Answers from BoB Spitfire pilot and Rigger
 

The unveiling event to Sqn Ldr Brian Lane DFC took place on Sunday in London, and was a great success. Over 400 people turned up which was incredible. Sadly, it was too windy (gusting up to 25kts) at RAF Coningsby, so the much anticipated BBMF flypast was scrubbed at the last minute. Amazingly, when they heard the bad news, the local police made a call and 15 minutes later, we were entertained with a very low and loud impromptu helicopter display by the Met Police's ASU, right over our heads - complete with waving pilots – incredible and nice to see that initiative is alive and well!


The highlight for me was meeting Flt Lt Ken Wilkinson AE RAF and Rigger Mr John Milne, both ex 19 Sqn. Ken flew under Brian's command and John was Brian's rigger. Such incredible gentlemen, both then and now, and yes, I did manage to ask them some questions and got some really interesting answers.

Stuff in [ ] are my own thoughts/assumptions and not the words of Ken or John.



Flt Lt Ken Wilkinson

Me: When you were scrambled, did you have to wait for your engine to warm up?

KW: Not at all. You just started it and off you went. No hanging around. I recall that one pilot [sorry, KW did mention his name, but I forgot it] saw his Spit with all the fairings off and yelled at his crew to get them bloody back on. As soon as they were on, he roared across the airfield and took off. [See Q&A with John Milne below though].

Me: When you took off, were you all lined up and ready to go or did you need to taxi into position?

KW: It depends when you are talking about. In the Battle [as KW called it] when we were on grass fields, the aircraft were dispersed. Had to be. Later on, when we had concrete runways, the aircraft were in hangars. [Didn’t quite answer my question – my fault. What I was angling at was whether dispersed aircraft were all generally pointing in the right direction and so could just scramble with little or no manoeuvring.]

KW: Later on, I remember watching Spit squadrons landing on the concrete runways. You would always see the canopies open right away and the pilots throw out their chewing gum.

Me: Why did they have gum? [I knew why but didn’t know they had gum and assumed that swallowing without gum would have cleared their ears]

KW: Well, to clear their ears.

Me: So I guess the runways were lined with gum then?

KW: Yes, I guess they were [chuckle].

Me: Could you hear other aircraft from inside the Spit cockpit?

KW: No. [Looked at me a little strangely as if he really wanted to say, of course not, what a silly question. [So flyby sounds within closed cockpit need to be disabled or at least made optional in the realism menu.]

Me: And what about the guns? Could you hear them?

KW: Oh yes, and feel them too. All combat was at about 120mph, on the edge of the stall, juddering all the time. If you fired the guns then, the juddering got even worse.

Me: In other words, it brought you closer to the stall.

KW: Yes [So there really was enough recoil of 8 machine guns to slow an aircraft down]

Me: Did you ever fly the Hurricane too?

KW: Yes, in fact I ended up instructing on Hurricanes.

Me: And was it much different to fly than the Spit?

KW: [shrug, as if to imply flipping between the two was easy, no real difference at all. In fact very much gave the impression if you were a Spitfire fighter pilot, of course the Hurricane was easy to fly! This does rather fit in with quote below*] Of course, the Hurricane had thick wings and so had a much wider undercart than the Spit [so there was some difference then!]

*In Dilip Sarkar’s Last of the Few Ken is reported to have said “If you were a fighter pilot, you were a cocky bugger. But as a Spitfire pilot, you were cockier still!”

Me: When were you last in a Spitfire?

KW: [shows me a photo (I think from the Duxford Spring airshow 2010) of him almost fully in the cockpit but with the lower half of his left leg hanging out of the open door.] I got my behind in, then my right leg, but I couldn’t get my left leg in! [laughs, then continues] I have been asked 3 times to fly in that 2 seater.

Me: Carolyn Grace’s Spitfire?

KW: Yes. Didn’t much fancy it. A 2 seater is just not the same, not a Spitfire. [ I always assumed flying in any type of Spitfire would be something most veterans, health depending, would love to do. But thinking about it, an integral part of the Spitfire fighter pilot experience is being alone, in total and sole control. To share the experience with someone else, who is the Pilot in Command, is perhaps understandably too much for some ex Spit pilots to bear].

Me: So how about a single seater then?!

KW: Hmmm, think I’d break it!

