thing to do was to bale out and let the aircraft go - there were plenty more where it came from, and a crew is worth more than an aircraft.

I believe that it was in consequence of this accident that hang-up checks became the rule.

One curious little thing: the front fuse cap spun off well clear of the aircraft and was lost (I can see some museum director in the future trying to puzzle out what this little round thing, dug up by a treasure-hunter, might be).

But the tail fuse safety device took the shape of a little sheet-metal butterfly-shaped thing (I've no idea how it worked). On quite a few occasions, an aircraft would come back with this thing embedded in a flap. It was too small to do any real damage, but the flap had to be patched after you pulled it out. It was a nuisance.

End of part 16

 

[Ascent]

Part 17

At Chittagong, the record in my logbook breaks off briefly until June 5, when the rain must have slackened off sufficiently to allow a formation trip. My log drily notes "Electrical Failure", but no more. I can only assume that the EDP mod had been done on my a/c; indeed we'd have been idiots to go to war with the chance of having to wobble-pump home!

On the 8th, another strange one: "To Panda & return" - 40 min. Twenty minutes each way - say 40 miles. Where had we started from? (Pandaveswar is a good 180 miles from Chittagong). What did I go for? Don't know.

This will be my constant refrain for the the whole of the next five months, until the 15th October, when we would go and start operations again. P/O "Robbie" Robertson (my nav on my first three ops) has vanished. In the meantime I was flying with all and sundry till further notice.

July, all formation except the on the 3rd - "Air Firing" - just that. Where was the range? What did we fire at? Front guns or back or both? How did we get on? - not a solitary clue.

On the 27th, "Stew" (F/Sgt now) turns up from somewhere - no idea from where. We will stay together as a crew from now on.

August, lots more formation, a bit of fighter affiliation. On one day, I fly with a Battery Sgt-Major Callum (what was that all about?) The last two entries for the month (12th & 13th) are puzzles. "Air/Ground firing" - no wiser! Last one: "Bombing - 2x250 - formation".

Why would you waste 250 lb bombs on some sort of exercise, when 11 lb practice ones are available? Where was the range?

By now my readers (if they're still awake) are as sick of the question marks as I am. let's forget them. September, some good news, my commission has come through. George Davies (whose own had come a month before) welcomes me into the Mess. (Trip to Calcutta, buy new hat, have photo taken, find to my dismay that Calcutta full of troops, now have to return twenty salutes for every one I used to have to give - buzz soon wears off).

I was lumbered with the job of Squadron Entertainments Officer. This was a sinecure, as there were no entertainments other than the very rare visits from a travelling Services Entertainments Party, and none of these came anywhere near us in my time. As we had no power (and dry batteries were practically unobtainable), there was no domestic radio; our only resource was the wind-up gramophone (Grandma will explain).

You couldn't get the steel needles you had to use with them, but it had been found that a particularly hard thorn was almost as good. You could get packets of these at an extortionate price in the Calcutta bazaars; it was really not much hardship to go down to 'Cal' every so often, have a night in the Grand and come back with a big bag of these.

Although Concert Parties were rare, I must say that the 1970s TV comedy "It ain't half hot, Mum" was remarkably near the mark. Some of these shows were local amateur efforts, and cringe-makedly bad. But they were doing their level best, and meant well, so of course you had to polish your buttons and turn up to support and applaud, even if you did regard them as one of the Horrors of War.

There are huge blank periods in the log. 14 Aug/21 Sep, and 23 Sep/3 Oct. There would have been a lot of leave periods at this time. Mostly these would have been spent in Calcutta (as I intend to devote a whole Post later to Kipling's "City of Dreadful Night", I shall not elaborate now).

On one occasion we (Stew and I) went up to Darjeeling for a couple of weeks and revelled in the blessed coolness. Don't remember much about it, except that we got up at crack of dawn one morning to climb a hill from the top of which it was alleged you could see sunrise over Everest. (E. covered in cloud, of course, should've stayed in bed and bought postcard instead).

