January 2015 We Defy Issue 1/15

Reunion 2015: Well I had a super response from those whom I emailed last

July about their hopes to come to the reunion, it was really

�ery �ra�fyin�, so than� you I ha�en�t had much of a response

from the request in the Squadron News from those not on

email. Just to say, I �now it�s maybe outside your comfort

zone, but I really assure you, that we ha�e the most friendly of

mee�n�. No bull, no ran� #ust old comrades to�ether, tellin� a

tale or two. I �now that all who ha�e a$ended the reunions

ha�e all met old friends and maybe more importantly, made

new ones at these e�ents. If anyone should be tempted, and

want to �now more, please let me �now. If you can �et there,

we�ll ta�e care of you!

Frank Ferguson: You may recall that the stalwart Frank from Northern Ireland went to the D-Day celebration anniversary earli-er in the year, and typical of the spirit of our Squadron, made an extra effort to visit the grave of an ex-flying comrade who had been killed at Picauville. Interestingly enough, a few weeks ago, I had an email from Willmott’s nephew, Jerry, who lives in New Zea-land. He was asking for some details about his Uncle’s demise. I thought Frank would be interested and copied the email to him. Frank being the good ’un that he is, and via his daughter Sara, sent photos and details of the event to New Zealand. Jerry Willmott said “I feel very humbled by it all.”, so once more 264 has been able to fill some more gaps in people’s lives. Thank You. My email address: I have just noticed that being an idiot, I hadn’t altered my email address on the Master template for the Squadron News that I had created some time ago. So if you sent me emails and I didn’t get a reply, maybe that’s the reason. What a silly billy! I have changed it now. I can also be contacted on g.faulkner@uwclub.net

264 Squadron News H M Armed Forces We Defy

Editor: Geoff Faulkner, 8 Rosamond Avenue, Shipton Gorge, Bridport, Dorset DT6 4LN. 01308 897275 Email: squadron264@uwclub.net

May I wish all our members a very happy, healthy and prosperous New Year

Sad News I had a phone call in September from Audrey Par-kinson (Nobbs), The lady of Keith Parkinson . She informed me that she had been diagnosed with ter-minal cancer of the bowel and liver and had 2 months to live. On top of this she has a blood clot on the lung. She was bright and positive and wanted me to ensure that I put in the Squadron News her heartfelt thanks to all members of the Squadron Assn. for their friendship and to say how much she had enjoyed belonging. She accepted her the condi-tion and said that she was OK with it as she didn’t want to be a burden on her family. What a brave and cheerful person it is who can take that attitude, a lesson for us all I think!. I guess by the time you read this, Audrey will have past on, our thoughts are with her family. Postcript: Although we had tried to make contact and even checked on Hospitals and Hospices, we got no luck. However, we heard on the 23rd Novem-ber from her daughter, that Audrey passed away on the 19th October and was cremated on the 7th Nov. As sadly no-one from the squadron attended as we weren’t told she had died. RIP

Concern: I wonder what the Squadron Association really means to of us?. I know for the last nearly 15 years and after I put an advert in the RAFA Magazine, “Air Mail” for an old Engine Mechanic who served during the time I was on the Squadron, that the only re-ply I got was from seven wartime ex-members. They were all obviously missing the comradeship of those days on the Squad-ron and appeared lonely, mostly widowers I suspect. After some thought I said to my wife, “I don’t know how I can actually walk away from this”. Hence the birth or should I say the rebirth of our Squadron Association. This has taken an inordinate amount of time and effort, none of which I regret as I have been a benefi-ciary of some great people that I have met and become friendly with, and also learnt al lot about our Squadron History. I am proud that I have been contributory in helping Bob Tacey to get a memorial tree to the memory of our ex-Squadron members planted at the National Arbouretum, proud we have a website that has brought us contacts from all over the world. We have a fairly good newsletter (These are comments made by other Squadron Associations, not mine!). A fairly loyal core set of members that keep our reunions alive, so YES I’m proud of our achievemnts. However, I am now getting desperate for items, stories, anecdotes, pictures etc if we are to keep this Associa-tion going, mainly through the Squadron News. There is so much experience, humour, tales out there and all you have to do is let me have it, if you don’t, then to coin the phrase of Private Frazer of Dad’s Army “We’ere Doomed, doomed I say”, So do you really want our Association to fade away? Or are we to be overcome our national pastime of Frenzied Apathy?. Remember our motto, “We Defy” and PLEASE put pen to paper and give me some interesting stories of what you have done on, or after the life on our proud squadron.

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A wonderful sight (and sound) If you want to conjure up a nostalgic memory of the Lancaster Bomber of World War 2, and if you have a computer, then look at the following UTube clip www.youtube.com/watch?v=dx9sHPZG7IU. Here you will see some spectacular videos of the Lancaster with its distinctive Merlin engines, but also the only other flying Lancaster from Canada. Although a “Fighter Boy” most of my adult life, this can only stir you to hear those wonderful engines in flight. A brief fact finding note for the Technical minded of us:

The first prototype Lancaster first flew on January 9th 1941. By May 1941, a second prototype was de-signed which was equipped with more powerful Merlin XX engines. In September 1941, the Lancaster was delivered to 44 Squadron for crew training and evaluation. It was an immediate success. The Air Ministry put in large orders almost immediately and the first production Lancaster flew in October 1941. Avro’s first contract was for 1,070 Lancasters but more soon followed. In fact, the orders for the bomber was too much for Avro and work was contracted out to other companies, such as Armstrong Whitley, Vickers Armstrong and Austin Morris. In all, 7,377 Lancasters were built.

