Happy 22nd Birthday Grandad - War Still Not Over - October 1942

Pilot's Flying Log Book Oct. 1942

My Grandfather spent his 22nd birthday training at 3(P)AFU RAF South Carney, with two flights in a twin engined airplane called an Airspeed Oxford. His first flight, probably in the morning, was instructed by F/Lt Warren and involved the number 6 cross-country course. There and home the cross-country course took two and a half hours, and with the top speed of an Airspeed Oxford being 192mph, this was approximately a 400 mile round trip.

This course would have relied on the pilot navigating via landmarks, dead reckoning, experience of the area and some luck. All the time the instructor would be noting down your errors and trying to distract you and put you off your calculations. I think the British trainee pilots had an advantage here, compared to the Commonwealth and allied trainee pilots, because they were used to the different and sometimes rapidly changing weather conditions and the more complicated navigational requirements of "patchwork" England.

1942 RAF Map of South Cerney Area

Referring back to Ken Fentons War Blog. that I mentioned in my last blog., Sgt Stephen Johnson gives his recollections of cross-country training.

‘After some time of flying solo we were passed fit to carry a passenger and used to go up with another pupil pilot to do navigation and cross-country flights. I was extremely lucky in being paired off with Arthur Innes who was the only pupil on that course to be assessed as exceptional in the final classification. I was at the same time placed as above average’

‘There was at that time a great shortage of pilots and the courses were being pushed through just as hard as possible. We were sent off on cross-country flights without wireless on some pretty bad days, with visibility only a mile or two and a very low cloud base. On one occasion we never saw the ground at all for about 2 hours. Luckily when we returned on our dead reckoning course we found a gap in the cloud and pinpointed ourselves not very far from where we expected to be.’

‘Being lost while flying an aeroplane is a most unpleasant feeling. When alone you are apt to panic just at the time when it is most essential to remain calm and try to work out where you are. One of the difficulties is that you can’t stop and look at the map. If it takes you about 5 minutes trying to match what you see on the ground with your map you have to remember to look for somewhere else on the map because even at 120 mph you have gone some ten miles. Luckily the South of England was covered with aerodromes where you could land if truly lost. If you did land as a pupil you were not allowed to take off again until your instructor came and fetched you. This wasn’t at all popular. Before the war and again now it is comparatively easy to fly down low and read the names off a railway station but just to be difficult they covered them up during the war and also filled all likely looking large fields with poles which caused little if any disadvantage to the enemy but a great deal of inconvenience to fledgling pilots.’

The second flight my Grandfather took was again with F/Lt Warren and of 1 hour 10 minute duration, involving a couple of exercises and an Instrument Flight(IF).

This would involve pulling a hood over the trainee pilot to obscure any view out of the cockpit and then relying on the instruments to get you back to the airfield. This would be used in conjunction with more training on the link trainer, to simulate night flying with all lamps off.

Airspeed Oxford instrument panel.

Again, I rely on Sgt. Stephen Johnson to let us know what it was like to fly like this,

‘Instrument flying was an important part of our training. We had started on a link trainer at Perth (EFTS) and at Brize Norton we spent a considerable time in one. This was an excellent machine for simulating the conditions of instrument flying and quite invaluable: but it was not the same as actual flight, for there was no feeling of motion to combat. It is a funny thing, flying an aircraft by instruments when you cannot see out at all. You are faced with two alternatives; either you believe what your instruments tell you or you can believe what your own sense of balance and feeling of movement tell you. If you do the later you are killed almost at once. The reason for this is quite simple. If you blindfold someone and put him on a revolving music stool and start revolving him to the right he will say, ‘l am turning to the right’. If after a few moments you stop he will feel that he is turning to the left. In an aircraft if the pilot believes his feelings he will start turning to the right again to counteract it. I believed the instruments. Some people did not.’

I just hope that after this hazardous birthday, my Grandfather treated himself to a pint or two and a singalong with his pals in the local pub.

Yellow Belly - 3 (P) A.F.U., South Cerney - September 1942

Pilot's Flying Log Book September 1942

After two days leave, on 14th September 1942 my Grandfather, H.C. Kelsey, was posted to No. 3 (Pilot) Advanced Flying Unit (3(P)A.F.U.) at South Cerney, Gloucestershire. This posting would require the mastery of a tricky, twin-engined, aircraft called an Airspeed Oxford. And the new instructor putting him through his "sequence of instruction" paces, as noted in the "Duty" column, was F/Lt. Chance.

Airspeed Oxford with "trainer" paintwork

Furthermore, the posting would mean that he would no longer be an instructor, but instead return to training, in preparation for an operational posting. But did it also mean that my Grandparents would be split up after a year of fairly normal domestic bliss? I can't imagine that Flying Officers were given married quarters during the War. Perhaps my Grandmother had to go back to London and live with her parents? So a lot of changes all at once.

Flying in the Airspeed Oxford, or "Ox-box" as it was fondly known, with it's distinctive yellow-belly trainer markings, was eloquently recounted in his autobiography by F/Lt. Chance, or John Newton Chance as was his full name. He was a novelist who became a flying instructor during the War.

With novelists and pianists as well as poets and artists among the men rubbing shoulders with my Grandfather in the RAF, they must have had a huge influence on this young man's attitude to life. After all, my Grandfather was still only twenty one years old at this time. The War had forced together a very diverse and interesting group of people from all corners of the world and I think this is why that generation seems to have been "special".

