Front-line and experimental flying with the Fleet Air Arm : "purely by chance"

360 Pages·2010·7.65 MB·English

by  Geoffrey R Higgs

Front-Line and
Experimental Flying
With the
Fleet Air Arm

Contents
Acknowledgements
Preface
Chapter 1 In the Beginning
Chapter 2 To War
Chapter 3 Flying Training
Chapter 4 Fully Fledged - 891 Squadron
Chapter 5 After the War
Chapter 6 14th Carrier Air Group, 1846 Squadron HMS Colossus
Chapter 7 14th Carrier Air Group - 804 Squadron
Chapter 8 Central Flying School
Chapter 9 No. 22 Flying Training School, Syerston
Chapter 10 Back to Sea - HMS Illustrious
Chapter 11 Deck Landing School Chief Instructor
Chapter 12 HMS Rocket – 3rd Training Squadron
Chapter 13 Empire Test Pilots School
Chapter 14 Experimental Flying Department, RAE Farnborough and Bedford
Chapter 15 Squadron Command Course and Scimitar Intensive Flying Trials
Chapter 16 803 Squadron in Command
Chapter 17 Goodbye to All That
Chapter 18 Back to America - US Armed Forces Staff College
Chapter 19 SACLANT, Norfolk, Virginia
Chapter 20 A&AEE Boscombe Down
Chapter 21 Joint Warfare Staff
Chapter 22 Fleet Aviation Officer, Far East Fleet
Chapter 23 RAE Bedford – Again!
Chapter 24 Director-General Weapons, Ensleigh
Appendices: 1. Provosts to Burma
2. Aircraft Types Flown as 1st Pilot/Captain
Index
Acknowledgements
Being absorbed in writing for over a year is not the most sociable of pastimes,
and I fully acknowledge my wife Pat’s tolerance in the many hours I spent in
isolation. For her help and encouragement I am greatly indebted, as I am to my
son, David, who provided invaluable computer and legal expertise and to Kate,
my daughter, for her patience in periodically reading the text. The most profound
comment from them was, ‘Who are you writing this for?’ I didn’t know either,
since I had moved the goalposts!
My thanks also to John Gaut, former FAA pilot and friend of long standing
who read my story and helped with useful suggestions, to Ted Whitley with
whom I had the good fortune to serve for a number of years and who allowed me
to quote his ‘Union Yarn’, and to Sir John Treacher for permission to quote from
his excellent book Life at Full Throttle.
I am grateful to my editor, David Morris, for the trouble and time he has
taken wading through the manuscript proofs trying to make sense of my
corrections and suggestions. And finally I am indebted to Peter Coles for having
the courage to publish my memoirs in the full knowledge that many others could
have written a similar and doubtless more interesting life history.
Preface
I began writing these memoirs in response to the not too infrequent urgings of
my family to put something of my life on record, solely for private use. I never
kept a diary and it was therefore something of a challenge.
However, I got down to it, temporarily ceased my primary pastime as an
amateur water colourist and spent the next year or so recollecting events of a
naval career that had been, ‘purely by chance’ like many others, the outcome of
a world war. This was my original title for my memoirs, but I was persuaded that
it did not have marketable value as a title, and my publisher wisely suggested the
alternative. But as I picked up the threads it became more of a narrative than just
a few reminiscences and in due course I was persuaded to offer it for
publication.
In the course of my writing I have not referred to any outside source for
information or corroboration, relying solely on personal recollections supported
by my logbooks and personal photographs. I realise the shortcomings of this
approach, but it arose from first intentions to produce a simple family record,
and as time went on I felt disinclined – or perhaps too idle – to conduct the sort
of research a more competent author would undertake. If, therefore, there occur
any errors of fact the fault is entirely mine, and while I am not aware of, nor
intend, any offence to the various characters who may appear from time to time,
I unhesitatingly apologise if I have transgressed.
For the same reasons of initially producing a private family record, I avoided
any tendency to become too technical in recording various happenings that I felt
would bore the layman. Again, this may have been a mistake, since I realise it
will be less than complete for the more discerning reader.
As I continued with events of the past I experienced many moments of
sadness at the loss of so many good friends who, for one reason or another, did
not stay the course. The hazards of flying they accepted willingly, as we all did,
but those of us who rose to the challenge and survived can only reflect, ‘There
but for the Grace of God …’
CHAPTER 1
In the Beginning
‘And why do you want to join the Royal Navy to become a pilot? Why not the
RAF?’
So the interview had progressed after the initial pleasantries in a building in
Whiteladies Road, Bristol. It was early 1943 and I was seated, somewhat
nervously, in front of three senior naval officers who were doing their best to put
this 17-year-old at ease.
I had rehearsed this totally expected question numerous times with nice pat
answers. But now my mind was a blank and I was tongue tied.
‘Is it just the uniform?’ one of them asked.
‘Oh no,’ said I, ‘we went to Weymouth.’
‘I see.’ said another of them. ‘So?’
And then it all flooded out and I told them about Alan Cobham’s circus and
an aeroplane known as the Spider at Whitchurch airport in the early 1930s. I had
gone with my father and sat on the grass outside the fence – it was too expensive
to go inside the airfield. It was a warm and wonderfully sunny day and at the end
of the flying display I was hooked.
They had listened politely to my ramblings without impatience.
‘But you earlier mentioned Weymouth’, one commented.
‘Yes, that was a few years later’, I replied. ‘We were on holiday and the bay
was full of warships.’
The sea has always had a fascination for me, I suppose because it was
synonymous with holidays. We had always mucked about in boats and trips
