Plane Tales

This Tale is a continuation of the interview of World War II pilot Flight Lieutenant Colin Bell DFC. At the age of 103, Colin recalls with perfect clarity what it was like to fly his De Havilland DH 98 Mosquito bomber into action as part of a Pathfinder Squadron. This Tale is the second part of the interview with Colin, the opportunity for which I have to thank my old friend Bob Judson. Having had a high ranking career in the RAF, Bob is now a consultant in the field of psychological, life and executive coaching and has a podcast, Leading 4 Life, which explores leadership in the stories of his own life and those told by his many illustrious guests, such as Colin. Bob was kind enough to allow me to share in this opportunity to interview Colin. If you want to take advantage of Bob’s services or listen to his free podcast then check out his website, here: https://www.leading4life.co.uk/ and his great podcast here: https://www.buzzsprout.com/2227500   The Nissen Hut was wartime emergency accommodation with a single coal burning heater. It was notoriously cold in the winter.   A No 608 Squadron Mosquito, B Baker March, takes off from RAF Downham Market   Bomber Command aircrew mission briefings   RAF Bombers attacking Berlin with Pathfinder flares below them   Most of Colin's bombing attacks were made as individual aircraft   Colin Bell talking to us during his interview   Hanover under attack from US forces during a daylight raid   Germani Anti Aircraft Artillery   A Mosquito formation   A period description of how OBOE functioned   The bar of the Crown Hotel Downham Market   A Focke Wolf FW190A similar to the type that employed the Wild Boar tactic   Jimmy Stewart who flew the B17 and B24 in operational missions and became a Brigadier General in the USAF   Colin stands beside one of the few remaining Mosquitos   Images shown under a Creative Commons Licence with thanks to Mark Vickers, Colin Bell, the RAF, Bert Verhoeff, the Australian War Memorial collection, the IWM, RAF Bomber Command, German Federal Archives, the USAF and the USAAF.

You are sitting in your airliner and the handsome, pretty or in a non-binary sense cute, elegant, lovely or in a non exclusive way charming, fine, interesting or personable flight attendant is standing in front of you to demonstrate the safety features of your aircraft. Hopefully if you enjoy the airline pilot guy enough to be listening to this you might have more than just a passing interest in what safety equipment there is onboard the average big, well equipped, airliner. Most airlines show the gender-specific pronouns that are typically used to refer to people in the way they identify   Door Arming controls   Girt Bar system that can be found on older style aircraft   Steph beside 'her' emergency exit   Slide use in theory and in practice   Disobeying safety instructions can lead to increased danger and possible loss of life   The early days of air travel   Jack Grant, an Australian, who invented the modern inflatable slide and won the Cumberland trophy     Aircraft safety equipment Halon (halo-genated hydrocarbons) are the world's best fire extinguishing chemicals but banned from manufacture   Safety cards through the history of aviation   Images are used under a Creative Commons licence with thanks to Virgin Atlantic Airways Ltd, Airbus, Oleg Bkhambri (Voltmetro), Boeing, Dr Steph, Marc-Antony Payne, Qantas Airways Ltd, John Collier, the Library of Congress, The Museum of Civil Aviation and SOC.

It is rare to have the opportunity to meet one of the brave young men who flew and fought in the Second World War so I was delighted to be able to talk to Flight Lieutenant Colin Bell DFC. At the age of 103, Colin recalls with perfect clarity what it was like to fly his De Havilland DH 98 Mosquito bomber into action as part of a Pathfinder Squadron.  This Tale is just the first part of the interview with Colin, the opportunity for which I have to thank my old friend Bob Judson.  Having had a high ranking career in the RAF, Bob is now a consultant in the field of psychological, life and executive coaching and has a podcast, Leading 4 Life, which explores leadership in the stories of his own life and those told by his many illustrious guests, such as Colin.  Bob was kind enough to allow me to share in this opportunity to interview Colin.  If you want to take advantage of Bob's services or listen to his free podcast then check out his website, here: https://www.leading4life.co.uk/ and his great podcast here: https://www.buzzsprout.com/2227500 Flt Lt Colin Bell DFC RAF   The lonely and dangerous job of a tail gunner   The PT17 Stearman   The Vultee BT-13A Valiant   The North American AT-6 Texan trainer AKA the Harvard.   The Bristol Blenheim   The de Havilland DH98 Mosquito   Colin with Bob (left) and myself (right) at the RAF Club in front of a painting of the Mosquito gifted to Colin and then presented to the RAF Club to display.   All images are shown with permission or under the Creative Commons licence with thanks to the RAF, the IWM, the USAAF, the National Museum of the USAF and Fotoafdrukken Koninklijke Luchtmacht.

