AN AVIATOR’S LOG BOOK

Taranaki Daily News, 17 September 1934, Page 7

AN AVIATOR’S LOG BOOK

TRAINING FOR WAR PILOTS

MR. lAN KEITH’S REMINISCENCES.

BLIMP THAT ZOOMED BOTH ENDS.

GILDED SPHERES OVER LONDON.

In an article which appeared in the Daily News last Monday an account was given, on material supplied by Flying Officer lan Keith, of the training received by New Zealand R.A.F. recruits in the early war years. Having learned the rudiments of flying in machines which would to-day seem perilously fragile and primitive in design, the drafts of army-airmen-to-be were dispatched overseas from New Zealand with other troops with fewer than eight hours dual and solo flying.

However haphazard and sketchy the initial instruction in aviation may have been, the final preparation of men for active service was thorough and exhaustive. By 1918 the importance of aircraft as weapons of modern warfare had been demonstrated. Supremacy in the air would turn the then wavering balance of victory and defeat. Both Allies and Central Powers had for their air forces the choice of the finest types of young men. Nothing in their training was left to chance. The New Zealand draft with which Mr. Keith left travelled by the troopship Maunganui via the Panama Canal and New York. Of the voyage Mr. Keith re marked, “It was certainly not uneventful. The only trouble was no one seemed to know what the status of a flying recruit from the Dominions was in those days. Some of us were treated well. Others were not. It was still a moot point whether we were officers or men —or any • thing.” SUBMARINES IN ATLANTIC. When the Maunganui crossed early in 1918 a German submarine had been operating with disastrous effect on Allied shipping on the Atlantic side of the Canal. The signs of that most terrible form of warfare were everywhere. Hardly an hour passed without the ship’s company sighting wreckage and empty lifeboats cast loose from torpedoed ships on the way from Colon to Newport News. At night the tension was extreme. All lights were muffled. Early on one memorable morning it was believed that the ship’s officers sighted an enemy submarine lying on the surface recharging her batteries, and the Maunganui fled at full speed, zig-zagging frantically in the darkness. Off the Atlantic coast the great Curtis flying boats, then -the last work in design for that type of machine, were seen patrolling coast waters as far as 90 miles from land. They were fitted with the new Liberty motors, in the design of which the best brains among American engineers had But even then the peculiar requirements of aircraft engines had not been accurately determined in America and the expensive and painstaking creation did not always come up to expectations. Overseas the signs of aviation’s forced growth were omnipresent. The skies were filled with the drone of motors. At New York the embryo aviators from “down under” were surprised to see an American battleship of the line towing a dirigible by a cable attached to her stern works. J By now almost adequate steps had been taken to counter the submarine menace in the North Atlantic. Ships travelled in heavily escorted convoys and the New Zealand troopship crossed without interference, although a tramp, skirting the tail of the officially constituted group, was snapped up by a prowling German raider. After docking at Liverpool the air force recruits dispatched to Lon • don for drafting to their units. DOOMED TO DISAPPOINTMENT. Those who had had imagined that their training would be training in the air and that they would be fit for active service in a few weeks were doomed to disappointment. Numbers had volunteered for air service who had not, by natural disability, the faintest chance of ever climbing into a cockpit. But the method of selection was painstaking and what training was given the raw material was calculated to stand them in good stead in whatever branch of the forces they were eventually used. At St. Leonards-on-Sea and Hastings, with poor food and long hours, the men completed a prolonged, exhausting course of infantry drill and did not even see an aeroplane at close quarters. The only really bright spot in the history of aviation at that time recalled by Mr. Keith was the incident of the “blimp” that zoomed at both ends! Possibly realising the exasperating position of the would-be aviators in the neighbourhood the crew of the dirigible provided entertainment for a number of spectators by repeatedly “jumping” the pier with the clumsy craft in a series of zooms. All went well until both fore and aft sections took the lift simultaneously and the gas-bag folded neatly in the middle, gently depositing the entertainers in the sea a considerable distance out, whence they were rescued by a brace of tarry fishermen. The spectators from the “aero" school were no longer entertained and did not pay the showmen the compliment of inquiring after their health. After drill tests those who had been selected from the miscellany at Hastings went on to the famous Bristol aeronautical school, where the really difficult part of their training began—instruction in every branch of aircraft technique, the design of engines, rigging, maintenance, map-reading, photography, wireless, aerial manoeuvres. The men who passed the 25 stiff examinations required for graduation from the Bristol school were theoretically fit for their work. The last of the undesirable types were eliminated. LONG SOUGHT COMMISSION. Thence the graduates went to a gunnery school at Uxbridge, where they were instructed in the science of aerial marksmanship and bombing. Success in the tests brought the long sought commission and, as post graduate instruction, Mr. Keith was sent to Biggin Hill wireless testing park. Selection and instruction had been spread over many months. Shortly afterwards the armistice brought hostilities to an end. The thorough training policy adopted by the British authorities had made British airmen masters of the air in the last year of the war. Of all flights made in those days Mr. Keith recalls best that which he made in a huge Handley Page bombing machine of which the wingspread was consider-? ably greater than that of Sir Charles Kingsford Smith’s plane, the Southern Cross. The flight was made over London for wireless test purposes on a bitterly cold morning at a height of more than 10,600 feet. A heavy bank of fog hung over the city, but through it appeared the globes of dozens of balloons gilded in the brilliant sunshine. Later the dome of St. Paul’s could be clearly discerned above the blanket of fog.

Despite the excellence of the view, the pilots were frozen and unhappy in the exposed cockpits. Still no word for return came from the testing mechanics cut off by a conglomeration of gear and bomb racks in the cabin of the machine.

After an hour and a half the pilots could stand the Arctic atmosphere no longer and managed to get a note back to the more fortunate ones in the cabin asking when the test would be finished. The reply was that they had been finished for some time, but wasn’t it a beautiful morning? They had been enjoying the . view! The half-frozen aviators had their revenge by bringing the machine down in a series of steep dives and zooms. Since the fuselage length was between 80 and 90 feet the motion in the cabin wak terrific. The joy riding mechanics were agonisingly airsick and too weak when they reached the ground to make any effective reply.