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Aviation History
1952
1952 - 2155.PDF
,.*** *,. * *1 a % LOW-FLYING ACADEMY The Training of Air O.P. and Liaison Pilots at Middle Wallop Illustrated by "Flight" Photographs IN the normal run of Service (and, for that matter, civil) aviation, low flying is rightly discouraged. By contrast, in one highly specialized sphere of action—that of artillery spotting and liaison flying in battle zones—the pilot may have to depend upon it for his survival. He must be able to select, enter and leave the most rudimentary landing-grounds within shell-range of die enemy and without being detected visually or by radar; and he must be adept at evading enemy fighters by dodging nimbly among valleys, trees, and buildings. How Air O.P. and Liaison pilots are trained in these duties, and in the many others which their work entails, is related in this article—which, incidentally, also indi cates a happy and smoothly working Army-R.A.F. partnership. THE Royal Air Force Station at Middle Wallop is the home of the Air Observation Post Pilots' School, now re-named the Light Aircraft School. To visit it is a rewarding experience, and one which has convinced the writer that here the R.A.F. is discharging a duty which is probably unique among the countless tasks that it is called upon to perform throughout the world: and discharging it in the highest traditions of that Service. Middle Wallop lies on Salisbury Plain, between its two sister-villages of Nether Wallop and Over Wallop—pic turesque names reminiscent of Much Binding in the Marsh and other such fabulous stations. Commanded by G/C. G. A. L. Manton, Middle Wallop is one of the stations under the newly formed 81 Group, which is responsible to Fighter Command for all training within that Command. Divided into two separate, self-operating, units, the Control and Reporting School and the Light Aircraft School, the station provides an excellent example of the marrying of two entirely different types of flying. At the Light Aircraft School there are dozens of Tiger Moths and Austers doing everything that those well-tried and versatile aircraft will do, while at one and the same time Spitfires and Oxfords of the Control and Reporting School carry out their own duties. While the writer was there he also observed a couple of helicopters of No. 1906 Helicopter Flight, which is based on the station; and the fact that all this varied flying goes on every day without a hitch reflects great credit on the organization and on the air-traffic control officers and pilots who operate there. To those of us who remember the happy days we spent in the early 'forties—the pleasant summer days sitting outside the crew room sunning ourselves whilst waiting our turn to fly—a visit to Middle Wallop brings an attack of nostalgia. For there one finds that old faithful, that aircraft which means more to many R.A.F. pilots than any other—the Tiger Moth. Nowhere else in the whole vast Flying Training Command of the Royal Air Force will one now find this aircraft. She has been replaced; and for some years since the end of the Second World War a more modern aircraft, equipped with two-way radio, beam approach aid, flaps and variable-pitch airscrew has been used to train the young Before pilots graduate to highway landings and take-offs (as seen in the heading) they practice on marked-out areas of comparable dimensions on the runway. Note, in the upper picture, the radio van and the human wind-tee.
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