I joined the Royal Air Force as a trainee navigator in July 1950 and after ITS at Jurby in the Isle of Man, commenced navigation training at No. 1 ANS at Hullavington in December 1950.  By this time, the Government had become concerned at the Russians possession of nuclear weapons and the build up of their bomber force based upon the B 29 copy, which Tupolev were producing.  As a result, the Meteor NF 11 was produced as an interim lash-up night fighter and the night fighter force in Fighter Command was rapidly expanded.  In consequence extra crews were required and my course was removed from navigation training at the completion of the Basic stage and posted at the end of August 1951 to the Night Fighter OCU, No. 228, at Leeming Yorks, before we had been awarded our wings and whilst we still held the rank of Officer Cadet.  In normal circumstances we would have proceeded to the Advanced stage and spent a further 5 months or so training before being awarded the 'N' brevet and then going on to an OCU.

Meteor NF13  flying over the Bitter Lake.

Some 15 out of the 32 who had started the course at Jurby completed the AI school in October and were awarded a navigator/radio "N" flying badge, about half were commissioned as Pilot Officers and the rest promoted to Sergeant, which was the norm for the time. To carry ones kit across the camp from the Officers Mess to the Sergeants mess was a humbling experience but we were very kindly received and I was quite content to be a sergeant, just to be flying had been my childhood ambition. We then joined No 2 squadron of the OCU and were introduced to the bunch of pilots with whom we were to crew up to fly the Mosquito NF36.  One of these was a Pole, Flt Sgt Joe Halkiew, who had wartime Mosquito experience, and who several people wanted to fly with, luckily he
chose me and we subsequently had almost five successful years together.

We had one dodgy incident at Leeming when we did our first high level (25,000 ft) night cross-country on the Mosquito, and was about the first time I had used oxygen. When at about 45 minutes after takeoff I turned to Joe and complained that I did not know how to use the Dalton navigational computer, he realised that I was suffering from lack of oxygen and found that we had in fact run out. He immediately descended to 10,000 feet and we carried on, I did not receive a very good mark for this exercise and it had to be repeated. This course lasted about eight weeks with some 38 hours on the Mosquito and my log book records on 14 January 1952, "Awarded Fighter Command Category 'C'" as a Navigator/radio. Joe and I, in company with another NCO crew, were posted to Egypt and early in February '52 we boarded a York at Blackbushe for Fayid in the Suez Canal Zone. On arrival we were given transport to Kabrit, which was home to two night fighter squadrons, 39 and 219, both equipped with the Mosquito NF36. It also housed 13 Squadron with the Mosquito PR34, but in the process of converting to the Meteor PR10, and 683 Squadron with Lancasters which was doing an aerial survey of Africa and which soon departed.

The situation in Egypt was total chaos, and because of the rioting which had occurred in Cairo the previous year and the subsequent attempts by the Egyptians to remove us from the Canal Zone, our forces had been doubled in strength. Unfortunately, stores and food supplies did not keep pace and at times our rations were extremely short and often of poor quality. Beer and bread were only available on about three or four days a week. We were expected to carry a service revolver and 12 rounds of ammunition when flying, the stores however had no holsters or ammo pouches so we were forced to carry our armament loose in our pockets! Initially there were no sheets for our beds, and when we were eventually issued with one each we had to wash them ourselves. We had only been there a few weeks when there was the most almighty sand storm which lasted about two days, the room in which the four of us then shared had a crack in one window and the man whose bed was beneath it woke up with about 2mm of fine dust all over him. There was also a small sand dune inside the doorway caused because there was a gap of about 12mm under the door. It was very difficult to walk against the flying sand and I can remember stumbling across to the mess, not being able to see my feet at times, whatever one tried to eat or drink crunched and tasted of sand. When it was possible to resume work, we found that because our hangar
doors would not close by about 400mm, one end the hangar was some 150mm deep in sand. After the aircraft had been pushed out and brushed off someone had the bright idea of opening the hangar at each end, reversing the tail of a Mosquito in, and, by running up both engines, assist a line of men with brooms to sweep the floor.  This worked a treat and created another sand storm, much to the annoyance of the Wing Commander Flying, whose office roof had been blown off and who's clerks had almost finished straightening out his paperwork, and which bore the full blast.  Our C.O. got a rather different one!

