| R.A.F. Jever |
FEB |
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The month's flying was seriously curtailed by ten days fog and in consequence two
Saturdays were used for flying.
Two exercises were held during the month by the Tactical Operations Centre. These
were exercise "Full Span" and Exercise "Amled", which took place in Denmark.
In addition there were two 'Full House' exercises and a practice Battle Call,
during which no aircraft flew from the Squadron because of fog.
The remainder of the month's flying was donated to cine in preparation for the Sylt
detachment.
Three more aircraft were collected from Aldergrove, and were flown over by
Flight Lieutenant J. Watson, M. Dale and R. Barcilon.
The monthly 'Round Robin' pair was flown by Flight Lieutenant D. Burton and
B. Wallis who landed at Twente for turnround.
Mike Ibbett, Al's son, wrote on 30Nov2016: "I see the records/photos refer to my father's forced belly landing due to (I seem to remember him telling us), a front wheel hydraulic failure and while not wishing to contest the memory of Merv Hodson, I would like to suggest that the plane you show was not the one flown/landed by my father at the time. When I saw it his photo, I thought there seemed more damage than I remembered, so I dug out an old photo I kept before my mother chucked the rest; these, three show the actual landing sequence as it slides down the runway and another stationary on the tarmac. This is the last one. The tail plane identity marking is a "Y", not a "U". As these were given to my dad as a memento(!), I would like to suggest this was the plane he crash-landed in and the other plane must have been involved in a similar incident which as Merv recounted, seemed to happen with monotonous regularity. It's interesting to reflect that one of the tower/flight crew-room members had the foresight to photograph it, so they must have heard from the tower that my dad was in difficulty. He did tell us that he had tried until nearly out of fuel (well he would have said that wouldn't have he!!) to get the undercarriage down but finally went for the ditch it approach as he always said he was always worried being long in the leg that he didn't fancy losing his kneecaps if he had been forced to eject." Swift WK290 Y arrived on 2 Sqn on Mon 11May59 and left on Tue 7Feb61 for 60 MU. Eventually it went to the Manston Fire School. (Thanks to Mike Ibbett) (Not in the F540)
During the final sortie of the last day of the month, Flight Lieutenant A.K. Ibbett
could only obtain nosewheel down on the selection of the undercarriage. Repeated
attempts would not budge the main wheels and so the nose wheel was selected up and a
wheels-up landing was made after jettisoning the Ventral tank. The landing was made
on the runway without incident and with little apparent damage to the aircraft.
One new pilot, Pilot Officer P. Holden-Rushworth was posted in to the Squadron and
was also converted to the Swift in the same month.
SIGNED (M.O. BERGH)
Flight Lieutenant,
Officer Commanding,
No. 2 Squadron
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