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Aviation History
1959
1959 - 1480.PDF
FLIGHT, 22 May 1959 719 charges through the course so that they do not get too many butterflies in their stomachs. Between Changi village and Fairy Point there are a sailing club, a rather rough golf course, a swimming-pool for N.C.O.s and the officers' club. This has its own swimming-pool and catering, hair- dressing and bar facilities, dance-floor and cinema shows; its floor space is built out on piles over the water of the narrow channel shore. Swimming-pools are desirable because the water is dirty with the refuse from ships, junks and the rivers' discharge; about 17 species of poisonous sea-snakes inhabit the coastal waters, especially the creeks, and their bite can be dangerous. From the shore one can see the maidens of the Singapore Super- sonic Water-ski Club skimming the surface behind fast motor- boats, standing like sculptured figures in bronze on their speeding slats of wood. Operational Air Station. R.A.F. Tengah is solely an opera- tional station, housing first-line squadrons of fighters, bombers and photographic reconnaissance aircraft. It was a pre-war air- field, first opened in August 1938, when it had two squadrons. It had five station commanders between then and February 1942, when it was overrun by the Japanese. Its commander at the time, G/C. R. A. Ramsay Rae, who took over on January 26, 1942, had but a few days in command before he was a prisoner of war. An Australian by birth, an R.A.F. officer by profession, he is taking command of No. 224 Group, F.E.A.F., at Kuala Lumpur from June 15 in succession to A.V-M. V. E. Hancock of the R.A.A.F. In the officers' mess hangs the heavy curved sword of the Japanese commander who surrendered the airfield to the British at the end of the war. Tengah re-opened as an R.A.F. station on September 22, 1945. Since 1948 it has been engaged in the war against the Communist terrorists. Today the scale of these opera- tions relative to total activities by the squadrons on the station is comparatively small: the operations have shrunk with the cleaning-up of the C.T.s in several States of Malaya which have been declared "white." The functions of the squadrons are largely those of continuation training, periodic exercises from their home station or from stations within F.E.A.F. or the SEATO areas. Here, as all over F.E.A.F., office work starts at 0800 and stops at 1615 hr. There is a break of 1J hr for lunch. The daylight hours after work stops are brief, but pleasant. Aircrew and groundcrew hours do not always coincide. Tengah is a widely dispersed station. Its roads are named after famous aircraft—Hurricane, Spitfire, Lancaster and so on. Its two barrack blocks are named for two V.C.s—Cheshire and Learoyd. The officers' mess is rather far from the aprons and light squadron trucks run up and down. Many private cars are used. Walking is seldom indulged in; it is unpopular in the hot and sticky climate. Mess and quarters are good, but not up to the standard of the F.E.A.F. headquarters mess. In the spring- time Malayan swifts nest in the verandah cornices and their drop- pings "bomb" those who pass underneath, the birds' cries are almost continuous. Behind the mess a compound is laid out with flowering shrubs and trees and outside my bedroom I saw papayas growing and bearing fruit. AU the station offices are close to the gate, which has the usual white pole (counterbalanced) across the entrance road. The guard is of R.A.F. (Malayan) Auxiliary Police. The offices are low, one-floor buildings, with slat-shuttered windows to keep out Here, a trainee at the Parachute School at Changi demon- strates the special tree lowering equip- ment described on the opposite page. The heading picture is a typical jungle tort, with its 260-yd airstrip, signalling for a supply drop the heat and let in the air. Pendant electric fans turn noiselessly unless the rheostat is switched over to full speed. The main hangars are of U.K. pattern, and the aircraftmen work in them stripped to the waist, wearing only shorts, socks and shoes. Their bronzed skins are wet with perspiration. The expanse of concrete aprons reflects the heat like desert sand, and when the rains fall the drops leap upwards from the hard surface. I found many of the men quite happy, but not a few preferred the U.K. and would be glad to return. I am not aware that much is done to interest the men in the country. I believe it would be worthwhile for the Services to get together and produce (or arrange for the produc- tion of) a book on Singapore and another on Malaya, dealing with the flora and fauna, thus enabling the men to begin taking an intelligent interest in their surroundings. In fact I found few officers who could tell me the names of the birds or identify a tree if I named it, even though these were flying and growing about their own quarters. Servicemen should not return from foreign service knowing nothing but the struggle to live an imitation of home life in exotic surroundings; they ought to return with accurate (not merely superficial) knowledge of the lands they have been privileged to live in. No doubt some do, but far too few. I had to visit the Raffles Museum and the Botanical Gardens to find the answers to simple questions. In their work against the Communist terrorists the squadrons at Tengah use bombs, rocket projectiles, cannon and machine- guns. The object is seldom direct attack. Very occasionally C.T.s have been surprised in a ladang (clearing for house and crops)— usually from information received through aborigines—and have there been shot up, or bombed. But mostly the aircrew have been denied the excitement or satisfaction (whichever it is) of seeing the enemy. Usually they have had to bomb blind, seeing only the canopy of the jungle trees, a green mat spread over the land- scape. Bombs dropped into such jungle leave no visible trace from the air; the sea of foliage, like the waters of the ocean, swallows everything without disclosure. To aid the attacking aircraft, A.O.P. Austers have acted as pathfinders, or navigational or target indication by the surface forces has defined the aiming or release points. The aircraft have been like beaters on a grouse moor, their bombs driving the C.T.s into the guns of troops spread across the line of retreat. I thought the runway at Tengah none too long for a heavily laden Canberra, despite the good S.W. entry which permits a pilot to skim the threshold. The runway dips to the centre from both ends and this hardly helps. Its N.E. end faces a low hill. Extension, although a considerable civil engineering task, is easily within the capacity of modern earth-moving machinery. It would ease the pilots' present responsibility for operating under what seemed to be rather close limits, especially at night. At take-off, too, one is committed once high speed is attained; and in view of the small margin, engine reliability provides the rather high premium for safety. This is my own opinion. I do not mention my pilot's name for fear of embarrassing him; he made an impeccable landing. [Continued overleaf Above, ground crews stripped to the waist work on Canberras at R.A.F. Tengah; and at right, Valettas—in one of which the author flew to Kuala Lumpur— on the PSP hardstand at Changi
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