Tony Blackman Test Pilot

Introduction

There is no such thing as a completely safe aircraft. When we fly at all we are taking a risk but the rules for designing aircraft try to ensure that the risk being taken is sufficiently low to be ‘acceptable’.

During the time I was flying, the emphasis changed from the government funding development costs for both military and civil projects to the aerospace companies having to take the financial risks themselves. Military projects had to be bid for at fixed prices and civil projects had to be developed with private funding.

As firms took more and more of the financial risk in aeroplane development, it became necessary for pilots to realise that they had to be salesmen as well as test pilots. For some, it took a little time to appreciate that their livelihood depended not only on being good test pilots but also on being good marketing men. In addition, they had to learn that an aircraft only has to meet its safety requirements; making an aircraft pleasanter and, perhaps, safer to fly was counter productive to their firm’s financial viability. This principle applies just as much today as it did then. There is no advantage in making an aircraft safer than the certification rules require, since to do so will almost certainly make it uncompetitive and therefore harder to sell.

Test flying was always thought to be the most demanding of flying tasks but we soon learnt that demonstrating an aircraft in the third world could be just as demanding, if not more so. Often far from civilization, the demonstration pilot had no back-up team of engineers; the runways chosen by the potential customer were always their worst, invariably short, rough and very often surrounded by hills. The decision on whether it was ‘safe’ to operate into an airfield during a demonstration was often incredibly finely balanced and the whole future of the sale and perhaps the aircraft project itself depended on the pilot.

Test flying involves many tasks – development and production testing, demonstrating aircraft at flying displays, demonstrating aircraft to customers at home and overseas, and training the customers’ pilots. Test pilots are not all equal and tasks must be allocated according to their interest and ability, as I discovered when I became chief test pilot. However, whatever the job they must always remember that they are being employed to sell aircraft as well as to test them.

This book is about test flying and the aerospace industry in the latter half of the 20th century, spanning a lifetime in aviation. It starts in the Royal Air Force, going from national service to learning to fly, then squadron flying, test flying at the Empire Test Pilots School and, finally, testing aircraft at Boscombe Down. The scene then shifts to industry and to Avros in Manchester where the Vulcan and Shackleton were being built and tested. The Vulcan development is described in some detail, including the Vulcan Mk 2 with automatic landing development and the Skybolt Air Launched Ballistic Missile. Then there is a step change as Avro decided to build a small twin-engined turboprop airliner for use all round the world to replace the ubiquitous DC3. The development and demonstration of this aircraft took more and more time as it played a vital part in the economic success of Avro and this work is covered in depth, especially the demonstration flying on some of the third world’s worst airfields. In parallel with this work, Avro won the contract to convert the Victor Mk 2s from bombers to refuelling tankers and, vitally important, to replace the Shackleton with the Nimrod maritime aircraft, based on the Comet airliner.

Inevitably there are fascinating stories to be told, including flying with the legendary Howard Hughes. Above all though I have tried to give an insight into what it takes to be a test pilot and spending a life in the aerospace industry.

The last part of the book is devoted to describing working in the avionics industry with Smiths Industries, selling electronics to the world’s airplane manufacturers. There is also an account of the time spent as a member of the board of the UK Civil Aviation Authority, when I had to make the transfer from being regulated to being a regulator.

Finally in the last chapter I give a personal overview, reviewing the past and considering the future as the role of the commercial airline pilot inexorably changes from being a hands on aviator to a manager of the flight and the systems in the aircraft itself.

Prologue

It was 1950. I looked at the notice board for my next training session. Instead of Flight Lieutenant Palmer, my regular instructor, I was horrified to see that I was going to have to fly with the chief flying instructor Flight Lieutenant Briggs. Deep down I was not entirely surprised and was already fearing the worst. I had already flown fifteen flights and over thirteen hours with Palmer and was getting increasingly nervous as he hadn’t sent me off solo. I was now very worried as most of the other pilots on my course had already gone solo so I was fairly certain this flight was going to be a ‘scrub check’, my last flight at the flying training school.

Briggs was a north countryman and didn’t say very much. We went out to the aircraft, slid our hoods back and put our parachutes in the seats. I did the normal external visual inspection and we climbed into the aircraft. I went through the checks and we taxied out. He told me to go to Chetwynd, a small grass airfield not too far from Ternhill in Shropshire where the school was based. I flew round the airfield checking the windsock, made certain there were no other aircraft ahead of me and then landed as I had been taught by Palmer. It wasn’t the smoothest touchdown in the world and Briggs waited until we had come to a halt clear of the landing strip before making a few comments about the landing finishing up by saying: Remember it can’t be very difficult. Look at all the other people who can do it. We taxied round, took off and did another landing. Perhaps I was trying too hard because this time Briggs gave me some more advice: When you get near the ground, throttle back and don’t do anything else. The aircraft will land itself.