KW: One sweep in 1943, my flight was briefed that the target [in France, he told me the name but I have forgotten it, sorry!] had no AAA to speak of. So, we escorted the bombers towards the target but were jumped over the French coast by FW190s. 20 minutes or so ensured when we kept the 190s off the bombers. Eventually, the 190’s lost interest. I lost my squadron but eventually hooked up with another squadron of Spitfires and so continued with them escorting the bombers. Then, over the target, all hell broke loose. Flak everywhere. This wasn’t right. I then got closer to the bombers and noticed that they had different markings from the bombers I had originally been escorting. I was escorting the wrong bombers who were bombing another, evidently more well defended, target!



John Milne

Me: Was it necessary to warm a Merlin up before taking off?

JM: Oh yes, definitely.

Me: So what would happen if you didn’t? How bad would it be? Would the aircraft fly, albeit with a damaged engine?

JM: Yes, it would be bad. Yes the engine would be damaged. You might not even be able to take off at all with a cold engine. [Interesting when you compare this to Ken’s answer. Clearly, engines must have been run up by the ground crew so that the pilots could, at a moment’s notice, scramble with a pre-warmed engine. Warming the engine was not the concern of the pilots, hence Ken doesn’t ever recall having to wait for a warm engine before applying full throttle. [So, we definitely need a pre-warmed engine scenario with CEM set.]

Me: So when pilots ran to their aeroplanes, were the engines already running? Did the crews start the engines before the pilots got there?

JM: Sometimes, it depended.

Me: So as a rigger, what was your responsibility? Did you rearm the Spitfires?

JM: No, the armourers did that. I looked after the airframe [and I think he also said control systems and instruments] and refuelling.

Me: So it was down to you to fix broken panels, or bits with holes in them?

JM: Yes, but if it was really bad, you’d have to [I think he said] give the aircraft back. In those days, when 19 was based at Fowlmere, it was just a field. No hangars or buildings. It’s still like that.

Me: So how long did it take to refuel a Spitfire.

JM: About 10 minutes. The Spitfire only had 2 small tanks.

Me: In front of the cockpit.

JM: Yes.

Me: And what about 100 octane fuel? When was that introduced?

JM: Oh, quite early on.

Me: In the Battle of Britain?

JM: No, before the Battle of Britain. [Interesting, so it should be available in game.] It was dyed green. After we finished refuelling the Spitfires, we’d empty what was left in the fuel truck’s hose into our motor bikes! [Brilliant!!] My motor bike’s petrol tank was stained all green on the outside! [Who? Me Sir? No, no, I didn’t pinch the fuel Sir!!] Wasn’t good for the bikes though. Engines weren’t designed for 100 octane and we kept asking the fitters to fix them!

Me: Does all this seem like a long time ago or just like yesterday?

JM: Oh, just like yesterday. As clear as anything.


It was so amazing to talk to Ken and John. They may be showing signs of wear on the outside, but their verve and passion is undiminished by the years and their memories remain as fresh as the moment they were made.

PPP

Fantastic
 

Thanks very much PeterPanPan. Some very interesting comments from both pilot and rigger from a historical point of view. I liked the 'chewing gum' scenario. Thanks for your great effort to interview them, it is so important, because they are all gradually going, sadly.
DFLion

It just confirms what I've always thought, memory is very subjective to who is recalling it and where their attention was at that time, the engine warming being an absolute classic instance.

Very interesting, thanks for posting :)

Absolutely fantastic interviews there PPP! I bet those 2 have some real stories between them to tell. I love the fact John filled his motorcycle with 100 octane fuel, it must of caused absolute havoc with it's engine though.

Thanks for your efforts PPP, a great read and some nice info in there. If you manage to catch a pilot again please ask about the negative G cutout issue..would be great to understand that one.

Cheers

Cool thanks..

They are turly the modern day heros

O_Smiladon

Great thread, fascinating.

It is amazing how these gentlemen can still remember detail!

thanks for this wonderful post!:)

very nice, thanks for sharing !!

Well done, PPP, thanks for sharing this. As others above have noted, the perspectives of a pilot and a rigger can be quite different at times. I just received Brian Lane's "Spitfire!" a few days ago through Amazon.ca....it had been on back order for some time. Looking forward to reading it after I'm finished reading Ulrich Steinhilper's "Spitfire on my Tail" -- talk about a different perspective!!! LOL

Good stuff PPP, thanks for sharing!

Especially this bit:

Which allowed for this:
http://www.spitfireperformance.com/lane-26-5-40.jpg

:)

Excellent find Lane. Not related are you?!

PPP

You didn't ask about TRACERS!!!!! FAIL!!!!

:) joking, great interview, wish i could spend a whole day talking to them(i would provide beer and food)

Very interesting read, thanks PeterPanPan! :)

Excellent interview!

