AIR TO AIR FIRING EXPERIENCE

My first few days at Risalpur were in the Operations Room a sort of Control Tower for the station.  It was here where I first met John MacTaggart [of Mac & Betty fame],  Here I did some R/T work with the aircraft, but mostly recorded all conversations between air crew and the tower.  It kept me hopping.  By recorded I mean I wrote down everything they said.  Of course we had a kind of shorthand for this, so it wasn't all that difficult, other than understanding the accents of some of the Indian pilots.

One of my jobs was putting up telephone lines with a W/O Johnson.  That was hot work.  We worked only in the very early morning, as it was so hot.  

      I met a Canadian pilot instructor by name of Courtenay, who had the nickname of "Waltzing" Courtenay, because of the way he landed his Hurricane, slipping from side to side to lose height quickly as he descended to the runway.  I was constantly on to him about learning to fly.   One day he asked if I would like to go up in a Westland Lysander doing some drogue towing, while his trainee pilots tried their skill at air to air firing.  He said he would be the pilot and I could handle the target drogue.  He said there was also a certain amount of radio air to ground and air to fighter dialogue required, which I could handle. He genned me up, [briefed me]  on the procedure regarding the drogue, which was quite straightforward, got me settled down in the Lysander and then said he'd be back in a few minutes for take-off.  While he was gone I called (a buddy) in the ops room and practised  my R/T procedure.  After a few minutes, from my "aft" position, I heard someone climbing into the aircraft,  assumed it was Courtenay and waited for his "permission to become airborne."  Then I heard "my pilot" call the tower.  He had a decided accent.  It wasn't Courtenay.  

After reaching our designated height, I let the drogue out by winch.  I forget the prescribed distance it had to be from our plane, but I would have liked it to be more.  It seemed too close for comfort, especially with keen young Indian pilots diving away at us and a rat-a-tatt-tatting with their machine-guns.  The flight itself was harrowing enough.  Some were way off the mark and I thought much too close to us.  Eventually it was time to fly low over the field and drop the drogue so they could check the scores the pilots had made.  [this was done with different colour paint on the rounds of ammunition which would leave their mark on the cloth of the drogue] On our first attempt to land, the ops room warned us off as we were about to overshoot the field.  With a great roar of engine the Lysander gained altitude and came around again.  Talk about over-correction.  On our second attempt we touched down on the very outer scrubby edge of the airfield, just missing a wire fence and I'm sure hundreds of iguanas popped back into their holes as we bounced, bounced,  finally coming to a full stop.  

      On leaving the aircraft I noticed my pilot was a smiling, very handsome young Indian chap about my own age.  I saw Courtenay later that evening.  "Still wanna fly?" he asked, with a big smile on his face.  He had purposely made the switch.  He made up for it later, giving me an hour or so flip in a Harvard and a few minutes on the controls, which I found to be quite different to the broomstick and two large books for rudder bars,  I had "trained" on three years ago in my bedroom. 

I got along well with Courtenay.  We did a few things together.  Played catch a lot, with a baseball and a mitt he must have taken everywhere with him.  I have often wondered if he survived the war.