Flying in Egypt was a new experience and we were sent off on cross-country flights that included traversing the Nile delta at high and low level by day. At night we had a cross country which included a turning point at Neckl in the middle of the Sinai desert, I found a few faint lights and concluded that I had missed the town shown on the map, later we had a look by day and found there were only a few scruffy buildings at a crossroads of desert tracks. Most of our flying took place over the Sinai, which was a strange landscape of shifting sand dunes in the North and barren rocky mountains to the South. Occasionally we would see a Bedouin walking along totally alone and miles from anywhere, also small groups with a cluster of black tents and small herds of goats or sheep. There was a tank unit at the disused airfield of Shandur nearby, and we would see them exercising in the desert. Joe soon found a new game in flying down the trail of sand thrown up by a fast moving tank, and zooming over the hapless commander standing up in the turret. Later on we had a visit from the officers of this unit, which caused considerable amusement in the crew room. Nearly half the Squadrons aircrew were NCOs and most of us were sat around the crew room playing cards or drinking tea when our C.O. brought in the tank C.O. to introduce us.  We shambled to our feet as only aircrew can, as this officer appeared. When he realised that there were NCOs present when he apparently expected all aircrew to be commissioned, he stopped with a horrified look on his face, turned to our CO and said, "I suppose you have to take an NCO along to do the work", turned on his heel and hurried out. We were not so amused when some of the tank officers were given rides on air to ground firing sorties and most were airsick over our radar sets!, we then had to do an NFT and go night flying with them.

We soon settled into the standard night fighter squadron routine of NFT's and ciné, with PI's under control of a local GCI radar. I should explain that ciné was an exercise using the gun camera, carrying out high quarter attacks, to give the pilots practice in deflection shooting. The Mosquito had a simple ring gun sight and so pilots had to learn the basic leadoff gunnery, as one would use when firing a shotgun, to this end the camp had a clay pigeon range where our gunnery officer used to organise Saturday morning shoots. I used to help him by doing some of the ciné film assessing, i.e. running the film one frame at a time and measuring the range, the deflection allowed and angle off of the target, to assess the pilot's accuracy, and in return he would allow me to have a go at the clays. There was also a strong emphasis on air to ground firing which was carried out on a range at Shallufa. This range was on bare rocky desert and it was absolutely essential to turn sharply away from the line of fire when pulling out from the firing dive to avoid ricochets and lumps of rock. We did have an aircraft written off because a ricochet penetrated the laminated wooden main spar, if the main spar was damaged within 18" of an engine mounting no repair was allowed and the aircraft was a write off.  During the day the local women and children could be seen running about under the aircraft as they were firing and picking up the 20mm cartridge cases as they fell.  At night it was even more entertaining as the navigators had to fly so that they could read off the altimeter and remind the pilot to begin the pull out from the dive at the specified 400 ft, this meant that recovery was often well below 300 ft. A pilot from 219 seriously frightened his navigator one night when he opened his throttles abruptly during this manoeuvre and the torque rolled the aircraft onto its back! He had the presence of mind to complete the roll and regain control.  The 10 foot square canvas targets were indicated at night by the use of three gooseneck flares, one on each side and one positioned behind at such a
distance as to just be visible at the correct 30° angle of dive. Each target was fired on by four aircraft, and the rounds dipped in coloured paint so that individual pilots scores could be made by the range controller, I acted as range controller one night and it was quite difficult to decide on scores by torchlight.