We need some sort of database to record all these gems and others before they are lost forever.

:) Thank you for talking to these real heroes :)

absolutely brilliant thx for sharing. nice to get some proper clarification on 100 octane fuel by someone who refueled the planes.

For those who wonder about the negative G cutout issue, I believe in real life it was exactly like in CoD. Check this video, check out the minute 6.25

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=slM-I...eature=related

the hurricane and spitfire pilot says he says something like ''you put your stick forward and the engine immediately cuts''.

I think we should trust devs more with their research in general terms, I would expect the complains about speeds to be also true in the game as I would think that the official data don't show the max speeds with the plane fully loaded with ammo and fuel. I could be wrong there, but I guess the devs did enough research on many aspects of the game, especially the engine and FM. Not that it couldn't be improved.... :)

cheers

seven

They were also dyed green so you could see them from 20,000 ft and steal the kill in your 110 octane luftwhiner's 109Z.

56RAF_phoenix

I don't want to push this thread off track but actually he says ''you stuff your stick forward and the engine immediately cuts''

For anyone who doesn't know, that means you shove it forward quickly and very definitely and I would expect the engine to cut then as you would be inducing a severe reduction in G, probably even to negative G. Bear in mind this is the sudden reaction to finding yourself near the stall with the need to get out of that situation as quickly as possible.

There is a summary on this forum by a current Hurricane Mk1 pilot which goes into more detail. I believe the cutout is coming into effect at too low a reduction in G, possibly around a reduction of 0.3G rather than a reduction to 0.3G

Many thank for the information PPP.

I had the pleasure of meeting Flt Lt Ken Wilkinson and Sqdn Leader Tony Pickering back in 2000 when they were travelling around together giving after-dinner speeches.

It was at an Air Warrior convention. (We used to drag our PCs to a Hotel and have a LAN party including on-line connection to the Air Warrior Host and make a late night mass attack on the insuspecting 'homey' Air Warriors.)

I just found a link to one of the guys' website with a brief report on the weekend
http://www.vulch.t15.org/aw2000.html
I particularly liked Ken's comments about flying with the Douglas Bader Wing:-
"Sixty aircraft in perfect formation, Fifty Nine aircraft under strict radio silence;... and Bader, chatting away to all and sundry. We were a grand sight" said Ken, "We never saw the enemy, but we were a Grand Sight."

Tony's wife Chris gets a mention, a lovely lady. I spent a long time chatting to her about her particular passion - her five year old grand-daughter. Later, she said about Tony, "He must be enjoying himself, we never normally stay up this late". He was particularly chuffed as we watched him fly an Air Warrior Hurricane only to realise it had the same markings as he had flown in 501 Squadron, quite a co-incidence.

Happy days.

Basically I think the devs got it almost quite right in the beginning. Now we are at old-IL2 stage which imho IS a bit arcade. IL2 is either no cut or full cut and you really have to push it.

In my opinion it only lacked some inertia in what the devs have provided with the initial release. The issue was principally that at the slightest deviation from 1g we got a lean cut out (not full cut out which occured when really pushing the stick as you describe). The result was that with minor turbulences we got lean cut outs (that looked very dramatic because black smoke was emitted but that was not that dramatic performance-wise). I think a filter filtering out the normal and weak turbulences out and have a small delay before cut occurs would have done completely the trick without going arcade.

Now we have arcadish cutouts and no black smoke.

I really just hope that Luthier is not becoming a second Jason - with all respect to Jason who is a great guy - really! I do appreciate him and his approach very much and he is listening to the community and is concerned about the opinion of his customers. It is just that: In my opinion he just listens a little bit too much to the loudly proclamated complaints in the forum and we all know that the whiners appear to be more preponderant while they are a minority as they are less reluctant to communicate their issues than those for which it is just ok the way it is. You know stuff like the schoolboy making most trouble getting most attention and stuff. Now they've dumped down the SE5 engine which was a bit fragile but only if one did not know how to handle it. Many complained about a glass engine of the SE5 (a fairy tale imho) while those taking time to master the SE5 as it was did not communicate in the forum. Now they removed the sensitivity of the SE5 engine although it was really an engine that was so much pushed to the limits that it should seem obvious that it is a bit sensitive.

Thanks for taking the time to interview those men, very valuable testimonies from a hard to reach community, especially as the years go by.

The more technical aspects are of special interest. For one, i was very satisfied to see the different answers about engine warm up that clears up a lot of things: engines demanded a warm-up session to perform adequately, which was part of the ground crews' job.

