In their own words...

[bobbysocks]

In 1942, on a quiet day in October, Bobby Gibbes sent a few of us rookie pilots on a low-flying exercise.

I was really enjoying it. Flying just a few feet above the ground and waving to Diggers of the 9th Div. Suddenly all the chaps on the ground pointed in the direction I was flying and started waving madly. I looked ahead and there was this palm tree!

I jerked the joystick back as hard and quick as I could. - I think I closed my eyes too.

When I got back to the Squadron base and landed, there was Harry Knight waiting for me. He was the plane’s Fitter.

“What the HELL have you done to my airplane???”

- Palm fronds were hanging from the wings and the tail and I was bloody lucky to come out of it alive.

I won’t repeat what Bobby Gibbes had to say…


some quips from Alan Clark 3 Sq RAAF


Did I mention that Tigers had no canopy or cockpit cover of any kind? But there was one saving grace - we had WAAFs to swing the propellers. Good strong lasses with no ambivalence about motors or, as far as I know, horses.

There was a little joke doing the rounds at Clyffe Pypard -

Q: What happened to the WAAF who forgot to put the chocks under before swinging the prop?
A: "Dis-ast-er" … (Say it out loud and think about it...)

Also in the pilot’s briefing room there was a blackboard with the following written on it:

"An instructor sent his pupil back to the base to get an insulated screw. The pupil came back with a WAAF and a pair of rubber gumboots!"



It seems that during his (US equivalent) SFTS in Texas some Women’s Army Corps girls arrived on the base to take over the radio telephone communications set-up. As a consequence, swearing over the R/T became a Court Martial offence. One of the trainee pilots on a cross-country exercise got lost and the following dialogue took place between the trainee and the control tower. Trainee: “Hello base, for Christ’s sake give me a course to steer - I’m all f***ed up.”

The squadron commander, who happened to be in the tower at the time and possessed a very distinctive southern accent, picked up the microphone and said, “Mister, what is your name and serial number?”

There was a long silence, then came, “I ain’t that f***ed up!”


My last flight, however, turned out to be a lot less boring than all its predecessors. With the trainee busy sending Morse Code in the back seat, we were stooging along somewhere close to Narromine, where another Tiger Moth EFTS was stationed. Quite a few Tigers were around, going about their routine training, when they obviously spotted this intruding Wackett, broke off their training and came belting over to me for a spot of “dogfighting”. Forgetting all about my pledge to fly straight and level, I immediately engaged about five Tigers in spectacular aerial combat but as the Tigers outnumbered me and could turn in smaller circles than I was able to do, they were soon on my tail. Time to go home, so I broke off the conflict and headed towards Parkes with my possibly terrified passenger. One of the Tigers persisted however; he got up above and behind me and made another classic fighter attack. Diving down fast onto my tail he shot past just below me, but very close. There was a loud "thump" and then he dwindled earthwards. “Shit!”, I thought, “He's hit my bloody fixed undercart and knocked it off.”

What to do? Very difficult to land without wheels, even more difficult to land with only one wheel. My first brilliant solution was to climb up to the nearest big cumulus cloud, position myself between the cloud and the sun, fly towards the cloud and see if I could get a silhouette of my undercart (if any) against it. No such luck, so I flew home and made a very tentative landing, without incident.

As we didn’t have the means to communicate in the air, it wasn’t until we got back to the hangers that the trainee could say, “Sir, we have lost the trailing aerial.” Oh shit! That was it. Having forgotten all about the blessed thing in the heat of battle it was obvious that the Tiger had got the aerial caught round his prop. No wonder he dwindled! It turns out also that he crashed - but more of that later.

Those of us who had trained as fighter pilots still held romantic notions about our prospective role in the air. We were soon to be enlightened about all this.

So, instead of racing off and flying Spitfires, we were now told that there was no more demand for fighter pilots and that we would all be converted onto bombers, a process that would take many months of special training. While there was a certain amount of awe-inspiring appeal in the idea of a 19-year-old Sergeant Pilot flying a huge four-engined bomber over Germany as captain of a crew of seven and with no second pilot, I decided that my true expertise (such as it was) was in single-engined flying.