In May 52 we went to Nicosia in Cyprus for the annual armament practice camp, there the concentration was on air to air firing against targets towed by Beaufighters on a range just off the north coast near Morpheu. Scoring again was by paint marking, here the hours of ciné practice paid off but accurate flying was essential if any hits were to be obtained. Pilots were not allowed to fire at a deflection angle of less than 30° to avoid danger to the tug from ricochets and tug pilots were quick to chastise offenders. Joe had been a tug pilot prior to the course at Leeming and had considerable sympathy with them. When carrying out firing exercises it was normal to carry 50 rounds per gun for two guns, this made the calculation of percentages easier. Scores rarely exceeded 25 and some pilots were quite unable to hit the flag at all, incidentally on air to ground an exceptional score was over 80, and could usually be 30 to 40 by day and about half that at night.  Firing the guns was an experience, the cockpit floor was a sheet of ply, immediately below which were the 4 20mm cannon and, while the pilot’s feet were raised on the rudder pedals, for the navigator it felt as though there was someone belting the floor beneath with a baulk of timber.

The powers that be laid on an "escape and evasion" exercise in which we were dropped off somewhere near Nicosia from the back of a lorry in pairs at night, with instructions to find a certain house on the coast about 40 miles away. We carried the normal 1:500,000 topographical map (approx 8 miles to the inch), which we used for map reading in the air, the resident Army forces, including a regiment of paratroops were sent out to catch us, and the local police and population alerted to report and apprehend us. One of our pilots was shot by a nervous Turkish-Cypriot who thought he was being robbed, but Joe and I made it to within about 2 miles until we were the last crew to be captured and were thrown into the local police cells, stripped to our underpants and handcuffed. There were already about four other aircrew in the cells, and we were transported some 35 miles to the interrogation centre at RAF Nicosia, handcuffed together in the back of an open 30 cwt truck while still only dressed in underpants. It was meant to represent the type of treatment we might expect from the Russians, all in all quite an experience.  However, after the delights of the Canal Zone, Cyprus was paradise with nightclubs that had cabarets and taxi dancers, and where we were treated like lords.

We returned to a normal routine at Kabrit carrying out all the usual exercises, amongst which pilots were required to undertake two practice single engine overshoots, and one single engine landing per month, so that they could cope when it really mattered. When on one engine the decision to land had to be made at 800 ft at night, and 300 ft by day, as the aircraft had to be dived while the undercarriage was retracting to enable a safe climbing speed to be attained. While the Mosquito could be safely flown on one engine, it would not maintain height above 5,000 ft, and full power was required which could soon lead to the live engine overheating. It was an endurance test for the pilot, as he had to keep the rudder held against the live engine. At the maximum speed under those conditions of about 155 knots it was fairly heavy, even with full rudder trim wound on, but the load increased as speed was reduced until at about 137 knots the pilot could no longer keep the aircraft straight and level. This so-called safety speed had to be determined whenever an engine was shut down, as losing control under these circumstances was one of the leading causes of Mosquito accidents. The hazards of Mosquito flying were vividly demonstrated to me one day when I flew with one of the more exuberant pilots, who asked if I would like to see some aerobatics (strictly forbidden). Naturally, I agreed and we flew a nice gentle barrel roll followed by a loop, which was very slow over the top, and then he decided to try a roll off the top. All went well until he pushed the stick over to roll out while inverted, then all hell broke loose with land and sky rapidly changing places several times while we banged our heads together at the top of the cockpit. Meanwhile the pilot, who could just reach the top of the stick, was vainly stirring it round until we entered a conventional spin, which seemed like a series of flick turns, from which he eventually recovered, and we very steadily and soberly returned to Kabrit. We concluded that we had managed about three or four turns of
an inverted spin followed by the same of a normal spin, it certainly used up a lot of height, but we remained friends and I kept my mouth shut!

