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The Shortest Flight (page 3 of 6)
Carrying a parachute over the shoulder in an imagined imitation of a Battle of Britain pilot walking towards his Spitfire, a red hot blast of air hit as the door was opened.
Inevitably the designated SNJ was last in a long line of identical aircraft baking in the sun. By the time the pilot settled in his cockpit rivers of sweat were running down inside the flight suit. .
An instructor in the back seat had only limited forward visibility, with the canopy arch and the students head blocking his view. There must have been anxious times, especially in the early stages of landing practice, as the man in the front seat struggled to get the aircraft under control, and safely on the ground. It was common practice for instructors to carry a supply of wooden wedges. These were inserted into the undercarriage and flap control levers in the rear cockpit to prevent a student inadvertently operating a system, until the wedge had been removed.
Hours and confidence slowly grew with exercises in general handling, emergencies, and endless circuits at one of the outlying fields, deserted except for a fire and rescue crew.
There was a hurdle to leap on 12th flight, a progress check, and then the vital test, the 2 hours “safe for solo” sortie, upon which all future hope of a flying career depended.
Unlike most other flying training courses, where an instructor might jump out at any time saying “Off you go” the USN system ensured that the student knew exactly when the test was due.
Preparation for the first solo flight began with an instructor on board departing from Mainside airfield, who directed the student to fly out to one of the relief landing fields. Here he would climb out and sit on the grass beside the runway.
The student then went off solo, to carry out two or three circuits and landings, before picking up his instructor again, and returning to base.
All aviators can surely remember the circumstance of their first solo flight, a slight nervous apprehension before take off swinging into the thrill of achievement once in the air.
The next stage was consolidation; aerobatics as a preliminary to combat and tactics, instrument flying and navigation flights.
Instrument training largely meant learning US civil procedures, using the radio ranges,”Flying the beam” for cross country work. These stations transmitted radio Morse code letters “A” and “N” in sectors, so arranged that the synchronised transmissions merged into a steady note when on a defined track. A pilot interpreted radio compass letdown started overhead at the high station, first proceeded outbound before turning back to track through the low station, The final approach was timed by stopwatch to a visual or overshoot point. A very high degree of accurate flying was demanded, and many hours were spent under the hood.
Though this was not actually flying in cloud the standards achieved stood USN trained pilots in good shape for the future.
A formation returning from an overnight cross country Navex, was once confronted by the menacing wall of one of the Gulf Coast’s massive thunderheads. No pilot flying in the lower altitudes ever took these as less than deadly serious. The flight leader therefore called for a weather diversion to a nearby Air Force base, one of the vast complexes of such airfields being built to accommodate SAC’s new B47 bombers. Each aircraft was immediately surrounded by armed MP’s.when directed to park on some distant perimeter track
“Stay where you are Bud, and hand out your ID card” was the order,
despite the large “Navy” letters on the side of the aircraft!
This was unbelievable to us for security matters in the UK were still being conducted in a much less rigorous way. There was perhaps an undertone of Air Force/Navy rivalry in part to explain this behavior. Course pilots could fly the SNJ quite well by the end of initial training; now they had to be converted into military aviators, and that first meant an introduction to flying in formation. |
