Target Practice

Interviewer: To go back to the, the drogue, can you explain to me what that involved, what your job was?

Drogueing?

Interviewer: Yeah

We had, what they called Lysander air planes, we called them Lizzie’s, and there’s the pilot and there’s an area where there’s a big gas tank and over the gas tank was a big wench with a cable and the cable was about 2000 feet, and at the end of the cable we had, what they called a fish with a hook. And we had these drogues that were, maybe 20 feet long and 5 feet in diameter and when they inflated, air would go in one end and out the other, like a round parachute. Well, actually, when it started out it was only about that big around and that long and we tied it with string, and a rope with a hook on it and you put that hook on this cable and you let the cable out then you dropped it and just the weight of it hitting the end of the fish would break the string and the thing would open up. And then we’d let it out about 1500, 1800 feet behind us and then the (inaudible) gunnery ships would come up, give us their numbers and they’d go out back and they’d start firing at it, so they’re 1800 feet behind us, shooting, and we’re up here. And we’d do two circuits around the lake, because they used to carry two to four gunners. While stationed, they trained at Commonwealth, it was a Commonwealth training station and we trained Australians, New Zealanders, British, Czechoslovakia, the whole works. Anyways, we’d do one exercise with them, then, then we’d, we’d go back to the field and drop that drogue and put another one on and come back and meet a second gunnery ship and we’d do the same. It would take about an hour and a half, an hour and three-quarters to do two trips then back down on the ground and, in a day, in a rotation you’d do maybe four to six trips a day.