There were various exercises during which we would simulate day bombers so that the four Vampire squadrons based at Deversoir could have a go at us. Joe would make me kneel on my seat and try to assess when the Vampires were reaching firing distance and call the break. With a little flap we could easily outturn them but with their superior speed I expect we were all held in their sights long enough for a kill at some time. During one of these, at about 11am one day, two Vampires collided while attacking an aircraft behind us and crashed into the Sinai desert some 40 miles east of the Canal. One pilot was killed and the other got out at very low level, had very serious injuries, including a broken hip, and was unable to move. The only means of recovery was by Landrover that took over 24 hours to reach him, but luckily for him some Bedouin had seen him come down. They came up to him late in the afternoon, did not touch him but erected a small tent over him and gave him some dates, then returned at dawn and left some water. Bomber Command Lincolns had a regular "Sunray" exercise to Shallufa and we normally did a night exercise with them. On one of these we intercepted a Lincoln and in accordance with the rules pulled up on his port side to claim the kill by flashing the navigation lights on and off. There was no response to several seconds flashing and Joe, who was an excellent formation flyer, became impatient and drew up close with our wingtip tucked well inside that of the Lincoln. Then he turned on the nav lights again and illuminated the Lincoln cockpit, that got a response all right and there were torches flashed at us from the length of the aircraft.

One day the nav leader called me into his office and said that the Group Navigation Officer had discovered that I was not qualified as a navigator, never having completed Nav School and was thus quite incapable of navigating in the Middle East. To complete my training it had been decided that I should do a trip with one of the Transport Command Valettas at Fayid, with their navigator supervising and the log and chart sent up to Group. When my turn came I had to take a Valetta to Aqaba, have a meal and a swim, and return. This was ridiculous as the round trip took under three flying hours, and the only available nav aids were my eyes and the map. Group must have realised this because a few months later I had to do another trip, to take a Valetta home to Lyneham, have a weeks leave and return as a passenger. This happened in December 1952 and eventually the call came for my logbook to go up to Group HQ and the entry qualifying me as a navigator was signed, dated 5/3/54!

We had been told that we were to be re-equipped in early 1953 with the Meteor NF13, which was an NF11 still equipped with AI Mk10 but with a radio compass, and Rebecca/Babs fitted in lieu of the SCR 729 beacon system, which our Mosquitos carried, also a refrigeration unit to civilise the cockpit. Incidentally Mosquito cockpit temperatures could reach 160°F(70°C), and we had a nasty experience while night flying after having done 3 hours low level during the day.  While climbing at 25,000 ft Joe announced that he was unable to read the instruments, I took my head from the radar visor and found that my eyes were not a lot better, so we very gently returned to Kabrit to be met by the ambulance, they filled us full of salt and tucked Joe up in sick quarters for the rest of the night.  However, the Meteors were delayed and the Mosquitos were getting tired, I do not understand the technicalities but there was a tolerance on a glue joint which was measured periodically and aircraft were scrapped if this tolerance was exceeded. The M.U. however was getting short of replacements so a technical conference decided that the tolerance could be increased to keep us going, but after another month or so there was again a shortage of aircraft, and a further technical conference decided that perhaps this tolerance was not so important after all and could be ignored! 219 were temporarily re-equipped with the Meteor NF11.  We were allowed to borrow a couple for a week or so in order that the pilots could be converted and we could do some PIs. Finally, in March
1953, the Meteor NF13s arrived and we embarked on a period of intensive flying in order to get fit for a large exercise at the end of the month, which went off fairly well.

In 1952 there had been a tense period with Egypt when the Egyptian army overthrew King Farouk and General Neguib became president, we sat about in the crew room with the aircraft fully armed waiting to take our appointed place in a plan to invade Egypt but it all came to nothing. A rather similar thing happened the next year when Colonel Nasser in turn ousted Neguib, I can remember visiting the Egyptian camp barber who, while trimming my neck with a cutthroat razor, told me how the Russians were going to supply Nasser with Migs and we would at last be driven out. Quite a number of servicemen lost their lives due to hostile acts
by the Egyptians, mainly ambushing transport and sniping, and these actions continued throughout the time we spent in Egypt. The airfield had an RAF Regiment squadron of Bofors guns for defence and these were normally lined up inside the wire perimeter close to the guardroom. In a later incident early one morning there were a series of explosions, the Egyptians had crept through the wire and blew up several of them. Also during the Meteor period we had a telescramble system whereby the aircraft on standby at the end of the runway were connected to Group by a telephone line plugged into the rear. These lines would be laid out from the control tower during the afternoon and on several occasions, thieving Egyptians would remove large lengths before we took the aircraft out at sunset. It got so bad that the lines had to be permanently concreted in. One of the more arduous duties we NCOs had was that of guard commander, the whole camp, except for the actual airfield and the control tower, was enclosed by a barbed wire fence, which was patrolled at night by armed guards. In addition, the unit was responsible for guarding a dredger when it was working on our section of the Sweetwater Canal, so in total the guard comprised some 60 men, who would be organised into the standard three-shift system of two hours on and four off. The guard commander had to be awake all the time, and his orders stated that on no account must he leave the guardroom, however the supplementary orders for guarding the dredger instructed him to visit the dredger guard every two hours. It should be remembered that the majority of the men comprising the guard were young frightened National Service airmen whose weapons training had been minimal. One of the most important duties of the guard commander was to physically check the breech of each rifle as guards were dismounted, to ensure that they had been properly unloaded. Joe twice had men accidentally discharge a round through the guardroom roof from supposedly empty rifles, this was not an unusual occurrence, and the guard commander would be put on a charge.