The Lancaster was a heavily armed bomber. It had eight 0.303 machine guns in various turrets on board. As time progressed, the bomb bay in the plane was changed to allow such mighty bombs as the ‘Grand Slam’ to be carried. The ‘Grand Slam’ at 22,000 lb (9979 kg) was the heaviest bomb carried in World War Two.

The Lancasters took part in many raids on Germany in World War Two. They were also used in specific raids such as the one on the ‘Tirpitz’ (November 1944) holed up in a Norwegian fjord. The most famous bombing raid by Lancasters was the ‘Dambuster Raids’. For this, Barnes Wallis had to make a number of modifications to the Lancasters that took part in this raid. Nineteen Lancasters took part in this raid on May 17th 1943, with eight planes being lost.

The Lancaster flew more than 156,000 sorties in World War Two. The plane dropped a total of 608,000 tons of high explosive bombs and more than 51 million incendiary bombs.

Facts: Crew: seven

Maximum speed: 287 mph (462 km/h) at 11,500 feet (3505 metres)

Ceiling height: 24,500 feet (7470 metres)

Range: 2,530 miles (4072 km)

Armament: eight x 0.303 machine guns; maximum bomb load of one x 22,000 lb Tall Boy bomb (9979 kg) or 14,000 lb (6350 kg) of smaller bombs.

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Continuing Terry Fensome’s Life story; from Newsletter 59 After about a couple months the owner of the twin came to see me to ask me if I was interested in starting up a new airline out of Hong Kong. My initial reaction was no thanks, but after a further week of talks I set up a due diligence teaming to look at everything. The finances were the first to be qualified, they proved adequate for the task supported by the numerous banks

The airline was to be an all freight airline circumnavigating the globe and called Pan Asia Air Cargo equipped with the new (at the time) Boeing 747 nose loading Freighter. The team who all by this time had resigned their employment with Cathay, the rest with Haeco senior execs and a Gulf Air captain, my good friend Nick Nicholls who had been my skipper on No. 10 Squadron, RAF.

After about two months of working with Boeing and the various airlines who were to be part of this enterprise, the owner of the investment company in Hong Kong came to me to tell me he had to go to Saigon where his Vietnamese wife and kids were living to bring them out as the war was getting a bit too close. Since he provided the financing I need him to stay in touch with me, which he did for a while, as the war got closer and closer to the city

I had to charter an Air Vietnam Caravel to fly him and his family out, but due to passport problems they never made it and the air-craft turned up in Hong Kong full of refugees. After re-establishing contact with him I chartered a small business jet from the Philip-pines and sent our chief flight engineer David Priest to go find him and bring him to Hong Kong again unsuc-cessful I tried one more time with a DC 3 from Bankok but he could not be found. By this time Saigon was a day away from falling with no sign of the owner and his family. They could not be found.

After about two more months of searching and working we decided that the Pan Asia Air Cargo project was not moving forward and it was time to call it a day. The funds we had were enough to pay and repatriate every one home including David Priest his wife Deana, their two sons, his father Edgar, Sylvester the cat, and the dog Henry. The company was shut down 6 weeks later, due to lack of funds, and no debts. All of the team found other employment fairly quickly as far as I know. I was offered a position as chief flight instructor in Aberdeen in the winter but not much else.

At this time Cathay were selling their fleet of Convair 880 Aircraft and all their spare parts and engines etc. This fleet was being purchased by well know aviation business man in Miami, Mr. George Batchelor. Our for-tunes were about to change again, when into the aero club strode a Singapore Chinese man asking for me. (Not another twin I thought) close but he wanted to start another small airline. He was funded by his brother Mr. Pe-ter Fong chairman of Air Trust. Peter Fong was funding his brother, Johnny Fong, to start up his own airline. I went to Singapore to meet Peter who impressed me as a very nice man. He explained everything so I agreed to join the team and returned to Hong Kong for discussions with George Bachelor, who had flown in from Miami.

We had enough money to buy 3 Convair 880 aircraft, plus all the parts and 6 months operating cash. This suit-ed George Batchelor who could sell them in situ and would not have to fly them to Miami. What George did not know was my experience on the 880 and the access to all the inside information on the purchase. So after 10 weeks of talking, fighting, and the walking out never to come back tactics he and his staff favored, I purchased three aircraft plus all the high failure components, and started to apply for a new operating certificate with the FAA. The new airline was called Orient Pacific Airlines.

Singapore did not like foreign charger companies, so we set up a parent company called Singapore Aircraft Leasing. There was a good reason for this – the nearest FAA office was in Guam, which was a respectable dis-tance away. So with all spare parts on board, household furniture, Meg and myself accompanied by our Pyrene-an Mountain Dog, Sheba, roaming the aisle, we flew off to Singapore to start a new adventure. I aimed our business and the charter market as we were the only large aircraft charter operator in Singapore then, especial-ly targeting the USA oil companies in Asia. The aircraft were based at Seletar and flew to Paya Lebar to take on fuel and load up with passengers or freight. Within a few weeks we have rights we had flights flying between Singapore, Dacca, Rangoon, Dehli and Bombay exchanging oil crews.

