The Tracker’s powerful piston engines propelled a stubby airframe. Its pilots looked out through goggling windows to the side and through arched eyebrow-like windscreens ahead. Two sensor operators were crammed into spaces behind racks of electronics and instrument panels. Under the floor hung two homing torpedoes, and the wings could carry depth charges and rocket pods. A searchlight, radar and a magnetic detector helped the specialist observers in the hunt for their quarry. Like the Skyhawk, the Tracker was built to be tough and was jam-packed with equipment. It had minimal comforts for its crew. It could fly for over six hours, ranging far from the fleet, an eye in the sky for the Admiral and his staff, and a deterrent to the prowling submariner.
The Sea King helicopter was massive. Twin turbine engines powered a huge rotor atop its boat-like hull. Designed to operate closer-in to the ships that it was to protect, the Sea King carried a powerful sonar. This unit was lowered on a cable directly into the water from the hover, where it could passively listen for a submarine or, alternatively, ping sound waves off its hull. The massive helicopter also had a radar and carried torpedoes.
The Skyhawks, Trackers and Sea Kings were the frontline aircraft of the Royal Australian Navy. In secondary roles were the old British Westland Wessex helicopters used for utility purposes and, most importantly, rescue operations. Wessex crews and maintainers distinguished themselves after Darwin was destroyed by Cyclone Tracy. The helicopters operated from HMAS Melbourne to ferry people and supplies. Dainty little Kiowa training helicopters built up pilots’ skills, while the bigger Iroquois that were used in the Vietnam war provided army cooperation and support. RAN Iroquois pilots had operated in Vietnam as part of a detachment during that war alongside the Americans, to whom the Iroquois was known as the ‘Huey’. There were fixed-wing support aircraft as well. One type was the Macchi MB-326 jet trainer.
Macchis were operated in numbers by Australia’s navy and air force. Advanced training where we would fly the air force Macchis was, for us, the glittering prize for successfully completing our training at Point Cook. Unlike the orange and white training ‘Fanta cans’ of the air force, the Navy’s Macchis were blue and white with yellow flashes on the tail that proclaimed they belonged to VC 724 Squadron. These Macchis were used for advanced training in fighter tactics and weapons. They could carry rocket pods, practice bombs and machine guns beneath their wings.
There were other noteworthy aircraft at NAS Nowra. Belonging to VC 851 Squadron were two airliners. These were British Hawker Siddeley HS 748s, powered by two ‘turboprop’ engines (a turboprop is a jet engine which drives a propeller). The original civilian airliner design carried some forty passengers. Also operated by the air force for VIP carriage and navigator training, the HS 748s were used by the navy as general transports, navigation trainers and, importantly, to accustom new naval pilots to flying multi-engine aircraft, because the Tracker was considered challenging to control with one engine failed.
There was no midshipmen’s gunroom in HMAS Albatross. Accommodated in the officers’ wardroom and on our best behaviour, we rapidly unlearned the air force patois and hearkened back to our six weeks in HMAS Cerberus. We found that Fleet Air Arm squadrons, six in all, were smaller than their air force counterparts. Three were regarded as ‘frontline’, routinely embarked in Australia’s only aircraft carrier, Melbourne, with the three second-line squadrons devoted to training and fleet support. Although they carried traditional ex-British squadron numbers, the exigencies of the Cold War dictated that Australia’s military be more aligned with the United States. The traditional squadron numbers were prefixed with letters that denoted the squadron’s role. For example, frontline VS 816 was ‘fixed wing, anti-submarine’.
At this shore base, the naval aircraft were kept clean. The frontline Trackers and Skyhawks gleamed in glossy paint and were crammed in hangars to replicate the below-deck environment of the aircraft carrier for effective training. The Trackers’ 22-metre wingspan required that the wing panels, outboard of each engine, be folded overhead, Then the aircraft looked like honeybees, with the pilots’ side windows reminiscent of compound eyes. The curved delta wings of the Skyhawks were tiny, and did not need to fold. The hangar lights were reflected in the grey and white gloss of the Trackers and Skyhawks. They were resplendent, in colourful squadron crests and markings. ‘NAVY’ was printed in prominent black letters on the fuselages. Sailors (‘maintainers’) in grey-blue denims tended their charges under the watchful eyes of the petty officers.
Hosted by various squadrons, our group was shown around the station. We looked over the various aircraft, sat in the cockpits and listened attentively to ‘old and bold’ carrier pilots in the squadron crew rooms and in the wardroom bar. Many of them sported beards. The air force began as a branch of the army, so it restricts facial hair options to a neatly-trimmed moustache. Cultivating a beard is the prerogative of the navy, the ‘Senior Service’. However, there is a protocol to be followed. The prospective beard grower must approach his commanding officer who then assesses the candidate for facial hair-growing potential and if considered suitable, grants permission to cease shaving. Reassessed after a suitable period, if the beard is not of sufficient fullness or just wispy bum fluff, the order is to ‘shave off’. ‘Shave off!’ was also used as a derisive, dismissive term in various circumstances.
A ride in a Sea King helicopter, the pilots almost unintelligible through the intercom because of their throat-mounted microphones, was the introduction to naval flight for most of us. Having had a taste for what was to come should we successfully complete the pilot’s course, it was time to get back to work. At Point Cook, after one refresher training flight after the forced hiatus, I had to start showing that all-important trend of improvement at the required rate. And now I had a new instructor.
A tall, gingery ex-helicopter pilot with an outgoing personality, Flight Lieutenant Clough was a contrast to the stolid Squadron Leader Heyfield. I commenced training in aerobatics, forced landing practice and spinning. An aircraft can be spun deliberately, or when it is mishandled. The indications of a spin and the recovery procedure were drilled into us and often asked for at the morning quiz. A spin at low altitude can be catastrophic. Then there were the various types of circuits: after achieving a satisfactory standard with normal circuit patterns to ‘Sir’s’ satisfaction, we started on flapless, glide and low level circuits, each with its own considerations and visual picture. Flapless circuits simulated a failure of the electrically-driven wing flaps on the CT-4, leading to challenging speed control on a flatter approach, a higher nose attitude and a faster speed for landing. Glide circuits simulated the last part of a forced landing from what was called ‘low key’, which, at 1,500 feet – or 460 metres high – was adjacent to the touchdown point of a runway or selected field. Low-level circuits were for bad weather or the instructor’s enjoyment.
Despite the workload, the pressure, and the military discipline, there were a few opportunities for relaxation. During the seventies and eighties, Australia’s military services worked hard and played hard. The vast majority of officers and men were well below the age of forty. There was a culture of letting off steam at Mess Dinners, on Friday afternoons and Saturdays. The ex-airmen on our course organised get-togethers with groups of trainee ‘WAAFs’, as female members of the air force were called then. It was the ‘disco’ era, and at various pubs and nightspots we looked incongruous in the flared trousers and colourful shirts of the day but with short, military haircuts. I had no driver’s licence – much less a car – but many of my course-mates did. 100 Pilot’s Course was, with one or two exceptions, slowly becoming closer-knit and more supportive of each other.
I managed to travel home to Mornington by train a few times for weekends to catch up with friends and family, but already I was being absorbed by military life. Life ‘in civvies’ had little interest for me. But would I pass the training? Younger than most on my course, I was immature for my age and unworldly. My performance in the aircraft was becoming more and more inconsistent. However, Clough sent me solo. Flying the CT-4 without the weight of the instructor and feeling it leap into the air was very memorable for me, even though I had soloed the Auster on a few occasions. Now I was flying a military
