Onward and Upward

Chapter 13

  My birthday comes around every year, whether I like it or not, but this year I was actually looking forward to it, it was tomorrow, and as I was idly thinking about it, I was flying over the Bay of Biscay with sixteen Hunters and Zebedee following me, and as we neared the English coast Teddy orchestrated our ‘arrival’ onto the Display Circuit. I didn’t have a lot to do as I was not a professional aerobatics pilot, but I could still hold my own in formation flying so as I approached our destination, on Teddy’s mark, I pressed my ‘press to transmit’ button. ‘Farnborough Approach, this is Lady S requesting permission to ‘fly by’, and then join left hand circuit for landing’. Either I would get a rollicking for not sticking to strict R/T procedure, or I might just get away with it.

  ‘Lady S, this is Farnborough approach, you are cleared for ‘fly by’ and left hand circuit to land, by the way are you on your own?’

  I had got away with it, ‘only a couple of chicks Farnborough approach, will be overhead in three zero seconds out’.

  Thirty seconds later I took the centre line down Farnborough’s main runway, I was perhaps a little low but hopefully no one would notice, perhaps they would all be too occupied with the eight gleaming Hawker Hunters on either wing tip, and a BAe 146 trying to crawl up my jet pipe. At Teddy’s command I just pressed my stop watch and then carried serenely on, but everyone else went ballistic. Firstly Zebedee seemed to stop in mid-air and then wheel around and dart for the end of the runway. She had to disgorge the ground crew before we arrived. Topsy had paid a flying visit to Farnborough a few days earlier and using a laser beam and an old fashioned tape measure he ‘spotted’ our marshalling points in green paint, and then as the hand on my stopwatch reached the required number I flipped Lady S on her side and pulled on a few ‘g’, we had practiced this quite a few times so I knew that sixteen Hunters were now in ‘line astern’ behind me, but, according to the professionals perhaps a little too close for comfort. Teddy knew the main runways width to the inch, and as I touched down to the left of the runway Natasha, just behind me touched down in the centre of it, and her number two touched down just behind, and to the right of her; and it was crisply repeated by the remaining fourteen aircraft, and a few thousand aviators started breathing again, and as I lead my team to the dispersal Topsy had everything ‘tickerty boo’, and it all went like clockwork. ‘Red Arrows move over, there are new kids on the block’.

  Once on the ground everything was checked and Lady S was led away by the nose to her new resting place, the organisers had persuaded me to let her reside in the static park, where hopefully she would be one of the main attractions. I only agreed to this as long as a couple of my own security people guarded her full time, and what posers they turned out to be. They were photographed in their smart green uniforms (minus their guns of course) against the side of the Lady S, beside Nanny Melva, kissing little Kyle and Macey, and generally beating the Coldstream Guards at their own game, but eventually we got the summons, ‘would we (Teddy, Natasha and I), please go to the control tower’. It was obviously time for slapped wrists all around. We were shown into the air show’s Control Centre and were introduced to all the big wigs, then finally it was the turn of the Programme Director, he was a funny choice to give us a bol- sorry telling off. No it wasn’t a telling off, ‘had we anything up our sleeves’, as I had a short sleeved shirt on, ‘not a lot’, then he came clean. Two of the smaller teams had just pulled out, ‘financial troubles’, but worse, one of the international display teams had just been grounded. There had been a spate of mechanical failures involving their type of aircraft and the F.A.A. and C.A.A. had grounded them all, ‘could we give them some extra display time’. We had a routine, which representatives from Farnborough and the C.A.A. had seen and approved, and were expecting us to put on, but we also had something a little extra, just in case, and this was the case.

  ‘Well’ said Teddy, looking at Natasha and myself, ‘I suppose we could give you an extra ten minutes’ (the Red Arrows had given him an extra thirty seconds) so it was nearly kisses all round, and the next morning at aircrew briefing, my pilots caused quite a stir, they were all dressed up in their ‘Sunday best’ flying suits, ‘but can you fly as well as you dress’ they jibed. ‘Just you wait and see sunshine’.

  Spot on the designated time Sally took over from the display commentator, and the Programme Director pressed the button on his stop watch, and the display went perfectly, it was an aerial ballet, enough to make grown men weep, but there were sixteen aircraft in the air and what the crowds really wanted to see were all sixteen of them in a single formation, and it looked as though it wasn’t going to happen as Sally seemed to be winding up her spiel, and the Programme Director was starting to feel very faint as we were only on time for the original display, and then, accompanied by rapturous applause the aircraft completed their final bomb burst and disappeared, and then, just as she was about to hand over to the very worried Commentator (he had nothing whatsoever to commentate on, the rest of the aircraft were all on the ground) she said ‘Oh! By the way Graham, you were asking me earlier what our pilots do when they are not flying’, he didn’t remember any such conversation but he was too much of a professional to let that worry him.