There were 14 of us on the company including Meg. Three crews of four Chinese mechanics that doubled as flight attendants and two girls as in-flight managers. We both did all the administration ourselves and collected the money. We kept two aircraft flying six days a week. It was good business and I also signed a contract with a company in Saudi Arabia to fly workers from the Philippines to Saudi twice a week via Bombay under a Saudi airline flight number.

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In Bombay the Indians could not understand why the aircraft were green and didn't say Saudi airlines on them so after three months we lost the contract, but not before I had a new contract to fly goats from Bombay to Sharjah every night. The trick was to go fast enough to get there before the goats ate the aircraft. We removed all the seats obviously, and put a thick plastic and fibreglass liner inside and up the walls. With five wooden gates across the inside of the fuselage which held 50 goats between each gate. 250 total, the goats were load-ed up the passenger steps at the rear doors with a lot of shoving from behind. The flight left close to midnight and we flew into the first new airport that Sharjah had built - in fact we were the first aircraft in there. For a number of weeks the forwarder for the goats will be there to off load them onto his trucks, the aircraft would be cleaned then flown back to Bombay to repeat the exercise the next night. On the last flight there, the forwarder did not show up so we had to leave for the hotel but not before we opened the overwing exits, and doors to let as much air as possible into the aircraft for the goats. This resulted in a lovely picture in the Flight Magazine of both wings covered in goats and a caption that said something like: “When the tem-perature on the ramp in Sharjah of 40° C, who could resist the lovely Convair 880 wing”. Any-way, that finished the goat hauling contract for while in Sharjah, the contracts manager for Sau-di suggested I should contact the Sheikh of Sharjah, Sheikh Sultan, who was trying to start his own airline, as he went to school with him, he would give me a letter of introduction to armed with his letter I went to the government offices. They would not open the letter due to the seal but they arranged for me to see the Sheikh's second-in-command so to speak, who then ar-ranged for me to meet Sheikh Sultan. As we had 34 engined jets each with 125 seats and full maintenance crews, we could operate them on his behalf, so began the talks. Meanwhile we now have two aircraft in the Middle East and one on the ground in Singapore. Gulf Air in Bah-rain asked me if we would position the aircraft there to cover the Gulf Air VC10’s which kept breaking down, so I moved the two aircraft to Bahrain and signed a contract to operate them. This meant we were in competition with Middle East Airlines which basically meant whoever got their first took the flight (they didn't have a chance!) Because our aircraft were green we were known as Thunderbirds 1and 2. As I needed the third air-craft now as well, I called Meg who was in Singapore with the other crew and mechanics and asked her to ar-range to get the aircraft and everyone there to Bahrain. When the third Convair did not show up on time, we called Singapore for an update on the situation and found out that it had crashed on takeoff from Seletar on its way to Paya Lebar to pick up fuel. The aircraft sustained major damage i.e. both inboard engines had sheared off and the aircraft had gone down an embankment on the airport. Meg was on board but having been a well trained RAF Loadmaster, got the doors open and the escape chutes deployed and everyone off the aircraft for any fire broke out the aircraft was a write-off. The runway at Seletar was, I believe 600 feet will stop I spoke to the control is in the tower who said that take-off appeared normal until the nose wheel came off the ground then went back onto the ground and ran off the runway at full power. The captain's statement said he had the control column a hardback at V2 speed and the aircraft would not fly! Finally Meg joined me in Bahrain where we lived in the Delmon Hotel. We had an elaborate system of con-tacts, this was before cell phones, and I think we used beepers, so when Gulf Air and beeped me, which was 15 minutes before they alerted MEA Airline, I'd beep the rest of the crew to go straight to the airport, thus we managed to get all the flights. We flew extensively then for Gulf Air and Reading and Bates Oil Company. We would fly Gulf Air with Meg as the senior flight attendant and we would come back, type out the invoice, then go around all the desks in Gulf Air to get all the signatures required for full payment, finally the cheque, then to the bank (what a job!) For Reading and Bates, we flew mainly into Iran (Abidjan) and the Libyan oil fields mainly every Wednesday.

To get more utilization I signed a contract to fly the odd flight for Air Malta. Which turned out to be a good

move, when Gulf Air finally had to give the flying to MEA, we moved the operation to Malta, where we flew Air

Malta schedules Malta – London, Malta - Helsinki and the Reading and Bates flights.

