My Years in the Royal Canadian Air Force - Part 8 [Wales and 53 O.T.U. Hibaldstow] By Ronald Gaudet I was posted to Wales on a Leaders Course run by the Army on 8 May. We had to learn how to strip, clean, and fire the different kinds of weapons and how to set up and defend a position. The first time I fired a Sten gun we were told to fire five rounds single shots. Set it to single and fired but it continued to fire even after I released the trigger so I removed the magazine to stop it. The Major gave me hell until he got the full story and then said I did well to stop it without panic as some have turned around and sprayed the troops. Of course we had to go over an assault course and I was worried as I was not feeling too good yet but as the Doctor said “if you are not fit to go on this course you are not fit to fly”. By the time we went over it twice I had the fastest time of the course. We had two teams and trying for first place at the end but were tied before the last test so the Major asked if it was a tie would I race their best over the Assault Course to break it, of course I said “yes”. Then we fired rifles and our section won and I got 19 out of 20. We won so didn't have to run it. Next day did pin pointing and our section won again. The following day fired the Bren gun but not so good only 29 out of 50. Then, I had to draw up the defence of an aerodrome and I drew the map and the other two did the writing in our team. Next day we went on a route march and I was made Platoon Commander. The Major was the attack force and drove a motorcycle and threw thunder flashes at us from ambushes. It was lot of fun. The following day we went over the assault course and the other team came in first but I was first in our team. Then we marched along the beach while they fired live ammunition over our heads and shell bursts around us. We went over the assault again and was chosen to go with another chap in a competition with the other team. We had field practice, fired the sten gun, and threw hand grenades doing well on both. The next day we fired the browning and sten guns and I did well on both. Then we went through a house filled with booby traps and it was a lot of fun but we also learned a lot. Our team was still two points ahead. Collected gulls eggs in the evening so will ate well for a few days. We had a drill competition on 17 May and the other team won on the inspection part. Then fired twin browning guns at a drogue and after this cleared a wood using blank ammo. They took us to the sand hills on 18 May and we captured a farmhouse and held it while the other team attacked us. Had dinner there and then a pistol competition which we won giving us the winning points for the course. We were moved close to the shore and fired live ammo in an attack and on this I was on the Bren and fired about 550 rounds. I really enjoyed this part. It was a ten day course and hard but we really enjoyed it. We left for London at 7pm. The reason for holding the course was that an airfield in Europe was taken by the Germans without a shot fired because no one was trained to organize a defence although there were lots of weapons to do so. I was in London from North Harrow at midnight on the 15th June and there was an air raid in progress and when I left at 5:25am.i t was still on and I could hear the explosions very close by. This was the new pilot less bombs which we called Buzz Bombs or Doodle Bugs. I saw my first Doodle Bug on 25 June. It was around this time that I missed the last train to Baker Street and slept in an air raid shelter all night and caught the first train in the morning and from Baker St. to Waterloo Station. On arriving there I looked up at the Union Jack Club where I usually slept on the top floor and there was no top floor as a Buzz Bomb had landed and blew the whole top floor off. It was a good thing I missed the train that night. One day we had a tow at Portland Bill and after about an hour the drogue operator asked me what the trouble was and so asked him what made him think something was wrong. He told me I was too quiet so then I said, "The engine temperature is 110 (it can blow up at 120), the oil temp. is 100 and the oil pressure is only 40 lbs’. And then he was very quiet. Also the gas gauge was getting low so I told him to pull in the drogue and we headed for home. Normally there is enough gas for about 3 hours and now after 1 hr. was wondering if we would make it home. On the way back was passing an American base and my gauge was reading close to the empty mark and by this time could see our base so decided to try for it. After a minute the pointer made a little jump and I turned and went back and landed to get more gas. The temp gauge was at 115 by this time. The Yank crewman asked what my problem was so told him I needed fuel. He asked where the gas tanks were so pointed to the plates in the wings. He took the outer one off and said this one is full so I told him it may be an oil tank, the inner ones were empty so he filled the two tanks and as the engine had cooled off was soon in the air again. Of course the heating persisted and I was still playing with the mixture and pitch control to keep from reaching the 120 point. When I was signing in the Sqdn/Ldr. said I was the only one of five Defiants to get back to base. The others had landed at other fields and one had the heads blow off just as he landed. He also wanted to know how come I got gas at the Yank base and I told him mine were empty and he said, "Your auxillary tanks too." I replied, "What aux. tanks." At this point his face turned red and he handed me two books on the Defiant and said, "Which book did I give you” and on pointing to one he said, "I gave you the wrong one." The one he gave me was the original fighter manual, the one he should have given me was the modified one which had two thirty two gal tanks added with two buttons to push and pump