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Early 1955.

The headaches I mentioned earlier were still very troublesome to me but I managed to conceal them as much as possible in case I was taken off flying. They seemed to occur at weekends and usually a day or two after a Dining In Night. I found that, if I was suffering and due to fly, I could markedly reduce the symptoms by using the oxygen test rig in the crew room. This was available for us to use to check our oxygen masks. A few minutes, sometimes as few as two, on pure oxygen would do the trick. I discovered this as a result of being detailed to fly and, on feeling like death while sitting in the cockpit, as soon as I connected the oxygen supply I began to feel very much better. As a result, these violent headaches seldom affected me when in the air. Christmas, with no oxygen available because I had no excuse for going near a hangar, was a particularly bad time for me. Some thought I couldn't hold my drink, but this was far from the truth.
As soon as the New Year break was over, on the 3rd of January I was in the air again. The first two sorties were at high altitude, the first involved a snake climb, battle formation practice, and a snake QGH. The second was solo and included cloud flying and ended with another QGH. My third sortie of the day was at low level, beating up anything which took my fancy.
Winter weather was beginning to take its toll of flying hours. There was much thick cloud, and on the 4th, although I flew four times, all sorties were above cloud and at medium level practising ciné quarter attacks, with a tail chase and formation flying as extras.
Over the next two days I flew four times, three of them at low level. I flew two sorties on the first day to Meppen Range. Each of them was live target practice, air-to- ground firing, on the 10 feet square targets using only two of the Sabre's six halfinch Brownings on each sortie. We never fired rockets from Sabres. The first sortie on the next day was similar, but that in the afternoon was at high level. Very high level.
There had been some discussion as to how high a Sabre could fly. Briefed for an aerobatic sortie ending with a practice flame-out landing, my additional and unofficial part of the mission was an altitude trial. Steadily climbing from base I reached 45,000 feet without difficulty. Thereafter the rate of climb slowed markedly. With oxygen full on, and using pressure breathing, I slowly reached 50,000 feet. Then things became very difficult. With 100% power, flying speed almost equalled stalling speed and at that altitude some very delicate control movements were called for. Any twitch, even the slightest twitch, of the stick would cause a stall and the height lost would slowly have to be regained. I could not improve upon 53,750 feet, indicated. At that height I was flying on a knife edge to stay there. The sky looked dark with the most part of the light reflected up from cloud far below and, of course, that penetrating point source of light, the sun. The horizon was visibly curved, the first time I could genuinely say I'd seen the earth's curvature. The top half of my body was frying from the direct rays of unfiltered sunlight, whereas the lower half of me was freezing cold in the shadow. I momentarily lifted my tinted visor and the blinding light was almost painful to the eyes. I was only at that height for maybe a minute. Descending steeply, I aerobatted my way to lower levels to comply with my briefing, and commenced a simulated flame-out descent from 35,000 feet. It didn't work out properly as a useful exercise because, with the engine still on, although throttled back, it was producing thrust and therefore reduced the dead-engine angle
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