- Cowie, Ian, Dim Jones, and Chris Long, eds.
Out of the Blue.
Farnborough, UK, 2011.
ISBN 978-0-9570928-0-8.
-
Flying an aircraft has long been described by those who do it
for a living as hours of boredom punctuated by moments of
stark terror. The ratio of terror to boredom depends upon
the equipment and mission the pilot is flying, and tends to be
much higher as these approach the ragged edge, as is the case
for military aviation in high-performance aircraft. This book
collects ninety anecdotes from pilots in the Royal Air Force,
most dating from the Cold War era, illustrating that you never
know for sure what is going to happen when you strap into an
airplane and take to the skies, and that any lapse in attention
to detail, situational awareness, or resistance to showing
off may be swiftly rewarded not only with stark terror but
costly, unpleasant, and career-limiting consequences. All of
the stories are true (or at least those relating them say they
are—with pilots you never know for sure), and most are just
a few pages. You can pick the book up at any point; except for
a few two-parters, the chapters are unrelated to one another.
This is thus an ideal “bathroom book”, or way to
fill a few minutes' downtime in a high distraction environment.
Because most of the flying takes place in Britain and in
NATO deployments in Germany and other countries in northern
Europe, foul weather plays a part in many of these adventures.
Those who fly in places like Spain and California seldom
find themselves watching the fuel gauge count down toward zero
while divert field after divert field goes RED weather just
as they arrive and begin their approach—that happens
all the time in the RAF.
Other excitement comes from momentary lapses of judgment or
excessive enthusiasm, such as finding yourself at 70,000 feet
over Germany in a
Lightning
whose two engines have flamed out after passing the plane's
service ceiling of 54,000 feet. While in this case the
intrepid aeronaut got away without a scratch (writing up the
altimeter as reading much too high), other incidents ended up
in ejecting from aircraft soon to litter the countryside with
flaming debris. Then there's ejecting from a perfectly good
Hunter
after a spurious fire warning light and the Flight Commander
wingman ordering an ejection after observing “lots of
smoke” which turned out, after the fact, to be just
hydraulic fluid automatically dumped after a precautionary
engine shutdown.
Sometimes you didn't do anything wrong and still end up in a
spot of bother. There's the crew of a
Victor
which, shortly after departing RAF Gan in the Maldive Islands
had a hydraulic system failure. No big thing—the Victor
has two completely independent hydraulic systems, so there
wasn't any great worry as the plane turned around to return
to Gan. But when the second hydraulic system then
proceeded to fail, there was worry aplenty, because that
meant there was no nose-wheel steering and a total of eight
applications of the brakes before residual pressure in the
system was exhausted. Then came the call from Gan: a series of
squalls were crossing the atoll, with crosswinds approaching the
Victor's limit and heavy rain on the runway. On landing, a gust of
wind caught the drag parachute and sent the bomber veering off
the edge of the runway, and without nose-wheel steering, nothing
could be done to counteract it. The Victor ended up ploughing a
furrow in the base's just-refurbished golf course before
coming to a stop. Any landing you walk away from….
The two hydraulic systems were determined to have failed from
completely independent and unrelated causes, something that
“just can't happen”—until it happens to you.
Then there's RAF pilot Alan Pollock, who, upset at the RAF's
opting in 1968 not to commemorate the 50th anniversary of its
founding, decided to mount his own celebration of the
milestone. He flew his Hunter at high subsonic speed and
low altitude down the Thames, twisting and turning with
the river, and circling the Houses of Parliament as Big
Ben struck noon. He then proceeded up the Thames and,
approaching Tower Bridge, became the first and so far only
pilot to
fly
between the two spans of the London landmark. This
concluded his RAF career: he was given a medical discharge,
which avoided a court martial that would have likely have
sparked public support for his unauthorised aerial tattoo.
His first-hand recollection of the exploit appears here.
Other stories recount how a tiny blob of grease where it didn't
belong turned a Hunter into rubble in Cornwall, the strange
tale of the world's only turbine powered biplane, the
British pub on the Italian base at Decimomannu, Sardinia:
“The Pig and Tapeworm”, and working as an engineer on the
Shackleton
maritime patrol aircraft: “Along the way, you will gain
the satisfaction of ensuring the continued airworthiness of a
bona fide museum piece, so old that the pointed bit is at the
back, and so slow that birds collide with the trailing edge
of the wing.” There's nothing profound here, but it's
a lot of fun.
The paperback is currently out of print, but used copies
are available at reasonable cost. The Kindle
edition is available, and is free for Kindle Unlimited
subscribers.
July 2017 