A Flying Instructor at RAF Church Fenton

On Yorkshire Day, enjoying cricket at Headingley earlier this year, I was reminded of my first encounter with the County back in early 1969.  “Let me speak plainly Brown: I run a very experienced outfit here at primary Flying Squadron and brand- new instructors like you dilute the quality of the unit.”  Thus, was I welcomed to Church Fenton in North Yorkshire (just) by my new Commanding Officer, Squadron Leader Cecil Jonklaas. Primary Flying Squadron (PFS) had formed a few years earlier as flying training reversed its previous policy of all jet training (straight through from ab-initio to “Wings” on the Jet Provost aircraft) to provide 30 hours of instruction in the single piston Chipmunk trainer for those pilot entrants who had not completed a flying scholarship as schoolboys or who had otherwise no previous flying experience.  The logic was that those young men who would be unlikely to make the grade on the jet could be filtered out earlier on the less expensive Chipmunk.  Its worth pointing out, in retrospect, that mastering the Chipmunk required the acquisition of numerous motor skills that would never be required on future types.  One could argue, however, that such negative training could be justified on the basis that if you could master the tricky, tail-dragging, little Chipmunk, you probably had the necessary inherent hand, eye, and brain coordination to manage on other types later.  I’ll come back to that.

I had found my way to Church Fenton by way of a 6-month training course at the Central Flying School at RAF Little Rissington in Gloucestershire.  In those days we needed instructors for the Chipmunk and Jet Provost, basic, and the Gnat and Varsity for multi engine and fast jet advanced training respectively.  You could volunteer for any role but you were largely typecast by your previous flying experience – it was unlikely that an ex Beverley pilot would be posted to instruct on the Gnat (but the opposite wasn’t always untrue).  Most of the basic cannon fodder opted for the Jet Provost from where the future opportunity to escape to more glamorous fighter pastures was highest.  On the other hand, basic training on the Chipmunk, usually at a University Air Squadron, of which, in those days, there were a great many, carried greater promise for quality of life and early responsibility.  Unfortunately in my case, a previous scandalous, by the standards of the time, association with a lady at my previous station, had somewhat marked my supervisory card.  Along with homosexuality, people took a generally dim view of such things in those days.  A one-side interview with the Commandant of the Central Flying School and the threat of action under QR1021 left me somewhat disadvantaged.  Who after all, in a one man and his dog University Air Squadron, remote from administrative support, would welcome the possibility onerous paper-work?  Fortunately, my CFS Instructor, the legendary John Snell, really stuck his neck out for me and I was allowed to continue the course from which I graduated, comfortably, as a B2 (under supervision) Qualified Flying Instructor.  But it was to Church Fenton in the Vale of York and not White Waltham and London SW1, where I was sent (and another one-sided interview with my new boss).

Although, theoretically qualified to instruct students in the art of flying, local procedures and organisational governance required various check rides with the supervisory hierarchy.  I couldn’t have offended anyone on this process because my log book records that I was let loose on a real student a couple of days later.  Although the introductory process was very formal, once completed, I was left very much to my own devices.  The daily routine began with a meteorological briefing for all staff and students.  A “Duty Instructor” was nominated for the day and his duties began with collecting all the weather and operational information before presenting a briefing to the assembled company.  Based on the expected weather, one of the supervisors would declare a “flying phase” effectively defining the extent of flying operations for the time ahead.  For example, the flying phase limited whether student pilots could fly solo, both in the immediate vicinity of the airfield and further afield.  If the weather was good, there would be few restrictions on solo flying but if the weather was poor, then flying would be restricted to dual (student and instructor) operations only and shades in between.  After the met brief staff and students dispersed to the Squadron facilities for the day’s duties.

The days duties would be displayed on a flying programme.  In the case of “A” Flight, to which I had been assigned, the flying programme was a template showing individual activity for instructors and students and time of day.  The template was covered with a large sheet of transparent Perspex and details were recorded in “chinagraph” (wax) pencil (easily erasable).  My Flight Commander, the hugely likeable Pete Ash (his opposite number on “B” Flight was the equally personable Stan Witchall), had constructed a flying programme for the day.  In the first box on one of the lines was my name, in the next box an aircraft tail number which had been allocated to me and then, ignoring a number of boxes marking time slots, a long arrow terminating at 1700 hours that day.  This was definitely not micro-management and I very quickly learned how to make the best use of the day’s weather with my new student charges.  For example, there was no use giving formal pre-flight briefs to your students whilst the sun shone if the forecast was for grotty later in the day.  Get airborne, brief whilst walking out, and catch up later.  And which student to fly with first?  Bloggs 1 needed light wind conditions whilst he mastered landings whilst Bloggs 2 would hardly notice wind whilst he struggled with the early upper air exercises.  And do you know, nobody said a bloody supervisory word to me?  I know, in retrospect, that they were watching but they, gloriously, let me get on with it and I relished the responsibility and the challenge.  Before long, I was juggling my 3 or 4 students through a busy flying day, and not wasting any of it.

