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My First Solo

I was 13½ years of age when the war started. Immediately my interest turned towards aeroplanes and before long I was obsessed with flying and with fliers. At fifteen I joined the Air Training Corps at school and spent much time around local airfields, watching aircraft and trying to scrounge trips. I had a little success with trips in an Oxford, a Mitchell, a Liberator, a Flying fortress and a Dakota.
At seventeen I volunteered for the R.A.F., and at eighteen and a bit I was called up.

In the early days of August 1944, I left the peace and the safety of the Norfolk countryside, and the spirit-breaking tedium of pen-pushing for an insurance company. I went to war. This is what I had waited for, although it was the lure of adventure rather than a desire to kill or to be killed which was the driving force. I was called up to fight for my King and my Country. I enlisted in His Majesty's Royal Air Force as No. 3001483, Aircraftman Second Class, Woodhouse, H.L.S., "for the duration of the present emergency." I was classified as Aircrafthand General Duties, under training Pilot, Navigator, Bomb Aimer, or to put it succinctly, as the Forces always did, "3001483, AC2 Woodhouse, H.L.S., ACH/GD/u/t/P/N/B
I was very, very proud of the white flash that I could wear tucked into my forage cap to signify that I was destined to become a famous R.A.F. air ace.

Induction was at St John’s Wood in London followed by basic training at Babbacombe on the Devon coast.
Just into the New Year of 1945, I received a posting to No. 24 E.F.T.S. (Elementary Flying Training School) at Kingstown, just north of Carlisle. This started in 1933 as a municipal airport and was taken over by the Air Ministry at the outbreak of the war for flying training. It changed to a Grading School in 1942 flying Tiger Moths.

The accommodation was very good and we were fed extremely well by civilian cooks wearing proper chefs' high hats, and actually carving meat from a large joint. With our white flashes we were well on our way. The birds would flock to us. Our spirits rose.

A Grading School was aimed at assessing all would be aviators to find those considered suitable as Service pilots. There was a maximum of twelve hours tuition leading to a solo flight at ten hours or as soon as possible thereafter.
The school was augmented by a satellite grass field at Kirkpatrick on some grazing land just over the Scottish border, not very far from Gretna Green.
Most of our flying was done from this satellite. Some planes were kept there and we were ferried back and forth by lorry.

It was January and February, the wrong time of the year to fly in open Tiger Moth cockpits. We were issued with inner quilted nylon suits and outer fleecy leather flying suits.
For our hands we had three pairs of gloves, one comprising several layers of silk, one of wool, and both to be worn under leather gauntlets.
Unfortunately, at the start of the course the Station was out of flying boots. This meant wearing all our three pairs of socks under our issued boots. To guard against the dangers of frost-bite flights were limited to around twenty minutes. Luckily, after a few days the flying boots turned up.
By the time that we had clipped on a seat parachute we looked like cumbersome Michelin men, and after we were strapped into the cockpit it was not easy to move our bodies or reach and manipulate the switches and controls.

A few words now to describe the features of the D.H.82A, Mark II, the De Havilland Tiger Moth.

It was a biplane with a Gipsy Major engine of 130 h.p. driving a two-bladed propellor. Controls and instruments were pretty basic. The controls comprised the control column, the rudder bar, the throttle lever, the tail-trimmer, and the autoslot locking device. The instruments comprised an Airspeed Indicator, an Altimeter, a Turn and Bank Indicator, an Artificial Horizon, an Engine Revolution Indicator, an Oil Pressure Gauge, a fuel gauge and a Compass.

The engine used unleaded 73 octane fuel at the rate of eight gallons an hour when cruising, and had a safe endurance of some 2 ½ hours.

The performance wasn't too exciting even if compared with modern cars.

- Maximum speed - 110 m.p.h.
- Cruising speed - 94 m.p.h.
- Absolute ceiling - 18,100 feet
- Approach speed - 65-70 m.p.h.
- Stalling speed - 45-50 m.p.h.

The aeroplane was fully aerobatic, except that outside loops and other "negative G" manoeuvres were banned. It required 120 m.p.h. for a loop, and 105 m.p.h. for a roll. It was forbidden to dive the aircraft at speeds in excess of 170 m.p.h.

Before our first trip however we had to learn how to start the engine by swinging the propeller (the Tiger had no electric starter), and obtain a certificate to prove our competence.

