19

Sabres!

At Wildenrath we were allocated rooms in the Officers transit accommodation which was little used and felt damp. Regardless, we were ready for our first day's instruction on the Monday morning. To my surprise, the course CO was Sqn.Ldr. Daniels, the very man I had been with at Ehrwald during the previous fortnight. We had a few quiet words about Ehrwald, otherwise it was down to business.
We had, previously, been able to read 'Sabre Pilot's Notes', back at Jever, but there is nothing like reading them when actually sitting in the cockpit of an aircraft. Vampires, size for size, were like kiddie-cars when compared with the huge bulk of a Sabre. I could stand by, and look down into, the cockpit of a Vampire whereas I had to stretch up and could only just get my fingertips on to the coaming of a Sabre cockpit - and I was the tallest pilot on the Squadron. The top of the tail fin was about 15 feet above the ground. To us, it was a massive aircraft. The cockpit was roomy too; each side of a Vampire's cockpit touched my arms when I was flying, but there was space in the Sabre to turn right round in it with straps undone. We even joked that the 'Yanks' had provided space for a Coke bottle, and that British designers put the pilot in as an afterthought, but the Americans built the aircraft round the pilot. On the other hand, in a Vampire there were a mere couple of dozen controls and switches of interest to a pilot in flight. A Sabre had about 180. You could waggle the stick in a dead Vampire, yet in a dead Sabre the stick was rigid because the controls were hydraulically actuated and wouldn't move without power. Clearly there was a lot of learning to be done in less than two weeks.
The first week of the course was devoted almost entirely to ground school work. This consisted of lectures and physical familiarisation with the aircraft. New Vital Actions had to be learned: emergency procedures, speeds for take-off, climb, stall, and landing, had to become second nature and reeled off verbally, and instantly, when asked. We spent much time sitting in cockpits learning the new layout, for this was entirely different to the British 'standard' layout with the six flying instruments panel always grouped in the same way. In a Sabre they were 'all over the place' and instrument flying was going to be difficult initially until the eye was trained to locate the relevant instruments as second nature. Fuel was measured in pounds, not gallons, and engine handling was going to be different. The Sabre had the Allison J47GE13 axial flow engine as opposed to the centrifugal compressor fan of the Vampire's De Havilland Goblin 2 engine.
Sitting in a cockpit in a hangar had its uses. Most of us learned quickly to be able to touch (blindfold) all the major instruments and to recite, at the same time, the routine and emergency procedures necessary for any pilot to know. As the learning progressed we were able to sit in the cockpit of an aircraft 'powered up' from a Struver diesel-engined starting generator (Vampires used Trolley Accs). With the power on, the electric and hydraulic systems became 'live', relevant warning lights and instruments began to mean something, and real-time cockpit checks could be practised. Our Course Instructors checked us out and tested us for competence in all the aspects possible while still on the ground, from simple but different things like strapping-in, to a full range of emergency procedures.
With the week's ground school formally over, we spent a nervous weekend, all of us with our Pilot's Notes in our rooms to continue our familiarisation. In the coming week we were to actually fly the brutes. There were no two-seater Sabres so each first flight had to be a solo affair.
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