I’m moving things on a bit in my logbook tales as it seems to be taking forever to get to the end so here’s the next one. I’d found a temporary job with the aircraft manufacturer British Aerospace flying Tornados and Hawks but now I was getting invitations to interview for jobs with a number of airlines. After months of drought, the flood gates seem to have opened and after wishing for just one offer I now had the opportunity to chose who I would go to. First, however, I needed to get through the interviews.   A Monarch A300   A Cathay Pacific Tristar   Virgin Megastores worldwide   RB's Manor House and the album cover for Tubular Bells   Richard Branson starts his own airline, Virgin Atlantic   Northwest Airlines put in a substantial order for Airbus A340s which were then flown by Virgin Atlantic   The BAe Hawk delivery team   One of the RMAS Hawk 108s   In formation and we're off to Malaysia   First stop Nice   Then on to Tanagra   Luxor   Dubai   Mumbai   A little 'hot start' in Bangkok       Images under creative commons licence with thanks to RHL images, Virgin, Jaco Ten, Northwest Airlines History Centre,

My logbook tales continue and after 5 months without an income the bucket of shekels I had to keep us afloat was starting to run dry... I could see glimpses of the bottom. Luckily the mortgage on our modest 2 up, 2 down, 250 year old, Scottish stone, terraced cottage at Leuchars wasn’t excessive and we had pared our living expenses down to the bone.  The sniff of some flying work for British Aerospace down at their factory at Warton, however, was very, very welcome.   RAF Warton during construction in 1938   The TSR2 and Panavia Tornado, both built at Warton   The Eurofighter Typhoon, soon to begin construction at Warton   The F3 Tornado in weather   The BAe Hawk   The Joint Tactical Information Display System   An F3 Tornado with a towed decoy   A Monarch Airways Airbus A300   Images shown under a Creative Commons licence with thanks to the RAF, the MOD, British Aerospace, British Aircraft Corporation, the USAF, the USN,  DoD and Monarch Airways.

Stories from my logbook continue with the last few weeks of my service career, which were a blur of form signing, return of equipment, formal dinners, informal parties, speeches and gifts, all accompanied by feelings of regret and excitement at to what my future held. I flew my last flight in an F3 leading a 3 ship out over the Scottish highlands and then, after everyone had landed, I beat up the squadron low and fast. I then planned to do a low, slow pass with a full burner pull-up into the vertical...   My full burner climb ended ignominiously when one reheat failed to light!   The mecca of all things truckie! Brize Norton.   The horrors of learning Morse Code!   The Campaign Against Aviation   The PA34 of British Aerospace which I flew at Prestwick   Finally, the proud holder of an ATPL   At last, the sniff of a job!   Images shown under creative commons licence with thanks to the MOD, the RAF, the CAA, Chris Lofting and BAe Systems.