Convair 880

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One trip into Bengazi was notable. We took an oil crew for change over, dropped them off, and then had to wait for 7 hours for the new crew to come back. I Noted on the way over that the F/E had a camera in his bag so advised him not to get it out while we were on the ground there as the Libyans had Mig aircraft at that time and cameras were forbidden. After landing, the crew, including myself, went down the passenger cabin to sleep for a few hours. I was woken up with a rife sticking up my nose which had an Arab army fellow on the end of it. The officer in charge told me that someone was seen to be taking pictures I looked sternly at the F/E who admitted it was him they told him it was not a problem but they need to see the camera and remove the film so he went with them to do this. Needless to say he didn’t return by departure time and we had to leave without him as everyone denied any knowledge of his existence. So I flew back minus the flight engineer. It took a couple of months and $15000 to a crooked Maltese lawyer to find him - he was in a prison in the desert. It took two more bribes to get him out . We flew in on the appointed flight to bring him back and again didn’t see him. When we landed at Luqa he was found in the front cargo bay in a crate which had been loaded with the oil company freight. By this time Air Malta were looking at the Boeing 737. It didn’t produce the smoke out of the engines we did, so eventually we lost the contract with them, but continued with the Oil Company. It was at this time that the USA tried to rescue those hostages in Iran and, as our aircraft were US registered, we could not fly there any more so we decided to close the company down and return the aircraft to Singapore. We stayed on in Malta for a few months then returned to the UK to see what else was in store for us It wasn’t long before I received a call from Laker Airways to see if I was still interested in joining them (from and old resume) so off I trotted to Gatwick to join Skytrain and the New DC10 in 1978. This was to be a brand new adventure for us with a surprising resultI completed all the initial interviews and paperwork and was inter-viewed by Allan Hellary, the chief Pilot. He was, for some reason, impressed by all my Convair 880 time so I became a new first officer for Laker Airways. Training was carried out in the USA where I used the first com-puterized training on a computer system called Plato, plus the simulators. Flying the brand new DC10 with the black and red strip (this was Freddie’s horse racing colours ) gave me enormous pride. I thought this is how an airline should be run. The hangar at Gatwick had no lift and Sir Freddie’s office was on the top floor - his way of keeping everyone fit. The first time I met him was shortly after the training. I was walking up the stairs and Sir Freddie was coming down. He stopped and asked me who I was. I said I was a new first officer on the DC10. He asked me if I knew who he was. I said no I didn’t but if he stayed there I would find someone to help him. He looked at me then broke into laughter, slapped me on the shoulder, said “well done”, and continued down the stairs. That was the start of a 27 year friendship. I flew with the Laker Company until the February 1982 when had a flight out of Manchester to somewhere in the Med. About an hour or so out from Manchester we had a radio message to return to Manchester, as the company had ceased operations. We opened the bar - free drinks for the passengers - and entered the holding pattern at Manchester. After landing, the passengers were so worried about the airline closing and all our jobs going away they were consoling us. The passengers from Manchester were a delight to fly, always full of fun. We tried hard to keep the company alive: Marching on parliament to get our MP, Douglas Hurd to do some-thing. There was a public outcry but all to no avail. It was over. So back to my house in Carterton Oxfordshire, I went.with Sir Freddie out to Miami to live and started a two aircraft Boeing 727 operation between the USA and the Bahamas. 2 days later I received a phone call from Miami, the girl asked if this was Terry Fensome, I said yes she said can you take a call from Mr George Batchelor (The man I purchased the Convairs off in Hong Kong in 1975) I said yes. His first words were “what are you doing?” I said I was having a scotch. He said ”well, now your boss is out of business” I said, at this time I didn’t know. He said “Well, how about working for me instead of against me and go and buy the 3 DC 10.30’s from the Japanese receivers”. I said ok. He told me he would arrange a meeting with his other two guys: An aviation lawyer in UK, Mr Humphrey Dawson, and a Miami inventory man. So a day later I was back at Gatwick looking at all the Laker fleet parked on the ramp. What a sad sight. It made me very angry. Over the next few months we negotiated for the aircraft and finally made the deal to pur-chase them at a big discount. Plus all the parts and equipment. George Batchelor had kept up with the negoti-ations and was pleased with the result. He then told me he had just Purchased Capitol Air, based in New York, and asked me if I could arrange to put

the DC10’s on their certificate so he could fly them live (with passengers) back to the States. I told him I would

tell him the next day I found a DAR FAA inspector and asked him what it entailed. We agreed we could do it so

I phone him back and said yes.

To be continued in the May edition of the Squadron News

Apologies that the aircraft featured aren’t Terry’s, but it’s just to give you an idea.

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Continuing the fascinating story of Desmond Hughes, from Septembers edition. Thus, on the morning of the 29th of August, the battered but unbowed remnants of 264 flew back to Kirton Lindsey. They were led by Plt off S R Thomas, a 20-year-old veteran of Dunkirk and the senior pilot left unin-jured. Fred Gash and I made our way back in 'Phelim', this time having a better trip as the weather stayed dry for us. After a few days, Garvin returned and resumed command, `Tommy' Thomas was made `B' Flight com-mander with acting rank of Flt Lt whilst took over `A' Flight. I now found that all my friends who had sur-vived were in `B' Flight and somehow managed to persuade Desmond Garvin to switch me over. Before that, however, I had a brief return to Hornchurch, James Bailey flying me down there to pick up one of our repaired aircraft. Naturally, we arrived in the middle of an air raid but the station wasn't the target and in due course I flew the patched-up aircraft out in good order.

In mid-September, the AOC No 12 Group - Air Vice-Marshal Trafford Leigh-Mallory - paid us a visit. (I remembered that he arrived by car - Keith Park of 1 I Group would have come in his own Hurricane!). He and Garvin sat in deck-chairs whilst we parked on the ground around them, bathed in warm sunshine. `L-M', a somewhat pompous and overweight man, gave us a general `pep talk' and his view on how the battle down south was going, and then said: "I want you to forget for the moment about the daylight battle and concentrate on getting the whole squadron night-operational. The Hun seems to be easing off his bomber raids by day and sending more by night, whilst still sending over lots of fighters. That seems to be the trend of things so I want to see 254 able to mount full night readiness - just for the coming moon period." However, I think we all sensed that this was the end of the Defiant as a day-fighter. The other squadron, 141, had lost 9 out of 12 aircraft when invited to patrol Cap Geris Nez at 5,000 feet and we had only lasted a week in the south-the writing was clearly writ on the wall. We never did go back into the day battle.