After you've waded through that lot, there are more interesting bits to come next time. On 15th October the Squadron flew Digri - Jessore - Khumbir(gram) (way up North in Assam) - we got the navigation right this time! - clocked 3 hrs, 30 min, about 500 miles plus pitstop. Now we're back in business again!

Endof part 17

 

[Ascent]

Part 18

We flew up to Khumbirgram (hereinafter "K") in 15th October '43, I flew my first sortie on the 21st, and on 18th November, Stew and I, and another crew from "B" Flight, were posted to 8 (IAF) Squadron back in West Bengal. So we were there only a month, but (in contrast with the last dull five months) it was packed with action!


A quick tour round K first: it was in a scenic valley up in the Assam hills, a dozen or so miles NE of Silchar. Very unusually, they'd built a concrete runway along the valley floor, obviously intending to stay there for good (it's there yet). They were also building proper dispersal pens and concrete taxiways on our side (the south) of the runway.


"A" Flight bagged some of these; "B" Flight had to make do with just the trees on the far side plus their camouflage to protect them (it proved a blessing in the end!) 45 Sqdn took some of the south dispersals.


The Mess was on top of the hill on our side. It had been a planter's bungalow. The whole hillside was a working tea garden and the scent of the fresh tea tips being harvested from the bushes filled the valley in the cool, fresh mornings.


The planter was away for the duration as a reserve officer in the Indian Army. His Indian foreman was running the show while he was gone; if the planter had a wife and family, there was no sign of them - they would probably have gone back to the UK if they could, or if not were settled in some hill station well to the west out of harm's way.


The large and palatial bungalow had been taken over by the RAF; we had our Mess, anteroom, billiard room and bar in it; our accomodation was in individual "bashas" in the former garden and tennis court.


Amusingly, I recently read on an IAF website, a grumble from a later ex-IAF pilot (7 Sqdn?) who was out in the wilds at Uderbund (not far North, over the hills), to the effect that the Sahibs had pinched all the best accomodation, leaving them out in the bundoo - the exact same complaint I made in one of my Posts long ago (Hullavington) about our transatlantic cousins! You get the picture.


Assam in those days was still tiger country, and there was an amusing incident one night. We had locally recruited chowkidars (guards) keeping night watch on the aircraft. Nothing much ever happened, no one was going to pinch the things and there was little danger of sabotage. So one of our chaps was having forty winks.


He was roused by an animal nuzzling his hand in a friendly way, like a dog. Opening his eyes he found himself nose to nose with a full grown tiger. With a howl of terror, he dropped his rifle (probably empty, anyway), and shot off in one direction. An equally shocked tiger fled in the other - he must have been kin to the Cowardly Lion of the "Wizard of Oz", or Ferdinand the Bull (remember him?), who "just liked to smell the flowers". Or, more probably, he was already full of the villagers' goats.


The tiger is a territorial beast, and it seemed we were on this one's patch. Weeks of tiger-awareness (not to say tigerphobia) followed. As with ghost stories, it is easy to be brave in broad daylight, but when night breezes rustle the bushes, and moonlight shadows move, tigers popped up all over the place.


It must have been on my mind. I awoke one night to feel my charpoy gently tilting and moving about. First thought - "some idiots have had a gin too many and are playing silly b#####s". Then I realised that I was alone in the basha. Next thought was of some large animal under the charpoy, arching his back to scratch on the underside..........Tiger!!!.....Then I realised that the whole basha was moving.......Earthquake!!!I shot out into the moonlight to join the others.


By then the tremor had stopped. It had lasted only a few moments and done no damage. A basha hut, its bamboo frame lashed together with coconut fibre string, is flexible enough to survive much larger earth movements than the one we'd just had.


We hung about for a few minutes, and then went back to bed. It seems that these tremors are not unusual, but full blown earthquakes rare, at this end of the Himalayas.