Log book stories still abound but I’m now on the last volume of my small collection of RAF Form 414s.  Unbeknown to me back then, my time in the Air Force was fast coming to a close. When I was offered the job on the Tornado it was on the understanding that I would serve an additional year to amortise the cost of training and I was now in coming up to the completion of my term of service, 19 years or aged 38 which ever was longer.  If I signed on again it would be to age 55.  What's more, I needed to make up my mind as the RAF wanted 18 months of notice of my decision… would I stay or leave.   The F3 Tornado   He used a mixture of chicken entrails, throwing bones and gazing into his crystal balls to tell me my fortune   With their glory days behind them the young guns often treated Specialist Aircrew with scant respect and as their skills grew tired and their experience became tarnished with age they sometimes had little to offer but old war stories   The KC135 equipped for probe and drogue refuelling   RAF weather colour codes   My ATPL study books   An F3 equipped for QRA   The result of a midair collision     Images under Creative Commons licence with thanks to Ronnie Macdonald, Mike Freer, Trougnouf, US DOD, Mike McBey, Defence Imagery, the RAF, the MOD, the RAF Air Historic branch, the IWM, J Thomas, Midjourney and Adrian Pingstone.

In the words of it’s benefactor, “It has been described as the most exclusive Club in the world, but the entrance fee is something most men would not care to pay and the conditions of membership are arduous in the extreme.” Other clubs that sprang up during the World Wars are more a measure of the bravado, luck or good fortune of its members to make use of an aircraft’s emergency survival equipment but the club I will tell you about today is one that honoured the grim stubbornness of its members to overcome the pain and disfigurement of their injuries with stoical good (if rather dark) humour.  The Guinea Pig Club. The badge of the Guinea Pig Club   McIndoe   McIndoe and his patients   Images under Creative Commons licence with thanks to the RAF, East Grinstead museum, the Library of Congress, the RCAF, the IWM, the RAF Benevolent fund and the Queen Victoria hospital.

My logbook tales continue with my tour on Tremblers flying the F3 Tornado which had got off to a difficult start when our compliment of brand new aircraft were shipped off to other squadrons and, in return, we received the dregs of the RAF’s Tornado ADVs.  They certainly weren’t in the best of condition and I began to think I was fated when I was forced to divert following a generator failure and X-drive clutch failure on an air test but then I was looking forward to leading a detachment down to Coningsby to fight F-16s over the North Sea in the Air Combat Manoeuvring range for a week.   The British Aerospace North Sea ACMI served UK and European Air Forces   Tremblers formate on the RAF's new E3D Airborne Early Warning aircraft.   An F3 Tornado fires an AIM 9 Sidewinder missile   A piper plays at sunset   A 100 Squadron Hawk trainer   An F3 on approach   The K2 Victor Air to Air Refuelling tanker trailing all 3 hoses   Italian firemen hose down a Tornado canopy as it was too hot to close properly   The F3's single Mauser 27mm cannon   The golfer Tom Kite playing for the USA in the Dunhill Cup at St Andrews   The Royal and Ancient golf club at St Andrews beside the 1st tee and the 18th green. In front is the historic bridge built for herders over the Swilken Burn   Images under Creative Commons licence with thanks to the RAF, the R&A golf club, BAe, Mike Freer and Optograph.

It’s the summer of 1971 and Helen Reddy is singing about hiking down to the canyon store to buy a bottle wine and having such a good time.  I have no doubt that the nine prominent Salt Lake members of the Fishy Trout and Drinking Society returning from their deep sea fishing trip were feeling equally relaxed as they boarded their flight back home from Los Angeles. They were getting onto a Hughes Airwest DC-9, Flight 706, the forerunner of Capt Jeff’s beloved Mad Dog and Angry Puppy, belonging to a new regional airline purchased and renamed by Howard Hughes.  A little before them, a U.S. Marine Corps F-4B Phantom II, Bureau Number 151 458, departed Mountain Home Air Force Base in southwest Idaho, bound for Naval Air Station Fallon in Nevada.... and so the story starts! A Hughes Airwest DC-9   A U.S. Marine Corps F-4J Phantom II,   An ANA B-727   A JAF Japanese built F-86F Sabre   The B-727 and F86 tracks   The flight paths of the DC-9 and the Marine F-4   The F4's position as would be seen from the DC-9 cockpit   The DC-9's position from the F4 front cockpit   The eye's Fovea Centralis, the small area of the eye’s retina that can detect fine detail   Various TCAS displays     Images under a Creative Commons licence with thanks to Richard Silagi, the U.S. Navy National Museum of Naval Aviation, Michael Bernhard, Hunini, the NTSB, the USN and U.S. Defense Imagery.

