As we did, the
Before the chocks were even in, a delegation of officers arrived and immediately demanded to know why we had been flying so low and so dangerously along the coastline north of Durban.
‘Not us!’ we echoed simultaneously, looks of shock, horror and incredulity etched on our unlined and innocent faces. ‘We would never break the rules!’
But, within seconds, there was a triumphant ‘Aha!’ from one of the technical officers (TOs) inspecting our Harvard. The other members of the rapidly assembled inspection party gathered around the gleeful TO, who was standing observing our tailplane.
‘Look!’ he said pointing at the horizontal stabiliser, where he had discovered evidence of something that had obviously impacted the elevator’s leading edge at high speed and gouged shallow furrows in its paintwork (as might be caused by heavy fishing line coming into contact with a Harvard flying at 150 knots, or about 275 kph).
‘Deny everything!’ whispered the
Just then there was a disturbance as the Harvard that had followed five minutes behind us arrived.
‘It’s probably them. They always fly too low,’ said the
‘Bah!’ responded their obvious leader, a guy with a massive handlebar moustache, but then, a little tentatively, and to cover all bases, he dispatched another of his TOs to scrutinise the arriving Harvard, just to make sure.
As it happened, that Harvard also had gouge marks on its tail.
And so did all 40 Harvards that arrived in Durban that day.
It seems that flying too low and too close to the beach was common practice among Harvard pilots. The practice had been going on since flying started, and will continue long after I have gone and robots replace young men as commanders of airborne military equipment.
Any
Before too long I was posted to South African Air Force College (SAAFCol) in Voortrekkerhoogte, Pretoria, alongside about 70 other newly qualified pilots and navigators for the prescribed SAAF Officer’s Course.
At this stage, none of us had been commissioned and we still all wore the white shoulder tabs designating candidate officer, the rank we’d all held since starting the Pupe’s Course. A week or two into the Officer’s Course, a small Wings Parade was held and Brian King and I received our coveted SAAF Pilot’s Wings.
The three-month Officer’s Course was designed to smooth off the remaining rough edges that some of us still carried from the wide diversity of our upbringing and schooling, to teach us a few of the protocols necessary to be good junior officers, to equip us with some basic administrative skills, to get rid of some of the belly fat accumulated during the latter stages of the Pupe’s Course, and, most importantly, to help us to survive formal dinners.
Attending lectures, completing syndicated projects and square-bashing on the parade ground, in roughly equal proportions, filled our days, while the nights were mostly spent acquainting ourselves with Pretoria’s not inconsiderable pub and club life. Many happy hours were spent in such venerable hostelries as the Keg and Tankard, Rose and Crown, Crazy Horse Saloon, Bumpers, Grand Wazoo, Petticoat Lane, Zillertal, Jacqueline’s and plenty of others whose names now escape me.
A nonsensical trend began to emerge whenever our group of 70-odd COs left the confines of the College on route marches that became longer and longer as we prepared for the 110-kilometre, five-day course-ending hike along and across the Magaliesberg, northwest of Pretoria. I use the word ‘nonsensical’ because of the insistence on the part of our drill instructors to do the training route marches at double pace for hours and hours on end.
It made no sense to any of my fellow pilots and navigators to trudge across hill and dale at a brutal rate for an extended period of time when our enormously expensive training – and future deployment – dictated that we move from place to place by air, even in the slowest aircraft, covering these distances in seconds or, at most, maybe just a few minutes. It was a question of energy efficiency, and the drill instructors just didn’t seem to grasp the concept.