It was hard work, particularly physically.  After signing for the aircraft we would collect parachutes, sling them over the right shoulder and walk to the aircraft.  At the rear of the wing, pass shoulder straps over the head and hold both with one hand.  Locate the quick release box (QRB) with the other hand, turn slightly clockwise and insert the shoulder lugs with a click.  Then feed each thigh strap under the bottom loop and back onto itself before clicking in the QRB.  Ensure that the QRB is locked and sitting fairly high on the chest so that the seat harness QRB could sit comfortably below. Tighten the whole thing so that you just about cannot stand upright then climb aboard via the left wing trailing edge, stand on the seat and then settle, allowing the chute pack to nestle in the hollow seat.  Once seated, fasten the aircraft shoulder and lap harness and tighten (later, we had a fifth anchor point in the form of a “negative G strap”).  This was done by twisting the knob on the QRB as far as it went, without depressing the thumb catch on the operating knob.  Then, with the knob held in this position, insert the lap straps followed by the shoulder straps.  Finally adjust lap and should straps to ensure the body is held firmly but no excessively tightly, whatever that meant. Next, don the cloth inner helmet and connect the pigtail to the aircraft intercom.  Then, put the bone dome over the cloth helmet and remove the visor cover.  Finally, clip the free end of the H Type Oxygen mask to the other side of the inner helmet.  Phew – good to go.  Strapping to the rear seat I would then wait, an eternity, whilst the student in the front seat struggled with straps and connections.  One could imagine what a challenge this would be, even to the least apprehensive student pilots.  In the summer it was hot on the ground and cold in the air (no heater in the Chipmunk).  One was obliged to dress is case of emergency so bare arms (fire) and comfortable footwear (parachute landing), for example, were out. The seat was uncomfortable and cramped, straining the spine and the noise, despite a flying helmet covered by a protective “bone-dome” was, by today’s standards, the stuff that industrial injury lawyers’ dreams are made of.  In the winter, it was perishing cold in the back, no matter what one wore and one pretty soon lost all sensation in the feet due to the cold.  One instructor at the CFS used to drum his feet on the floor of the back cockpit to keep warm.  Unfamiliar with the aircraft, a fellow student asked the instructor, “what’s that noise?”  Quick as a flash, Steve Holding said, “oh its only the oil pump – sometimes they can be a bit noisy.  If it stops, that’s the time to worry!”  Steve spent the next few hours patiently drumming his feet on the floor throughout each flight only to cease, abruptly, a few days later in the middle of an aerobatic sequence as it all went quiet at the top of a loop.

And so began my flying instructional career.  Flying instruction technique had developed during the First World War when Major Raymond Smith Barry invented the “Gosport System” of flying instruction.  The Gosport System had been used thereafter and Smith Barry’s legacy was very much alive with many of his original observations and notebooks on display in the CFS HQ.  Primary Flying Squadron was, as it says, concerned with the Primary stage of flying instruction, that is, the sequence of instruction given to an ab-initio pilot before the first solo flight. Following aircraft familiarisation and instruction on preparation for flight, subsequent lessons comprised; the effects of the controls, flying in straight and level flight, climbing and descending, how to recover from stall, turns using moderate angles of bank, taking off, and approaching the runway and landing.  All these elements, put together, comprised a “circuit and landing,” the consistent safe execution of which was the pre-requisite of being sent on ones first solo flight, Exercise 13 in the syllabus.

“The first solo flight may be regarded as a milestone in the pupil’s road of progress which indicates the end of one phase of training and the beginning of another.  To the pupil, and his instructor, it is the crowning achievement of all that has gone before, and when successfully completed, it can impart to the pupil a feeling of confidence in his ability in a manner nor possible during dual instruction.  Therefore, it is a most important stage in the pilot’s training.”

So I set about preparing my students for their first solo.  As I said earlier, nobody interfered, and nobody volunteered advice.  But I remember, a few weeks in, mentioning in the crew room over a cup of coffee, that I was having trouble with Bloggs 3 who could not keep straight on the runway during the take off run.  Nobody said anything at the time but later, old and bold instructors sidled up to me; “where’s he looking - at the ground or the horizon?” “What’s he got on his feet – tell him to swop his heavy boots for plimsoles for a while,” and so on.  Advice was always available on request from all the experience of which my Squadron Commander was so proud and most of it extending from WWII.

But as a newly qualified instructor, a B2 QFI, the principle restriction on my competence was authorising first solo flights.  One way of progressing would have been for the B2 to get his students to a certain stage and then formally present them to a more qualified instructor for a first solo check.  There are all sorts of things wrong with this approach, not least of which was putting the poor student under undue pressure.  For me, one day, apparently at random, Pete Ash the Flight Commander told me to take the day off, muttering something about not much going on.  On my return from a day out in York, I found that both my students had completed Exercise 13 and that I was to resume their training in circuit consolidation.  The sense of confidence I achieved was just as significant as the sense of achievement felt by my students for I had learned a vital lesson – I now knew what standard a student should reach before he was fit for solo.  At the same time, my flight commander had just exercised a highly effective quality check on the standard of my instruction.  One of the students, by the way, was Acting Pilot Officer Mike Rudd who subsequently did rather well in his flying career.