We then had to become familiar with the cockpit layout, the instruments such as they were, and the controls. We had already been lectured on the aircraft and its handling characteristics, and had learned stalling speed, climbing speed, cruising speed etc., and some airmanship including the overriding need to keep a good lookout at all times.
The first flying lesson was a familiarisation trip of straight and level flight. My instructor to start with was a Flight Sergeant who was browned off by being switched from flying operational aircraft to trying to teach kids still wet between the ears to fly.

After an initial mix-up with the rudder control (for some reason I tried turning left by pushing my right foot forwards — I must have thought that I was riding my bike), I then progressed quickly to take-offs and climbing, then turning without varying height, and approach, gliding and landing. After this the instructor taught steeper turns and induced stalling and spinning so that I would recognise the symptoms that could cause problems in flight and take the appropriate recovery action.

For good measure the instructor would demonstrate aerobatics; rolls, loops and rolls off the top. Ostensibly this was to see my reactions, but to me he was obviously showing off (the R.A.F. expression was shooting the s...).
As the Tiger's carburettor was fed by gravity from a fuel tank in the top wing, the aircraft could not be flown upside down for more than a very short time as the engine would starve of fuel and petrol would fall from the breather pipe.

While all this was going on we were learning more about airmanship, which, as well as embracing rules of the air, emphasised safety, and particularly the importance of procedures.

Of course there was the continuing requirement for us to get and to keep fit, and for the first and only time in the R.A.F., I was forced to go into a boxing ring. We were paired off by the Sergeant P.T.I. (Physical Training Instructor). My opponent implored me to go easy and reminded me that we need only go through the motions. He was taller than me, he had a longer reach, and every time I stuck an arm out towards him he just thumped me one. Three two minute rounds later my face was all puffed up with red weals, despite the oversize gloves, and my unmarked opponent stood and just grinned. He was not even out of breath. I think that the P.T. Instructor must have been a boxer, and might have been on the lookout for a future Service champion. I didn't impress.

At some time during our stay at Kingstown, pairs of us had to spend a few nights in a Nissen hut on the satellite airfield at Kirkpatrick to guard the R.A.F. property. I remember the cold and the snow when it was my turn, although the hut had a coke-burning stove.
I recall that there was an arrangement with an isolated farm nearby to supply milk and eggs each morning for breakfast. We trudged cross-country through the snow early each morning for our life-blood.

Going solo was the goal. We knew that if we didn't, that would be the end of all ambition. During the flying instruction I was most apprehensive. The instructors were always critical, saying, "Keep that wing up", "Watch your airspeed", "Keep straight, you're yawing", "Don't snatch at the controls", "You're too high", You're too low", "Be more gentle with the stick”,. “Imagine that you have your weapon in your hand and coax it” and other less printable remarks. I never got any praise or any intimation that I was progressing satisfactorily.

The aircraft had no radio communication either with the ground or between instructor and pupil. Interchange of information in the aircraft was by a speech tube. The instructor sat up front and had the better view. The pupil's view was dominated by the instructor's back.

After around ten hours of dual instruction I was handed to the C.F.I. (Chief Flying Instructor), a Flight Lieutenant Lishman, to test whether I was ready to go up on my own. He could have failed me on the spot, in which case I would have been posted away that same day; or he could have handed me back for a further hour's instruction and a retest. I concentrated hard during the test and even managed a passable attempt at a three-point landing.
Imagine my elation when, after the test, I taxied him back to the dispersal area and he got out without a word, carefully secured his straps, waved an arm, and walked into the wooden flight hut. It was traditional for him and for your instructor to keep well out of sight, but you could be sure that they would both be looking apprehensively from behind the curtains.

It was February 23rd 1945, about mid-afternoon. The first solo comprised a take off, a climb to 1500 feet, a right-hand circuit comprising a turn cross-wind, a turn downwind, and an approach and landing, followed by taxying back to the flight hut with a Cheshire cat's grin.
What usually happened, and I was no exception, was that the pupil would deliberately approach too high and overshoot the approach when landing. It was an excuse to go round again, just to prolong the flight and the experience.

