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THE RAF AND OUR WAR
Part 2

Whilst at Charter Hall I met a Pilot named Richard Hillary who had been shot down in a Spitfire early in the war and had been badly burned. His face was badly scarred. He was retraining on twins. Unfortunately one night he took off just after me, both of us being under R/T control, were told to circle beacons, which was all one could see, no other lights and pitch black with no moon. They kept calling Richard’s call sign, to no avail. When instrument flying it was too easy to get mesmerised by the beacon one was circling, get steeper and steeper, then stall, which I imagine is what could have happened to him. He wrote a book after his Spitfire crash called “The Last Enemy”, which was quite good, he was also sent to U.S.A. by the Ministry to help the Yanks to understand the war problems, where he had an affair with Merle Oberon. Night flying was really quite scary during the war for those without extensive experience of instrument flying. Remember that there were no lights on the ground as now to provide some sort of horizon to fly by and when there was no moon or it was overcast, reliance on instruments was essential, despite some of those feelings that one was not doing what the instruments told one. Take-off could be particularly hairy in really bad weather.

On 9th September 1943 Helen had our first daughter, we called her Pamela Jean. From this time distance it seems thoughtless that I should have not prevented this during a hot war. Helen had been living in Wood Green with my parents after our marriage and she was obliged to work on aircraft. My father worked in a furniture factory building the new Mosquito twin-engined aircraft, so she worked there, for some months and then when she realised she was really pregnant, moved back to Ipswich. Unfortunately she was fairly close to the airport which was often the target for the Luftwaffe, not ideal for mother and child. Although I did not see much of Pamela then, I was destined to see even less, and she grew to be a very pretty little girl.

On 7th October 1943 I had a small brush with authority. I was instructing a certain F/O Roberts on circuits and bumps when after 4 or 5 of these, we moved once again to take off. My attention was taken up by maps slipping to the floor as he opened up to take off. We were in a Bisley, which was a very sluggish aircraft at the best of times, and over 80% down the runway we were clearly not going to get airborne. Directly ahead of us and beyond the barbed wire on the boundary was a greenhouse and a house. There was only one thing to do, the standard instructions I had impressed on my pupils, undercarriage up, engines off, which I did, our speed must have been some 120 m.p.h. I put on hard right rudder to try to move away from the property, the noise of grinding and bending metal was tremendous. We went through the boundary, just missed the greenhouse and ground to a halt in a secondary heap of barbed wire. Looking around to see what had gone wrong, I realised that F/O Roberts had failed to close the gills which improve the airflow to the engine when taxying, but spoil the airflow on take off. If I had ever wondered what difference this would make, I now knew!
My log book was endorsed because I was in charge (rightly so) for carelessness.

There were many other incidents involving pupils which, in retrospect are amusing. I remember one who tried to land with the undercarriage up. On the approach there are a number of vital actions that have to be taken, which with practice become automatic, such as: undercarriage down, check lights are on, fine pitch, flap. My man failed to put the undercarriage down or check the lights, put it in fine pitch, then put the flaps down, checked on the throttle, and I could see he was somewhat surprised that his speed wasn’t dropping normally, so I let him continue to about 300 feet and then I said gently, “Would you mind opening up and going round again” The surprise on his face when he got round to raising the undercarriage was a joy to see, but I reckoned, by doing it that way he would always remember it.

On another occasion, whilst taxiing, my pupil raised the undercarriage instead of checking that the flaps were up (a standard part of cockpit drill). On the Blenheim, the two controls were very close together, so in order to stop such characters using the wrong lever, they put a small hinged cover over the undercarriage control. I was unfortunate that my lad flipped the cover up so quickly, I could do nothing about it, and we sat on the ground.

In September 1944 I was sent to OTU to do a refresher course on Beaufighters. I really took to the "Beau", despite the fact that many pilots said it swung like a bitch on landing and wasn't very clever on take off, I thought it was great, perhaps that was because I flew Bisleys.. I picked up my Radio Observer there, Ted Baikie, an ex-Durham policeman. It was his second course. On his first one, his pilot had crashed on landing and killed himself, but Ted had escaped. I was very pleased on this course that I had passed out with the top Gunnery score, the Beau had 6 machine guns and 4 cannon and I got the highest score ever recorded there.

We finished the Course and were told we were to join 89 Squadron in India. We were to take an aircraft out with us so we reported down in Cornwall where we did aircraft tests. It was fairly obvious that a number of crews were swinging the lead by failing their Beaus for high consumption. I did a thoroughly extensive test on ours and it passed comfortably. The reason these tests were necessary was that the war in Europe was still on and we were to get to North Africa via the Bay of Biscay and the Atlantic without crossing land. To do this we went unarmed and with fullest tanks.

