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Aviation History
1954
1954 - 1234.PDF
FLIGHT, 30 April 1954 557 THE QUEEN'S SQUADRON . . . "C", F/Sgt. Pennie, reported that he had been seriously wounded; he was instructed to increase speed in order to get home quickly. The leader in "P" acted as escort, and "X", which was experiencing trouble with one petrol cock, was given per mission to leave the formation and fly more slowly to increase range. It was never seen again. "N" returned safely independ ently. A later report said that one of the crews had been picked up by the Royal Navy; and another pilot, F/O. K. Jenkinson, was picked up after spending six-and-a-half days in his dinghy. Apparently he had had his starboard engine hit by flak and later the petrol feed to the port engine failed. In the resulting ditching his navigator was washed away and never seen again. Jenkinson had with him only two packets of chewing gum, a bar of chocolate and a few barley-sugar drops. He bandaged his wounds with pieces torn from his parachute. On the first day a Wellington passed over but failed to see the Very lights which he fired; and on the second day a Beaufighter went by almost exactly over head and also failed to see the dinghy. He had no drinking water, so periodically he washed his teeth in salt water and gargled with it to relieve his thirst. The weather became bad and several times he was thrown out of his dinghy into the sea. For the next four days Jenkinson drifted, sleeping at times but not, curiously enough, feeling badly the effects of hunger or thirst. He had a recurrent dream that he was rescued by a submarine, the commander of which questioned him as to how long he had been adrift. When told "five days," the submariner said: "You are not time-expired yet, you have still a couple of days to go"—and then put him in the sea again. And it was in the early evening of the seventh day that Jenkinson saw a convoy and fired his last three cartridges. Two, wet, misfired; the third was all right. He then had the morti fication of watching the convoy alter course away from him. For a while all seemed hopeless, and he lay down to sleep. But a little later he heard the approach of a vessel. It was a British destroyer; he had been seen, and a boat was being lowered. No longer able to stand the suspense, he dived into the sea to swim towards his rescuers. Safely on board, he was taken to the sick bay; but very soon he was able to face a botde of beer in the wardroom. In the period he was adrift he lost some 28 lb in weight. These high casualties, aggravated by die posting away of a number of tour-expired experienced crews, brought the effective ness of the unit down to a very low level. On top of all this, the commanding officer went sick. In August, training flying hours exceeded for the first time for a long while those spent on operations. Squadron claims for the month in respect of both shipping and aircraft were nil. But the unit was soon back in form. September was marked by a number of intruder operations over enemy airfields in the COMMANDING OFFICERS S/L. J. A. McKelvie, A.F.C. S/L. H. R. Murray-Philipson S/L. Lord G. N. Douglas- Hamilton ... S/L. E. H. Stevens S/L. G. L. Denholm, D.F.C. S/L. F. M. Smith S/L. M. J. Louden S/L. Forshaw S/L. Lord D. Douglas-Hamil ton .. S/L. P. Illingworth S/L. Marshall W/C. H. A. Chater * 1925 1931 1-4-34 23-8-39 29-9-40 1-4-41 7-7-41 19-10-41 19-12-41 10-4-42 8-42 28-1-43 War-time W/C. J. R. H. Lewis, D.F.C. W/C. J. D. T. Revell W/C. C. N. Foxley-Norris... S/L. Patterson. D.F.C. S/L. T. C. Rigler, D.F.C., D.F.M S/L. H. R. P. Pertwee, D.F.C. S/L. G. K. Gilroy', D.S.O., D.F.C S/L. J. W. E.Holmes, D.F.C., A.F.C S/L. P. J. Anson, D.F.C. ... S/L. R. Lloyd Davies, D.F.C. S/L. R. A. Schofield group captain. 11-43 15-6-44 23-9-44 10-1-45 26-1-45 1-4-45 11-6-46 23-9-49 1-12-50 22-3-53 25-8-53 Aegean area, and by offensive reconnaissances. The high spot of the month was the effective attack on the Orion in the bay of South Denusa. W/C. Revell was posted as non-effective and W/C. C. N. Foxley-Norris took over command. By October the squadron was quite back on the ball. On the 3rd, the squadron diary records, ten Beaufighters were airborne to find die minelayer Zeus. In this they were unsuccessful, but they found a convoy of five other vessels instead. All were damaged, and two set on fire and abandoned. On the 7th the squadron completed twelve months at Gambut—and a very effective twelve months it had been. Later in the month W/C. Foxley-Norris