`GROPING IN THE DARK'

Night fighting was a new way of life altogether. Gone were the endless days of fluctuating states of readiness; gone the frenetic scrambles; gone close formation flying; gone the dog-fighting, except for fun in night flying tests; gone the exhilarating curved side-slipping approaches; gone the constant peril of being `jumped' by 109s. In came a remarkably ordered regime. Each flight was on night readiness on a `two nights on, two nights off basis, occasionally varied to `both on' at the height of the full moon. Virtually all patrols were by sin-gle aircraft, except the odd one at dusk when a pair might start together and separate when full darkness fell. Instead of perfecting dog-fighting technique, achieving smooth and accurate instrument flying was of vital im-portance. The real enemy became the weather, which killed far more night fighter crews than the Luftwaffe air-gunners ever did

264 duly carried out the AOC's orders and got itself night-operational before the moon period. The special perils of the new role were made crystal-clear to me very early on. I was carrying out the task of 'OC Night Flying'. This involved laying out the flare path of feeble battery-powered 'glim lamps', which in theory could not be seen from above, augmented by 'goose-neck' flares for use if the visibility dropped; siting and controlling the Chance light, a powerful mobile floodlight which could illuminate the touch-down area; using an Aldis sig-nal lamp with red or green glasses to give or deny permission to land. Shortly after dusk on a moonless night, I saw one Defiant take off and, instead of climbing straight ahead, go into a slow turn to port; it got no higher than 150 feet before it began to lose height again and flew into the ground, exploding in a ball of flame. This was an inexperienced but comparatively elderly pilot, Derek O'Malley, a barrister who had joined the RAF shortly after being called to the bar; he had an attractive personality and was in my view a considerable loss to the squadron. However, that incident drove home into me the lesson that you just had to establish a sustained rate of climb on your instrument panel before going into a turn of any sort.

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Partly to give the day fighter squadron at Kirton a chance to get a decent sleep at night and partly to prevent the station being found and attacked by German `intruders' while our flare path was alight, we used to do our night patrols from a satellite field near Caistor. It had a couple of Nissen huts, one for the aircrew and one for the groundcrew, a field telephone to the sector ops room - and precious little else. We kept patrols going all night when the weather was good enough but the only enemy aircraft any of us saw was one briefly caught in searchlight over Hull; another, probably an Me 110, had the temerity to strafe our flare-path one night - after it had been given a `green' to land! There was also a nice little daylight comedy when a young airman, post-ed on top of one of Kirton's hangars as a lookout with a telephone down to ops, was heard to sing out: " 'Ampden dropping messages, sir!" as a Dornier 17, having just popped out of cloud, laid a stick of 4 bombs across the airfield. Autumn weather being what it is, we had a period of thick fog as a high pressure area settled over us for a few days. I am only slightly embarrassed to recount that, after a third night of being cooped up in the Nissen hut with under 50 yards of visibility and no hope of flying, someone rigged up an extension of the ops tele-phone into the snug bar of the little nearby local pub. This enabled the authoritative Welsh lilt of `Tommy's' voice (with ours appropriately silenced) to assure the controller that, as he looked out of the win-dow, he couldn't see even the nearest aircraft. I don't believe that ops ever learnt about this!

At that stage of the war, facilities for controlling night fighter aircraft were rudimentary, to say the least of it. First we had only the HF TR9 set in the way of radio/telephone (RT) communication; this was unreliable, had only one frequency and was unreadable at over 40 miles from the transmitter site; there was no radio link whatever at Caistor. Secondly, though tremendous development was taking place in equipment of all kinds, radar coverage in 1940 was only out to sea. As raids crossed the coast, they had to be taken over by the Observer Corps; their plotting of tracks wasn't at all bad but their estimates of height could be many thou-sands of feet wrong, particularly at night. The fighter's position had to be determined by a very clumsy meth-od. Three or more RT/DF vehicles had to be deployed out in the countryside with telephone links to ops. They would take bearings on the fighter's RT transmission, pass their readings to a triangulation room, whence a map reference of dubious accuracy would be passed to the main ops plot. This was not a quick process. Thus bomber and fighter were plotted by different methods; the accuracy achieved was barely suffi-cient by daylight - at night it was quite hopeless. All the controller could do was to vector the fighters into the general area of a raid and hope against hope that sooner or later one of them would stumble across one of the bombers. In bright moonlight, a Heinkel might be seen a mile away if nicely silhouetted against a cloud layer; on a black night, 100 yards was nearer the mark though if you were lucky you just might pick up the glow of the engine exhausts at up to 300 yards.

We did a lot of `standing patrols', flying set patterns at heights designated by the controller. On a clear night, very large paraffin-fuelled `Money' flares were laid out in the open country to mark the ends of patrol lines and fighters could position themselves easily enough; if there was cloud cover, RT/DF had to be used and the call of "Transmit for fix" would ring repeatedly in one's ears. There was also a device known as 'Pipsqueak' which could send out a transmission lasting for 14 seconds but this was unpopular with pilots because it cut out their radios completely whilst the transmission was going on - and, in air fighting, 14 sec-onds can be a very long time to be incommunicado. It is, therefore, not really surprising that 264 flew some 200 night patrols before anyone made an interception - Fred and I were to turn to be the lucky guys.