So I set about exploring ways to make this happen, if at all possible. As it turned out, if you volunteered to go to the Middle East, you could stay on singles as that was the only Theatre of War outside Russia that any ground fighting was going on, and this is what I did. There was still a long wait though, as the EATS was working so efficiently by now (1943-44) that the UK was flooded with trained airmen. So here was another parting of the ways for old friends as most of our intake ended up on bombers. Many, like Ken Grose and Rex Loton, did not survive, but some, like Bill Fallon and Errol Ingram, did - Bill as a rear gunner (tail-end Charlie) and Errol as a pilot completed full operational tours of duty and lived to tell the tale.

The Kittyhawk was a sturdy, attractive veteran of the North African campaign but without the Spit’s charisma. As they were only operating in Italy, at least Burma was ruled out! But, we were told, the Aussies amongst us were destined for Italy, as both Australian Squadrons (numbers 3 and 450) were operating there, supporting the British Eighth Army, as they had done throughout the long Western Desert campaign. Indeed, 3 Squadron had been in the Middle East since June 1940, during which time it had had many updates of aircraft type, starting off flying Gloster Gladiators, a semi-obsolete biplane which would not have been out of place in WWI! Actually it was about this time, unbeknown to us, that No.3 was converting to the best and most effective fighter of the war, the P51, known as the Mustang, but little did Lew Ranger or I think that we would end up there flying these magnificent machines.

After some 15 hours on these, the big day came for me on October 20, 1944, when I was to have my first flight in a Kittyhawk. What an awesome thrill! To fly a single seater fighter the first time - no instructor, just you. They could tell you how to fly it on the ground but, thereafter you were on your own. To start with it had a much more powerful engine than anything we had flown before. We had previously flown only in radial-engined, air-cooled motors, this one was equipped with a 16 cylinder, in-line, liquid-cooled Allison, which seemed to stretch out in front of you forever. Don’t forget that I still hadn’t learned to drive a car.

Unlike most present-day planes which have two main wheels and a nose wheel, P40s had a tail wheel, so that you couldn’t see in front of you until you had given her the gun and got up sufficient speed to lift your tail up. This done, you roared along the runway at maximum revs until you felt that beautiful feeling of leaving Mother Earth, and then you were flying. It is hard to describe the feeling of being in control of all this complex machinery and power. As you lift off and retract your undercarriage the feeling of being airborne, of feeling the subtle currents of air gently acting upon your machine, is awesome. The seemingly limitless power at your fingertips and the three dimensional control of height and direction is heady stuff indeed. However, on this first trip in a P40 there were many other things to think about; lots to remember and lots to learn and get the particular feel of this beautiful, sleek beast. Somewhat to my surprise I managed the landing OK in spite of the considerable difference in speed and feel from anything previously. It’s a funny thing that throughout my flying career I never ceased to be amazed that I could actually land these flighty creatures!

Flying training in the Kittyhawk proceeded through the usual gamut of exercises, spins, formations, cross-countries etc. Somewhere I have a few quite good photos, taken by me with a very unreliable cheap camera, of Lew and I low flying across the desert. This was quite a feat as I had to fly one-handed, formating with Lew, and still try to take the photos. Unfortunately at this time one of our group, a good friend and fine chap, Geoff Swinbourne, crashed his Kitty and was killed. Another funeral - we buried him in a desolate piece of desert. He was only 19 years old. But for the rest of us it was get up in the air and get on with it.

It happened thus: air-to-air gunnery practice is usually done by a pair of planes both carrying cine cameras, which were used instead of guns for obvious reasons. Both pilots would shoot at each other using the cameras, the films of which were analysed later in the Station’s theatre. In this instance there had been a serious stuff-up as one of the planes (Spitfires) was loaded with cannon shells instead of film. The pilot of this plane, Jim Fletcher, a mate of ours, lined up the other plane, laid off the necessary deflection and pressed the trigger. His aim was obviously very good as he only let loose some 12 cannon shells before he realised what was happening and took his finger off the button. The incident above resulted and we returned to Jungle Jim’s rudely interrupted monologue.

He had every right to be very angry, as what we had done was not only rude but a potentially serious breach of Air Force discipline. Jungle Jim, ever a mild man, only remonstrated with us mildly. Never the less it was not a good way to kick off with a reportedly perfectionist type instructor.

more from alan to come...