Flying Scot: An Airman’s Story

168 Pages·2012·2.7 MB·English

by  Commodore

First published in Great Britain in 2012 by
PEN & SWORD AVIATION
An imprint of
Pen & Sword Books Ltd
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Barnsley
South Yorkshire
S70 2AS

Copyright © Alastair Mackie, 2012
9781783036097

The right of Alastair Mackie to be identified as the author of this work has been
asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act
1988.

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To Rachel,
who shared my joys and sorrows,
triumphs and disasters
for more than sixty-seven years.
Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright Page
Dedication
Chapter 1 - Something in the Air
Chapter 2 - The Wide Blue Yonder
Chapter 3 - Ready for Take-Off
Chapter 4 - Go East Young Man
Chapter 5 - Chasing the Dawn
Chapter 6 - Home Skies
Chapter 7 - Storming the European Ramparts
Chapter 8 - In for the Long Haul
Chapter 9 - Domestic Interlude
Chapter 10 - Buttoned Up and Flying Right
Chapter 11 - Glimpses of the Orient
Chapter 12 - On the Wing
Chapter 13 - A Good Grounding
Chapter 14 - An Airman Abroad
Chapter 15 - White Giants on Parade
Chapter 16 - Strengthening the Deterrent
Chapter 17 - Through Adversity
Chapter 18 - Policy and Peril
Chapter 19 - Time for Benevolence
Chapter 20 - At Odds with Whitehall
Chapter 21 - Out of the Blue Barathea
Chapter 22 - Civil Suited
Chapter 23 - Reflections
Index
Chapter 1
Something in the Air
In the sleepy Worcestershire town of Malvern in the twenties we hardly ever saw
actual aeroplanes, although books and pictures of them had fascinated me since
early childhood. On one memorable day, however, there arrived a flying circus –
not Monty Python’s, but a real one.
It was owned and operated by Sir Alan Cobham, who had been a First World
War pilot. He had a miscellany of elderly aircraft, including an Avro biplane in
which he offered punters short flights – hops, more like – for payment. I was
crushed by my father’s refusal of my plea to be taken aloft. This was not, I think,
because of the cost, but he was rather thinking of the danger.
The offering of these flights was known as ‘barnstorming’. Fast forward to my
own flying days and I, like most pilots, had the job of giving cadets and other
would-be airmen such flights so they could gain ‘air experience’. On one
occasion, a boy from Eton College Air Training Corps thanked me for his flight
and offered a tip. Noblesse oblige, or what?
There were no such offerings from ATC cadets from my own school,
Charterhouse. Like other public schools, we were visited by liaison officers
recruiting for the three services. At the time of one such visit, in July 1940, I was
semi-idle, having passed the exams that qualified me to go to Christ’s College
Cambridge to train as a doctor.
One evening, I went to an excellent lecture by a naval officer that propelled
me into wanting to take part in a war that I feared would end before I could
become involved. I thought of the Army, but was put off by the sotto voce
assurance that those of us who joined up in the ranks of the local regiment, the
60th (Royal Surrey) Rifles, and behaved ourselves, would within six months be
commissioned as officers. This, I felt, flouted my principle of paddling my own
canoe. The Navy, in a sense, might have requited that. But life as a seaman
seemed to consist of very long stretches of gazing at oceans and only rare
opportunities for the sort of derring-do I had in mind.
That left the RAF. I consulted my father about deferring the medical training
for which I had been promised; there would be a place for me at Cambridge after
the war. Patriotically, he encouraged me to join.
During my final term at Charterhouse I had to go to a centre in Reading for
medical testing, which turned out to be very thorough. On the way back from
Reading I passed through Waterloo Station, where, to my surprise and delight, I
saw King George VI – in field marshal uniform and in a Rolls-Royce – drive
through the main entrance.
I soon heard that I had passed the medical test, which wasn’t a surprise to me
as I had always done my best to keep fit. Hopeless at football and a source of
despair at cricket, I had resorted to tennis, squash and swimming, and these were
soon to become sources of personal delight and points scoring from the RAF.
There were squash courts at most airfields, and I used them enthusiastically until
I reached the recommended age limit of forty.
Following my medical test a telegram summoned me to report to the RAF
Records Office in Gloucester. This was a daunting surprise because I had hoped
I would go to a training unit rather than a mere repository for personal
particulars. Thankfully, it was simply part of the bureaucracy. I thought of
Shakespeare’s dictum:
There’s a divinity that shapes our ends,
Rough-hew them how we will . . .
I was relieved when a posting to Cardington for initial training arrived. Even that
seemed odd, because Cardington was well known as the centre for the RAF
balloons that became integral to air defence. I was soon to discover that it also
housed a reception centre for processing recruits. This comprised swearing them
in, giving them the traditional King’s shilling and equipping them with their
much-prized uniform.
Going through the system took all day and meant an overnight stay in a
barrack block. My bed was one of thirty; occupants of the other twenty-nine
insisted on keeping their underwear on and the windows shut on a warm August
evening. The smell was awful.
Towards the end of a second day of processing it emerged that we were
expected to stay another night, up with which (in the manner of Churchill) I
would not put. I explained to the corporal in charge that I had friends nearby
would not put. I explained to the corporal in charge that I had friends nearby
who I could stay with. He was surprised and told me that the railway warrants
we were to be issued with had not yet been signed and that the flight lieutenant
whose job it was to sign them had gone off duty. When I volunteered to go
without one he let me go.
My destination was a large house at Ickwell, where a Mr and Mrs Hayward
Wells would, I knew, be glad to put me up for the night: no smells, no
underwear making do for pyjamas, and every comfort. Mary Wells was a
lifelong friend of my mother’s and Hayward part-owned the brewing firm of
Wells and Winch, which was eventually to be taken over by one of the big
breweries – Greene King – in 1961. The Wells welcomed young officers as
guests during the war, me included.
Thus began the humble first phase of my RAF career, which was known as
deferred service but turned out to be a boring wait in the queue for full-time
training.