The visibility got worse and Briggs decided we had better go back to Ternhill. Back in the crew room I could feel all the other pilots looking at me. They were all student pilots and I was an officer and they had gone solo and I hadn’t. Still I realised that Briggs hadn’t called me in and scrubbed me so there was still hope. The following morning I saw Briggs was going to fly with me again and once more we went to Chetwynd; I knew this was make or break time. I made my approach and landing and remembering Briggs’ advice as we crossed the hedge, pulled the stick back only slightly and gently closed the throttles. There was a pause and the aircraft touched very smoothly. Briggs didn’t say anything but pointed to a hut just clear of the strip. I taxied over and to my amazement and relief saw that he was undoing his parachute straps. When we had stopped he turned the hood handle and slid the hood open on his side of the aircraft. He climbed out over the wing and then turned, fastening the seat harness and sliding the hood shut again, locking the hood handle and climbing down over the wing onto the ground. He walked away from the aircraft and then turned, signalling me to carry on. It was an amazing moment.

The propeller and engine were still ticking over with the throttle closed. I opened it slightly, taxied the aircraft across the grass to the edge of the airfield, looked at the windsock, then turned so that the plane was into wind, which was very light at about five knots. I looked all around. There was one other aircraft which had just landed but no others in the circuit as far as I could see. I did not have to use the radio to get clearance for taxi or take-off as there was no air traffic control. I lowered the flap to the take-off position and went through the pre takeoff checks making sure the elevator trim wheel was in the neutral position. I opened the throttle steadily until it was fully forward making sure the pitch and mixture controls were fully forward as well. The aircraft started to accelerate and I checked that the engine was at full power with the engine speed at 2,500 rpm. The airspeed indicator needle came off its stops and the speed slowly increased to 50 knots while I kept the aircraft straight by moving the rudders with my feet as it accelerated, bumping across the grass. At 55 knots I pulled the control column back and we were in the air, me and my Royal Air Force Percival Prentice trainer! There was no turning back. I would have to complete a circuit of the field and land on my own, for better or for worse.

I throttled the engine slightly to 2,400 rpm, retracted the flaps and climbed away at 70 knots. As the aircraft reached 500 feet I started to turn left continuing to climb to 1,000ft above the ground. When level I let the speed increase to 90 knots, throttled back and flew the aircraft down wind parallel to the direction in which I had taken off. After five or six minutes, when I judged I would be able to land near the start of my take-off run, I turned the aircraft back to the field and started my descent. I lowered the flap to the take-off position, throttled back a little, and reduced my speed to 65 knots. As I straightened the aircraft and lined up for landing I selected full flap. It was not too difficult to adjust the engine power to keep the speed at 65 knots and descend steadily to cross the airfield a few feet above the boundary hedge. As I approached the ground I closed the throttles and gently pulled the control column back and waited. The aircraft subsided on to the grass very gently, tail well down, and I cautiously applied the brakes to slow the aircraft, not that it needed much braking. I had finally done it. Flown the aircraft by myself.

Almost automatically on a wave of euphoria I raised the flaps and then taxied back towards Flt Lt Briggs who had been watching my circuit. I stopped the aircraft, throttled right back and Briggs climbed up the wing with the slipstream in his face. He slid his hood back, clambered in, strapped on his parachute and then strapped himself in to the aircraft. He connected up his helmet and said laconically: ‘Good, let’s go back to Ternhill.’ It was all over and I felt an enormous sense of relief. I had gone solo and I was quite sure that nothing else could ever match that moment. But as things turned out I was wrong.

1951, exactly a year later.

I got out of the train at Hanover, northern Germany and looked for an RAF transport to take me to Wunstorf, an ex-Luftwaffe base where there were three RAF squadrons of the 2nd Tactical Air Force, Nos 4, 11 and 26. I was being posted to 11 Squadron which, like the other two squadrons, was equipped with single-seat Vampire 5 fighter/bombers. It was only two weeks since I had left Ternhill and here I was in Germany. I had been expecting to have to spend the best part of a year in England being taught how to fly my first operational aircraft at an operational conversion unit, perhaps flying as second pilot on a piston-engined Coastal Command Shackleton somewhere in the UK. Instead I had been selected to join a front-line squadron to be taught how to fly a jet aircraft by the squadron itself. It was unheard of, something entirely new for the RAF and I was delighted to be a guinea pig.

