Spitfire Girl (16 page)

A week passed. Two. Three. Four, before the epilogue to my life of crime was rather sadly written. Picking up the evening paper I read a small news item that a plane had been lost over the Channel. The pilot was my ex-employer. As a result of his death the company was disbanded and I, I deduced, was safe.

‘Now what?’ asked Reg suspiciously some months later
as I opened a large O.H.M.S. envelope.

‘I was thinking of joining the air force,’ I replied, meekly.

‘Oh. Is that all,’ he said heavily.

‘Yes, dear.’

‘Which?’

‘Which what?’

‘Which air force?’

‘The Royal Air Force Volunteer Reserve of course.’

‘What’s the matter, wouldn’t the Russians have you?’ he said, referring to my partisanship for the only air force in the world that has operational women pilots.

‘Don’t be silly, Reg. I’m serious.’

‘I’m sure you are,’ he brooded.

I left it at that for the time being, drove to R.A.F.V.R. Western Command headquarters, near Bristol and met the Commanding Officer of the Reserve Unit. He was intrigued by my suggestion that I should join his unit but was genuinely flummoxed what to do with me, an occupational disease with the R.A.F. as far as I am concerned. We had tea in the officers’ mess whilst he looked through the files and regulations to decide whether he could have a female in his unit and, if so, what sort of specimen she should be. He scratched his head, admitted defeat and suggested I return home until he had investigated further.

He wrote to me later stating that the Royal Air Force Volunteer Reserve would be delighted for me to join them under a new policy of recruiting experienced women pilots. I would hold a temporary non-commissioned rank of airwoman until I qualified as Pilot Class IV.

The R.A.F.V.R. consisted primarily of ex-R.A.F. personnel who had reserve commitments, voluntary or otherwise, and a small number of experienced pilots and ground crew voluntarily recruited direct from civilian life. They were, broadly speaking, civilians except when attending lectures and flying training. Thus being a member of the R.A.F.V.R. conferred many of the privileges of the R.A.F. with negligible sacrifice of civilian freedom.

Distributed throughout the country were a dozen or so flying schools where V.R. pilots during their spare time reported for flying training and lectures. Each pilot was expected to complete a minimum of forty hours’ flying annually, usually over the week-ends and to attend evening lectures twice a week.

In this way, and at comparatively little expense, a reserve of pilots was maintained in what may be described as the third line air force whose worth in an emergency would be incalculable.

The highlight of the year was the two weeks’ compulsory attendance at an annual summer camp. Each R.A.F.V.R. unit seconded its members in batches of six or so to a regular R.A.F. station where they received the full impact of service life. During this period they lived on the station, wore uniform and were expected to conceal civilian decadence.

I was pleasantly surprised to discover that I would also receive a salary, flying pay and out-of-pocket expenses totalling approximately one hundred pounds per annum for the privilege and pleasure of flying His Majesty’s aircraft.

I was all set.

‘Reg,’ I said as he sat at his desk.

‘No!’

I let fall a poignant tear. Just one in the brooding silence. I turned my face to the window so that he could see it, but he was oblivious. I sniffled loudly and squeezed out another tear from the other eye. ‘You go to the Territorials,’ I sniffed, as he looked up.

‘That’s different,’ he replied with masculine logic. Contriving an avalanche of tears I made great play with a pathetic wisp of handkerchief. ‘All right; all right,’ he grunted as he got up to go to the Territorials. ‘Stop weeping. If you must, you must.’

The following week I ‘signed on’. There was little ceremony at my return to the fold but in the weeks that followed the administration of the week-end air force sagged dangerously with the stress of absorbing a female into masculine prerogatives. Inevitably I had trouble in getting a number. After considerable correspondence my old Waaf number was resurrected, found wanting and discarded. A brand-new one was triumphantly produced only to be snatched away when it proved to be of masculine gender. I am convinced there is a secret vault somewhere in the depths of the Air Ministry where millions of numbers stacked in silent rows are guarded by sinister, taciturn men determined to guard the sacrosanctity of their charges. Eventually I got a number so astronomical I had difficulty in memorizing it. My uniform – slacks and battle dress – was also of masculine gender. With buttons in the wrong place.

