stayed overnight at the Streits Hotel and returned to Sylt by train the next day. What a way to start off a new year.
I didn't fly for a week, and then only for 35 minutes ciné on the flag. All our ciné film was quickly processed after landing, and each day was analysed and criticised by the Pilot Attack Instructor in front of all Squadron pilots. It was the 9th of January before it was my turn to fly again. This time dual with the PAI in a Vampire T11 for live-firing. I followed this with another ciné sortie in heavy salt spray which, on drying on the windscreen, obscured forward vision somewhat. A further flight for the same purpose the next day lasted less than 10 minutes and was aborted because my aircraft became unserviceable soon after becoming airborne.
Conditions were icy and bitterly cold, and flying was minimal. My highest score was 9% of rounds fired. That was on the 12th. Then there was a week during which I didn't fly at all, nor did hardly any one else owing to the extremely cold and filthy weather.
The highlight of this period, between the incessant lectures, gym sessions, demonstrations, training films, and general boredom, was when Plt.Off. Doug Fewell and I contrived to go on a 'swan' one day for a trip on the RAF Air Sea Rescue Launch based at List, the old Luftwaffe seaplane base at the northern tip of Sylt. With skipper Fg.Off. Saunders at the helm, and well wrapped up in the bitter cold, we set off for the northern range area, being careful not to stray into Danish territorial waters as we rounded the northernmost tip of the island. Our duty was to warn off shipping which looked like straying into the danger area, and to be there in the event of an aircraft and/or pilot coming down in the sea. There was very little flying, and no shipping near enough to warn off. We drifted, engines off, on a choppy sea, in the duty area, for seeming hours. The novelty wore thin, so we went below for a brew. The paraffin heater in the cabin gave off noxious fumes to the point when, after having had a hot drink, and suffered the erratic movement of the vessel in that reeking atmosphere, both Doug and I moved back on deck so as to counter a growing sensation of queasiness. No-one on board was ill, but it was a near thing. With our stint nearly up, the skipper started the engines and gave us a maximum speed demonstration, warning us first of all to hang on tight. We bounced from wave top to wave top and crashed into the sides of some. With spray coming over the top, and seeing the wake, and hearing the roar of the twin diesels on full power, it was an exhilarating, if bitterly cold, wetting, experience. That done, we made our way back to harbour in a gentler fashion. We were told that, next day, there was ice floating on the sea off List. Our experience whetted the appetite of a group of other pilots in the Squadron to organise a similar trip some days later when the ice had moved away. To a man, their queasiness turned out to be completely uncontrollable!
Whilst mentioning the cold: it was our habit, regardless of conditions, to go for walks and explore the area near the camp. On one of these ventures three of us decided to go down to the coast on the mainland side of the island to the south of the Hindenburg Damm as we had heard that the sea had frozen in that sheltered area. Frozen it was, and thick too. We ventured on to the ice, thinking that maybe we could walk across to the mainland a couple of miles away and return by train. We innocents soon discovered the folly of our intentions and retreated with some difficulty back to whence we had come. What we had found, and should have known, was that the ice, with the action of the tides, had fractured and each heavy piece (ice floe) had collided with the next, often riding on top. This caused an extremely broken, often steep, and very slippery uneven surface on which to make any sort of progress. In places there was open water thus creating extremely dangerous conditions. We were lucky to get back to dry land safely.
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