1955?

The first time I flew.......................

The whole process of getting that flight and a few that followed beggars belief now.

I lived in south London then and attended Henry Thornton Grammar School which had its own Air Training Corps squadron. The cadets met on Friday evenings after school and we learned marching and studied (with limited seccess) air navigation and meteorology and like mysterious stuff. The whole thing was a government plot to provide the Royal Air Force with half trained new recruits I suspect. The uniform was, I remember, a devilish torture. Made of the old serge material which had the feel of a coarse woollen blanket. The collar was a throw-back to a World War 1 style. It fastened at the throat with two hooks and eyes which lined up perfectly with our newly appeared adams apples. But, enough of the suffering!

One of the perks of being in the ATC was the chance to fly. This happened, I think, on Sundays. I would appear at Balham railway station in my awful uniform and join the rest of the cadets. We' go by green, electric train to Kenley. Off the train at Kenley we'd form up into a squad and march all the way up the hill to R.A.F. Kenley.

Kenley had been a major Battle of Britain fighter airfield in the second world war (only ten years past then!).
In 1955 it was much reduced. Well, we'd march onto the base and seemingly spend the rest of the time there marching up and down waiting for our time to fly.

The aircraft? Avro 'Ansons'. Essentially a left-over from before the war although the ones we flew in were built during or perhaps soon after (?) the war. Two engines, Armstrong Siddley 'Cheetahs' each driving two bladed propellors. Archaic I suppose to today's eyes they were old even then. Seven passengers and with a tailwheel undercarriage they were nonetheless the most exciting things we'd ever seen close-up.

At long last my turn came and we dashed across to where our 'plane waited. An awkward scramble in through the door on the left hand side behind the wing. Get ourselves sat down and be shown how to fasten the strange all-webbing Sutton harness. A least twice I flew 'up-front' in the right seat beside the pilot. I don't recall where I sat on that first trip. I can't remember the flight now, it was just one of maybe half a dozen.

They were all the same, wonderful.... just wonderful. There's nothing like it. We'd been brought up on stories of the war with its lumbering heavy bombers, Lancasters and Halifaxes and the nimble fighters like the Spitfire and Hurricane. Now I was part of that band of heroes, or so I must have thought.

The bumpy taxi across the grass and turn into wind and no doubt wait the OK from the 'tower'. I can imagine it now. The throttles being opened, the seeminly deafening noise. Brakes off and slowly at first, the acceleration and finally, the sudden smoothness of flight and the ground dropping away. It must have been wonderful. Up into the blue, up where Spits and Messerschmitts had fought over England.

Tiny cars and tiny cows and tiny everything and able to see forever.

The fear, the awe, the excitement. I WAS FLYING. It only happens once for the first time. Forgotten now in a way, in the blur of so many flights since. But that first brief 15 minutes of soaring above the earth must have made my heart sing.

All too soon we'd turn and seemingly find Kenley by strange magic. A slow, wing-wobbling descent and the wheels would hit and we'd taxi in to swap with the next lucky seven.

The 'Anson' was a dear old lady. When the landing gear went down two green- painted, wooden balls would emerge from two tubes to tell the pilot the wheels were locked down and safe. The engine oil pressure gauges showed through cut-outs in the cowlings, requiring the pilot to peer out of his windows, left and right, to read them. You clambered over the main spar on your way to the cockpit.

More marching and then a long march downhill to the train, but that didn't matter ... I'd flown, escaped earth's surly bonds ... I'd flown!