[bobbysocks]

An Account by Wing Commander Hank Costain MBE

In spite of the advances made in aviation, man is allowed to use the sky on sufferance, never as a right; and, as Hank Costain now tells us, the elements can regain control of their domain in the most brutal fashion.

During the summer of 1944 I was a Flying Officer with 615 Sqn operating Spitfire VIIIs. During the battle to repel the attempted Japanese invasion of India we had been flying from Palel on the Imphal Plain but the time came for us to pull back out of the front line for a brief rest. Accordingly, on August 10th, our 16 aircraft took off from Palele with the CO in the lead, for a nice easy trip to Baigachi near Calcutta; for a quarter of our pilots however, the flight would be their last.

For much of the route we had underneath us puffs of thin fair-weather cumulus and as we neared our destination we let down through them. Soon afterwards the cloud cover above us became complete, but as we had good contact with the ground everything seemed all right. Indeed it was, until straddling our path we found a thick brown storm cloud extending right down to the ground. Clearly we could not go forwards through it and, because we had passed our point of no return, we could not go back to Palel either. So the CO decided to take us back a little way, then we could climb up through the layer of cumulus and once above it we could search for a way through the storm; but it never happened that way.

Soon after re-entering cloud there was a sudden bang and everything seemed to happen at once: the sky turned black as pitch, my Spitfire reared up and the stick seemed to go wild in its attempts to wrench itself out of my grasp. Somehow we had slid into that dreadfully turbulent monsoon storm cloud. Within seconds I was completely out of control and with the artificial horizon toppled I had not the faintest idea which way was up. Outside it was so dark that I could not even see my wingtips and the pounding of the walnut-sized hailstones on the fuselage drowned out even the noise of the engine. In my earphones I heard the frenzied chatter of the other pilots as they treid to fight their way free of the storm's clutches.

Of all my flight instruments, only the altimeter seemed to be reading correctly and from its spinning needles I learned that I was in a violent up-current. After going up rapidly through nearly 10,000ft during which my stick seemed to have no effect at all, the Spitfire bucked and entered an equally vicious down-draft and we were plunging earthwards just as fast. Again, nothing I did with my controls seemed to make the slightest difference. As the altimeter reading neared 1,000ft it became clear that this was no place for Mrs Costain's young lad - I had to bail out.

First, I had to get rid of the hood, so I yanked hard on the jettison ball above my head but the tropical heat had perished the rubber and it came away in my hand. Charming! Since the hood would not jettison I slid it fully back on the runners, then trimmed the nose fully down and undid my seat harness. Finally, I let go of the stick and as the Spitfire bunted forwards, up I went like a cork out of a bottle. At least, I would have done if not for my parachute pack getting caught on the overhanging lip of the hood. The next thing I knew I was tumbling head-over-heels along the fuselage before ramming hard into the tailplane and shattering my leg. As the tail disappeared into the glood I grabbed at the parachute D ring and pulled it, then I glanced down to see the ground rushing up at me.

The parachute canopy deployed just in time, but even so the landing on my boken leg was excruciatingly painful. As I lay in a sodden heap in that flooded Indian paddy field and began to collect my wits, my first thoughts were for the perfectly good Spitfire I had just abandoned. "Good God" I remember thinking "what on earth am I going to tell the CO?" Luckily I was picked up soon afterwards by some of the locals and they took me to a doctor.

In less than 5 minutes, 615 Sqn lost its CO and 3 other pilots killed and 3 more injured; we had written off half of our aircraft, 8 of the most modern fighters in the theatre. And it all happened without there being a Japanese fighter within a 100 miles. When it is angry, the sky is a foe without mercy.