Air shows
FOLLOWING THE DEATH OF COLIN we received a new squadron commander. Squadron Leader Sandy Mutch’s posting to No 1 Squadron brought our OC’s rank into line with the other squadrons. He took over leadership of Colin’s formation aerobatic team and had it ready in time for the ‘Elizabethville Show’.
After this there were air shows in Broken Hill and Lusaka in Northern Rhodesia and a number of others in Southern Rhodesia. Each involved flying displays by all squadrons. My involvement with other junior officers was manning static displays of aircraft and equipment. It happened to be a very pleasant task because spectators showed so much interested in the aircraft. When the flying started I could watch every display from start to finish because all spectators were doing the same. There were two particular displays that stick in my mind. They were given by Canberra and Vampire FB9 solo routines, both at Broken Hill.
Squadron Leader Charles Paxton flew the Canberra. Like most bombers, this aircraft was not stressed for aerobatics even though, without the encumbrance of bombs and long-range fuel tanks, it could perform lovely- looking loops and barrel rolls.
Charles opened his display with a high-speed pass followed by loops and barrel rolls. Next came tight turns at very slow speed so that spectators could see bomb doors opening for a close look into the bomb bay. In the next turn undercarriage was lowered to show the sequencing of wheel doors and gear, again at close range. Two more turns were made with bomb doors closing and wheels retracting before full power was applied in the last turn which developed into a thunderous sounding steep climb-out followed by a powerless and silent descending turn back towards the crowd.
Still holding crowd attention, Charles whispered past the crowd flying slowly with full flap and wheels down. At this point John Mussell opened his display with an ultra low-level, high-speed pass under the Canberra, flying in the opposite direction then pulled up into the loop that opened his sequence. John Mussell had flown the FB9 solo aerobatic display for some time before Bob Woodward arrived from the RAF with his own polished version of low- level aerobatics flown in a T11.
Bob, who had been the top solo aerobatist in RAF Central Flying School in the mid 1950s, flew a close-in compact display at relatively slow speed that only pilots could appreciate because of the flying skills involved. John Mussell on the other hand flew to please the public. Flat out at full power he provided the noise and speed expected by all civilian spectators.
John’s run under the Canberra was so low that many people standing two or more rows back heard but did not see the FB9 flash by. The crowd loved the noisy surprise, which resulted, according to the newspapers, in two of Broken Hill’s pregnant ladies being carted off to the maternity home ahead of schedule.
Because he was so fast, John’s first loop took him almost out of sight before he came down in a forty-five degrees inverted dive. Leaving his roll-out very late, he entered a second loop with plenty of crowd-pleasing speed and noise. He continued on with his sequence for about five minutes, throwing in every aerobatic manoeuvre before making a slow roll along the viewing line at very, very, low level as only John could do. He then pulled up sharply into a vertical climb intending to execute a left-hand stall turn, again high up.
I do not recall what went wrong. The aircraft was pivoting around its left wing when suddenly it started a rotation. This tightened as the aircraft descended. When John had done more than six turns in an ever-tightening spin, it seemed he would not recover from the dreaded condition for which the FB9 had such a bad reputation. It was obvious that John would have trouble bailing out and I had a picture in my mind of what he was experiencing up there as the crowd clapped and cheered this ‘spectacular manoeuvre’. When it looked as if there was no hope, the aircraft snapped out of the spin and John stole the show by continuing his noisy display as if nothing untoward had happened. The crowd certainly did not realise how close they had come to witnessing a disaster!
On return to Thornhill there was a fuss over the Canberra that Charles Paxton had been flying. Many of the rivets in the fin and rear fuselage had popped, indicating that the aircraft had exceeded its structural limitations. Though the damage was easily repaired, Canberra pilots were immediately banned from making any aerobatic manoeuvre.
Flypasts
NO 1 SQUADRON WAS OFTEN INVOLVED in formation flypasts for a variety of special occasions. In the latter half of my first year on the squadron I was included in formation flypasts over parades held for the Queen’s Birthday, the Governor-General of the Federation inspection of forces and the Battle of Britain Commemoration Parade. Little preparation was required for formating pilots but the formation leaders had to practise for the split- second accuracy needed to pass over a parade bang on time. This was much more difficult to achieve than was apparent to observers on the ground.
The first requirement was to know the exact order of parade, the height and ‘time zero’ for The first formation to be overhead. Also needed were timings and heights for those following. Time Zero inevitably coincided with the last note of the Royal Anthem. The parade would remain at the ‘Present’ until the last formation noise had abated sufficiently for the parade commander’s voice to carry to all units on parade.
An Air Force officer on the ground (air co-ordinator) had to time parade rehearsal so that he would be in a position to give the formation leaders a running commentary on what was happening on the parade ground with a countdown to ‘Zero’.
Formation leaders would usually fly a reverse pattern from the parade ground to their intended holding point to establish precisely how many minutes and seconds it took to fly the route. Having established this, they would then fly their intended path a few times to prove their timings for the actual parade when they would be leading whole formations.
Out of sight and hearing of the parade each formation flew a racetrack pattern in its assigned waiting area, well separated by height and distance for safety’s sake. Each leader knew how long it would take from any position in his racetrack pattern to get to the parade ground on time and on correct heading. But seldom did the timings of the practice match those of the official parade. This made a formation leader’s job a very tricky business.
The problems in getting timings right were almost always due to unexpected actions by the reviewing Officer. This is the sort of information from the Air Force co-ordinator that formation leaders dreaded, but had to be prepared for:
“No sight of the Reviewing Officer’s car yet—already running five seconds late—Oh! Here he comes—he is