  ‘That’s right Sally, what do they do?’

  ‘They play cards Graham’.

  He could see she was playing for time so he went on, ‘and what game do they play Sally?

  ‘It’s a special game Graham.’

  ‘Oh really Sally, and how does it go,’ he now had his fingers firmly crossed behind his back and hoped this was leading somewhere.

  ‘First off they take a pack of cards, shuffle them, and discard about half of the pack, and then the rest are split evenly between them. One player then lays a card, and the other one has to try and follow suit. Three consecutive cards and you win the trick; four of a kind, or four in a row and you win the game’.

  This was getting boring Graham thought, and then Sally continued ‘there was one particularly interesting game this morning between Mr Michaels and Teddy, our team Manager’

  ‘Oh really’ said a puzzled Graham.

  ‘Yes’ said a defiant Sally, ‘First Teddy laid the Ace of Diamonds’

  And four Hunters, in an immaculate diamond formation rose up in front of the startled spectators. They reached an imaginary point high in the sky and then seemingly dissolved.

  ‘Then Mr Michaels laid the Two of Diamonds.’

  And first one ‘diamond four’, and then just below it another ‘diamond four’ rose into the air, just like the two of diamonds on a playing card, and as the first four reached that imaginary point in the sky they all dissolved, each going their own separate ways.

  ‘We had all seen the Four of Diamonds get taken earlier’, Sally stalled, ‘but was the three of Diamonds in the discarded half of the pack, or was it in Teddy’s hand we all wondered? Then Teddy leaned over the table and triumphantly flung down the Three of Diamonds’, she all but screamed.

  And right on cue first one diamond four, then another, and finally a third seemed to rise from the ground in front of the crowds; they now had the three of diamonds, before they again dissolved, and by now the crowd could sense that something special was about to happen, was it going to be the four of diamonds, but no Sally had already said it had gone.

  ‘Teddy leaned over to take the trick, Sally continued, but Mr Michaels placed his hand over the cards, ‘not quite’ he said, and ladies and gentlemen at this stage of the game you must realise who actually signs our pay cheques at the end of each month, and with a flourish he laid down the winning card - and what was it you may ask? Ladies and gentlemen it was Mr Andrew Michaels very own Sixteen of Diamonds’, and with that all sixteen of my aircraft rose from the ground in a perfect Diamond Sixteen formation. The crowds went wild, the Programme Director fainted, Graham was speechless, and Lt Eagles RN, who had been trying to get into his Gazelle for the past five minutes, one foot in his aircraft and the other on t
he step gave up and just stared as the first of the sixteen aircraft reached that imaginary point in the sky, but the formation didn’t dissolve, it curled over in a loop, and then into a barrel roll, all the time being followed by the other fifteen aircraft in perfect formation, and for a further five minutes the sixteen Hunters gracefully wheeled around the skies above Farnborough, as if bound together by cables, reminiscent of the Black Arrows in the 1950’s and then after the obligatory bomb burst finale, one at a time each pilot did a low/slow flypast in front of the mesmerised spectators, giving them a wave from the cockpit as Sally introduced them. In return each received a rapturous applause, not only from the crowd but from their peers as well. Then finally it was Natasha’s turn, and as she did a perfect sixteen point hesitation roll, at about zero feet (give or take), she received a standing ovation from the Red Arrows (and every other pilot on the airfield). Finally, an exhausted Sally handed the microphone back to Graham, who now had some ‘filling in’ of his own to do as Lt Eagles was only now kicking his machine into life. ‘Well Ladies and Gentlemen’ he said ‘how do you follow that’ (unfortunately it was the poor Lieutenant), ‘and before you go Sally, thank you for that enthralling commentary, and from everyone here at Farnborough, a big thank you to Mr Andrew Michaels and his ‘Green Diamonds’. It was now going to cost me a small fortune to get all the publicity bumf changed.

  The next morning at the aircrew briefing eighteen chairs were vacant in the front row, and we received a standing ovation from the remainder of the room as we made our way to them. I also received about fifty C.V.’s as I passed through the crowded room, and yet again the Programme Director was in a tiz woz. As two Pitt Specials were taxiing in after their display yesterday, one had had a brake failure and neatly chopped the tail off of his team leader, no one was hurt ‘but’, ‘can you PLEASE give me a few extra minutes’.