In April '53, we set off as part of a flight of three aircraft to visit Malta, this meant a refuelling stop at El Adem and because of strong headwinds, a further stop at Benina. Unfortunately, we were unable to restart an engine and so the other two carried on while we were stuck at Benina, this aerodrome belonged to the Libyans and an English company did the air traffic control, and the small RAF detachment who had refuelled us could not effect a repair. A servicing party had to be sent the 200-mile trip by road from El Adem, which took them more than a day. We were accommodated in the old Italian officers mess and decided that we would have a Saturday night on the town in Benghazi a few miles away on the local bus. What a joke, it took us all evening to find somewhere to get some alcohol of very dubious quality. Engine repairs dragged on and it was four days later when we returned to Kabrit. It was usual practise to send us away for weekends to Malta, Cyprus, or Habbaniyah in Iraq, as a navigation exercise and one or two crews would be told, "Off you go to Malta, or wherever, Friday afternoon and return on Sunday afternoon or early Monday morning."  These were great fun and enabled us to get a good meal and a drunken night out, and buy some cheap booze and fags. The Meteor ammo tanks in the wings were a good store and I can remember getting bottles of gin out covered in ice after the trip back from El
Adem, where they had cost 6/8d (33p). The cockpit was rather cramped and I used to fly with my travel bag upended between my legs, if I dropped a nav instrument on the floor the only way to retrieve it was to ask the pilot to invert the aircraft and sort it out from the rubbish that collected in the top of the canopy. Once on returning from Malta to El Adem we had a problem when the ventral tank failed to feed. A hurried calculation showed we had not enough fuel to make El Adem or return to Luqa, so I made a rapid course alteration for Benina, which was roughly at right angles to our track. We made it there with no more course changes and before the tower was manned and landed with the gauges reading empty. When we subsequently landed at El Adem to refuel we noticed a
car waiting to cross the runway, the pilot forgot that we still had a full ventral tank and so were overweight for landing and dropped the aircraft quite heavily on to the runway. While we were having a meal in the officers mess (I had no badges of rank on my flying suit), the waiter came up to us and asked the pilot to come outside.  There he was faced with the Station Commander who tore him off a strip for "damaging his runway". On another occasion on landing at El Adem, we were met by a 13 Sqdn pilot who’s Meteor PR10 had sprung a fuel leak with fuel swilling about the fuselage. He was desperate to return his films to Kabrit, but was unable to use his radio or any electrics, and formatted on us for the trip back.

However, I was not finished with the Mosquito, when our Meteors were delivered the ferry pilots took a Mosquito back with them but left several behind under repair in the MU, these were returned to the UK by squadron crews as they were repaired. The last one, RL141, was appropriated by our CO, Sqdn Ldr Cogill who chose me to accompany him home where I enjoyed a months leave, that and the week in December 52, being the only leave I had during my 2 and a half year tour. We left Fayid on 24th July 1953, refuelled at Luqa and at Istres, near Marseilles, where we spent the night, and arrived at Benson on the 25th. I believe that this was the last time a Mosquito night fighter was flown by a squadron crew in the RAF, and it is a great pity that none were preserved.

