
An entirely different event occured during the time that some extension work
was being done to the apron (hard-standing) outside the Squadron hangar. A trench
had been cut a short distance away outside the hangar threshold and parallel to it.
The Erks had the unenviable task of pushing all aircraft over this trench by using
three wide, suitably placed planks. It so happened, one day, when I was the last to
land and taxi in, rather than, as per orders, stopping the aircraft and climbing out on
the outer hard-standing I decided to help the lads. With plenty of forward speed and
more than adequate brake pressure, I stopped the engine and carried on rolling
forward, lining myself up with the planks. With still enough speed in hand, and
perfectly lined up, I let my aircraft roll across the planks, then stopped immediately
afterwards, much to everyone's satisfaction. With my cockpit canopy back I could
hear a cheer from the lads as I had saved them work, and speeded things up so they
could get away for an earlier tea than expected. I was immediately popular, but for
one thing. Hearing the cheer from his office, the
Boss looked out of his window and
saw what had happened. I was sent for and received a stern, yet mild, ticking off for
my troubles. The consequences of my actions, had anything gone wrong, were well
and truly made clear.

Another incident, of which I am ashamed, was the time when I did not do my pre-flight checks thoroughly enough. I taxied and took off with my pitot head cover
still on. Nobody noticed that I had been careless. I found myself climbing away at
zero airspeed! It took me a moment to check round the cockpit and found that both
my
VSI and altimeter appeared to be behaving strangely. Everything else was OK.
Fortunately I was in clear air. It was only when I looked aft that I noticed the
warning streamer still flying from the pitot head cover. By this time in my flying
career I knew well how an aircraft felt at different speeds so, with no-one about to
see what I was doing I slowed and switched the pitot head heater on, hoping it
might burn its way through the cover. It didn't, and I didn't want to lose face. I had a
landing to make and certainly didn't want to call any emergency. Next, I climbed to
what I judged to be high enough for a
Mach run. The streamer tore off in the air
flow and, in so doing, must have put enough stress on the fabric cover to peel it back
away from the end of the head. Suddenly I had altitude, speed, and a working
VSI! I
nominally completed my sortie, landed, and taxied back to dispersal. The aircraft
marshal didn't notice anything amiss, but as I climbed out of the cockpit one of the
ground crew saw the pitot head cover ruckled back against the fin. He was alone so I
swore him to secrecy and walked aft and pocketed the offending item. Nothing was
said.

In preparation for the
Squadron's conversion to
Sabres we were issued with new flying kit. Our flying suits remained the same and we retained our Mae Wests,
gloves, and aircrew watches, but we handed in our leather helmets, goggles, and
oxygen masks. In their place we were issued new oxygen masks, soft inner helmets
incorporating slim headphones, and an outer hard helmet (bone dome) to which
was attached a dark visor for high altitude work. We were also issued with string
vests, soft collar-attached shirts, a '
G' suit, '
Sabre boots', and a very comfortable
anorak.

Before converting to
Sabres I had to cut a slit in the side seam of my uniform trousers so that the pipe from the '
G' suit (worn over our underclothes) could
protrude. String vests were initially popular but were soon not used because, to put
it in the vernacular of the time "They rubbed our tits off". The new helmets took
some getting used to, and later proved themselves essential. The new '
Sabre boots'
were like shoes, but with a boot extension above. This was said to make them
waterproof and, in an evasion situation, could be cut away to resemble shoes. They
replaced our then habit of wearing crêpe-soled shoes for flying. These were silent
when marching and became dangerously slippery on spilled aviation fuel.
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