  ‘How about twenty five’ I said, and that shut everybody up. Then I continued, ‘how about if Natasha does a solo routine, Topsy, my Crew Chief, and Natasha have worked something out, but about half of it will be on the ground; perhaps she can be the final act of the show?’ Although the Air Show was on for a week, the public were only allowed in for the final two days, the first five being reserved for big business. As I had nothing to sell we were only doing the last two days.

  Sally had sorted things out with Natasha and the two earlier programmes were now smoothly rolled into one, but everyone in the know really only wanted to see the final display.

  Good evening Ladies and Gentlemen it’s me again, and please may I introduce Miss Natasha Shladakoff, team leader of the ‘Green Diamonds’.

  Loads of applause - then nothing.

  ‘Pliz, werr iz ze starter buzzon’ came a plaintive plea over the loud speakers.

  Natasha, in Arabella was hiding behind a hangar close to the end of the runway, along with Topsy and my ‘bomb heads’. It took her about ten minutes, and many flash bangs and fireworks to finally get Arabella started and to bounce her onto the end of the runway, only she was across it, not along it.

  ‘Pliz, ziz runway iz vezy short - but I go,’ and with that she slammed the throttle open.

  ‘No, No’ Sally screamed ‘you are pointing the wrong way’.

  After a few more bumps and grinds Arabella was finally straddled the centre line, but pointing in the wrong direction. ‘Okidoke, thaz iz bezzer, I go now’.

  Yet again Sally did her screaming bit, and then told Natasha to look in her rear view mirror.

  ‘Pliz, Iz av no rear view mirror’ Natasha wailed.

  ‘But all aircraft have rear view mirrors’ Sally moaned.

  ‘No Iz av never ad one’ she explained, and then Sally had an idea.

  ‘Natasha has your aircraft got a make-up mirror?’

  ‘Ov course, all Russian pizots muzz luk bufull’, and so she instructed Natasha to twist it.

  ‘OOOOH, Iz can zee my behind’, and over half the spectators had a vision.

  Finally, when she was lined up on the centre of the runway, and pointing in the right direction, Natasha slowly pushed the throttle forward to its stop, and just as the mighty Avon reached its maximum output she released the brakes, and roared off down the runway, and into the history books. First the undercarriage came up, and then the flaps, and then Arabella sank down until the bottom of her fuselage was a mere few inches above the tarmac, and every pilot knows that when you pull the nose of an aircraft up, its tail goes down - and Natasha had no room under her tail. Just as she seemed to be running out of runway Natasha blipped the flaps and Arabella leapt vertically into the air, and once there was room below her tail Natasha re-wrote the books on the Theory of Flight. She covered all the standard manoeuvres, plus a few more in her breath-taking routine, and then she came in for her finale, and cart wheeled in front of the crowd, now that was impossible. As she taxied in I could hear all the old Theory of Flight books hitting the bottoms of the skips, but then, just as she was coming to a graceful halt, spot on her spot, things quickly turned pear shaped. The crowd control barriers paid only lip service to crowd control and an ecstatic crowd surged forward, heading towards her aircraft. Fortunately the ground crews managed to stop any spectators from being sucked into Natasha’s intakes as she frantically shut the mighty Avon down, but not so a very large hat, and then the crowds were swarming all around my beautiful aircraft. I watched the mayhem unfolding before me from the top of the V.I.P. viewing stand, and I think I broke at least three world records myself as I hurdled down the bank of chairs, some of which still had people in them, and ran towards the flight line, which unfortunately for me was a fair distance away. As I finally wheezed my way onto the line I was met by a grim faced Topsy. Arabella needed a new ‘donkey’, and a few of the smaller aircraft blanks had been ‘purloined’ by energetic souvenir hunters, but it looked as though we had gotten away quiet lightly with our first riot, but it was obvious that aircraft security was going to have to have a higher priority in the future. As I approached Arabella her tail assembly had already been slid off and two rather large hunter green (with gold trim of course) articulated Lorries were parked one either side of her, they were our ‘roadies’. John had realised that Zebedee could not carry anything like the amount of spares that might just be needed whilst we were operating away from home, so he’d had two forty foot trailers (13.6 meters actually) converted into mobile store rooms and workshop, complete with their own hydraulic crane and fork lift truck. They were easily capable of providing all the necessary support equipment that was required to enable the engine change to go speedily ahead, as well as providing the replacement engine, sorry donkey, itself. They even had an awning that could span the working area in case of inclement weather - nice one John, and most of my pilots were safely tucked up in bed by the time Arabella was better, but one, by the name of Marcos, was wide awake, not through excitement but because he only needed four hours sleep a night, or less. Marcos was Portuguese and he had been a member of their national aerobatic team before he joined me. Doc Martin had initially been worried about this strange phenomenon but after innumerable tests she agreed that that was all he needed, so he was standing by to take Arabella up for a test flight. It was pitch black by the time Topsy had ground run the new engine and finished all the paperwork, but that was not a problem, as all my Hunters were rated for night flying, although none had actually done it before. Fortunately Marcos owned his own aircraft and regularly flew home to Portugal to see his girlfriend, usually arriving after dark, so he was ‘night flying rated’, and Farnborough Air Traffic Control were ‘flexible’ about allowing the test flight; but only as long as he did the noisy bits well away from the airfield. We didn’t realise that he was back until he taxied onto the hard standing, apparently a Hunter glides beautifully when the engine is throttled right back. All the aircraft had had their drop tanks re-fitted, and so after Arabella was refuelled and A.F.’d (after flight inspection) all my aircraft were now ready for the long flight home, so it was off to beddy byes in a
nice comfortable bed for me, and I didn’t have to go very far to get to it, after all Zebedee was MY BAe 146 and I had to get some use out of her now didn’t I.