I was attached to the R.A.F.V.R. flying school at Filton aerodrome, near Bristol, for flying training and lectures based on a syllabus designed to fill in the gaps left by civil flying. It was a small unit with five ubiquitous Tiger Moths, a strength of fifty or sixty pilots, of which I was the only woman, and tiny administrative offices.

My first flight in the R.A.F.V.R. was not auspicious. Though there was no resentment at my presence with the V.R. school – on the contrary my new comrades thought I added a touch of piquancy – I was determined to be a paragon of tact. Thus, clad in inelegant Waaf battledress, I approached my first flight with the Royal Air Force with diffidence and humility.

The Chief Instructor sitting warily in the front seat of the Tiger Moth asked me to carry out a take-off, circuit and landing. I did so. His praise was effusive. ‘Very nice, very nice,’ he coaxed as I did a second. ‘Do another one like that and I‘ll let you go solo.’ I did so and went solo with the instructor wishing me a dramatic good luck. After I landed the instructor met me with my flying log-book in his hands. ‘You might have told me you had nearly three thousand hours,’ he commented irascibly. ‘Trying to make a fool of me?’

During my first year with the V.R. I qualified for preliminary Wings. Not, I should make it clear, the full Wings worn by qualified R.A.F. pilots. Though I had many thousands of hours I was not considered the equal, rightly so, of the air force pilot with three hundred hours who has completed the fully integrated and comprehensive R.A.F. flying training course. My background and experience had too many serious limitations – no night flying, Jet flying, formation flying, gunnery, advanced aerobatics, instrument flying and familiarity with radio equipment – for me to be considered a fully competent pilot.

Jill presented no problem. Reg and I were rarely on duty simultaneously. If our week-end duties clashed I took Jill with me to the aerodrome, where she explored hangars and cockpits and soon possessed the privileges of squadron talisman. Once I suggested that Reg take her to the Territorials but apparently they do not do that sort of thing in the Army.

She also accompanied me when, in addition to the V.R. I got a job as part-time pilot with a flying club. On Bank Holidays and week-ends when I was not scheduled to fly with the V.R. I took passengers on short joy-ride flights, the joy being confined to the passengers and, occasionally, carried out private charter flights for gentlemen in loud tweeds to point-to-point and race meetings. It was a tepid occupation but it kept Jill in shoes and me away from Mrs Beeton.

During the war I had no opportunity of night flying
for all A.T.A. ferry-flights were conducted during daylight. On a few flights when I deliberately dawdled in order to descend with the sun the mild flirtation with the darkening sky merely increased my envy of those who, in Bomber Command, thundered into the night; even though their destinations were the pitiless skies over Germany.

It was therefore something of an occasion when I received orders to report for night-flying training and in the evening drove to the aerodrome past others destined for the pub or the cinema to whom the darkening sky held no significance.

The pupils and the two instructors who were to give us our first night-flying lesson had a late supper of the traditional bacon and eggs in the mess and drove out to the aerodrome when day had long gone. The aerodrome, no longer familiar, presented a night-scape of shadow broken only by the flickering flame of goose-neck flares outlining the runway. Around the perimeter of the aerodrome further lights twinkled guidance for taxi-ing. Flanking the runway stood the flying control van, a converted truck with a perspex dome that glowed eerily and outlined the head of the control pilot standing inside.

I felt nervous and tense. My day experience seemed peculiarly irrelevant to a setting that had dismissed the guiding horizon and substituted a small cluster of instruments. Instruments that had to be coaxed and guided until they indicated that the aircraft is following a normal course and not plunging to the ground or pointing to the stars; ultimately the same thing.

The stars shone brightly, promising a sky untrammelled by cloud. All the pupils were subdued; the instructors omnipotent.

I climbed clumsily into the cockpit, knocking against protuberances that hid themselves in the darkness. The instruments gleaming fluorescently in the shaded cockpit lights, indicated information that had acquired a more urgent significance in the darkness. A car passed distantly, the gear change registering clearly in the silence of the night. Momentarily I envied the driver his destination.

