Lightning up : the career of Air Vice-Marshal Alan White CB AFC FRAeS RAF (Retd)

371 Pages·2009·16.92 MB·English

by  Alan White

For Caroline, Julia, Victoria, Max,
Gemma and Nicholas

Contents
Preface
Acknowledgements
Chapter 1 Just Out for a Spin
Chapter 2 Commissioned – But Perhaps Not Quite
Chapter 3 Smooth – At Least with the Canopy
Chapter 4 Aspiring Fighter Pilot
Chapter 5 First Squadron
Chapter 6 Chivenor Revisted
Chapter 7 Deputy Flight Commander
Chapter 8 Slow Trip in a Fast Jet
Chapter 9 Tengah and Other Places
Chapter 10 Why Am I Here?
Chapter 11 On the Ground
Chapter 12 A Real Man’s Aeroplane
Chapter 13 Balls! Keep Fighting
Chapter 14 Squadron Commander
Chapter 15 Station Commander
Chapter 16 Grounded
Chapter 17 Deputy Commander
Chapter 18 Turning Finals
Glossary
Bibliography
Preface
This book is not an autobiography. I did not set out to write one. It is
simply a record of a career in the Royal Air Force of a pilot who
happened to be fortunate enough to fly fighter aircraft, and survive an
occasional brush with Lady Luck.
I was not destined to fire my guns, having been too late for the Korean War
and too old for the Falklands, and involved with little in between other than with
some aspects of the Cold War and with a couple of minor dust-ups in the Far
East. There was a time when I would have welcomed an opportunity to engage
in aerial conflict. But one grows wiser with experience and time, and that
foolishness passes.
I retain the greatest admiration for those who did – and do – find themselves
flying in hostile skies, often with the odds stacked against them. Their courage
humbles those who, like me, merely flew.
Acknowledgements
Iam greatly indebted to my good friend Don McClen for encouraging me to
write this book and for continuing to do so after he had ploughed through my
first draft. His candid criticisms and helpful suggestions provided the
essential catalysts for its successful completion.
I should also like to record and acknowledge the considerable help I have
had in quite a variety of ways, from the confirmation of some of my hazy
recollections, to the provision of facts, the sourcing of photographs, and the
drawing of maps. The following acquaintances and friends all have my gratitude:
Hugh Alexander, National Archives, Kew
Peter Biddiscombe, old pal on 247 Squadron Richard Calvert, friend and former
squadron commander Sebastian Cox, Head of Historical Branch (RAF) Bill
Duffin Hon Sec of the Independent Researchers’ Association Paul Jackson
FRAeS, Editor in Chief, Jane’s All the World’s Aircraft Norman Roberson,
Honorary Secretary, 20 Squadron Association Henry Roberts, amateur
cartographer
Mick Rogers, Honorary Secretary 247 Squadron Association Stewart Scott,
author
Jerry Seavers, friend since 20 Squadron days Eunice Wilson Archivist to 247 (F)
Squadron Association
CHAPTER ONE
Just Out for a Spin
Sitting on the top-deck of a Belfast City bus one miserably wet afternoon in
January 1953, peering through its condensation-steamed windows, I found
myself wondering what the hell I thought I was doing. I was on my way to
Sydenham, now Belfast City Airport, to have my first experience of flying – my
‘familiarisation trip’ with Queen’s University Air Squadron. The rain was
pelting down. The heavy dark cloud looked menacingly low. It had all been so
totally different a few days earlier when I, and several other undergraduate
would-be aviators, had spent a happy afternoon meeting the squadron
instructors, having an introductory briefing, and being shown over the aircraft on
which we were to be taught to fly. The prospect of flying had then been very
appealing. In the present conditions it had no attraction at all and I seriously
hoped that my trip would be cancelled.
About an hour and a half later, worrying weather notwithstanding, I was
briefed and kitted out. I had fur-lined boots on my feet, a leather flying helmet
and goggles on my head, and I had been handed a ‘Mae West’ – a bulky yellow
flotation jacket – to put on. I had been supervised as I trussed myself tightly into
the harness of a parachute-pack shaped to fit in the aircraft seat and, with that
pack swinging awkwardly below and behind me, I shambled out from the dry
comfort of the squadron’s accommodation to one of its four Chipmunks.
Climbing cumbrously into the front cockpit I was somewhat relieved to see
that the rain was slackening and that the gloom was lightening away to the west
– but at that moment even a totally cloudless sky might not have dispelled the
apprehension I felt about going up in this mini-machine whose cockpit hardly
fitted me and which, besides, smelled slightly of sick.
Oddly, although I had been impressed by an older cousin who had come to
spend a few days with my parents in the mid-1940s, proudly displaying Flying
Officer’s tapes and pilots’ ‘wings’ on his uniform, I can’t recall feeling any great
urge to follow in his footsteps. At school I had been fired with the idea of
making a career in the Army but I had been armlocked by my father into
deferring that ambition in favour of reading for a degree; he had even set me up
with a meeting at the home of a friend of his, a professor at Queen’s, whose task
was clearly to persuade me that a university education would be a much better
bet than an immediate plunge into a military career.
While it would be wrong to say that I had had no interest in aeroplanes or in
flying, I had never really given any thought to the possibility of getting airborne.
My interests were elsewhere and, the moment I was old enough, I had joined the
Territorial Army. The idea of the University Air Squadron (UAS) came three
years later and owed more to the persuasive patter of a friend than to a burning
desire on my part to learn to fly. And I doubt that his enthusiasm was initially
any greater than mine as his principal argument for attempting to join was that:
‘They have a great Mess and it’s open on a Saturday night long after the pubs in
Belfast close.’
UASs were set up – the first at Cambridge in 19251 – while the RAF was
enjoying a brief period of modest expansion. As the then Chief of the Air Staff2
put it, by encouraging undergraduates to fly the UASs would be ‘…. a great
means of enabling the spirit of aviation to spread…’, and they would ‘… give
the brains of the country a chance of being used for aeronautical
purposes….’They were also a means of encouraging undergraduates to consider
careers in the various Branches of the RAF, and the free flying lessons provided
by them was the bait for all potential officer recruits, not just for potential
members of the flying, or General Duties, Branch. But the cost of providing such
lessons, even with simple aircraft, had to be justified3 and anyone applying to
join had to display both the aptitude to cope with flying lessons and the qualities
that the RAF was seeking in its own recruits. We thus found that joining wasn’t
simply a matter of presenting ourselves as keen applicants for membership of a
university club.
The first hurdle to acceptance was the medical examination, a fairly lengthy
affair that covered everything from the history of our health, through its current
state, to possible future infirmity. During the course of it I was asked if I ever got
sick in cars or on buses and this gave me a momentary twinge of concern; I had
been sick every time I got into a car when I was a child, but I didn’t volunteer
this last, hopefully irrelevant, piece of information as I had long since grown out
of the tendency. Besides, as rough seas and boats didn’t bother me I reasoned,
optimistically, that aircraft would be unlikely to do so either. Happily, we were
both pronounced fit and able to see and hear to the required standards.