A Blunder in Training
Heroes Remember
A Blunder in Training
One that I do recount in my book, but I didn't, I didn't spread
around at the time. In OTU in England, now you, we went to
OTU up in Grangemouth, north of Stirling, north of Edinburgh,
and there you learn to fly a Spitfire, but a Spitfire is a
single-engined air craft, you fly with your instructor on an
master and then he sits beside you after the Spitfire is, is
parked and he goes through the cockpit and tells you
everything that you have to do. And you read about it and you
have, there are about 16 things that you do when you get in
the air craft, this and this and this. One important thing was
to, when you, before you take off, you put the pitch of the
blade into fine pitch, or, so that it, well, you get more
power to take off. Well I was so, I got the instructor to, I was
his crazy pilot who was brilliant you know but unreliable,
anyway I got him to let me go off first of my group, I was quite,
and he finally gave me a, a survey again of the cockpit and
all the things I was to do, but I wasn't listening really.
And so I got into that ruddy air craft and everything went well,
and then I pushed the throttle forward and everybody told me,
we were all told, how the tremendous acceleration you have
in a Spitfire, nothing like a Harvard or anything, you pushed
back, and then you, so I pushed the throttle all the way forward
and the, the Spit started down the runway and, but it sounded
like a truck, and it was roar, roar, and it, I couldn't get it
up in the air. I pulled back the stick and, and I could see the
end of the runway, I could see the bush at the end. Well,
finally, I got, just got airborne, just enough, I couldn't
even get the wheels up because I was afraid I was going to hit
the trees, and I finally did a long wide circuit because it was
going so slow, I was almost stalling, I was going only about
eighty or ninety. And as I turned I saw these red lights
coming up from the Aerodrome. Oh, and I thought, "Well, there is
something wrong," and I could see there was something wrong with
the aircraft but stupidly I didn't think about the pitch, I
was in course pitch all the time not fine pitch. Anyway I just
made the hillside and just got back in and my instructor,
oh he was white in the face, he, when I taxied up to him. He
said, "You bloody sod, you bloody fool. You were in course pitch
and you're still in course pitch, you get out." So I was
grounded for five days. So that was the most exciting,
bad time of my...
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