of descent. This, in turn, affected distances from which to set up a supposedly deadstick landing. It was not like the real thing I had experienced. It was a poor, distorted, simulation which could be misleading, and I said so on landing.
I next flew on January 11th. The first sortie was a weather recce and then I joined up with others for battle formation practice. The next sortie was further high level battle formation practice and the third was to practise ciné quarter attacks on a towed target.1 122 Wing had by now set up a non-firing drogue towing range over the sea to the north of the islands of Spiekerooge and Wangerooge and parallel to the coast. There had been difficulties in doing this, particularly with the towing aircraft. Sabres were unsatisfactory as tugs for a variety of reasons, so the Station Flight Meteor was used. There were also difficulties when it came to the radar gunsights detecting and locking-on to the drogue. Much on-going experimentation was being done to try to solve this problem. Until it was solved - eventually by tying aluminium reflectors to the drogues - the gunnery results for Sabre Squadrons at the next live-firing detachment to Sylt would again be abysmal.
January proved bitter. There was snow and freezing rain. With strong winds and driving snow it was no longer practicable to walk across the airfield to our hangar after Met Briefing. On one occasion some of us piled into the back of Des Browne's Landrover to drive there round the peri-track. It wasn't long before, in freezing rain, he calmly announced "Gentlemen, I am no longer in control of this vehicle!" With some difficulty thereafter we slithered and skidded our way, even sideways and backwards, for the last half mile. On getting out, several of us fell over on the dangerously slippery hard-standing. As Squadron MTO I had to set an example for ice driving and with practice born of necessity, became quite good at it, even on roads with a steep camber, but sometimes with my front wheels on the crown of the road and my right side rear wheels dragging close to the kerb.2 At least I always got to my destination safely and without damaging anything. Al Colvin, as I remember, could never master this art, and many were the times when he would recruit us to help him extricate his own private car from the roadside drainage ditches. If we were summoned to do this in the evening, many of us suspected that there was not just ice but an alcoholic factor in some of his predicaments.
While mentioning winter weather I remember being on parade when it started to snow and, before the parade was over, every man had a pile of snow on his right shoulder up to the level of his ear. Another occasion, during freezing rain when things always seemed to go quiet, the only significant noise was that of the creaking of the trees giving way under the weight of accumulated ice, and the crash as whole branches broke off and fell to the ground.
Flying was impossible in these conditions and after significant snow falls. On several occasions the whole of the Station was mustered to help clear snow off the runway so that flying could take place.   [Click to see video of this operation.]   I have to admit that when this happened I would disappear to the PSI gardens and the warmth of the greenhouses where noone would think of looking for me.
Ground training continued until flying could recommence. Tank recognition, aircraft recognition, ciné film analysis, lectures, war films of all sorts, work-outs in the gym, and a bit of bull here and there, kept us fully occupied. Occasionally one of us would be summoned to taxi an aircraft across to the Tech Wing hangar for servicing. This was usually on a Saturday morning when there was no flying or flying had ceased for the day. The routine was for the pilot so detailed (and it was often me) to phone Air Traffic and tell them what was afoot, and phone the Tech
______________________________________
1 This was the last time I flew XB812, the preserved aircraft now in the RAF Museum at Cosford.
2 In Germany we drove on the right-hand side of the road.
137