As in the Arakan, Army close support was the greater part of our work, and we could get feed-back from them. When we went further afield, it was more difficult. Some strikes were on supposed Jap stores dumps in riverside villages. Leaving behind only a huge cloud of dust, you can't tell how successful a strike has been. If it was important to know (ie, do we need to do the job again?) a PR Hurricane would go out to photograph the result.


An air staff officer back at Group had a bright idea (make for the hills, chaps!) Why not kill two birds with one stone? Fit a camera in the bomb bay of the last Vengeance to go down, and let him take the photographs himself after he's bombed. They checked for free space in the bay: it could be done.


This proposal did not meet with any enthusiasm. To begin with, it violated the Golden Rule of Ground Attack, which is "DO NOT HANG ABOUT THE SCENE OF THE CRIME". By the time a defending gunner has put down his mug, stubbed out his fag and swung his weapon round onto you, you want to be hull-down on the horizon, going like a scalded cat. Many a good chap has been lost,
staying behind to admire his handiwork.


Nevertheless they decided to give it a whirl, and I drew the short straw. Our target was a small Burmese town with a jaw-cracking name (my personal best in the log book is: "Kyathwengyaungywa" - but that's not today).


All I remember about our target was the pagoda in the town centre: Its gold leaf sheathed spire blazed in the morning sun; our intelligence officer noted that every single crew made particular mention of it at de-briefing after we got back.


The strike was on the river edge of town. There were no railways so far north in our part of Burma, and the roads (little more than bullock cart tracks) were too dangerous for the Jap to use by day in the dry season. The long dust trail raised by even a single truck could bring down attack by a patrolling Hurricane or Beaufighter.


But all the rivers ran north and south; they were the natural highways of the country. The Jap used them as suppy routes, moving barges by night, and lying up camouflaged under overhanging trees at staging posts during the day. This place was one such post (according to intelligence, which we hoped was correct, otherwise, a lot of innocent Burmans were going to die for nothing).


We were to target the riverside buildings.The strike went according to plan, as far as I could see. I was disappointed to see no black smoke - a sure indicator of rubber or a petroleum product, war stocks on the way to the Jap armies around Imphal, and no explosions after the bombing. The first five aircraft cleared away to the West and left me to it.


I went off down river for five minutes or so, then turned back north at 1500 ft as instructed, bomb doors open for a straight and level run over the target. I was acutely conscious of having no armour plate underneath me.Over the spot, Stew switched the camera on for its ten-second run.


Nothing hit us, and I carried on up north, intending to clear the area before turning west over the ridges. These ran north/south at about 6,000 ft in parallel with the rivers.We must have been flyihg a minute or two, when Stew chipped in: "There's a radial engined fighter about two miles behind us".

End of part 18

 

[Ascent]

Part 19

"There's a radial engine fighter about two miles behind us".....

I didn't like the sound of that. There were two such aircraft in the area which would fit the description: the Japanese "Oscar" and our "Mohawk". They were very similar in size and general appearance (but not in performance; an "Oscar" would have a "Mohawk" for breakfast, any day).

But there was a useful difference. The (US P-36) Mohawk's wheels retracted back-and-twist, so it had "knobs" on the leading edges of the wings. The Oscar didn't.

"Can you see the knuckles, Stew?"...."Can't be sure, wish I'd a pair of binoculars". I wished myself far away. It was most unlikely that a 5 Sqdn. Mohawk would be swanning around so deep into Burma (and where was his wingman? - he wouldn't be alone, fighters always operate in pairs).

The odds were on an Oscar. We're well below him, so he probably can't see me as long as I stick to the jungle covered hillside, and keep away from the bare paddy fields on the valley floor, where my camouflage would be no use. (Over jungle it was excellent, as I knew from the DIY training sessions in which I'd played the "fighter").

If it is an Oscar, and he spots us, we're cold meat. Infinitely more agile, 100 mph faster and more heavily armed, he'll cut us to ribbons - (IIRC, starting with 2 x 0.30 guns, they'd moved up to 2 x 0.50, and some had 2 x 20mm cannon). Much as I respected Stew, he'd done little or no live firing since his days in a Blenheim turret eighteen months before. We'd go down with all guns firing, but the only thing Stew was likely to hit was our own tail.

