Flying on wings of desire with the RAF
WE ARE now well into 2018 so forgive me for mentioning that this year is the 100th birthday of the RAF. The actual birth date was April 1, 1918. I recall with great clarity the 40th birthday on that date in 1958.
I was a hitchhiking free passenger on a Bristol Beverley from RAF Lyneham to Luqa, Malta, looking for a sunny break. The Beverley was a lumbering freighter that flew like a sick hippo. This one had in the hold a huge jet engine whose weight, if we had gone down in the sea, would have speedily taken us to the bottom. There were six passengers crouching in the tail boom.
We refuelled at the French air base at Salons outside Marseilles and flew on. A hundred miles over the Med the starboard inner engine just blew up – it literally disintegrated. Up front Sgt Pilot Farmer performed miracles, bringing us down to 100ft in case another engine went, and we limped back at wave-top height to Salons, landing with a huge sigh of relief.
The senior passenger, an Air Vice Marshal, confiscated the French franc reserve of the tiny RAF liaison unit and we went off into Salons town to celebrate the 40th anniversary and being alive. It was 13 years after the war. The French remembered the liberation and on seeing our pale blue uniforms and wings we were in clover. We dined excellently with much wine and sauntered off to a friendly bordello.
There the youngest of us, a schoolboy heading to Luqa for Easter hols with mum and dad, lost his virginity to a sympathetic French girl. We rolled back to base in the small hours singing bawdy songs. The AVM was being supported by Sergeant Farmer to the surprise of the French air force guards on main gate. They thought that they had “égalité” but not like that.
The next day a replacement Beverley arrived and we flew on to join the hangovers at Luqa. I don’t think we could get away with that nowadays. Political correctness and all that. Still, we had some fun.