The numeric version of three previous Tales covering the A to Z of Aviation.  Now we look at what numbers might mean to pilots?   Babylonian numeric text   The Japanese Zero fighter   A 'tongue in cheek' three engined Airbus   The twin hulled S55 flying boat   The North American F-82   Flying in Vic   The Piaggio Avanti EVO   The Old Course with RAF Leuchars in the background   The 10 ton Grand Slam bomb   The Seven Seas appeal of the DC-7C   The NASA B-52 "Balls 8"   Red 10   Images under Creative Commons licence with thanks to Osama Shukir Muhammed Amin, Kogo, Arpingstone, images from the Public Domain, the USAF, the RAF, Scott Cormie, Swissair and Delta, NASA,

As you may recall I was undergoing the training course for the Tornado F3 Air Defence Variant having completed four previous flying tours.  Now being a senior officer it made the job of working as a student again a little more bearable. The Old Pilot's logbook tales continue: An RAF Tornado Air Defence Variant   67° wing sweep   Ait to Air refuelling from the wing stations of an RAF VC10     We watched in horror as a motley collection of hanger queens and scruffy excuses for aeroplanes were delivered, bent and leaking, onto our aprons   Images under Creative Commons licence with thanks to the Royal Air Force, the MOD, Adrian Pingstone, Chris Lofting, J Thomas and Pràban na Linne Ltd.

Form 414, my RAF Logbook continues with me leaving Australia and the Hornet unhappily in my rear vision mirror as I was heading back to Blighty and a cold winter in Lincolnshire.  No 229 Operational Conversion Unit was the training unit that would give me my first taste of the Mighty Fin, the Swing Wing Super Jet, Mother Riley’s Cardboard Aeroplane otherwise known as the Air Defence Variant of the Tornado.   Not just a British aircraft, the Tornado was a project involving Germany and Italy as well.   A cutaway of the ADV Tornado   Just some of the multitude of limitations that Tornado pilots were required to memorise   The Tornado cockpit showing the wing sweep lever   The Mighty Fins of 43 and 111 Squadrons   The RB199 lacked sufficient thrust to allow the F3 to perform adequately at medium and high level but it did have a way of going backwards!   Images under Creative Commons licence with thanks to Surruno, Panavia, BAe, the RAF Museum, Mike Freer, Kevan Dickin, Chris Lofting and the RAF.

After I landed my aircraft I clambered out of the Hornet with the cold realisation that I might have flown my last sortie.  The spinning sensation had ceased and the sortie had gone beautifully, it was almost as if it had been a bad dream. A continuation of tales from the Old Pilot's logbook, RAF Form 414.   Was the sun about to set on my career?   The surgery span round and round   Promotion   Exercise K89   One of our opponents, the F16   Firing off live missiles like the AIM 7M Sparrow   Landing in a thunderstorm   A week on Song Song island acting as the Range Safety Officer   The RSO and his crew of Malay troops   My final flight and the boys renamed my aircraft Nick The Pom!

The year is 1957 and the space race is underway.  The major powers around the world, mainly the Soviet Union and the United States, are all striving to develop the technology that will allow them to reach outer space. The Soviet Union’s Academy of Sciences prime aim was to beat the Americans into Earth orbit and their top secret Sputnik project was about to reward all the efforts put in by a generation of scientists and engineers.  Sputnik 1 was soon to be placed atop an R-7 rocket and launched into a low orbit to become the first artificial Earth Satellite. But what if they hadn’t been the first?   Sputnik was fired into a low earth orbit on the 4th of October 1957 atop an R-7 rocket   Some months before the Sputnik launch the US were conducting nuclear tests   The Pascal I underground test caused a huge blue flame to erupt from the desert   Very high speed cameras were used to film the tests   The Horizons spacecraft   People wonder what became of the manhole cover and if anything was written on it?   Images under a Creative Commons licence with thanks to the Atomic Heritage Foundation, the Federal Government of the United States, NNSA and NASA.