We took off on 13th November in pouring rain and disappeared in cloud. It was then that I realised my RO, Ted was not a Navigator, nor did he have the vaguest idea how to read a map. Fortunately I had done rather well on my navigation course and was very happy with map reading, so Ted was really just a passenger. We broke cloud on my dead reckoning about 50 miles off the Portuguese coast, and even then when I tried to point out the landscape to Ted, he couldn't understand what I was talking about. In the Beau the RO sat halfway down the fuselage in a little turret.

We landed at Rabat Salle in Morocco and spent the night there. I knew that my brother Jack was stationed near Tripoli, so I thought it a good idea to meet him. We were scheduled to land at some other field in Algeria Biskra, I think, so I did that, but when we were then routed to Cairo, I put us down at Tripoli and asked for a check on the instruments which was rather naughty, as the C.O. said later. We went into Town and the Headquarters of the R.C.S.. got him in from some 80 miles down the Coast, and we spent a few hours together swapping yarns.

From Cairo we hopped over to Bahrein where we spent the night in a tent and I remember meeting some character who had been out there too long and was clearly going round the bend, he showed us what he said was a diamond that he had bought, some half inch across that he said was going to make his fortune when he got home. I hope he made it.

We then went on to Bandar Abbas in Persia (Now Iran) and finally to Karachi, which was then India where we left the aircraft, and after a couple of days were given train tickets to Bombay. We were allocated a tiny carriage to ourselves at the end of the train, I think the yanks would call it a caboose. That was just as well because the rest of the train was swarming with Indians, packed like sardines, and hanging on the sides and the roofs. Unfortunately I had somehow picked up Dysentery, and by the time we got to Bombay I was in some considerable distress and had to ask for an ambulance which carted me off to the General Hospital, where I spent a couple of weeks taking dozens of tablets until I was better.

We were sent on a jungle survival course which took about 4 weeks and then we finished our journey and arrived with 89 Squadron in Baigachi, just north of Calcutta. Sorties were flown from there over Burmah, and also eventually from Hmawbi and Cox's Bazaar. These were mainly Night fighter flights under ground control, but there was also fleet support in the Bay of Bengal.

Most night flying by the Japs had by now ceased. The ground control unit in Calcutta was new and inexperienced. I was scrambled on one occasion to intercept a bandit approaching Calcutta and I got behind him about 50 miles east of the city. At this point Ground control said “This is definitely a bandit, you have our authority to fire” It looked very much like an American DC3 to me, but to be sure I got right under his tail to verify that it was not the Japanese look-alike, and then got my RO to fire off the colours of the day which they did not respond to, but they now had their lights on and I followed them in to Dum Dum airport and tore a strip off Ground Control, telling them never to order a pilot to open fire, a pilot of little experience may well take them at their word. When I landed I got in touch with Dum Dum and told them that their crew that landed at such and such time was lucky to be alive, they must remember to switch on their IFF.

We had a dicey episode when on a night trip some 200 miles north when our electrical equipment caught fire. Luckily we were able to extinguish it before any serious damage was done and got back to base without ground control. At night one was very reliant on radio control and to lose it was not very welcome.

We then converted to Mosquito XIXNF's from our Beaufighters, and although we were all very fond of our Beaus, we were happy to have a new kite to fly. At this stage I was teaching a new crew to do a bit of formation flying when the idiot whom I had told to keep at least one wing length clear, slipped into my slipstream and smashed the elevator which forced us into a steep dive. I managed to recover and land without crashing but it was not amusing!

The Mosquito was a wonderful aircraft to fly, very responsive to the controls and a delight on take-off and landing, but it is debateable whether it should ever have been sent to the tropics, as there the extremes of humidity and heat played havoc with the glued construction. I lost two good pals when a wing fell off over the airfield.

We were all prepared with the other two Forces to invade Malaya and Singapore, when the Atom bombs were dropped and after the second one the Japanese surrendered, so we were the first occupying Squadron in Singapore. The original plan was for us to fly down to Malaya and land at the airstrip in Penang. As we flew past it when we occupied Singapore, the strip had been destroyed so we were rather pleased that the Japs had surrendered. After settling in we spent some time on dropping leaflets over Sumatra, to inform the Japanese soldiers and the local inhabitants that the war was over. We also spent some time playing football and rugby and doing photography

Eventually we were demobbed, sent home on the "Capetown Castle", and I arrived back in Southampton in April 1946 to a wife and daughter I had not seen for some 18 months, we had written some hundred odd letters to one another, but homecoming in my demob suit was very sweet. The war in Europe had been over for many months so our arrival was completely unnoticed.

By and large I had a very interesting war, King George sent me to a number of Countries, gave me lots of aircraft to fly, but I still remember many of my friends who did not return, we did what we were told to do and it was an adventure, but some of us were asked to do much more.

As a couple we have had a very interesting, some have said exciting, life. In addition to having another beautiful daughter, we have seen quite a bit of the world and done a number of things together that we wanted to do. We are just sad that our politicians have destroyed the essence of the country that we helped to defend.

Harry & Helen Burkitt.

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