My Years in the Royal Canadian Air Force - Part 7 [Gosport] By Ronald Gaudet I arrived at 667 Squadron, Gosport on 1 April and would fly Hurricanes and Defiants. The Defiants had the turret off and a sliding hood, boot and wind driven prop for the operation of the winch as we were towing drogues with them. Talking with other pilots to find out the gen as we called it, I was told the pilot I replaced was shot down by the tank he was towing for and both him and the operator were killed so be careful and keep your eyes on the tracers. I had a tooth out on 6 April and had to fly for 2 hours 30 min. at 5000 ft and kept swallowing blood until I got sick and threw up all over the side of the plane. The ground crew told me they would clean it up. I guess it was because I did a good job on my test flights for them. I was crossing the harbour from Portsmouth to Gosport in 11 April and was watching a fire boat speeding around when it cut across the bow of a tugboat but didn't make it. She sank in 3 minutes. Solo flight today in a Defiant and was quite an experience. Just after lift off a bird flew past over my left wing. We were using a right hand circuit that day and climbed to a thousand feet and came in to land but for some reason could not get the left wing up above level. Missed the runway by a quarter mile as the kite was skidding most of the time. Figuring it was my fault tried everything I could think of but same result. I made the circuit larger and larger and got closer to the landing strip but could not spread out the final approach as ships in the Solent had balloons up to five hundred feet. After about forty minutes I almost made it except for a hangar in the way; the crash truck and blood-waggon came tearing out but I went around again. The next time came in at 120 and was just ready to touch down and the left wing dropped but the wheel hit before the tip, opened the throttle and lifted the wing up, eased the throttle back and landed this time. As I taxied past the control tower and our flight all our pilots were outside waving at me, I thought what a ragging I would get over this. Reaching the parking spot the rigger jumped on the wing and said, ``are you lucky`` so asked him what he meant. He pointed to the left wing and when I looked over the side the covering that closes the space where the wing bolts on had broken at the trailing edge. This left a hole about 4 or 5 inches wide the whole width of the wing which of course broke up the lift on the wing. This happened on take off so had I been making a normal left hand circuit would have spun in. This was the only day in the four and one half months I was there we did this. This was due to a field next to us and made it necessary if the wind was in a certain direction to keep the two circuits clear of collisions. The other pilots told me if it was them they would have climbed up and bailed out. Also did my first drogue tow today for 2 hours 30 min. I was standing outside of the Beaver Club on 15 April and an S.P. came up and asked me for a pass even though I was a W.O.1. Of course, I did not have one. He wanted to know where I was stationed and I told him it was Gosport but he did not know where it was. I told him it was not very far from London but he was not satisfied with this. So told him I took an electric train there so he thought this was o k. He did not know the train went all the way to Portsmouth and then caught the ferry to Gosport. Monday I asked the C.O if he would sign a pass and if I could get one stamped. He said he figured it was not possible. I suppose the reason it was hard to get was that the south coast had a line not to be crossed because of the build up of troops for D day, therefore you had to have a good reason to get a pass. I then went to the orderly room and asked the F/Sgt. if I could get a stamped pass but the answer was ``no way``. I started to leave and he asked if I had any soap coupons so I said ``yes`` as I get soap from home. He then said, "if you give me your soap coupons I will give you a stamped pass". So each week I had a stamped pass. You should have seen the look on the C.O.'s face when I handed him the first pass to sign and he said, "how did you get this" and immediately added "I do not want to know" however, he said he would sign and he did but with one provision that if I got caught with it I must eat it. On 22 April while flying for heavy ack ack at 5,000 ft. some idiot fired at me but missed but not by much, maybe they didn't know the gun was loaded. When I first went over to the drogue section to find out the score on towing was told if I dropped the drogue between the center of the field and the drogue hut they would pick it up but past that I would have to get it. On the other side of the hut it was all woods and if it fell there I would have to climb and get it. It is kind of tricky as you have to allow for wind, your speed and time lag as you must tell the operator when to cut the line to the drogue while we are doing about 180 mph. At first I was kind of careful and dropped them just past the center of the field and then tried to get closer to the hut as the packers tease you when that far out. After about a month I was no longer getting teased but still trying to get closer. I dropped the drogue one day and had just landed and signed in and the phone rang and the call was for me so I thought I was going to have to climb the trees to get this one. It was one of the packers and he told me they were playing cards and hearing a knock on the door he got up and opened the door but there was no one there but on looking down there was my drogue it had hit the door. They thought this was great. One hot day I was not feeling so good as my friend dysentery was with me again, and my job was to do low level attacks on the 40 mm Bofors guns on the tip of the Isle of Weight. This was to give the gunners practice training on the weapon. Of course they didn't shoot at me. I was flying a Hurricane and after about an hour decided to change my tactics and climbed to 1000 ft. and circled in a big lazy circle. The hood was open as it was hot and the first thing I knew the wind was screaming and looking ahead saw the sea; I pulled back on the stick and just cleared the surface, I had just passed out as old friend dysentery hit again. My troubles were not over as I came out level the cliff the guns were on was directly ahead so had to keep the stick back and hope to climb over. Just made it over the barrel of one gun in fact they had to depress it to let me by and felt her shudder and put the stick forward before she spun out. Fortunately this was a point of land jutting out so more or less fell over the other side and picked up flying speed again. Had I been a few degrees to the left would have belly flopped on the deck. Another day I was doing low level attacks on Bofors along the coast east of our field and the fog closed in suddenly and I had to stay at 300 ft. or less to see the ground. At 180 mph you can not pinpoint your self as you can only see a short distance around. I followed the shore-line but had to be careful as the ships in the Solent were flying their barrage balloons at 500 ft. and to get to the field it was necessary to come close to them. Needless to say I saw them in time and made a safe landing. On signing in the Sqdn. Leader wanted to know how I did it as all the other pilots had landed at the field nearest them and I was the only one to get back. He had been calling the fields around to see if they had heard my engines or had I landed there. I was billeted with a Flight Sargent ground crew and every time there was an air raid at night he would awaken me to go to a shelter and it took a week to convince him to stop. However, one night I woke up suddenly and the blackout blanket was fluttering on the ceiling as the window was up and the room was as light as day; the bombers were circling over head and had just dropped some bombs. I put on my tin hat and trousers and tore out the door then realized I didn't know where the shelters were. I saw someone running by the tennis court so ran that way and soon saw one around the corner of the court. Just then I heard more bombs coming down so bent over and ran full out around the corner and thought I was hit by a bomb but had run head on with another airman. He was smaller than I and went tumbling over and over but I made it to the shelter. The next day at breakfast one of the Sergeants was saying what an experience he had last night. When the raid started he ran to the shelter and set down; he suddenly realized he was on Air raid Duty that night so tore out to go to his post. He said, "I ran to the corner of the tennis court and met some big son-of-a-bitch head on and thought my last day had come." I burst out laughing and he said, "So you were the son-of-a-bitch." and we all had a big laugh. On 6 May I had to go for a physical to see if fit to go on a leaders course. The doctor asked me if I was fit to fly and on saying "yes" he said I was fit to go on the course.