ventral tanks, and I had to burn off most of that fuel before attempting a flapless/brakeless landing. Having already done one brakeless landing, I knew what was to follow, and it was a very lonely hour and a half contemplating the future. Because of the floods I decided against jettisoning the, by now, gas- filled empty ventral tank. Also, to shorten the waiting time, I was foolishly tempted not to empty the rear tank, which put the centre of gravity much further aft than normal. The ground crew had delayed their departure till I was down, and they decided to try to emulate the Fleet Air Arm and stretch a rope across the runway to try to catch the tailwheel strut before I swung off the runway. However, on landing l bounced slightly and this distraction caused me to forget to switch off the engine. This, coupled with the rearward centre of gravity, caused a vicious swing well before I got to the rope, and I was headed for the floods of unknown depth. I expected these would stop the wheels and probably put the aircraft on its nose, or, even worse, over on its back from where I could easily drown. Having been told by the ground crew, after my earlier adventure in Cyprus, that a wheels-up selection was more easily repairable than an overturned aircraft, again there was nothing for it but to raise the undercarriage and stay right way up. I came to a halt some fifty yards out in the water, and one of the airmen came splashing out to me, Since he was already soaking wet, I persuaded him to carry me ashore, which we achieved with me brandishing the cavalry sword which I had had in the cockpit with me, having had no room in my kitbag.
I spent the rest of the day ignominiously flying back in the Valetta with the ground crew, and contemplating how I might have better handled the problem. The sad sequel to this story occurred after I had left the Middle East, but I heard that one of our NCO pilots had gone down to Khartoum to airtest the Spitfire after it had been repaired. It transpired that the engine radiators had become full of sand in the crash, but had neither been checked nor replaced. During the airtest the engine had overheated and caught fire, but, when the pilot had bailed out, his parachute, borrowed from the Khartoum parachute section, had failed to open correctly and he was killed.
Three days after returning to Fayid I went for another air test in a Mosquito, but this time I wasn’t offered the chance to fly it myself - wonder why? At this time we received a new intake of experienced pilots from UK, one of whom had been one of my flying instructors at Cambridge.
All the other fighter squadrons in the MEAF had, long ago, converted onto the single-jet-powered Vampire aircraft, 32 (our sister squadron in Cyprus) having received them before we left Cyprus, together with 73 Sqdn. in Malta. Our friends in the Tempests at Deversoir had got them before we went to Khartoum, and we heard lurid tales of how they gobbled fuel and were slow to accelerate on an overshoot, but climbed very rapidly. In fact, we were able to beat a Vampire to 20,000 ft., they then overtook us to 30,000, but were useless at gunnery at 40,000ft., whereas we could do an ordinary quarter attack up there. 208 was a low-level recce. outfit and were thus due to get Meteor Mk.9 twin-engined single-seaters, but we first got a Mk.7 two-seater, which arrived in October, for our conversion, in order to be trained in flying twins. For this reason two of our new pilots were flying instructors, though neither of them knew anything about low-level recce. or, indeed, about Spitfires. One of them was so livid about reverting to piston-engined aircraft that he claimed to have had an engine failure and bailed out as a protest - we checked and discovered that he had had his parachute repacked the previous day.
Though we had our two-seater Meteor, and I was by then the longest serving pilot on the squadron, the ex-Cambridge instructor refused to convert me because I was nearly due to return to UK as “tour-ex” (tour expired), after the standard 2 3/2 -year tour. Unbeknown to me, that ruling affected the rest of my life.
In early September we heard that we were to make our next visit to 26 APS at Nicosia and, still being the adjutant, I flew up there on 7th to check the position. I spent most of the remainder of the month doing air tests and practising air-to-ground firing, and, on 28th. off we went. On my first sortie I reckoned I had got a good score till, on my last attack, the canvas target caught fire and burnt out, leaving me with no record.
Apart from three days during which I flew down to Fayid to air test some replacement aircraft, we spent the whole of October on the practice camp, culminating, for me, on the last day when I sank a ship- towed sea target and shot off a towed glider target in consecutive sorties. This made me extremely unpopular with the authorities,because
a) they had no more ship-towed targets and
b) they claimed that the glider nearly landed on the shore. And, of course, the reason I had shot them both off was that I was allowing too much deflection, which hit the towing cable instead of the target. As a punishment I had to fly back to Fayid with the ground crew in a Valetta.
Immediately we were back at base we had to get ready to travel along the coast again to Tripoli for the annual army exercises. It was obvious that the squadron had already written me off, since I was detailed to act as the ground liaison officer and for that reason I travelled to Tripoli on the ground crew Valetta. I was attached to an army unit, together with a naval pilot, and we had an armoured car, complete with driver, allocated to us.
The desert is very cold at night in November, and on our first night I discovered a generator vehicle with the engine running all the time to provide electrical power. At the rear were open shutters to the radiator, and warm air was wafting from this, so I laid out my sleeping bag and went to bed underneath it. Luckily for me I was spotted about five minutes later and a large soldier dragged me away, complete with sleeping bag. As I came to he explained that, not only was warm air coming from the radiator, but so was the exhaust gas, which would have done for me big time.
Both the naval pilot and I had an opportunity to drive the Beaver armoured car, which turned out to be a Humber Snipe saloon with an armoured body, and the brakes couldn’t handle the added weight. At one point, descending a steep hill with a narrow bridge at the bottom, the army driver demolished part of the bridge without any apparent damage to us. After an interesting week we returned to Tripoli and I was allowed to fly a Spit back home to Fayid.
On 1st. December I flew my last sortie on 208 Squadron and on 3rd. I climbed aboard a Hastings transport on my journey back to UK. We spent the night at Luqa in Malta, en route to Hemswell in Lincolnshire, where we landed in deep snow. Strangely enough, it wasn’t the first snow I had seen since we left UK, because it actually snowed in Egypt that winter, and we had log fires in the Mess, the only fuel available being used railway sleepers.
Unfortunately I had been promoted to Flight Lieutenant only a few weeks before leaving Egypt and hadn’t bothered to change any rank badges on my blue uniforms, and had therefore packed my greatcoat in my steamer trunk. I spent two freezing days walking about in my khaki uniform as a consequence. However I was home and had several weeks leave due to me, not having taken any during my overseas tour, My final memory of my overseas tour was the arrival, after a couple of weeks, of my steamer trunk, which, I was amazed to find, released the distinctive smell of the Canal Zone - a cross between diesel oil and ‘effluent’.