Let me take you back to the dim distant past and Captain Jeff’s start with his legacy airline, ACME, I mean Delta, no ACME, Delta, Acta, Delme… oh whatever. His career started, not in the Captain’s seat but somewhere in the bowels of flight deck, sitting sideways with control panels in front of him instead of windows, that stretched to the ceiling!  Jeff was an engineer on his favourite three holer, the Boeing 727. The loss rate for this iconic airliner was, unhappily, quite high.  As of 2019 the aircraft had suffered 351 major incidents of which 119 resulted in a total loss.  The loss of life resulting from these bare numbers has risen to over four thousand souls.  One addition to those sad statistics came from Flight 600.  This is the story.   The Boeing 727 Flight Deck   The 727 on its maiden flight   The famous S bend   With tail mounted engines the wings could be fitted with full span lift devices   The B727 was the first first airliner to have an APU   The 727 had rear mounted stairs that were used by the nefarious DB Cooper   Which resulted in the fitting of a Cooper Vane   The mechanics of a microburst   Our Captain Jeff   Images under Creative Commons licence with thanks to Felix Goetting, Alex Beltyukov, Boeing, Tank67, Daderot, Juras14, Aero Icarus and NASA.

Two of the Saratoga’s F14 Tomcats were tasked to defend the carrier against a simulated attack during Exercise Display Determination 87. The leader of this small formation included a senior pilot and skipper of a newly arrived Junior Grade Lieutenant Timothy Dorsey. Many years later, Dorsey would be nominated for promotion to a one-star Rear Admiral, an appointment that required Congressional approval.  What stood in his way was an incident that occurred during that fateful day in 1987.   USS Saratoga   Timothy Dorsey   F14 Tomcats on deck   An F4 tanking   HUD film of the engagement   US Navy wings   Images under Creative Commons licence with thanks to the US Navy, US Air Force and the US Gov.

Part 2 of my interview with my mate Matt, steely eyed rocket man extraordinaire.   Goonhilly   Gyros and spacecraft in Telstar   The interior of Telstar   The magnitude of space junk around the world   The first live TV pictures transmitted via satellite   Images under Creative Commons licence with thanks to NASA, I Alison, Rama, NASA, US Gov, the BBC and Andrew Bulko

At first glance he looks to be a rather scruffy and unkempt elderly chap but behind the heavy glasses there are two twinkling eyes that reveal more than you can imagine.  Indeed, appearances can be deceiving as this retired RAF Technician could have well been a steely eyed missile man as he controlled military satellites around during the Cold War.  Meet my mate Matt! Sputnik     RAF Oakhanger   Inmarsat equipment on board a ship   Not every launch was a success   Telstar   Voyager   Images under Creative Commons licence with thanks to Nigel Chadwick, NRAO/AUI, Saber1983, the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum, Dale Griffin USGS, then Science Museum and NSAS.

In the tale, the Applegate Memorandum, I described the difficult birth that McDonnell Douglas had with the DC-10 when it’s safety record was permanently marred by a cargo door design flaw that plagued its introduction.  Sadly, this wasn’t the only issue that was going to discredit the aircraft in the eye of its passengers and they would ultimately condemn the world’s first 3 engined wide body as a dangerous failure.  Although the aircraft’s problems with its cargo doors could be firmly laid at the feet of McDonnell Douglas, the next disaster that the aircraft would have to cope with was not of the manufacture’s making, but of some operators who took it upon themselves to shorten engineering procedures.   Then incident aircraft N110AA   Cutaway showing the configuration of the wing mounted engines   The DC10 cockpit   The last moments of American Airlines Flight 191   The aftermath   Images under Creative Commons licence with thanks to the Dale Coleman, Jyra Sapphire, Jon Proctor, the Bureau of Aircraft Accident Archives, the NTSB, the US Gov and American Airlines.