By the end of September, it had been decided that we were needed to help in the defence of London, which was beginning to suffer increasingly heavy raids at night. First, `B' Flight were sent down to Northolt - a crazy decision as it lay just within the London balloon barrage, which was invisible by night. After a few days (and scary nights) the whole squadron was ordered to Luton. The field we used then is un-recognisable within the modern Luton International airport, with its fine runways and taxi-tracks. There was no concrete except right beside the small hangar, which belonged to the Percival Aircraft Company. Our best grass runway was some 750 yards long and we used to space our flares at about 75 yards instead of 100 to make the flare-path look a bit better. There was no accommodation on the airfield so we were billeted out in private houses - which are still to be seen to one's left on the climb up to the modern airport.

The night of the 15th October was eventful. It was pretty cold and, with very little cloud and a full moon, it was not long before the enemy raiders arrived over and around London. Our patrol line was just inside the Essex coast on the Thames estuary. I scrambled a little after nightfall. We were soon flying at 17,000 feet and had just completed a 180 degree turn when I saw a condensation trail, silvery in the moonlight. Calculating that there must be a bomber somewhere at the end of it, I went to full throttle and rushed along with the vapour trail running just above my cockpit, peering ahead with my eyeballs out on stalks. I noticed that the trail was turning to port a bit so I flew inside it, cutting the corner and hoping to catch up even faster thereby. Then I saw another trail, just outside the one I was following and thought : `Good show! Another chance to see a Hun!' and went on with the chase, still turning. It was when I saw a third trail that the awful truth dawned on me. I was chasing my own trail

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I returned to base in disgust - and embarrassment, because I had told the, controller on the RT what I was up to. After a couple of hours, however, I was sent up in another aircraft and went on patrol in the same area, with Lon-don again getting a bit of a pasting. The night was still brilliantly clear but there were now some white patches to be seen on the ground below; I paid no attention to this. I was just beginning to think 'Ah well! Another hour of watching the bombs fall and not being able to do a damn thing about it', when I saw something move across the stars and turned gently towards where I had seen the movement.

The dark shapeless blob slowly grew into a long black line and then I picked up the incandescent glow of an ex-haust. Shouting "Tally Ho!" on the RT, I turned gently back to starboard, throttled back a little and slid into wide formation on what was clearly a twin-engined aircraft. As I dropped down a little below it, some 50 yards on its beam, the unmistakeable wing-plan of a Heinkel 111 was revealed. I told Fred to open fire and he made no mis-take. Along burst, with the de Wilde twinkling brilliantly on its starboard engine and the Heinkel was a mass of flame. It slowly turned over to port and went down in a steep dive, trailing a plume of fire as it went. I started to follow it but it was obviously finished and I eased out of my dive. It crashed in open country with a mighty explo-sion - later found to be at Hutton near Brentwood. Two of the crew of four had baled out.

Shouting "Great shooting, Fred! We've done it, we've done it!", I reported our success to the controller and asked for a vector back to base. Chortling delightedly, we dropped down towards Luton, picket up the dispersed flashing beacon in its field some 5-6 miles from the airstrip and flew on the designated course until I saw the small red obstruction light on top of the Chance light.

It was then that I realised that the valley below the airfield was totally fogbound and that patches of thick mist were already encroaching on the flarepath. I could see the goosenecks from above but, as I lined them up for landing and dropped down into my straight approach, they faded out. I opened the throttle and went round again, realising that the red obstruction light was sticking up nicely above the thin layer of mist which was shrouding the goosenecks.

On the second approach, I got nicely lined up and, as I dropped down leaving the floodlight on my left, I could just see three-flares ahead-but I had come in just that wee bit too fastand floated to the fifth flare before touching down.I immediately applied full brakes but the tyres was slithering on the wet grass. I was skidding along quite slowly when I passed the last flare and thought I had made it, when there was a bit of a bump, and the starboard undercarriage leg folded up, the nose went down, the propeller stopped– and there we were sitting in the hedge with the undercarriage warning the hooting derisively. I switched off the fuel and ignition and hopped out to find Fred already on the ground. A truck loomed out of the mist,someone shouted “Are you all right?“, and a fitter climbed up to the cockpit, pushed the throttle lever forward a couple of inches—and stopped the ghastly noise from the undercarriage horn.

Because we had down the Hienkel, nobody was nasty about the bent Defiant. The jubilant ground crew jacked her up, Rei-locked the undercarriage leg and towed her to the hanger. They changed the propeller, straightened out the odd panel on the starboard wing, sprayed on a bit of paint and Defiant N1621 was in the air again in less than three days, with a swastika painted on the future large, all was forgiven!

A little earlier than this, when we had been at Luton are very few days, we had a visitation from on high. It was a dark night with complete cloud cover at no more than 200 feet as measured by a dusk of flight. Visibility was about 1 mile but it was dry; weekly just about see the far end of our little flare path.’ Tommy’ had told the control-ler that,whilst we could take off safely enough and climb above cloud, there was no way that any aircraft he scrambled could get back into Luton. The controller said that the German airfields in France would probably be clear for some hours but that all other night fighter bases around London were suffering from the same low cloud. We had better stay on the ground until the weather improved.

A couple of hours after dark and without any advance warning a car drew up to a dispersal hut and a tall brood-ing figure emerged. He asked a passing game and who was in charge and was told “ Flight Lieutenant Thomas Sir”.

“Tell him that the C in C is here and wants to talk to him”.off ran the airman and soon ‘Tommy’ was out at the car saluting smartly.