In October 1953 the Sqdn went on a week's detachment to Habbaniyah in Iraq, going there required us to divert round Israel, via Aqaba, landing at Mafraq in northern Jordan to refuel. Mafraq was an oiled sand strip and great plumes of dust were thrown up by the aircraft, particularly on takeoff. One evening waiting for our number two to take off while we were airborne above him reminded me of watching a Sunderland on the Great Bitter Lake. We were told that Habbaniyah was our "war station", we carried out sector recces round the north, and east borders, having to find the three passes into Iran at Ruwandiz, Penjwin and Khanaqin.  The northern oilfield at Kirkuk had a very large flare where surplus gas was burnt off, and this could be seen from a great distance, as also could
the gold plated dome of the mosque at Samara. While at Habbaniyah we did some air to air firing for the benefit of the Wing Commander Flying there, he was a very keen type and would press on in below the laid down 30° angle off, with the result that he put a shell through one of the tugs engines. As we only had one aircraft modified to tow targets that curtailed the fun. We also went down to Shaibah near Basra and did a sector recce round Abadan and Kuwait. There was an oil derrick immediately beside the approach into Shaibah and it was a little unnerving flying past this red light at night. While in the mess I got into conversation
with an American oilman and he told me that they were drilling down to 10,000 ft! I considered this total bullshit but years later learned that this was in fact true and that the southern Iraq / Kuwait oilfield at 5,000 ft deep was underlain by even larger oil deposits 10,000 ft down. The oilfield produced large quantities of gas, and we were told that the town of Basra had gas pipes laid in the streets to supply street lighting for free and that each house had a free supply for lighting and cooking.

Between times we returned to the normal routine enlivened by exercises in one of which we were vectored onto a Vampire on a nice moonlit night who must have seen us as we were turning in behind him and started some mild evasive action. I held on to him for a few minutes until he thought he had lost us and levelled up so that we were able to complete the interception. We pulled up alongside him but he did not see our nav lights, we could plainly see the dark shape of his head in the cockpit, and once more we had to tuck a wing in and give him a close up flash. The dark shape went pale as he turned his face towards us, and I have never seen an aircraft break away so sharply, he must have had quite a shock when someone turned a light on about 15' away from him. We also carried out a large radar calibration operation for the army who were installing an air defence system. These involved low flying over set routes with no low limit and were most exhilarating, I flew six of these, three of them in one morning with three different pilots, and referring to my logbook I did a lot of flying with other pilots as the squadron was short of navs. The Meteor was a very pleasant aircraft to fly in and one felt safe and secure, in fact I have heard it referred to as a "gentleman's aeroplane", and Joe was an excellent pilot who loved aerobatics and formation flying. He even had the confidence to try and teach me to do aerobatics in the T7, but his night aerobatics were my greatest memory. He tried a loop one night when there was no natural horizon and of course the artificial horizon had toppled, with the result that we finished in the opposite direction to our original, he also once managed 13 consecutive barrel rolls, and he would sometimes finish an interception by diving beneath the target and pulling up into a barrel roll in front of it.

