the technique as ‘speaking Japanese while straining on the toilet at the same time’. Now, with all this safety and survival equipment learned and fitted, it was time to fly the Macchi.
I had never been so intimately connected with an aircraft. The ejection seat and parachute straps were done up tight across my torso and hips. The leg restraint ‘bowyangs’ were tight around my calves. The g-suit’s hose was plugged in on my left. A lanyard attaching the dinghy pack to my parachute harness was attached to my right. Helmet on and plugged in to the intercom and radio. A large ribbed rubber hose stretched from my oxygen mask to the aircraft’s supply, the mask tightly clamped against my face. The emergency oxygen hose was attached as well. This was the familiarisation flight, and I was flying with another navy pilot, the ‘SNO’ (Senior Naval Officer) at Pearce.
We were on the runway and he advanced the jet’s throttle to take-off power. Early jets had the peculiarity of taking a period of time to accelerate and the Macchi was no exception. The whine of the engine behind us increased to a subdued roar. Plumes of mist from the air conditioning cascaded from various vents around the cockpit and canopy. The jet rolled slowly at first but as the engine’s compressor and turbine RPM built, the Viper swallowed more air and its increased thrust accelerated us faster, with a noticeable push in the back. At 100 knots – or 180 km/hr – the SNO lifted off the nose wheel with a positive movement back on the control column. The Macchi reared up on its landing gear, still accelerating but on the ground, and then the runway fell away. He held the jet at a shallow angle, still accelerating while the wheels were retracted, and then up came the nose and we were climbing, the scrubby eucalypts below falling away fast. Wow! No vibration of a propeller or throbbing piston engine, just the hum of the little Viper engine behind us, and a ‘husshhh’ of air over the canopy punctuated by the suck-blow of our breathing through the masks over the intercom, which was normally set to ‘hot mike’ – always on – for ‘dual’ flights. The black faces of the wing-tip fuel tanks loomed either side like wingmen. On came the bank angle to turn toward the training area, and, oh, the rate of climb! It seemed no time at all when we were at fifteen thousand feet, four and a half kilometres above the earth. In a repeat of the Point Cook ‘famil’ flight, the instructor started manoeuvring And now, the g! The g-suit inflated and I felt uncanny squeezing on my legs and abdomen. I could hear the SNO in the front seat grunting through the intercom, and with vision starting to fade, it prompted me to strain against the g myself, which seemed to last forever thanks to the jet’s performance and available thrust. Now, a loop: four g came on, the suit squeezing tighter, and the nose arced up into the dazzling West Australian sky, but far slower than the CT-4 because jet loops are huge. At last, the g came off while we floated over the top of the loop, the earth even further below, then the sandy fields and blotches of eucalypt and pine forest slowly started to loom and then the g again, the suit obediently constricting and becoming familiar already.
‘Handing over,’ the instructor called, and I had control. So much better than the CT-4! With no propeller causing whorls of air around the tail surfaces, power changes in the jet did not affect rudder or trim settings: the Macchi just went where it was pointed. The control stick felt solid but responsive, promising precise and accurate control of the jet’s flight path. The SNO allowed me to manoeuvre it for a while, then took over for the return to base. Unlike at Point Cook, all returns for visual flying for both instructors and students flew through an initial point, some eight kilometres, five miles from the runway, the aircraft doing 250 knots – or 460 km/hr – until level with the landing point, at circuit altitude. Then, there would come a hard turn onto downwind called the ‘pitch’, with the jet’s throttle snapped closed and the speed brake deployed by the pilot to slow down for landing.
The Macchi’s design was so clean that a hinged panel was forced out from its belly by a hydraulic ram: an air or ‘speed’ brake, to rapidly slow the jet. We passed through the initial point, bouncing through heat-induced turbulence but strapped solid in our seats, and when abeam the runway the instructor yanked the wings into a hard bank, simultaneously smartly closing the throttle lever and flicking a little switch on top of it that extended the speed brake. Whiirrr – thunk! The brake deployed and we were thrown forward against our straps with the deceleration, simultaneously g pushing us into our seats in the hard turn until we were on ‘downwind’. Speed now below 150 knots – or 280 km/hr – and there was another schloop-thunk as the speed brake came in: the instructor throttled up the engine but now at this much lower speed the Macchi was a different machine, its nose uptilted higher into the sky to maintain height and, as I would find out, its controls noticeably sloppier.
The landing gear was put down with a rumble and vibration and further deceleration as the extending legs and covering doors fought the airstream, then ‘thunk-thunk-thunk’ as the three landing gear legs locked into position. In no time at all, we were on final approach, the engine behind now warbling near idle. With the large wing flaps deployed, the nose pitched down and all the instructor had to do was to point the jet at the white runway numbers on the threshold, the near end of the runway, controlling speed with movements of the throttle until at last the concrete loomed, and he ‘flared’ the little jet for landing. A squeak-squeak as the main tyres touched the runway but the nose stayed high in the air, the pilot ‘holding off’ the nose wheel, the attitude of the Macchi now creating aerodynamic drag and helping it slow. Then the nose came down to rest on its wheel and while taxiing in I realised how hot I was under all that equipment, the huge canopy and that cloudless summer sky.
Marshalled by the ground crew, we parked under the car port, and after double checking that I had correctly inserted the ejection seat pins, we lifted the canopy, which then locked vertically on its hinge like an open coffin lid, and my first military jet flight was over. What a machine! It had seemed to go just where I pointed it in almost vibration-free flight, the rudder pedals just footrests, the physical control of the aircraft so much easier than that of the CT-4. However, I already knew that the headwork required to operate the Macchi, as opposed to just controlling it would be significantly more important.
The first ‘phase’ of the course at 2 FTS was essentially a ‘conversion’ onto the Macchi in order to achieve an equivalent point in competency for successful testing at its end in manoeuvres and standards to that of the end of the Point Cook training. We would have to ‘come up to speed’ with the various circuit types, basic aerobatics, navigation and instrument flying. There was also a lot of night flying. I applied myself diligently, the ‘visual’ flying and aerobatics mediocre but in what seemed to me at least, a much more straightforward aeroplane to control, and a basic handling test at the end of this phase went reasonably well. ‘Medium level’ navigation was not too threatening, because the huge dry lakes of south west Western Australia were visible for miles, making the task fairly easy.
Importantly, my diligence and, dare I say, my unusual enjoyment at the time, of instrument flying became a saving grace, which made up for the razor’s edge of low-to-mediocre standard in the other areas. Night flying also went well: it is a combination of instrument flying and looking out for other aircraft (easy to see with their lights and flashing beacons), and keeping track of the lights of Pearce’s runway to make sense of where I was. Even in the accommodation blocks, the roar of the jets was magnified at night. The Viper engines crackled on take-off into the cool, velvet night sky, fading into a dull, slowly reverberating roar until the next aircraft in the sequence, its beacons flashing, launched into the blackness.
My first instructor, ‘Nobby’, was an outgoing and even personable RAAF flight lieutenant, but after successfully completing the battery of ground exams and flight tests in visual and instrument flying, it was time to move on to the next phase. And, a new instructor.
I had been considered safe enough for solo flight in the Macchi, the first flight alone in the jet being a circuit at a ‘satellite’ runway called Gin Gin, set in a rectangle cut from low olive green scrub to the