round the bay, that sort of thing. I tried to explain this to the Interview Board,
and I suppose it must have had some success; they were still listening politely,
although they must have heard this sort of waffle many times before.
Then more questions – why had I left school early, what had I learnt in the
Air Training Corps, did I have any of my family in the Royal Navy – yes,
brother and sister – and so on.
Eventually, after they had discussed together out of my hearing, the
President of the Board announced that I was too young for immediate
consideration. My heart sank. But then, observing my disappointment, with a
smile on his face he added that subject to a medical examination they would
recommend entry under the ‘Y’ scheme for training as a pilot in the Fleet Air
Arm nearer my 18th birthday. I cannot recall subsequent events. I left, floating
on air, caught the wrong bus back to my office for work for which I had no
inclination.
So it was that a short while later, after I had taken and passed a medical
examination, a letter arrived confirming the Board’s decision and enclosing a
black badge embroidered with a ‘Y’ for wearing on my ATC uniform. I would
be called up for training shortly after my birthday.
As far as I recall it was late November when the early morning post
produced a travel warrant with instructions to join HMS St Vincent on 3 January
1944. The Allied invasion of Europe was still in the future, there was still plenty
of war left, and in a macabre sort of way we all hoped to be part of it. Such was
the misplaced enthusiasm of youth. But these were unusual and exciting times
for late teenagers whose experience of life away from home had been restricted
to the annual family holiday – and this more recently limited by the war.
And so on 3 January 1944 I followed my brother and sister into the Royal
Navy. My mother took my departure in her usual stoical manner, no tears,
anxious for me to do well and full of optimism. My father accompanied me on
the local train to Bristol Temple Meads for the main line to Salisbury and on.
These were the days of compartments, and we were joined by several American
soldiers of whom at this time there many thousands deposited in or around
Bristol in the build-up for the forthcoming invasion of Europe. We had already
seen much evidence of this in the construction of temporary camps, including
one on the local golf course, where the 14th and other fairways became Tin Pan
Alley, Broadway or other such familiar names to them. The American soldiers
had been well received by the locals, and in turn their generosity knew no
bounds.
Those in our compartment were no exception. We got into animated
conversation during the journey, asking about their home life and families, and
they in turn seemed awestruck by the blitz on Bristol and what we had suffered.
Large cartons of Lucky Strike cigarettes were produced which they insisted we
accept. Much later I would wonder how many of these five American soldiers
survived the invasion, which was to come five months later, and the subsequent
fighting.
Such was the fortune of war that I was now to embark on the opportunity of
a lifetime, an experience nothing in my earlier life could have anticipated. But I
am ahead of my story.
Early Life
I was born on 25 September 1925, the third of four children, into a very happy if
impecunious and occasionally tempestuous family. My father at that time had
been working for the Great Western Railway since his youth and progressed to
engine, or locomotive, driver status. Every small boy then aspired to be a train
driver, and I suppose I was no exception until, later, after the Whitchurch
display, I was dedicated to aeroplanes, with little hope then of achieving such
lofty ambitions.
My mother kept a tight ship. We went to Sunday School and church as a
matter of course. My maternal grandfather was a lay preacher, which he took
extremely seriously. In the First World War he had courageously admitted to
being against the war – any war – and any question of fighting. To kill was
totally alien to his nature. Although a Conscientious Objector, he nevertheless
volunteered to join the Medical Corps as a stretcher bearer, accepting fully that
the casualty rate was at least as high as for front-line troops. The experience
dwelt heavily upon him, and he took to composing poetry, at which he showed
considerable flair. He was in every way a very kindly man whom I remember
with much affection.
When I was 10 we moved home, and hence schools. I was within a year of
taking the scholarship examination, not a good time to change schools.
Fortunately I had been well schooled at Knowle Park, particularly by an
excellent teacher, Miss Horler. Her brother was the well-acclaimed Sydney
Horler, author of numerous thrillers. In her somewhat matronly way she imbued
an enthusiasm for learning, no mean achievement with 9/10-year-olds.
And so my arrival at the new junior school, Sea Mills, was quite painless.
The school had a positive attitude towards sport, and boasted a number of well-
above-average players, particularly footballers. At least two of these went on to
achieve professional status at the highest level.
The previous excellent teaching showed up well against my fellow pupils,
and at the end of the first and only complete year there I was awarded a prize for
coming top of the form. More important, I passed the scholarship examination
for entry to a number of grammar schools in Bristol.
Thus it was that at the age of 11 I arrived at Cotham School, a relatively
small school of some 350 boys or so. Cotham had been born out of the
nineteenth-century ‘City School’ founded by the Merchant Venturers in Bristol
for their own children. Cotham adopted many of the former school’s traditions.
It had an excellent reputation for scholastic achievement, which I doubt I did
much to enhance. Professor Paul Dirac, the renowned physicist and Nobel Prize