(29th August 2012 Signing on at 18:33)
…about Flying Training at Hanworth Airpark.
Arriving from Glasgow
I do not know what year this was, but presumably it was the
Christmas either immediately after, or immediately before, the Britain’s
declaring a state of war with Germany. My father had been fired from a job
assembling Sunderland flying boats in Glasgow (or maybe Dumbarton) but that is
another story.
He arrived at Feltham station on the Greenline bus from
Victoria Bus Station, having taken the bus down from Glasgow. He says that he
had the clothes he stood up in, a small suitcase and his toolbox. He had been
told that he had a job with General Aircraft on Hanworth Airpark. He had
nowhere to stay. As this was the late 30’s, the journey down from Glasgow must
have taken some time. He said that he arrived in Feltham late in the evening.
He checked his toolbox into the left-luggage office at Feltham Station and
enquired about somewhere to stay for the night. I don’t know how effective such
an enquiry would be now, but then it got him the suggestion of an address down
Hanworth Road. This was a time before even land-line phones were common, so he
would have had no choice but to walk to the address and ask. Fortunately they
had room for him. In fact it at was even better than that.
The house where he had been directed and where he eventually
stayed for a while made him very welcome. The “man of the house” had lost his
job, and so they were very short of money. The money from his rent made all the
difference. It was just before Christmas and my dad said that the wife said to
her daughter “now we can have Christmas”. The pair of them went on a shopping
expedition to Bentall’s in Kingston a day or so later.
The day after he arrived my Dad went to General Aircraft. He
was told that he had a job, but that news of his dismissal had come down from
Glasgow. He had a bad reputation and he what going to be watched.
What I don’t understand is how my Father moved from General
Aircraft to Flying Training Ltd, but he did!
Defending the
Airpark, with few guns and no ammunition
The war was either under way or just about to start. This
could be the period which I believe was called “The Phoney War”.
Hanworth Airpark was a military base. All the instructors in
Flying Training had been drafted into the Airforce and the ground maintenance
personnel, like my Father were under military orders but continued to be
employed by Flying Training. As the Airpark was a real military objective, some
means had to be put in place to defend it from attack for the air or the ground.
To put this on a formal basis, my Father and all the other members of the staff
became members of the Home Guard (or whatever its predecessor organisation
was). From some source unspecified they were issued with guns (probably ancient
rifles). They were even issued with a small number of machine guns, one of
which was mounted onto the back of a truck. In my mind I have a picture of an
earlier version of “the technicals” in warring African states, where a machine
gun is mounted on a frame behind the cab of a Toyota pick-up truck.
There was just one problem, but it was a significant one.
Whoever had organised the artillery had forgotten about munitions! There was no
ammunition for either the rifles or especially the machine guns. However
impressive it all looked, it was completely useless! As my Father said, thank
goodness there was never any question of using the weapons, because it would
have been hopeless.
There were some garbles stories about defence exercises at
night. It all sounded good fun and chaotic, but I wonder if it really felt like
that at the time?
Leaving for Stoke on
Trent (Mere?)
At some point it was decided that Hanworth Airpark was not a
suitable base for a training squadron, and the decision was made to move the
whole organisation to Stoke-on-Trent. I think the destination was “Mere” but
I’m not sure. The aircraft were flown up and everything else went up as a
number of convoys.
Alan Lavender’s first wife’s parents lived in Victoria Road.
Alan had a three-wheeled Morgan sports car. Because the moving was government
business, he had fuel to drive it up in one of the convoys. Looking back, I
can’t remember my Father ever mentioning how he travelled up to Stoke-on-Trent.
Piss-pot up the
flagpole
The pilot students at Hanworth were like many students. They
got up to all sorts of wild things. Many of their escapades were fuelled by
drink. The officers’ mess for the flying school was located in Hanworth Park
House. Behind the house, naturally, there was a flag-pole.
One night, probably after an evening in the pub, an
unidentified student climbed up the flag-pole and placed a chamber-pot on the
top.