I guess in the future we could tie this into a script of some sort for online/offline dynamic campaigns:

IF enemy detected by radar ahead of time or squad is on alert rotation, THEN spawn with warmed up engines, ELSE spawn with cold engines (to simulate getting caught unawares by low flying jabos, etc)

The only thing i'd like more detail about would be the fuel question, the way it was asked it's a bit ambiguous and could be construed to only pertain to their squad/airfield. It would be much more beneficial to have asked them specifically if 100 octane fuel was used by all or the majority of the squads/stations.

In any case, i won't let that minor niggle get in the way of a perfectly good interview and the commendable effort of organizing such an event in the first place. Good job and a very good initiative ;)

Thanks a lot for the interview and for asking that question :grin:.

Valuable information to me who have never flown a piston engine aircraft in real life, not to mention a WWII fighter; neither have most IL-2 sim pilots, I suppose. So it is a definite clarification for many.

Haven't tried COD yet. Is COD's in-cockpit sound effect realistic in this respect?

I'm hopefully meeting Ken Wilkinson again later this year and, if so, will try and ask him some more questions ... and perhaps show him a vid of CoD!

PPP

At a local airshow a few years ago I paid for a 20 minute hop in a Harvard. Not a WW2 fighter, but not a modern-day Beechcraft either. The pilot was a former RCAF CF-18 pilot who flew these demos for the love of it - a real cool dude. I had a chance to chat with him a bit prior to the ride and told him about IL-2. He responded by snapping in the joystick (it had a spring-loaded button - just like a vacuum cleaner!) in the rear seat (my) position.

After getting us up in the air he demonstrated a few basic air maneuvers over rural Ontario, including a wing-over keeping a barn in sight through the canopy top. Cool!!! He then let me take over for a few coordinated turns. Make that "attempted" coordinated turns! LOL

It was all over much too soon. One lasting impression I got was the NOISE!!!!! Even with the modern insulated helmet I was wearing the noise was still almost overwhelming and almost visceral! Obviously, it was necessary to use the built-in intercom to communicate back & forth. I swear someone could've fired eight .303's beside my ears and I wouldn't have heard a thing! Dunno how a P&W Wasp air-cooled radial compares to a R/R Merlin V-12 glycol-jacketed behemoth from inside the cockpit (ie. Hearing passing nearby aircraft). Probably the best descriptor for either is "EH????"

There's a passage in Geff Wellum's book First Light where he overshoots and can hear the engines of the LW bomber from inside his cockpit, but he was very, very close.

I've also read a few BoB pilots accounts where they heard the engines of the enemy, all were also, very close (less than 50 yards).

Really interesting to hear his answers! It's always special when one is talking first hand with the men who where really there!

I once met an old pilot at a late night barbecue at an airfield that flew in the Finnish winter war, we had a bunch of beer together and one of the interesting parts of that discussion I remember was when he told me they used bear fat to smear in a thick layer in the face as it got so cold in the open seat cockpits of the old biplanes he flew (I think he flew Bristol Harts and later some captured Russian planes in the continuation war). As they never knew when the alarm would go off and it took rather long to smear bear fat all over the face they slept with it. They had it for a couple of days but when they got to much lice in the fat they had to take it away and smear a new layer ;)

Another time I flew with an old 109 pilot in his own plane as his certificate had been withdrawn for a weak heart (was in the late 1980:ies). He still wanted to fly so I went with him in his Grob as my certificate was valid ;) He flew all the time but left the landing to me... Later (by a fire with a beer too actually, common at Swedish air fields late summer nights after a day of flying) he told me he never liked landings any way after flying the Me109 during the war ;) He flew late war 109 G:s from 1944 and said half of the pilots at his unit (late war rushed out recruits) where killed in the landings and he was scared to death at every landing.

When I asked him if he shot down any enemies he laughed - "When we where in battle it was all chaos with planes everywhere and I just tried to stay away from the enemies - I fired my guns a couple of times at enemies but I don't think a single bullet hit the target".

please ask him how sensitive was merlin engine to "negative G cutouts". Currently in the game even a slight move forward with stick and engine cuts...

It would be interesting to hear what Ken has to say but IvanK recently posted these results from the RAE, made "at the time":-

http://forum.1cpublishing.eu/showpos...3&postcount=99

Thanks PPP

let him ask the pilots....

Indeed. There is always the possibility that actual experience (and Ken's recollection of it) is different to that written in an RAE report. In any event, listening to Ken talk about it is infinitely more interesting!!

PPP