It occurred to me as I looked out at the German countryside how my flying career had changed. From being about the worst pilot on my course flying the Prentice I was probably the best pilot on the Harvard at Ternhill and was the first to go solo on my course. Only two or three of us had been chosen to go direct to be trained on the squadron and I was fairly sure I wouldn’t have been on the list unless my flying assessment had been better than most.

Of course, there was an immediate training problem for the squadron since there was no way that I was going to be allowed to step straight into a Vampire. I’d read the rudimentary pilots notes but this clearly wasn’t going to be good enough. Not surprisingly the problem had been anticipated and I was going to be given jet flight experience in a two-seat Meteor trainer which in fact was twin engined and larger than a Vampire but without any armament. However, before we went out to fly one of the squadron pilots, Flying Officer Farley, who was also a flying instructor, took me in to a small room next to the crew room and started telling me all about mach number, the speed of sound and how it affected the way the aircraft flew. He also started telling me about jet engines, aircraft pressurisation and the use of oxygen. It was all new to me and I loved every minute of it. After the briefing we went up in the Meteor, which was a fantastic experience. After lunch we had another flight and he told me to make sure I knew everything in the Vampire pilots notes.

Three days later I flew with Flying Officer Greenfield but this time I knew it wasn’t a scrub check because the Meteor was such a delight compared with the Prentice and the Harvard aircraft I had flown and I revelled in flying it; there was no propeller to get in the way, there was a nosewheel instead of a tail wheel and for the first time I could see the whole world, or that’s the way it felt. After we landed Greenfield checked my knowledge on the Vampire and then entered my name to fly it in the authorisation book which I then had to sign. I had to pinch myself as I realised I was going to be allowed to fly a jet aircraft by myself having only just left Ternhill!

It was cold in the continental winter and I was glad I was wearing a flying helmet, a thick flying suit and boots. I got to the aircraft and put my parachute in the pilot’s seat. I walked around the aircraft to make sure the control and undercarriage locks had been removed, the cover of the pitot tube measuring airspeed had been taken off and the plug in the static plate had been taken out. The mechanic had plugged in a large battery pack. The de Havilland Vampire 5 was only very small but I kept reminding myself that it carried four deadly Aden machine guns.

I didn’t need a ladder to get into the cockpit as it was so close to the ground. The cockpit seemed tiny, even smaller than the propeller aircraft I had been flying; I’m sure the Gieves tailor who had measured me for my uniform would have said very neat, Sir. I wound the bubble canopy shut, made certain the handle was securely locked so it wouldn’t come open in flight, switched on the ground power and then checked that the undercarriage green lights were on and the fire warning light was off. I got the check list out and worked round from left to right. It wasn’t easy as the cockpit was so cramped and I had to look down all the time. When it was done I looked at the ground engineer and indicated I was ready to start the engine. He gave me the thumbs up and I pressed the starter button. There was a starting noise turning into a whine, the noise getting shriller and shriller. Suddenly there was a rumble and I knew the Goblin jet engine was alight. The needle of the jet pipe temperature gauge started to move rapidly to the right and then suddenly stabilised at 400°C. The engine gauge steadied at 3,200 rpm and I switched on the engine generator, checked its warning light was out and then signalled to the mechanic to remove the battery pack.

The tower gave me permission to taxi and I waved for the chocks to be taken away from the wheels. The mechanic came forward and pulled them clear with their ropes. He gave me the thumbs up and I gently opened the throttle. The engine whine increased but it seemed to take a long time before the aircraft started to move, unlike the Prentice which, with its propeller, responded immediately to any throttle movement. It felt very strange rolling down the taxiway so close to the ground, almost like a dodgem car in a fairground. At the beginning of the runway I waited for a formation of two other Vampires, like mine, to land and then I taxied on to the runway, doing my final take-off checks and lined the aircraft up. Eagle 51 you are cleared for take-off. I opened the throttle fully, the engine noise became a scream and I could feel the aircraft accelerating quickly as the Goblin reached full power. The jet pipe temperature gauge stabilised at 720° with the rpm at 10,200 and at 60 knots I pulled the stick back to get the nosewheel in the air. In a moment we were at 105 knots and I pulled the stick back further and the aircraft leapt into the air. I selected the undercarriage up followed by the flap the moment the aircraft left the ground and pulled the stick back hard to climb quickly and prevent exceeding the maximum speed for the flaps and undercarriage. Then as the aircraft accelerated to 250 knots for the climb I switched on the cockpit pressurisation.