The confident voice of the instructor echoing through the speaking tube left me wondering at his nonchalance as he instructed me to sit back and gather impressions whilst he did a circuit and landing. I felt most impressionable. My eyes but not my mind noticed the familiar movement of the controls as he prepared for starting. Petrol on, throttle slightly open; ‘Contact,’ he shouted to the dim figure waiting to swing the propeller. The engine coughed into action, spitting meteoric sparks as though clearing its throat before subsiding into a steady blue flame that licked and curled from the exhaust. With a wave of his hand we taxied towards the runway with sharp, crackling blips of the throttle. Confidently I assumed we were taking a logical path through the bewildering taxi-ing lights.

Lining up between the two parallel rows of goose-neck flares the instructor flashed our recognition signal on the navigation lights. An answering steady green from the perspex dome signalled the all clear. ‘All set?’ asked the instructor nonchalantly. I nodded stupidly at the dim silhouette in the front seat before grabbing the speaking tube and answering: ‘Yes, sir.’

Snorting flame we charged at the windmill of night. The wheels bumped and jarred interminably as we accelerated and the tiny islands of light flashed by on either side. With the detachment of a passenger I counted them... three... four... five before, like a tube train leaving a brilliantly lit station, we soared into a tunnel of darkness. The flares dropped away and were left behind as the midnight blue enveloped us in welcome. Mechanically I looked ahead for the horizon. But there was nothing except the instructor’s head bent intently forward over the instruments as we climbed like a submarine into the sea of night.

The haze of lights of a city gradually approached as we climbed and became a sparkling star that looked like a snow-flake under a microscope. The arteries of life, illuminated by street lamps, radiated from the brilliant core and curved through the darkness to other communities glowing like fireflies on the horizon. We climbed steadily to 2,000 feet before levelling out. I regretted the obtrusive roar of the engine. Without that reminding cacophony I could have imagined true flight and fulfilled the childish dream of joining the pixies, the fairies, the birds.

‘Jackie!’

‘Sir?’

‘Did you fall asleep? Take OVER!’ I grabbed the controls and continued the gentle turn to the left started by the instructor. It was easier than I had anticipated. I relaxed and enjoyed the carnival of fight beneath.

‘O.K. I’ve got her,’ shouted the instructor through the speaking tube. ‘Well do a landing.’

Below, the runway twinkled like illuminated parallel bars and seemed suspended in mid-air. I felt that if we landed on it we would drop through to the bowels of the earth. It was small, too small. I was glad of the confident silhouette in front as he flashed the navigation lights. Immediately an answering green beam of light from the control van searched waveringly for a moment before glinting sharply in our eyes. Regretfully I watched as the instructor throttled back, lost height and turned towards the runway. Cutting the throttle we glided in a shower of sparks towards the nickering flares that outlined the runway and swayed, rose and fell as though determined to evade us. With a dying swish of slipstream we touched down with a heavy un-instructor-like thud, rumbled the length of the runway and taxied back to the flying control van.

‘O.K., Jackie. Try a circuit and landing.’

I did so. It was tolerable.

‘Another,’ he ordered encouragingly from the front seat. I obeyed and made a perfect landing. Nothing to it, I thought cockily until he climbed out of the front seat, leaving an eloquent void and said: ‘Right. Off you go. Try one on your own.’

I looked up at the sky. It was black. Very black. It had, I decided as I taxied to the beginning of the runway, got very much darker since the last landing. Beyond the perimeter of the aerodrome I could see cosily lit homes where people listened to the radio and faintly heard my exhaust. I envied them as the green light flashed and I was committed to the sky.

A few moments later I was a thousand feet above and no longer envying them. Fear forgotten for night-flying was no longer an unknown. In the slim cockpit the instrument lights glowed with the intimacy of a camp fire. The stars twinkled a welcome. The buffeting of the slipstream that snatched at my helmet and goggles as I looked down was like the roll of drums that highlights a spectacular achievement.

It was another first. My first solo flight at night. I felt the old thrill of achievement and felt content that every step, every decision, every yea or nay had brought me to the night sky over Bristol.

The landing was poor; but what did it matter?