  I had been in bed for about ten minutes when my mobile phone rang, it was Marcos, ‘there is a situation in the aircrew bar’.

  Apparently not all the rest of my pilots were tucked up in bed. Melvyn was just about the only one of my pilots that I didn’t really get along with. He was an excellent pilot (and didn’t he know it) but at this moment he was in the bar, and unlike the rest of the pilots that were flying tomorrow he decided to break the ‘bottle to throttle’ rule (no alcohol within the twenty-four hour period prior to take-off). He had only had two small ones, but unfortunately as he hadn’t had a serious drink since the New Year they went straight to his head, so he had a couple more, and I arrived just as he was downing his last (whilst he was employed by me anyway) (a double), down in one, and he immediately decided that attack was the best form of defence and started getting belligerent. It turned out that he was clearly a ‘closet’ sexist (amongst other things) – he did not approve of women ‘bosses’ in particular, women ‘drivers’ in general, and was obviously a bad loser when he didn’t get any of the prime jobs, ‘and he thought all that effing money was wasted on me’.

  ‘My, my, aren’t we the jealous one’ I thought, as I sacked him on the spot - and then departed to wake up Teddy and Natasha to break the good news.

  The briefing in Zebedee the following morning was scheduled for nine o’clock, for a ten o’clock take off, but she was deserted, everyone was out on the line ripping the drop tanks off the aircraft, after they had first been drained of fuel. When I had left the bar the previous night Melvyn had then really gone on a bender, and just before the MOD police escorted him off the Airfield he had announced to all and sundry that ‘that bunch of amateurs won’t have a hope in hells chance of giving any more displays for many a month, not without me’, ‘they are not that good’.

  Normally I wouldn’t have given it a second thought, but when I went up to the Control Tower at eight o’clock to say my goodbyes I was greeted with ‘It’s a pity you’ve got to cancel your other displays’, now that seriously pissed me off. It was time to see if David’s comment was true, ‘could I actually walk on water?’, and the answer apparently was yes, as at ten o’clock gaggles of two or three aircraft at a time took off in loose ‘wobbly’ formation, and disappeared off into the distance. It looked to those not in the know that the new kids on the block were skulking away, a very feeble departure, and if anyone had bothered to count they would have seen seventeen Hunters finally disappeared off to ‘who knows where’, but my feet were still firmly on the ground, Natasha had asked me ‘pretty please, can I borrow the Lady S’.

  Of course I said ‘yes’, ‘but if you scratch her, it comes out of your pay packet’, and a few minutes later I strolled casually outside Zebedee, with a pair of ear defenders firmly clamped over my ears, just in time to see, hear and feel seventeen Hawker Hunters roar over the spectator’s heads. They were way below the minimum height, and in a tight diamond sixteen ‘and a bit’ formation, my Lady S was the ‘bit’, with Natasha trying to fly up the jet pipe of the Sally, who had taken Melvyn’s place as ‘tail end Charlie’. Peter Frost, my other spare pilot was also among them somewhere, but with the minimum of shuffling about there were now seventeen gleaming Hunters pirouetting about the sky. They did the full diamond sixteen routine, and just as they were doing the bomb burst Natasha roared in under them and did three consecutive cartwheels along the runway, a very polite way of saying ‘up yours Melvyn’.

  When I paid my final ‘final’ visit to the Control Tower it was a different atmosphere all together, it was all very upbeat, ‘but was I going to try and beat the world record of twenty-two Hunters doing a loop at Farnborough way back in ’58, in two years’ time?’ (Farnborough alternates annually with Paris).

  ‘Of course I wasn’t, it had taken me all of my time to get sixteen Hunters into formation’, but I had ALL my fingers and toes crossed as I said it.

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