“This is a fine airfield“ said Air Chief Marshal Dowding, gazing out toward our glim-lamps,” How many aircraft have you got in the air, Thomas?”

“No Sir! Until this low cloud lifts, we would lose any aircraft we scrambled. We can take off okay but there’s no where to land afterwards– we would have had to bale out! “

“ But ThomasU...there are some Huns airborne.we should be after them. Why can’t you land somewhere? “.

To be continued in May’s edition of the Squadron News. 8

The Tucano and the RAF {Courtesy of the RAF} The Tucano T1 is a modified version of the Brazilian Embraer EMB-312 Tucano aircraft, and is built under li-cence by Shorts of Belfast. The Tucano is operated primarily from No 1 Flying Training School, at RAF Linton-on-Ouse, to provide basic fast jet flying training to RAF and RN student pilots, and basic WSO training to all po-tential RAF WSOs. Student pilots fly around 130 hours during their training course on the Tucano before pro-gressing to the Hawk T1 aircraft at RAF Valley.

The aircraft is powered by an 1150shp Garrett Turboprop engine, has a maximum speed of 300kts (345mph) and can maintain 270kts (310mph) at low level. It can operate at up to 30,000 feet and has an initial climb rate of 4000 feet per minute. The Tucano replaced the Jet Provost in RAF service and its two-seat tandem cockpit makes it an ideal lead-in to the Hawk, which is flown at the next stage of training. The turboprop Tucano was chosen to replace the RAF’s Jet Provosts because of its greater fuel efficiency and lower operating costs. The aircraft handling is similar to that of a jet aircraft and it is fully aerobatic, thus providing an excellent work-horse for training fast-jet pilots in all aspects of military flying. It is used to develop students in a full range of skills, including general aircraft handling, formation flying and low-level navigation and, due to its comprehensive avionics and ice-protection packages, it can be flown in all types of weather, by day and by night. The Tucano’s all-weather flying capability, plus its excellent endurance, allows a great measure of flexibility in the training role. Should weather conditions be poor at their home base, crews operating from RAF Linton-on- Ouse can fly low-

level sorties to locations as far away as Wales or the north of Scotland. The Tucano has recently undergone a wing and fu-selage strengthening pro-gramme to overcome air-craft stress problems and will remain as the RAF’s primary fast-jet basic flying-training aircraft until later in the decade The Tucano was selected in 1985 to replace the RAF's Jet Provost basic flying training aircraft which had been in service since 1955. Some seventy percent cheaper to operate than the Jet Provost, the Tucano used by the RAF differs from the version originally developed by Embraer of Brazil and

used by many air forces across the globe. The main difference is the engine - the RAF choosing a Garrett turbo-prop over the standard Pratt and Whitney powerplant. This increased performance but did cause a number of problems which delayed the entry into service for the Tucano. Other changes included a cockpit layout similar to that of the Hawk advanced trainer and strengthened airframe. Once the initial problems had been solved, the Tucano entered service in 1989 initially at Church Fenton, then Cranwell, Linton-on-Ouse and, finally, Finningley. Of these training units, only Linton-on-Ouse operates the Tu-cano - Church Fenton and Finningley having closed while Cranwell aircraft were transferred to Linton during the mid-1990s. The introduction of the Tucano allowed the RAF to streamline its basic flying training syllabus somewhat as the aircraft offered twice the range and endurance of the Jet Provost, allowing two sorties to be flown before the aircraft required to be refuelled.

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Editor’s Comment: I have enquiries from all over the world asking about relatives who served on our Squadron and it takes an awful lot of time trying to find out if we have anything on their history. Its not quite so difficult if they were Officers or Aircrew, but almost impossible if they are NCO’s or Airmen, sad but a fact. The MOD won’t help and Records seem to have been privatised and only want money to check out names and with no guaran-tee of success. Some of our most notable characters are easier to investigate and it gives me a lot of satis-faction to help people on their quest for details of their relatives. However, I recently had an enquiry about Tommy Thomas (see article by Desmond Hughes in this edition) and had re-printed a booklet that Ray Loveland had reproduced from a Dutch account of the operation over Holland on May 23th and 13th May 1940, in which Tommy Thomas took part. It contained photos of several members of that ill-fated mission, combat reports, and a host of other details. I also printed off Photos of the pictures taken when Hugh Tu-dor (ex CO of 264), Dave Boden and myself attended a wreath laying ceremony in Made, Holland. So after this particular enquiry and a promise of a donation to the Squadron from the enquirer, all this infor-mation was posted off. Sadly, and for the first time and after two reminders, one of Tommy Thomas’s grandsons, welched on the agreement and never sent a donation. Well you can’t win them all, but it’s sad that Tommy’s honour didn’t extend to this particular ‘gentleman’

Reunion: Could I re-iterate my comments from page 1 regarding attendance of the Squadron Reunion, for those who have never attended one, then why not try it, there wont be many more chances to meet ex-colleagues and comrades. Also, and now getting VERY important, could those who said they hope to come please confirm you still hope to attend. I DO need this information to settle the amount of rooms re-

quired, as I don’t want the same problem as last year, when we were oversubscribed and some had to stay at another hotel, so please help me to help the hotel.

As a reminder it is on the weekend 6th/7th June 2015

at the Best Western Plus West Retford Hotel, Ret-

ford, #otts. D#22 7XG.

