correct times and speeds, because the low level navexes terminated with a ‘target’ which was to be overflown exactly and at a nominated time. Phew! Made it this time, but the timing not great. Barely a ‘pass’.
My overall performance was still a poor average. Silly mistakes and poor aerobatics often prompted gruff and sarcastic responses from the instructors. I was not a great navigator – I fixated on inappropriate priorities and found it difficult to read features at low level over the vast west Australian wheat belt, with the tiny towns hard to spot and all looking the same. As at Point Cook, my saving grace was my instrument flying and good ground school results, but I barely scraped through each progress test flight. However, like the others, I was entrusted with more solo flights including navexes and night flights.
Still nineteen, I was slowly maturing, and 100 Course had bonded further, whittled down to a little over twenty students from the original forty. I became accepted into the fold of the ‘drinking buddies’ as the study eased a little, and I was usually invited along for Friday night outings to the pubs and clubs. We had a course song, and roared lewd ditties and chants, most of them picked up from the beer-swilling instructors on Friday afternoons while we let off steam in the Students’ Mess and the noisy pubs:
‘Who’s the man with the big red nose?’
Hoo, ha, hoo ha ha
The more he drinks, the more he knows!
Hoo ha, hoo ha ha
Where are we from?
PEARCE!
And what do we eat?
FISH!
And how do we eat it?
RAW!
And when we win,
WE SHIT IT IN!
So up the old red rooster, and drink MORE PISS!’
The ‘Neptune Song’ was an ode to the old Lockheed Neptune maritime patrol aircraft, often bawled out during Friday afternoon hilarity in the Students’ Mess by instructors who were ex-maritime patrol pilots, sung loosely to the tune of ‘Bless ‘em All’:
‘Neptunes they don’t bother me,
Neptunes they don’t bother me.
Clapped-out abortions with holes in their wings,
Poofter co-pilots and engines that “ping”.
So if you’ve got a MiG on your tail,
Don’t let your Aussie blood boil.
Don’t hesitate, slam it right through the gate,
And cover the bastard in oil!’
They go up,
They go down.
The engines, they go round and round.
If you’ve got three burning, and only one turning, you’d best get your arse on the ground!’
After each song glasses were refilled from the jugs of frothing brown liquid. Not a big drinker, I did my best to fit in and joined the ribald songs with growing enthusiasm. Some of the fellows had local girlfriends who joined in the merriment. The course would run from January to September so there was almost a settled feeling at 2 FTS for many of us.
I managed time for driving lessons: a course-mate, Gerry, let me attach ‘L’ plates to his old Volkswagen and gave me some road experience. After a few lessons to polish up, I presented for a driving test in Perth, where a gentleman in a suit and tie introduced himself as the tester and asked me what I did. I told him I was a trainee navy pilot, qualified to fly a single engine jet solo, day and night, but I was not legal to drive a car. At last, I had a driver’s licence, but still no car.
There were two forms of motivation to remain focussed on the course and to keep putting the work in and not get distracted by girlfriends and social life. First were the sobering ‘scrubs’ that occurred late in the course. One farewell was particularly sad. Nicknamed Luigi from his Mediterranean appearance, his eyes filled as we farewelled him noisily in a bar at Perth Airport. Luigi had often been the life of the party. Gerry had gone and another student, worldly and older than most of us, had been caught carrying out solo aerobatics low over a girlfriend’s house, spotted by an instructor in another Macchi. Schmitty, also older but intelligent and dry of wit, had not adjusted well to military life and had also gone. He would return to the legal profession.
The more positive motivation was the ‘Postings Dining-in Nights’ and graduation parades, of which there were three each year. The air force’s Dining-in Night was equivalent to the navy’s Mess Dinner, but with variations. Full formal Mess Dress, solemn ritual and formality would likewise descend into happy chaos after the Loyal Toast, where the ‘crabs’ toasted the Queen standing up. At each course’s Postings Dining-in Night, the students’ fates would be read out one by one: ‘Smith, Thirty-Four Squadron’ (VIP transport), ‘Jones, Thirty-Eight’ (transports), with elated yells from those earmarked to fly fighters or F-111 bombers. Then, the navy postings: they would be to fly Skyhawks, Trackers, or helicopters. Next morning, more sober heads would realise that the course was not yet over, and any posting to an operational squadron would evaporate should the pilot’s training not be completed successfully. It would be back to work for the final phase and the final tests: formation, navigation, instrument flying and lastly, the ‘Wings’ test.
100 Course marched in support of two graduation parades, impressive affairs with families, friends and senior officers looking on. The air force cadets would become commissioned as pilot officers and depart on their postings to operational squadrons. The navy graduates, however, would remain as midshipmen and would cross the continent to Nowra for further training. I hoped fervently that I would be doing the same.
Phase Three, the final phase, was that coming together of the separate aspects of the advanced training syllabus, and the final test flights. For the Formation Test, my friend Phil was the candidate in the other aircraft. I ‘hung in’ on his wing as best I could, completed the ‘rejoins’ and station changes and then slipped back to a few hundred metres astern of his Macchi in a ‘tail chase’. I manoeuvred in an imaginary cone as Phil threw his aircraft around aggressively while I moved in or out of the cone’s edge to try and maintain a constant distance and to follow him.
High in the sky, Phil pulls over me in a huge loop. I follow him over and I pick up the orange and white of his Macchi, smaller now, arrowing down thousands of metres below us towards the dry lakes and scrub, two white helmets visible in the darkness of its cockpit … Then the g comes on as I cut to the inside to catch him … now he’s pulled up into dazzling blue, gravity takes over and his Macchi slows, so I had better get to the outside of the cone otherwise I will get too close …
A few minutes later, the tail chase was over. Now it was my turn to take the ‘lead’ with Phil flying on my wing, to repeat the entire exercise. In the debrief, my flying on Phil’s wing was considered satisfactory and despite comments on my mediocre leadership, Phil and I were told that we had both passed the test.
The Navigation Test was a struggle: a ‘high-low’ profile where I was to fly the first leg of a triangular course at high altitude, descend, and then complete
