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Aviation History
1953
1953 - 0679.PDF
673 FLIGHT, 29 May 1953 Fastest aircraft in R.A.F. service is the Canadair Sabre F.1, large numbers of which are entering service with the 2nd T.A.F. and, later, with Fighter Command. The nearest aircraft carries the standard glossy grey- green camouflage. Representative of the many hundreds of aircrew of Fighter Command are the Vampire N.F.10 crew shown boarding their air craft for a night exercise: F/LJ.H.Hedger, a flight commander of 23 Squad ron, and his navigator, .PjO.M. S. Troake. The Queen's Air Forces . . . could do it with full equipment. Even if he could, it is considered physiologically bad to get "in a lather" before a flight. All this may sound as though the carefree era of piston-engined flying has gone for ever, to be replaced by a routine in which a fighter pilot is transported to his aircraft and flies entirely by means of instruments, graphs, cathode-ray tube traces and radio mumbo-jumbo. Wondering if the old hands felt this to be the case, we recently sought an interview by Air Marshal Sir Dermot A. Boyle, K.B.E., C.B., A.F.C., who has lately been appointed A.O.C-in-C. Fighter Command, in succession to Sir Basil Embry. Sir Dermot was quite specific: "It's what the youngster thinks that matters. He isn't concerned with what it was like to fly a Spitfire; he probably thinks such aircraft old crates. High- altitude flight makes any man feel just a little bit older and, even in modern pressurized fighters, we aim at a low age-limit. There are plenty of young people, of the right type, entering the Com mand all the time; they are showing themselves fully capable of coping with everything." And this is as it should be, for Fighter Command is a fine place for "young men of the right type." Perhaps our present fighter pilots will end their Service as chairborne missile- directors; but they are certainly doing a particularly active job at the moment. "Flight" photograph THE ROYAL OBSERVER CORPS CLOSELY linked with Fighter Command is the Royal Observer Corps, whose duties are by now well known. It is of passing interest to note that their badge pictures a watchman of a former Elizabethan era, scanning the horizon for an invading Armada. Horizon scanning is once more becoming of prime importance for the earlier reporting of low-level "rats" is now an urgent problem. But the R.O.C. is all right; last October we wrote: "a full "season of exercises had worked wonders with last winter's recruits and, during the four days and three nights of R.O.C. participation in Exercise Ardent, they put through plots to centre with speed and accuracy that would not have disgraced the post in its World War II heyday." And earlier this month the R.O.C.'s first long- service medals were presented to 20 members of the corps who enrolled in the early 1930s by the A.O.C-in-C. Fighter Command, who, with justification, referred to their work as "a vital job." The Corps has increased both in numbers and in enthusiasm during the past year. Their proficiency is underlined by the increasing numbers who take the Master Test (pass mark, 90 per cent) and one post, at least, gained five of the prized Spitfire badges from the last examination. The Commandant, A. Cdre. G. A. Vasse, C.B.E., also sees to it that posts keep on their toes during actual operations; any plot taking as long as 30 seconds is likely to earn a reprimand for the observers concerned.
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