When the time came to hoist the flag the following day, the
Commanding Officer was furious when he saw the chamber pot. He immediately
ordered someone (presumably Airforce personnel) to climb the flagpole and
retrieve the pot. Inspection showed that the flagpole was rotten, and although
it had apparently withstood the weight of a student the previous night, nobody
was prepared to climb it sober and in the cold light of day!
Not to be defeated, the Commanding Officer then ordered the
guard to shoot the pot down. Apparently they had found at least some ammunition
by this stage. When the chosen marksman shot the pot they discovered the flaw
in this plan: it was an enamelled steel chamber pot! Shooting it made a noise
and ruined the pot, but it wasn’t likely to bring it down.
I would like to say that the story had some funny or
surprising ending. Unfortunately, it has no ending at all. I don’t remember my
Father saying how the chamber pot came down, if it ever did. Of course it must
have come down in the end, because there is no flag pole at Hanworth Park
House!
Stealing a fire
engine
Several of the trainee pilots were a little eccentric. One
of them habitually wore a red huntsman’s jacket. I believe it is called
“Hunting Pink”. This fellow (I suppose he must have been in his early twenties)
took a fancy to one of the barmaids in the Airman public house. The feeling was
not reciprocated. This barmaid either lived on the premises or very nearby.
One evening, when drunk the “huntsman” proposed to the
barmaid and asked her to run away with him to Gretna Green. He was obviously a
romantic. She told him that she would, on sole condition that he drove her
there in a fire engine. She thought that would be an end of the matter.
The following day, she was wakened early by the sound of a
bell outside her bedroom window. When she looked outside she saw that the
huntsman had stolen a fire engine from the local fire station (I presume the
one which used to be under the railway bridge at Bridge House). She told him
that he was an idiot and that he should go away.
I don’t know what happened to the huntsman or what happened
to the fire engine. I have to suppose that the fire engine was returned
undamaged and that this kind of madness was exactly what the airforce was
looking for in its fighter pilots.
Joe Tollow’s dog
I know almost nothing about “Joe Tollow” except that he was
one of my Father’s mates, and that he had a dog.
At that time, The Airman public house had three bars:
Public, Saloon and Private Bar or snug. My Father and his colleagues had
sort-of taken over the Private Bar. They had no right to do this and the
publican didn’t approve, but they regarded it as their territory.
The Private Bar was furnished with small tables (I don’t
know what shape, but I imagine little round tables. The important thing is that
between the legs of these tables was a small shelf at about “dog height”. I
think it was intended for putting glasses on when the top of the table was
being used for playing cards or dominos.
Anyway, Joe Tollow’s dog (I know less about the dog than I
do about his master) enjoyed having his back scratched. He just couldn’t get
enough of it. If someone else had invaded the Private Bar, and my Father and
his mates were there, they would sit around one of the tables and scratch the
dog’s back. The would also sit with their legs under the table so that the dog
could not get under their table. When they stopped scratching the dog, it would
look for somewhere else to scratch its back. If it could get under the shelf of
one of the adjoining tables then it would scratch it’s back and probably upset
the drinks (and the other customers)!
Floyd Buttle
Floyd (Bud) Buttle was one of my Father’s friends. His wife
Madeline’s parents lived in Victoria Road. I have seen a photograph of Bud. He
had a moustache. I know that after (and possibly during) the war, he worked for
Airworks in the Arabian Gulf. He died of lung cancer.
Madeline re-married and moved to the Isle of Wight. I met
her there many years later.
Crash
Flying Training mostly used Hawker Hart and Hind Aircraft. I
am not sure if it was them, but one type of aircraft was supposed to be very
difficult to spin, even if it stalled. This made it an ideal early trainer.
However, some of the aircraft were re-engined which changed their handling
characteristics. One of them spun out of control and crashed (An electricity
sub-station near Cromwell Road) killing the trainee and the instructor.
(Pages 4+, words 1,690,
signing off at 19:37 )
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