Stories About My Flying Career – No 1, Crashing

A friend in Northumberland recently alerted me to the publication of a book called “RAF Acklington – Guardian of the Northern Skies” by Malcolm Fife.  Acklington was England’s most northerly airfield during WWII and was one of the most important in the region.  After the war it was a fighter station before changing to the training role.  The station ran down and closed in the late 60s.  The land was exploited as an open cast coal mine and a prison was constructed.  When last I visited, it was difficult to imagine that an airfield ever existed there, but it did and it was a hugely important part of my life.  So I ordered the book and when it arrived, I turned eagerly to the period around 1964 to see if there was anything I recognised.  There it was on page 250, an account of the loss of a Jet Provost training aircraft on a navigation exercise.  The report concludes on the following page by saying that the student pilot spent several weeks with his ankle in plaster before resuming his flying training.  So he did but it was less than 5 weeks – here is the full story.

I was an Acting Pilot Officer (APO), I began my flying training at Royal Air Force Acklington on 26 May 1964, having previously completed Officer training at No 1 Initial Training School, Royal Air Force South Cerney.  How young and warlike we looked!

Acklington, at the time, was the home of Number 6 Flying Training School equipped with Jet Provost T Mk 3 and T Mk 4 twin seat training aircraft.  I was assigned to Number 1 Squadron and was at the stage of the course where half the day was spent in the Ground School on academics and the other half flying.  Acklington had few, if any, permanent buildings and, instead, comprised a village of wooden huts, variously converted.  We marched everywhere, to save walking, and the huts and alleys between presented excellent cover for the numerous Master Aircrew, often highly decorated from WWII, who had little appetite for confronting a flight of Acting Pilot Officers and, necessarily, being obliged to salute them!

The weather in the Northumberland and Borders area on 30 September 1964 was dominated by an anticyclone centred just to the East of Hull.  There was some scattered clouds, base 1000 to 1500 feet with a light South Easterly wind and good visibility.  Pretty good flying weather and excellent for a student pilot about to embark upon his first experience of low-level navigation – “Nav 6” as it was designated in the Jet Provost flying training syllabus.  But before flying in the afternoon, I was in the classroom in the morning.

Memories of “groundschool” as it was then known are somewhat hazy but we certainly encountered some characters.  There was the gruff Senior Meteorologist who periodically invited the class to “pick the bones out of that,” the charming, much decorated and immaculate Flight Lieutenant SCS Bennett who attempted to instil  “airmanship” – “a red light visible through three hundred and sixty degrees every one hundred and fifty feet, or part thereof, equally spaced.”  The “part thereof, equally spaced” was always repeated for emphasis and with an obvious twinkle!  Goodness knows what he had done to deserve such a fate!  Flight Sergeant Foard attempted to teach us navigation and the mysteries of the “one-in-sixty rule.”  But I do remember one lesson that morning – it was delivered by the Scottish Chief Technician who was responsible for technical instruction.  He was talking about the engine, the Rolls Royce Viper 20201, or “constant thrust-variable noise” as it was often described.  The Chief Tech sang its praises in terms of reliability and robustness - “a viper cocktail” – a pheasant, a bucket of ice and a sack of sand – could all be ingested without mishap.

Lunch was either sandwiches, if on the first wave of the afternoon, or a more leisurely affair in the labyrinth of huts that had been arranged as an Officers’ Mess.  I must have enjoyed sandwiches and even a generous allowance for flight planning before departing Acklington at 1400 hours local time in Jet Provost T Mk 4 XR664.  Her she is.

My instructor was Flight Lieutenant D J Philips (Phil), actually an Engineering Officer who had gained his “wings” and was now doing his operational tour as a “creamed off” Qualified Flying Instructor (QFI).  He had accumulated 263 hours on Jet Provosts, including his own basic training and the QFI Course at Central Flying School (CFS) – he was still pretty much a god of the skies to me.

Our first track took us to Eyemouth along the coast – we passed Alnmouth, Dunstanburgh and Bamburgh by which time my instructor had finished his instruction sequence and had handed control to me to continue northwards.  Passing Holy Island there was, unsurprisingly in retrospect, a lot of birds about.  Noting my apprehension, Phil took control and demonstrated that sea birds were pretty pathetic creatures and, when confronted by a growling Jet Provost, would immediately descend.  All that I needed to do was just to tweak back on the stick, pass over the terrified bird, and resume my low level navigation.  I’m not sure if he had also remarked that birds of prey reacted differently, but he should have done.

Back in control, I was obviously doing quite well because the atmosphere relaxed and I was encouraged not to pay too much attention to always being 250 feet above the ground all the time – the odd excursion below was OK, provided conditions were suitable.  Similarly, the 180 knots Indicated Air Speed (IAS), at which the exercise had been planned, seemed rather pedestrian after I had got the hang of things and we may have tacitly agree to speed up a little.  And so it was, heading 057° (compass) towards Coldstream.  I think we must have generally been following the course of the River Teviot, descending down a spur, the apex of which was the junction of the A68 and A698, into the Teviot valley with higher ground both to left and right.

To be continued.