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Aviation History
1954
1954 - 0743.PDF
19 March 1954 333 Another memory of the time when everything that could fly was hastily armed: Magisters of No. IS E.F.TS. were equipped to carry four 20 lb bombs for "defence." that S/L. Homersham took over, No. 15 E.F.T.S. made history and our formation efforts came to a very sudden stop. It was the morning of October 26th, and there had been a hard frost during the night. The Magisters had, as was customary by then, been dispersed around the perimeter during die night and had, therefore, a thick coating of hoar-frost on the upper surfaces of the wings. We should, of course, have known better than to take off under these conditions, but whilst knowing that ice on wings was a bad thing we did not then realize that frost could be much worse. We soon found out. The formation moved off as usual and, halfway across the airfield, I realized that my air speed was reading 65 m.p.h. and that the aircraft was still firmly on the ground. A few seconds more and I saw that I was not going to get airborne before the boundary was reached; so I dirotded back and prepared for the bump, the brakes being useless on the slippery grass. To cut a long story short, I ran through a heap of stones by the fence, which removed both undercarriage legs, continued through the fence, and finally came to rest in the middle of the Glasgow Road. I did nothing worse than bump my head on the windscreen support. Having got out, I was able to survey the debris around me. I had been in No. 3 position, and No. 5 on my left had just managed to get airborne, but had gone through both road fences, finishing up in a heap in the next field. Our leader had stopped short of die fence, as he, too, had wiped off his undercarriage legs and had also run into a small tent, which had stopped him going further. No. 2, on his right, had got up to some ten feet in a semi-stalled condition, and then hit a small hangar, leaving one wheel and a wing on the roof and landing in a heap on the far side. No. 4 had managed to stagger across the road, where he hit the roof of a small cottage, depositing his engine through the roof on to a bed, and the aircraft into a chicken run by the side of die house. Most fortunately there was no fire anywhere, and none of the crews was badly hurt. On the evening of the accident a member of die school heard an "eye-witness" account of the affair. It appeared that die five aeroplanes were flying along on a beautiful morning, high up in the air, when a mist suddenly came up and "tiiey all toppled to the ground"! Of such stuff are witnesses made. . . . Whilst this was a time of intense work, work which I think we carried out to the best of our ability, mere were, of course, lighter moments. I recall that the first necessity when we arrived at Carlisle was a suitable low-flying area and it was soon found that the banks of the Solway Firth were ideal. And not only the banks, for at low tide there was a wide expanse of fine hard sand which sufficed as an airfield for at least two machines on the first day we were there. Later on I spied a sweet young thing sunbathing therein and "shot her up"—only to find to my horror that it was Mrs. Douglas, the C.O.'s wife! He later said that he couldn't understand how she could have recognized me at "a height of 100 feet. . . ." We started ab initio flying with Polish pupils after we had What happened to a formation of five Magisters that took off—relatively speaking—from Carlisle one autumn morning with hoar frost on their wings. None of the crews was seriously hurt. The story, which points a moral—that hoar frost can be more dangerous than ice—is told above.
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