The unwelcome stranger stayed with us, still a couple of miles astern and some 1500 ft above. The minutes passed very slowly, it was his move now. I fancied I could read his mind. He's seen the dust of the attack on the town, thought he'd glimpsed an aircraft heading away North up one of the valleys, but isn't sure which one. He'll keep going to see if something pops up.

What I mustn't do is to climb over a ridge, for then he's spot me on the skyline straight away. But as he was making no attempt to close the range, I became more confident that he wasn't following me - he was simply following his hunch. (It's just possible that his guns were empty, but that's hardly likely in a war zone). As I'm in his twelve o'clock position, and below him, what he was looking for was (literally) "under his nose", but he couldn't see it.

So I'm stuck, flying North up this valley. It would be fatal to try to turn round - he'd have me at once. It was stalemate. This must have gone on for five or ten minutes.. It felt like eternity, and I had to review my options. I'd flown off the northern edge of my map and now there was nothing in front of me but China two or three hundred miles ahead.

My remaining fuel might have got me there, but luckily it wasn't necessary to try. For at last he must have decided his eyes had been playing him tricks, and he cleared away to the east. We were very glad to see him go. I waited a few minutes more to let him get well away, hopped over the ridge and set off back.

I must have run a good 40 miles north of target with him sitting on my tail, so I had to guess a rough heading for base. Keeping climb power on the engine, I steamed along over the endless mountain ridges, feeling very lonely and insignificant in a very wide world.

Half an hour later, I spotted five dots on the horizon, dead ahead. It was the rest of the formation, dawdling along to let me catch up, and wondering where I'd got to. And I'd run straight up behind them! Stew was amazed (so was I) and bored the Sgts. Mess rigid when we got back, bragging about the navigational genius he'd got for a pilot (I didn't disillusion him!)

The photographs were duly developed and didn't show much. I think there was still too much dust over the target to get a clear picture. But you couldn't expect an aircraft which had just bombed to wait around in the vicinity for a quarter of an hour to get a better one. (221) Group had second thoughts, and dropped the whole idea - to general satiisfaction. Let the specialists take the snaps. And the stranger? Nobody knew or cared.

As to whether the strike had achieved much - or anything - we never heard. We had agents in Burma, but information seemed to take a long time to come out and filter down to a Squadron.

With Army Close Support it was different, and on one of my last strikes from K, a pat on the back came my way. The target was "2 Stockade" - wherever that was - (it's in my log, but I don't know if it was a "Goodie" or a "Baddy"), The Army problem was that the Jap was able to supply and reinforce the particular place that was giving us trouble over a single road. If the road were destroyed, it would make life much harder for him. A sortie went out; the Army reported that all the bombs were close, but the last man down had put three of his four into the road, with the desired result. I'd been in my (usual) 6 position, so it had to be me. (Pure luck, of course).

Just as we had nicely settled ourselves in K for the dry season of '43/'44, all the RAF VV Sqdns. were raided to supply experienced air and ground crews to build up the two new IAF VV units (7 and 8 Sqdns) which had recently been re-equipped with the type. I think 110's share was three or four crews; we were one of them. It wasn't very flattering - if you were a squadron commander, would you send your best people? (I've already mentioned that the gullible nav who'd got the Flight lost on its way to war the previous May was among us).

I believe it was a political thing. Independence was in the air, and I think we wanted to hand over a "going concern", with all three Services up and running, to our successors. At that time Partition was hardly considered as an option, we hoped and planned for a united India which would replace the Raj. Sadly it was not to be, and millions would die in the communal riots which accompanied that failure.

But before we left K, the place was bombed by the Japs - for the first and only time (AFAIK). And that will, I hope, make for an interesting Post indeed.