Formation flying was all the rage and large formations would be flown for any occasion, one hilarious incident came while we still had the Mosquito, I was in the parade on the square and the drill was that the station commander stood on a raised dais with his back to the flagstaff commanding his unit of about 1,000 men. As the formations approached he would give the order "General salute, present arms", and as the flypast roared across the orderly sergeant raised the RAF Ensign, and when the noise had subsided the Group Captain gave the order "Slope arms". On this occasion, the wife of one of our officers worked in the Forces Broadcasting service in Cyprus and he had been allowed to take a Mosquito over to visit her. As he was returning he heard the flypast on the R/T and seeing them in the distance decided to join in!  He opened up to full power but did not quite catch up in time, which resulted in him roaring past the flag very low down, absolutely flat out with a thin trail of black smoke from each engine. This coincided with the order to slope arms, half the parade saw the CO's lips move and obeyed the order while the rest held the present arms position. Anyone who has done rifle drill will realise that those who had sloped arms thought they had got it all wrong and went back to the present and those who had not sloped arms realised that they should do so immediately. The result was rifles waving in all
directions, and a very angry Group Captain. We also took part in the Coronation Flypast, which went all round the Canal Zone, and I can remember particularly another large flypast that was led by another keen Wingco Flying who would keep too low. Joe had a position at the extreme left of a large formation of squadrons, which put us about five aircraft displaced laterally from the leader. The turns tended to be steep with the result that when on the inside of a turn we were in great danger of being flown into the ground. I had to remind Joe of this because it was a bumpy day and 110% of his attention was required to maintain formation, with the result that his station keeping became a bit ragged at times.  The leader could check this by watching the shadows of the formation on the
ground and reprimanded Joe. He got the immediate curt response, "If you can do better come back here and do it yourself", there was no answer but a least he took the hint and took us up another 100 ft.  A pilot in that situation really had to work hard and throttles and airbrakes worked overtime to maintain station, in 45 minutes both he and 500 gallons of fuel were exhausted.

Kabrit was a poor place with little in the way of amenities, conditions for the airmen were really bad and far worse than prisoners expect today. Ours were not much better, but at least we got our trips away. Water was obtained from the misnamed "Sweetwater Canal" which had been built to provide water for the builders of the Suez Canal in the 1860's, it came via a tortuous route from the Nile and every Egyptian along the way had disposed of his dead animals and done whatever else he needed to in it. To cope we had a water purification plant that produced slightly sand coloured water which curdled the milk in tea, and which the Egyptians attempted to sabotage. Sanitation was of the “bucket and chuck it” variety and these were emptied periodically by a gang of Egyptians into an old dustcart, to watch these people carrying buckets on their shoulders with the contents spilling down their galabiyas was something to steer well clear of, the smell being indescribable.   They used to spread it on their fields and sell us the resultant melons, and the medics wondered why there were dysentery epidemics. In the worst of these the sick quarters was completely over-run with nearly 300 sick at one time, and the M.O. had to take over part of the officers quarters, even so casualties were sleeping in the corridors and on the verandas. However we were on the edge of the Great Bitter Lake and could go swimming from a jetty, which had been built by German prisoners of war, there was also a winter theatre/cinema, where we had occasional ENSA shows and an open-air cinema for the summer.  This generally showed three films per week, although very popular films were sometimes only on for one night. One such was "The Sound Barrier" which all the aircrew and the Station Commander wanted to see, but needless to say, that night was a night flying night. While our CO relented, 219's insisted on his night flying and was not popular!  One of his pilots flew over the cinema at very low level and rolled as he climbed away, there were four aircraft airborne and
they all kept their mouths shut so the culprit was never known, true to the old service expression "No names, no pack drill". The Meteor of course never troubled the sound barrier, we were not supposed to exceed Mach 0.77 but with throttles wide-open and diving, most people imagined they could read 0.85 on the Machmeter, but the aircraft was at its aerodynamic limit and no amount of extra power would make it go any faster.  It felt as though the aircraft was gripped in a giant vice and being vigorously rattled about, and a wing would drop, but control was instantly regained by extending the airbrakes.

In June 1954, 39 Squadron was presented with its Standard, and we had a fancy ceremonial parade in which I was B Flight marker. We were issued with heavy khaki drill uniforms with trousers and a shirt and tie, which made three hours of ceremonial rifle drill quite an ordeal, normal summer dress being an open necked khaki drill tunic and shorts. Fortunately, nobody fainted and it all went very well. All in all I was not sorry when my 30 month tour ended in August 1954, and I was required to be available at midnight one evening to load my kit into a lorry to go up to Fayid and catch a Hastings home. Needless to say, I was dumped into the lorry and slept off a glorious binge on the aircraft. I did not recollect much about landing to refuel and have a meal in Malta, and only came to when the airman in the canvas seat beside me shook me awake to show me the English coast.
©  Peter Verney.

Thank you for sending us this article Peter, a welcome addition to the collection of stories on the website.
Richard Woolley.  November 2004.