I looked out of the bubble canopy with its magnificent view and saw Wunstorf rapidly disappearing below me as the aircraft headed upwards. The scattered low clouds disappeared as if by magic below and the aircraft climbed to 30,000ft. I dived until the aircraft shook and buffeted at .78M, mach number, its maximum permitted speed. The ailerons made the control column rock slightly from side to side and I had to push and dive quite steeply to reach the maximum speed. Then I closed the throttle and selected the airbrakes which caused some mild buffet and slowed the aircraft down a little.

At 10,000 feet I tried some rolls which were easy compared with both the Prentice and the Harvard because the ailerons were very effective and the rate of roll seemed so fast. I followed the rolls with two loops and again everything seemed straightforward though the g forces in the loops were much higher than the piston-engined aircraft I had just been trained on. I started the loops at 320 knots and had plenty of speed at the top of the loop compared with the Prentice which would run out of airspeed if the loop was started too slowly. The aircraft was a delight to handle and responded immediately to any movements of the stick. Forty five minutes passed like magic and with the fuel gauge showing only about fifty gallons I returned to Wunstorf to do some landings. My first touchdown was firm as, I learnt later, were most landings with the Vampire and then I opened the throttle again for another take-off. I did two more landings and returned to the ramp. I had gone solo in my first jet and I was euphoric, quite sure that nothing else could ever match that moment. But as things turned out I was wrong again.

It was 1958, seven years later.

Vulcan Two, you are cleared for take-off.

The Farnborough air traffic controller gave us permission to go. With my right hand I moved the four small throttle levers located on the central console between the two seats fully forward while pushing hard with my toes on the brake pedals to prevent the aircraft moving. The whole aircraft shuddered and slid slightly as the engines came up to full power. We could hear the incredible noise, even inside the cockpit.

This was the moment I had dreamed of when I had decided some years earlier, as a national service education officer, to stay in the Royal Air Force and learn to fly. I looked out to the left at the serried white rows of chalets, one above the other and at the flags by the exhibition halls streaming in the breeze. Dickie Proudlove, my co-pilot, and I could see the thousands of spectators standing by the rails looking at us in the grey delta bomber. The professional photographers seemed very close in front of the barriers. The small aircraft which had just taken part in the Society of British Aerospace Constructors show ahead of us taxied clear of the runway and Jimmy Harrison, my boss, took off in the first production Vulcan Mk 2. Even now, as we were cleared to start our display, it was difficult to believe that my unlikely plans had actually come to fruition.

Looking forward down the runway, the tarmac stretched clear before us towards the trees far in the distance and Laffans Plain. I released the pressure on the toe brakes and the aircraft leapt forward, like a Formula One racing car in pole position at the start of a grand prix when all the red lights go out. The airspeed indicator needle started to move forward at lightning speed as Dickie called out the numbers. I moved the rudders to keep the aircraft in the middle of the runway as it raced past the chalets with unbelievable acceleration.

Rotate

Dickie called out as the airspeed reached 120 knots and I pulled the control column back with my left hand to get the aircraft into the air. As we left the ground I had to push the column forward immediately, with the speed building up very rapidly, in order to prevent the aircraft climbing. My right thumb pushed the button on the instrument panel to select the landing gear to retract. The push force on the control column was now getting very high. I moved my left thumb and pressed the electric trim knob on the top of the column forward continuously to trim the aircraft nose down and try to keep the stick force under control. I did not want the aircraft to climb at all, once the landing gear was up, so that the speed would build up as quickly as possible as we raced along the top of the runway.

Pull up

Dickie shouted as we reached 270 knots, 308 mph, just before the end of the runway. I released my push force on the control column and pulled the stick backwards. The aircraft reared up in the air and started to rotate and climb rapidly upwards, pressing us into our seats.

Three g

Dickie echoed the normal acceleration that was driving us down onto our seats and making the aircraft point at the sky. I released my pull force slightly and tried to maintain the three g as the aircraft, pointing skywards, rotated through the vertical, since three g was the maximum acceleration permitted for the aircraft structure without it starting to break up.