them into the main tanks. We were told the reason for the overheating was the high humidity that day and the radiators could not cool properly. My using the pitch and mixture controls enabled me to keep going. Shortly after this on 7 July we were on a special exercise with the Army and simulated an air attack on Portsmouth and I took an army Capt. Pinker up to observe it from the air. I guess the humidity was high again as I had the same problem as before so did as before and was able to stay up the full one hour and twenty-five min. He was really thrilled as it was his first trip and told me he was hanging on the sides on take off and suddenly found we were off the deck and he never felt a thing. On landing he was waiting to feel her hit and then I was turning to taxi in so never did feel us touch down and figured I was a very good pilot. On the 17 July we were called to a meeting by the Sdn/Ldr. and told we would be flying Defiants on beat ups (low level attacks) to save the Hurricanes as they were getting a lot of hours on them and were hard to replace. We were not too happy about this as they were not manoeuvrable enough for this type of work and we said so. He assured us it would first be tried out by the most experienced pilot and we would go from there. I breathed a sigh of relief as I only had 55 hours on them and the Sdn/Ldr. had over 2000 and everyone else had far more than I did. However, the next day on checking the bulletin board my name was there to do L.L.A. at hill 1-6 and 7-12 and none of us could believe it as I had the fewest hours of all being the last to arrive. I was not too happy but away I went and on my first dive at the guns went down as I was used to doing in a Hurricane but at 300 ft, decided to pull out just in case and it was a good thing I did. Although the kite leveled off the thing kept mushing down until I was almost on the deck. From this I found we should make long less steep approaches if we wished to be safe on these dives. Did this for the required hour and a half. The next day my name was up again for another hour and twenty min. When I came back from this one the rest of the pilots wanted to know what it was like so I told them what to look out for and wound up by saying, "They will keep as flying these until someone gets killed." I noticed the boys looking at me kind of funny. And then the window to the Sdn/Ldrs. room closed with a bang. However there were no more L.L.A. with Defiants. I found out after that some of the others had refused to fly on beatups with the Defiant. Flew with Sgt. Hare, an air gunner on rest, for practice stream of the drogues on the 24th. I was flying along the river towards Portsmouth and on the way to base at Gosport and he had just pulled the drogue up just behind the tail. We were at about 1000 ft. at the time and suddenly the pedals shot back and forth and I could not stop it and looking in the rear mirror could see nothing wrong and was getting ready to tell Hare to bail out. In order to let him bail out I would have to skid the kite sideways so he would not hit the tail section which meant by that time I would not have time to get out myself. As I turned to tell him to jump I noticed the propeller to his winch was slowly turning and then knew what the trouble was. He didn't put the brake on hard enough and it reeled the drogue in until it was up to the boot and the end was slapping the rudder back and forth. I told him to let some cable out and everything was normal again. I was doing beat ups for a Bofors gun at a training post on the coast and of course flying a Hurricane for this. As it was a two hour long exercise I had to use all of the main tanks and then switch to the reserve which is gravity feed to the engine. To do this a red light came on when the pump pressure started to drop and would then switch over. I was getting close to this point and was checking every few minutes when I saw a kite coming at me so did a tight turn and saw it was a Hurricane and we had a little dog- fight. I knew a little trick that he didn't so out turned him and he gave up and flew off. Went back to the gun and started a dive at 1000 ft. and at 500 the engine died as I had forgotten all about the red light. I pulled up to gain as much height as possible, picked out a field to land in and tried to slow my descent as much as I could. I had already switched over but not a kick from the engine so decided to try the primer and this seemed to take ages as it had a very fine thread on it. The altimeter was down to 400 ft. on the second try of the primer and the engine started and started to climb up again so screwed the primer back in. At this moment it stopped again and had to go through the process again although was down to 300 this time but it didn't stop this time. I took off one day in a Defiant and as soon as the wheels came up did a full left bank as usual and suddenly I realised my exercise was up the coast to my right so flipped over to a full right hand turn to go in that direction. When I returned to sign in the Sqn/Leader wanted to know what the hell I did on take off and I looked at him and said, "I didn't do anything." He replied, "You call doing a full left bank and flipping over to a full right bank at 50 ft. on take off nothing." I told him that I could see nothing wrong with it. He then said, "You may have enough experience to do it but if some of the other boys try it they will probably get killed so don't let it happen again”. The Group Captain saw you when you took off and called immediately to tell me and wants to see you tomorrow morning and he is not too happy. This was on the 19 July in the middle of the afternoon. We were just getting ready to go for supper when the phone rang and the Sqn/Ldr. opened his window and told Bobby Breen and I we had a little trip to do. The marines wanted a good beat up of their training area as they were teaching