How to Bail Out and Land

The peculiar thing about our aircraft was that you sat in a bucket seat, you sat on your parachute, it was under your bum, and strapped in. But, and if you had to bail out, we did not have ejection seats like the lads have today which are marvellous. We would have to wheel back the canopy, drop the Spitfire door, which you could drop down, stand up, turn around and put your right leg on the wing and then jump. And that was not a particularly enticing thought, so I decided if I'd had had a problem I'd have probably tried to ride it down and belly land it somewhere. But that's the only instruction we had. If the ground was level and you left the under cart up and you just flew it and actually held it at about two or three feet above the ground, four feet, until it literally stalled, it could in fact mush in. I can't comment more than that cause I've never did it but I've seen lots of indications where guys have done that and walked away from the bird without the slightest problem. On one occasion, landing in Italy, I used to prefer to fly my aircraft onto the ground. As you know the Spit was a very long snout with a tail wheel so when you landed and pulled that snout up so that you would land on the under cart and the tail wheel, your view would be obliterated so I used to bring it in and actually try to fly it onto the ground and once I was on the ground then gently drop the tail. On one occasion I did this and I noticed the engine was very, very rough, very rough and when I parked the aircraft I saw that when landing like that I had the tail too high and I had taken about four inches off each one of the propeller blades. Oh, yeah, and that's a four bladed prop. Yeah.

Mr. Yarnell describes some characteristics of the Spitfire. He explains how to bail out and how to do a ‘belly’ land in case of trouble.

Cyrill St. Clair (Cy) Yarnell

Mr. Yarnell was born August 9, 1920 in Carlow, Ireland. He moved to Canada when he was 8 years old. He enlisted in the Royal Canadian Air Force in 1940 at the age of 20. Mr Yarnell received his initial pilot training in Victoriaville, Quebec where he learned to fly the Fleet Finch, he then graduated on to the Harvard. He received flying instructor training in Trenton and trained pilots from many countries. After instructing for a year, Mr. Yarnell was sent overseas. He flew missions over North Africa, Italy and Germany and was involved in the battles at Liri Valley and Monte Cassino. Following the war, Mr. Yarnell continued with the RCAF, retiring in 1975 as a colonel. He is a member of the Air Force Association of Canada and is very active with the Air Force Museum in Trenton, Ontario. Mr. Yarnell and his wife, Phyllis, have three children, seven grandchildren and one great-grandchild.