The speed was dropping rapidly now and I had to adjust the pull force to maintain three g but then, as the speed dropped, I slowly relaxed the pull force so the normal acceleration reduced, preventing the aircraft from stalling. I looked out of the tiny front windscreen but there was nothing to see except sky. I looked anxiously at the top of the screen for the horizon to appear, even though it was going to be upside down. At last it came into view. The aircraft was completely on its back, 3,000ft above the onlookers at Farnborough. I allowed the Vulcan to continue to rotate for a second or two more before moving the control column all the way to the left to apply full aileron. The delta-shaped plane, now flying just above the stalling speed, tried to yaw to the right and I had to apply full left rudder to prevent sideslip building up and to enable the aircraft to rotate.

The Vulcan seemed to roll interminably slowly, as the horizon rotated from the top of the screen to the bottom but, finally, after a few seconds, it was the right way up with the runway below. I pushed the control column forward and dived as steeply as I dared at the ground, slamming the throttles closed with my right hand. It was eerily silent except for the wind noise as the aircraft accelerated. The tents below rushed up to meet us and then, at 270kts once more, a few hundred feet above the ground, I rotated the aircraft upwards again, moving the throttles to apply full power, to do another ‘roll off the top’. I rolled out back to level flight as we finished the second roll off the top, but there was no time to relax. I searched for the runway and dived down, this time positioning the aircraft downwind for landing. The challenge now was to get my Vulcan on the ground as quickly as possible and not to interfere with Jimmy’s first run and barrel roll in front of the crowd.

We lost height very rapidly, throttles closed all the way, doing a tight left hand turn on to finals. People often told me not fly the Vulcan like a fighter but I always explained that there was nothing else I could do. Why else did it have a fighter type control column? I let the speed of the Vulcan fall so that we were almost stalled as we approached the first few yards of tarmac. I pulled the two outboard throttle levers fully back and lifted them up over the closed gates so that the engines stopped as I made the final flare for landing. We touched down with the nose way up in the air like a praying mantis. The wheels rubbed gently on the ground and the aircraft slowed rapidly with the enormous aerodynamic drag. I gradually allowed the nosewheel to come down as the first runway turn off appeared and then engaged the nosewheel steering by pressing the button below the control column. I pushed the right rudder pedal and steered the aircraft off the runway, using the two remaining engines. We checked our watches. The whole flight had taken three minutes and nineteen seconds, five seconds better than our rehearsal. It was all over. My first chance to demonstrate in front of the crowd. I was elated, but in reality the flight meant a lot more than that. My years of training had come to fruition. The work had been rewarded. I had flown aerobatics in the huge Vulcan bomber at the Farnborough Air Show and I was certain that nothing else could ever match that moment. I was wrong.

CHAPTER 1

Learning to Fly

Some people in life seem born to fly. They yearn, almost it seems from when they are born, to pilot an aircraft. It is their driving ambition and they are emotionally involved with everything connected with aviation. I was not one of those people. In my formative years at school, during the 1939/45 Second World War, the thought of flying an airplane never occurred to me. I watched with horror as some of the United States bombers returned damaged from Germany, emitting smoke, and landing on the many airfields surrounding my school at Oundle in Northamptonshire; the airfields are now deserted but some names I shall never forget – Polebrook, Molesworth, and Deenethorpe. I still remember seeing the planes that did not make it, crashing in the countryside nearby, not really appreciating the terrible human tragedies that were occurring.

It is strange that though I eventually spent my whole working life in the aerospace industry, I still was not the slightest bit interested in aviation even when I left school for college. My involvement with flying was purely an accident and I have often wondered what finally motivated me to get involved with aeroplanes. It might have been significant that every summer in the 1930s we spent our holidays at Westcliff-on-Sea in Essex. My mother got rid of me for the week by paying the local boatman, who made his living taking holiday-makers sailing off the beach, the then not insignificant sum of two shillings and sixpence to take me on as his helper. I learnt about sheets, booms, anchors, tides and many other skills. More importantly, I learnt how to trim sails into the wind and how to steer a sailing boat. Sailing was my first experience of aerodynamics and the effect of wind and tide. However, I did not sail again until I was at college.

My prowess in matters educational, before I reached my ’teens, was abysmal. My local day school was evacuated to Devon twice, the first time in 1938 to a guest house in Dawlish when another world war seemed inevitable. But then the Prime Minister came back from Germany with a ‘piece of paper’ saying ‘peace in our time’ and so we all returned home. We went back to Devon again in 1939 to Luscombe Manor when the war actually started. I can still remember listening to Neville Chamberlain’s speeches both in ’38 and again in ’39 when he announced the invasion of Czechoslovakia and the declaration of war. To us at school the threat of war or even war itself meant very little. My parents tried very hard to find a school which would teach me properly and improve my education and in 1940 they sent me to an expensive private school, Downsend School in Leatherhead in Surrey. Here the teachers made serious efforts to educate us because, I realised some years later, it was vital to get good results for entrance to the so called public schools, actually privately funded, in order to ensure that parents were willing to pay to send their children to the school. No sooner was I settled in Downsend than we were again evacuated, this time to Hurstpierpoint public school in Sussex, further from London but actually closer to the war and the enemy aircraft.