them how to take cover when attacked by aircraft. We were not happy with this as it meant we would be late for supper and not much left to eat. Going out to our kites we said not a word but just looked at each other and grinned, in our way saying we will give them the works. We climbed up to 1000 and found their road and came in at ground level went up a few feet turned and came back before they could form up again. We then split up and had we practised it we could not have timed it better, As he came from one end of the road and me the other and passed each other right over the troops who were lying flat on their stomachs pointing their rifles at us or trying to as we were just skimming the deck. Every pass we made in one direction was from the airfield towards the Solent meaning we had to fly low over our field to skim over the road. The next morning the Pilots from the Officers Mess said we were in big trouble with the Group Captain (our C.O.) due to our low flying last night. They had just sat down to eat and the C.O. was about to put a fork full in his mouth when the whole building shook and with a roar we went by and he lowered the fork and clinched both hands down on the table and glared at the path of our flight. This happened several times as we made quite a few passes from this direction. I figured I was in real trouble now due to the take off as well as this. However around nine o'clock the Sqdn/Ldr. opened his window and called Bobby and I over and handed us a telegram. It came from the British Marines thanking us for the beautiful beat up we had given them the night before. He also said we were lucky to get this as he felt the C.O. would not feel like punishing us after such a good report and he was right as we never heard from him. On the 27 had another medical and told them I felt fine and they put me A1B allowing me to fly operational again. Bobby and I were the only N.C.O. Pilots in the flight as we were W.O.1 so we applied for our commission. We had a good recommendation from our Sqn/Ldr. and the C.O. but were told by some that we would not get it as the big shot at Group didn't like Canadians and not one had ever received one before. We of course didn't believe this but the time came to go to Farnborough and be interviewed by the A.O.C. We were going to headquarters and on our right was a high concrete wall. All of a sudden we heard a high screaming sound. And four aircraft flew from behind this wall and was out of sight in seconds and we looked at each other and at the same instant said, "No props." We had just seen our first jet and up to this time did not know they were even thought of. I went in to see the A.O.C. and only saw him long enough for him to ask me a couple of questions having had no military aspect at all. We did not get our promotion so they were right. Shortly after I was called to Canadian Headquarters and was boarded before several Officers who asked all sorts of questions on flying. They said I would be getting my promotion shortly. On 25 May I had a tow at Area U which was off the West end of the Isle of Wight. The ceiling was about 1200 ft. and an L.S.T. (landing ship tank) gave me the signal to start the tow. Shortly after a voice came on and said I was towing for the wrong party but as he had the correct call sign but not my number I ignored it. He kept calling back and wanted me to come over as I was his tow and upon looking around I could not see any other kite so decided maybe he was calling me. I could see what looked like a Cruiser to me lying off the South coast of the Isle. So headed for it and they said to carry out Exercise One. UI didn't have a clue what that was so with our normal 1000 ft. of cable out started to tow back and forth in the channel. After making a couple of passes and no firing I figured they were only calibrating their guns and just as we got to the end of a pass there were three loud bangs and the pedals banged back and forth and the whole aircraft shook. The operator swore and I asked him what happened and he replied, "Look up overhead." I did and there were three big black balls of smoke; they just missed us. From then on I watched for flames from the guns before making a turn. She was firing a broadside at times as the ship disappeared in smoke. After 40 min. of this a kite from A Flight showed up and told me he was the correct tow so we went back to base. When I went in to sign in the Sqdn/Ldr. asked how I enjoyed my trip and I told him not too bad and explained what happened. He grinned and said that A Flight had called and told him it was the French battleship Richalieu and needed 2000 ft of cable for the tow to be safe and the ceiling was too low for this and their kite had to come back. We didn't know it at the time but all the towing we were doing was getting ready for D Day. The ships were mostly landing craft and troopships and also tanks running along the coast. I was then posted to 53 O.T.U. Hibaldstow (228 km north of London) and arrived there 14 August and had a check in a Master by F/L Foster on the 16th. He had given me my Familiarization for night flying on 27 Aug. 1941. The one who wanted to know if I was going to land at 50 ft. He gave me the blindfold test in the cockpit of a Spitfire V and then flew for 30 min. and I was a very happy pilot indeed. On 24 August I did my first dive-bombing and averaged 196 yards and was told this was good for the first. A piece flew off my prop on this trip and made her vibrate badly but of course at the time didn't know the cause. Next day practised air to air firing and on the last burst the button came apart in my hand. One has to remember these aircraft were through battles and getting worn out and only good for this kind of work. I was posted on the 30 August after 16 hr. 45 min. on Spits. I had an appointment to see W/C Lamond at H.Q. in London and was told my commission would be through shortly.