and F/O. Jenkinson flew to Athens to escort Mr. Anthony Eden on a diplomatic mission. Operational hours were up to more than 430 once more. Toward the end of the month, consequent on the evacuation of Greece by the Germans, shipping targets dropped to nil, but various land targets were attacked in joint actions with Naval aircraft. In November the bottom fell out of No. 603's war. During the month activities were restricted mostly to reconnaissance of the Dodecanese and Aegean islands. On one or two occasions the Beaufighters were fired at, but no other enemy activity was reported. In fact, the biggest thing of the month was an exercise in which 15 Beaufighters were sent to attack a splash target towed by H.M.S. King George V. The final days of November were spent in packing up, following news of the intended return of the squadron to Britain. On December 26th, 1944, the squadron sailed from Port Said, landing at Liverpool on January 6di. They proceeded to Goltishall. Here the pilots were all posted to the Mosquito Wing at Banff, but the ground crews were retained and put on the strength of No. 229 Squadron, which was thereupon renumbered No. 603. Thus the unit once more became a Spitfire (Mk 16) Squadron, but now engaged in escorting shipping strikes by Beaufighters and in dive- bombing V2 launching sites. At Coltishall five other Spitfire squadrons were performing the same task. The commanding officer of No. 603 was now S/L. Patterson, D.F.C. (To be concluded) HUBERT SCOTT-PAINE AS we briefly recorded last week, Mr. Hubert Scott-Paine died recently at his home in Greenwich, Connecticut, at the age of 63. To the general public he was, perhaps, best known for his achievements in designing and racing high-speed boats, craft which were the prototypes of many used by the Royal Navy and the R.A.F. during the war. In aviation circles he will be chiefly remembered as a pioneer in the manufacture of marine aircraft. He learned to fly in 1910, designed and built several original aircraft—those were landplanes—and presently became manager of the flying-boat business founded by Noel Pember- ton-Billing. When the latter entered Parliament in 1916 he handed over control of the firm—by now known as Supermarine—to Scott-Paine, and under his direction a notable series of aeroplanes emerged. Shortly after the war he was joined by Sqn. Cdr. James Bird, and the two began to explore the possibili ties of the commercial flying-boat by running experimental services from Southampton to Le Havre and to the Channel Islands with a three-seat, open-cockpit biplane powered by a 160 h.p. Beardmore engine. Thereafter they pro duced an increasingly successful range of civil and military flying-boats, mainly of biplane configuration with single engines mounted above the fuselage and driving either tractor or pusher Mr. Scott-Paine airscrews. It was one of these, the Sea Lion II, that won the Schneider Trophy at 145.7 m.p.h. near Naples in 1922. In 1923 Scott-Paine and Bird formed the British Marine Air Navigation Co., which successfully operated cross-channel services from Southampton to Cherbourg and other places with three Supermarine Sea Eagles, six-passenger flying-boats engined with the Rolls-Royce Eagle. In the following year the company amalgamated with others to form Imperial Airways, of which Scott-Paine became a founder-director. In 1927 he founded the British Power Boat Co. at Hythe, and thereafter his energies became increasingly occupied with purely marine work, though he remained a director of Imperials until 1940. He leaves a widow and four children. NEW BRITISH STANDARDS THE British Standards Institution has recendy published, under the authority of its aircraft industry standards committee, twelve new standards for various types of bolts. Three (A. 59, A.60, A.lll) are for ranges of steel close-tolerance bolts and shear bolts, cadmium-plated for use in aluminium alloys, and the remaining nine (A.l 13-121) cover UNF-thread bolts in steel, corrosion-resisting steel, and light alloy. Another recent B.S.I, publication is the British Standard Code of Practice on the Use of Electronic Valves. Part 1 gives general information and operating recommendations for all types of elec tronic valves, whilst Part 2 sets out additional recommendations on the use of domestic receiving valves, cathode-ray tubes and rectifiers. Copies of the Code (CP. 1005) are obtainable at 6s from the British Standards Institution, 2 Park Street, London, W.l.
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