I loved being at Hurstpierpoint, set in the Sussex countryside, with lots of Victorian and Edwardian buildings housing the boys and the classrooms. There, at the age of eleven, I unexpectedly developed an obsessive interest in mathematics and this fixed streak in my character has never left me, though the obsession drifted from mathematics into computing. Thanks to Mr Straker, the maths master at Downsend, I managed to get a major scholarship to Oundle. He introduced me to Lancelot Hogben’s Mathematics for the Million and I was enthralled. His book taught me differential calculus at an early age and, like learning any language, the earlier one starts the easier it is to assimilate. Hogben followed his first book with Science for the Citizen and again he opened my eyes to concepts that I had never imagined. To this day they are still my favourite reference books, together with the three text books my maths master, G W Brewster, wrote at Oundle.

I remember my excitement as my mother bought all the clothes required by Oundle, listed in detail by the school’s administration. Every article of clothing had to have a tag sewn on to it bearing my name and the ‘house’ where I would be accommodated whilst in the school. The war was causing shortages so things were not all that easy to obtain. The great day finally came; all the parents arrived at Euston with their offspring and off we went in a special train direct to the station at Oundle. I was in New House, one of eleven houses at the time and, of course, it was the oldest house in the school.

Oundle School was wonderful for me. Mr Brewster taught me for the four years I spent there and I enjoyed every minute of his lessons, much to the amazement of many of my school fellows. I was very fortunate in that I was able to assimilate mathematics with incredible ease but, after two years, I decided to concentrate on science as being a more practical discipline. I developed an interest in electronics which I found very demanding theoretically but which, I realise now, was very time wasting practically and, rather like a disease, it started to blunt my academic skills. Luckily the blunting proceeded slowly and, as the war ended in 1945, I went up to Trinity College, Cambridge with a major entrance scholarship to read Physics with my anticipated future quite clear; to get a good degree and do research as befitted a scholar. But somehow things did not work out as planned and I was called up into the Royal Air Force for two years national service.

In October 1948 I went to Padgate near Liverpool, as many thousands of recruits before me had done, to do ‘square bashing’ and to learn how to be the RAF equivalent of an army private. Of course, for me and the others who were with me, it was a special situation because we had all been pre-selected to become officers in the education branch. As we finished at Padgate we went on to the Officer Cadet Training Unit at Spitalgate in Lincolnshire to be trained as officers. It was an interesting course and twelve weeks later we emerged as pilot officers ready to be trained as teachers. We went on to Wellesbourne Mountford, where the RAF School of Education was based. The students on our course came from many disciplines but we all had to learn that just having a degree was not an immediate passport to becoming effective teachers. After twelve weeks we were judged ready to be let loose on our students; our training as teachers was, of course, rudimentary, but we managed because we had a real depth of knowledge in our various subjects and our students were eager to learn.

As the course came to a close our chief instructor discussed with us the various postings that needed to be filled. I cannot remember all the choices for the few science graduates on our course but I was attracted to a post at Wittering since it was only 100 miles north of London and, therefore, convenient for my social activities. The job at Wittering was to teach mathematics and physics to students who were to become pilots and navigators but, at the time, this fact made no special impact on me. I was duly posted to No 1 Initial Training School to become an instructor, my first real job and so, in this casual way, my life and career was settled!

Wittering appealed to me. It was one of the RAF stations built between the two world wars with standard buildings, hangars and an officers mess where all the unmarried officers lived. It was near my old school, near Cambridge and not too far from London. The place was on the Great North Road and, by modern standards, the traffic was very light. I was lucky enough to have an old second-hand car so I was able to tour the area, though petrol rationing was still in force after the war and I could not get far.

The airfield had been used during the war but there were no runways as such; however there was a grass strip nearly two miles long which was a magical place in many ways. I loved getting up early in the morning when I was going to London, harvesting the mushrooms from places where, twelve hours before as night fell, there was absolutely no sign of any; their speed of growth never ceased to amaze me. Unfortunately, due to the drive of technology, it was not many years later that an enormous 10,000ft runway