May I remind you that the interest visit, is to the Newark Air Museum, but for those who are not interested (funny people!), there are good shopping facilities in Retford (Sorry fellas!) and also golf, swimming Pool etc. also I chance to catch up some afternoon sleep!.

I have interspersed this edition of the Squadron News with some cartoons and hope that it doesn’t cause any offence, but gives you a smile or two!

Danger! Important There is serious chance that I may have to reduce the Squadron News either in size or less frequently as I am now so desperate for articles to print. 15 years has exhausted all avenues, please help me!

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It occurred to me, that as we have altered in appearance over the intervening years, that it might have been helpful if I had put a key to last years photo of the reunion at Borne End. So hopefully, I will be able to get the correct names to the number ballons. From Left to Right (as best that I can do!) 1 Ken Burton 2 Pauline Long 3 Sylvia Mann 4 Sheila Kearl 5 Susan Hall 6 Brian Long 7 Robert Downing 8 Ian Kearl 9 Paul Lippett 10 Derek Cook 11 Alan Cooke 12 Jim Hall 13 Mike Webster 14 Joan Faulkner 15 Marjorie Tacey 16 Miki Warren 17 Bob Tacey (Treasurer) 18 Tony Warren 19 Bill Griffeths 20 Brian Mann (Deputy Chairman) 21 Judith Robertson 22 Liz Olding 23 Jeanette Griffeths 24 Bunny Drysdale 25 Peter Wright (President) 26 Geoff Faulkner (Secretary) 27 Ken Heaney 28 Sylvia Cook 29 Anthea Hughes 30 Paddy Hughes 31 Clyde Anderson (Archavist) 32 Val Anderson 33 Lindsay Wright Now if I’ve got any of the names mixed up, I apologise and you’ll have to put it down to old age, although I know I’m only “a kid” to some of you.

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Good News - 264 We Defy March

Some good news about a 264 March. Bill Bywater (one of our members) wrote a march for 264 some 8 to 10 years ago and hoped his friend might arrange it, sadly his friend died. He gave it to me and I promised to see if I could find anyone who could arrange it. Firstly, I gave it to a soldier who was in an Army band and sang in my Male Voice Choir. He started it and then was posted overseas, and later left the Army. Luckily he sent the copies back to me. Later, and with an accompanying letter I sent it to the Musical Director of the Central Band of the RAF in 2011, with the melody score and some band parts. Sadly I did not have the courtesy of even a reply. Later I sent the package off again to the Band of the British Legion, once more I was disappointed that nor-mal manners were lacking, as again there was no acknowledgment. At this point I gave up the struggle, as I had approached three other bandmasters, who either “lost the copies” or said they were too busy. I have now made contact with Adam Glyn BA (hons) GCGI, LRSM Dip Mus and Concert Manager of the Bourne-mouth Symphony Orchestra. I had a long chat with him and although he is commissioned to do composing and arrangements, that he is pasid for. He has kindly agreed to try to do something for us after the New Year and has said he wouldn’t charge us. Although I’m sure we would make a contribution. So watch this space!

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Some thoughts for us Oldies!

HEY OLDER CROWD

A distraught senior citizen phoned her doctor's office. "Is it true," she wanted to know, that

the medication you prescribed has to be taken for the rest of my life?"

"'Yes, I'm afraid so,"' the doctor told her. There was a moment of silence before the senior

lady replied, "I'm wondering, then, just how serious is my condition because this prescription

is marked 'NO REPEATS."

An older gentleman was on the operating table awaiting surgery and he insisted that his son,

a renowned surgeon, perform the operation. As he was about to get the anaesthesia, he

asked to speak to his son. "Yes, Dad, what is it?" "Don't be nervous, son; do your best, and

just remember, if it doesn't go well, if something happens to me,

your mother is going to come and live with you and your wife...."

You know you are getting old when everything either dries up or

leaks

First you forget names, then you forget faces. Then you forget to pull up your zipperU it's worse when you forget to pull it down. Thoughts from Tommy Cooper: A mate of mine recently admitted to being addicted to brake fluid. When I quizzed him on it he said not to worry, he could stop any time..... I had a mate who was suicidal. He was really depressed, so I pushed him in front of a train. He was chuffed to bits. I went to the cemetery yesterday to lay some flowers on a grave. As I was standing there I noticed 4 grave diggers walking about with a coffin, 3 hours later and they're still walking about with it. I thought to myself, they've lost the plot!! My daughter asked me for a pet spider for her birthday, so I went to our local pet shop and they were £70!!! stuff that, I thought, I can get one cheaper off the web. Statistically, 6 out of 7 dwarves are not happy. I start a new job in Seoul next week. I thought it was a good Korea move. The Prime Minister, David Cameron, has announced that he intends to make it more difficult to claim bene-fits. From next week, all the forms will be printed in English. I was driving this morning when I saw an RAC van parked up. The driver was sobbing uncontrollably and looked very miserable. I thought to myself ‘that guy’s heading for a breakdown’. YES, I'M A SE#IOR CITIZE#! . I'm the life of the party...... Even if it lasts until 8 p.m. I'm very good at opening childproof caps.... With a hammer. I'm awake many hours before my body allows me to get up. I'm smiling all the time because I can't hear a thing you're saying. I'm sure everything I can't find is in a safe secure place, somewhere. I'm wrinkled, saggy, lumpy, and that's just my left leg. I'm beginning to realize that aging is not for wimps. Yes, I'm a SENIOR CITIZEN and I think I am having the time of my life!