It was exhilarating, taxying round the edge of the field, weaving from side to side to improve the view. The grass had a coating of snow which blew about in the slipstream.
I stopped at the far end of the field, and turned into wind by revving the engine with full rudder. I then went meticulously through the check procedures. Then I searched the skies through 360 degrees for other aircraft. All was clear.
I pulled down my goggles, progressively opened the throttle fully, bounced along the grass, picked up speed, concentrating on keeping straight, and checking the instruments.
The tail came up quickly. After a few seconds, light pressure on the control stick brought the wheels off the ground; and then we were up, up, up, and away.
The ground seemed to fall away quite quickly even at the modest speed of the Tiger. I realised that I was now completely on my own. Then it was time to throttle the engine back slightly to climbing revs.

I remember singing and shouting tunelessly at the top of my voice, attempting to drown the noise of the engine, and the sound of the wind singing through the wing struts and wires.
A climbing turn to the right and it was time to level off at 1500 feet. It was then time for a further right-hand turn into the down-wind leg. All the checks were done again, the slots were unlocked ready for landing. I turned into the crosswind leg, throttled back and started to lose height.
I then turned into the wind towards the landing strip to position the aircraft for the approach and landing. The whole flight went very well and after deliberately keeping too much height on the first approach, and going round again so that I could re-live the whole experience, the landing was a fairly acceptable three-pointer with little or no bounce.

We always had to use the grass with the Tiger Moth and get the tail down fairly quickly. The aircraft had no brakes and no tail wheel, and relied on a skid under the tail to slow it down. Again, no sign of the Chief Flying Instructor, and no praise whatever from the instructor when I had parked and returned to the flight hut. Just the bare statement, "You owe me a pint." A debt incidentally that I was given no opportunity to discharge.

I was on cloud nine.

The airfield at Kingstown was about two miles north of the town of Carlisle, and we could only get there by walking, so we didn't go very often. Somehow or other, and I cannot remember how, I got to know a rather plump young lady who's father was the Dean at the Cathedral.
She took me to her home at the Deanery two or three times, and the Dean always gave me some supper. The fare was always the same, a chunk of bread, a hunk of cheese and a mug of strong cocoa made with hot water, with no milk or sugar. The Dean was a friendly round-faced scholarly fellow and I remember finding his conversation much too deep and educated for me. I never met a Mrs. Dean.
My stay in the area was short so I suppose that I must have left his daughter heartbroken. I don't even remember her name, nor her looks; just her father's reddish round face, his dry bread and cheese, and his cocoa !

Luckily at the end of the tests I came out well, and then had my trade reclassified as " u/t Pilot ".

Shortly after my solo trip I was posted to continue my training as a pilot, first to R.A.F. Sealand in the Wirral and then R.A.F. Church Lawford just outside Rugby. Unfortunately, my flying career came to a premature end with an accident while playing basketball.

My demob group was promulgated as an ACH/GD. In the late autumn of 1947 and my release was imminent.
What a distinctive Service record ? I had started out as an AC2 (Aircraftman Second Class) and ended up as an AC2 (Aircraftman Second Class), despite an automatic promotion to AC1 after six months and to LAC (Leading Aircraftman) after a maximum of two years.
My trade started as GD (General Duties) and finished as GD (General Duties) In crude Forces language, my rank and trade after three and a half years of service to my King and Country qualified me as a "shit-house wallah".
Not many airmen achieved that.

On the seventeenth day of November 1947 I returned to civilian life. I travelled to R.A.F. Wharton in Lancashire. Here I was issued with a demob suit, a raincoat, a trilby, a pair of cuff links and a railway warrant for Norwich. I said a very fond farewell to Service life with the first two fingers of my right hand.

Back to Civvy Street, getting towards my twenty second birthday, I was dapper and resplendent, and looked stupid, in my new cheap and ill-fitting suit, raincoat and trilby. Older, sadder, and infinitely wiser.

I had descended from a potentially brave young warrior to a disillusioned ex-serviceman.

From a hero to a zero !!

Subsequently I married, we had sons and then grandchildren, and I spent the rest of my working life in insurance. The family has of course been the centre of life for me and the source of enjoyment.
Service life in the forties is consigned to the deepest recesses of a reducing number of minds; R.A.F. Kingstown and R.A.F Kirkpatrick and the like are mere ghosts, before long I too will be a ghost and very few Tiger Moths survive.
However, that twenty minutes or so a little over sixty years ago is frozen in time within my memory It is still remembered as the greatest single achievement of my hum-drum life, when a dream was realized and fostered for a few weeks and months..

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