End of part 19

 

[Ascent]

Part 20

In November '43, shortly before Stew and I were posted away from K to 8 Sqdn, the Jap decided that our people there had become too much of a thorn in his side, and he decided to do something about it. Shooting sitting birds may be a bit unsporting, but it is by far the most effective way to deal with our sort of bird. He put in a high-level air raid on the place; this was unusual for him; his normal tactic was to use the Oscar in low level hit-and-run raids. These were mainly ineffective, as our aircraft were usually well dispersed among the trees, or (exceptionally, as in "A" Flight's case now), in the luxury of three sided protective "pens".

It was a glorious day. North India in the cool, dry season must have one of the best climates in the world. We had six aircraft bombed-up ready for an army-support strike later that morning. We had had the briefing, delivered by an Army liaison officer. This would amount to little more than telliing us the name and position of the the place we were going to thump. If the target was difficult to identify, it would be marked by a mortar smoke bomb when we arrived on the scene. Other than that, the sortie would be so much like all the ones we had flown before that we could almost fly it in our sleep.

We had enjoyed our preflight glass of "char", and were making final preparations, when a signal came down from 168 (?) Wing: "Japanese bombers in the area. Scramble all aircraft not bombed-up". We could sense their dilemma. There was no certainty that an attack was coming our way. If we put the bombed-up six into the air, and kept them hanging about until the danger had passed, they would have to be refuelled and turned round after landing; this would then make them late for the (timed) attack by the Army, which might have to be abandoned. On the other hand, if the attack were on us, and we were all on the ground, we could lose the lot.

There then followed a mad scramble to get all the other flyable aircraft into the air. S/Ldr Traill, (45 Sqdn) started one of his, knowing that it had no wheelbrakes, but hoping to steer with rudder and prop blast down to the runway. You move a Tiger Moth about like that, and might manage it in a Spitfire. But not in our lump! He got out of his pen, across the taxiway and straight into a tree. Fast growing tropical vegetation is relatively soft; no damage was done - except to the tree - and to his self-esteem!. (en passant: he would be killed with his crewman in a flying accident the following year). The scrambled aircraft got off, took up a grandstand position a couple of miles away, and settled down to watch the fun. My aircraft and I waited on the ground with the rest of the box, one unflyable one and the one stuck up a tree.

All was quiet for a time, then we heard the drone of approaching engines. They came in from the East, nine "Bettys" (a twin engined thing about as big as a Wellington - or "Sallys"? - very similar) at around 10,000 ft. Their formation was immaculate, three vics of three. Our nice new white concrete tracks must have caught the eye of the lead bomb-aimer. There was nothing to distract him, we had no AA and the nearest Hurricane was 200 miles away in the Arakan.

Now was the time for all good men to make themselves scarce. Some slit trenches had been dug round the dispersals, but we aircrew decamped to a small ravine nearby, snuggled into the sides and waited. The bombs came down with a rush like a flock of starlings and burst like firecrackers at Chinese New Year. Some came into our ravine, but nobody got a scratch. The Japs wheeled away to the south, and we climbed back to survey the damage.

Two of our airmen had been killed instantly. It seemed that they had decided, at the very last moment, to "find a better 'ole", mistimed it, and were caught in the open when the bombs fell. I still remember the sharp ferrous smell of fresh blood mixed with the hanging smoke. One was a sad sight indeed. He must have flung himself down at the very last moment before a bomb landed on the concrete right behind him. The shrapnel sprayed round at ground level; one piece had opened up his back along the spine from bottom to top as cleanly as with a tin-opener. Blast had torn off shirt and flesh, the result looked for all the world like a side of meat you (used to) see hanging up in a butcher's.

I looked at this pitiful mess, stunned, for a few moments before someone came up with engine covers to shelter him and the other man lying nearby, not visibly injured but just as dead. I'm afraid I don't recall their names (but they'll be in the 110 Sqdn. ORB). Apart from these two, I don't think anyone else suffered any injury; as they had all been down in one or other of the slit trenches.

End of part 20