So what was it like to fly an Airspeed Oxford? From what I have read, it seems that the first thought many trainee pilots had when first confronted with the large, complicated frightening monster called the Oxford was "I'll never manage THIS!" It certainly was a huge jump from a diminutive Tiger Moth, to the 53 feet 4 inches wingspan of the "Ox-box" with it's two large engines providing 750 horsepower, compared to the Tiger Moth's 130 horses. However, my Grandfather had the advantage of a great deal more flying time than the usual trainee, and knowing him , no doubt he would have been far more excited than frightened. He was a very self-confident man and would probably have started telling the flying instructor how to fly the plane within minutes of starting up!

These recruitment drawings make training in the Airspeed Oxford seem a cozy affair!

In terms of design, the Airspeed Oxford is the first aeroplane that my Grandfather flew which related more to the 2nd World War than to the 1st World War. It had a fully enclosed cockpit for a start, although apparently the glass panes often didn't fit well and a "bracing" breeze could be felt through the gaps! Secondly, the cockpit instruments were arranged well and easily seen, rather than just haphazardly bolted in as an afterthought. However, the "Ox-box" was regarded as tricky to fly well, and deliberately designed so. The theory being that if you could fly the Oxford, then you could fly pretty much any multi-engined aircraft, therefore making it ideal for training. It seems that it was on take-off that the Oxford could have a mind of it's own, as a wartime trainee at 3(P)A.F.U called Stephen Johnson recalls in a blog called Ken Fenton's War;

"After our Tiger Moths, the Oxford seemed a very powerful machine. You had to learn to control the swing on take-off by opening one engine or the other a little more. I had managed to go solo in an Oxford after about two and a half hours dual and felt quite confident about it. We were thrilled by our Oxford’s power when we first started flying them, as they went much faster than Tiger Moths and had all sorts of new gadgets, like retractable wheels which usually went up and down when you pressed a lever and flaps which did likewise."

He continues, 

"There was no electrical intercommunication in Oxfords or Tiger Moths in those days. We used a system akin to those tubes you find in the walls of very old houses. Down these you had to blow at first and this blew a whistle incorporated in a plug at the far end; this in turn summoned a minion from some distant basement. In an Oxford you had a flexible mouthpiece which you tucked into the front of your parachute harness; the other end was plugged into the pupil’s helmet. If you blew into it it made his eardrums pop. This was seldom necessary however as pupils were unlikely to go to sleep while flying.’ 

Another trainee at the time, called Peter Mayhew recounts in this same blog another quirk of the Oxford,

"The Oxford was a good deal more exciting to fly having one or two vices, such as dropping a wing when you stalled it. A week or so after going solo we did our first night flying."

As usual, these men are very understated about the difficulties they experienced in mastering the foibles of the Oxford. In fact stalling an Airspeed Oxford, which, as we know, was part of the training schedule ( See my earlier blog here), was rather hit or miss. Some would stall "straight", whilst others would have a pronounced wing drop, but you would never know for sure which one, so counteracting this before the aircraft started "spinning" required a good deal of pilot skill. Nobody could say flying the Oxford was a "piece of cake", it behaved itself when handled well but tended to bite fools!

Airspeed Oxfords at South Cerney 1942

So with the added difficulties of flying this aircraft, the usual British weather and the relatively busy skies around the airfield, not to mention the fairly frequent raids by the Luftwaffe, the casualties and deaths of young RAF personnel were a serious concern. The average percentage of deaths whilst training was 3%, but this does not include serious, life changing injuries. In the book "Bombing Hitler: One man's war with Bomber Command", T.I. Steel's Grandfather Bernard Steel, was one of the trainers at 3 (P)A.F.U in 1941/2. This passage tells us of his last day at South Cerney;

"As it turned out Bernard's last day at 3 (P) A.F.U. would be 17th October 1942 as he would take a week's well deserved rest before joining his new unit. His final pupil at South Cerney was a Sergeant Heath who, after a fifty minute flight, helped take Bernard's flying time to 832 hours and thirty minutes. Unfortunately October was unable to give the unit a fatal free month. The last man to be killed in a flying accident at 3 (P)A.F.U. while Bernard served there was Sergeant S.F. Smith, who was killed in Oxford AP401 after losing control during a night-time overshoot at Bibury relief landing ground. The aircraft was destroyed by fire after crashing. He was the thirtieth young airman to die at 3 (P) A.F.U. during Bernard's year at South Cerney."

I'm just trying to imagine what it would be like if just one person died where I worked, let alone 30 in one year! And this without getting anywhere near the enemy, just during training. Thirty deaths at just one unit in just one year through occupational accidents... how did they handle this pressure? I know that F/Lt. Chance eventually snapped and had to be invalided out of the service in February 1944.

Airspeed Oxford "Trainer" at Duxford

What of the War in general at this time? Stalingrad is now completely surrounded by the Wehrmacht. Food supplies to the civilians are dwindling and the people are starving to death, with some reports of cannibalism. The fighting is becoming bogged down in house to house attacks, and the casualties on both sides are horrendous. One of the worst battle sites was at Mamayev Kurgan, a strategic high point overlooking the City centre. Originally captured briskly by the Germans on 13th September 1942, the very next day it was the site of a huge Soviet counter-attack from 13th Guards Rifle Division. By September 16th, the Russians had recaptured the hill, but the cost was almost all of the 10,000 Soviet troops who had attacked two days previously. 

BBC The World at War Episode 9 - Stalingrad