THE ‘VENTRAL BOUNCE’

Sometime in mid-1954 (I cannot pinpoint the exact date) I flew No 3 in a FR9 four-ship of 208 Sqn out of Abu Sueir (Canal Zone). The exercise was to find an RASC unit deployed in the Red Sea Hills to the South of Suez, carry out simulated strafing attacks (the vehicles were all soft-skinned), and then take F24/95 shots to show the Army how (in)effective were their attempts at camouflage and concealment. We made a tactical approach to the exercise area down the Canal below the level of the banks (some P&O passengers got woken up early) and turned West from the Gulf of Suez into the exercise area just as the sun rose over the Sinai behind us right on the dot of StartEx. We caught the pongos with their pants right down, nose to tail with their lights still on. After a very low strafing run at about 450kts (it was still too dark for the G45 to show anything useful, thank God!), we split into pairs to take the happy snaps.

The old F24 could not cope with very low level photography at high speeds without excessive blurring of the image, so when you wanted BIG CLOSE-UPS the drill was to slow down as much as possible - usually about 170 kts with a third flap. So I made the usual "Speedbrakes" and "Flaps" calls to my No 2, "Brian", opened the canopy (it used to get effing hot at 450kts low over the desert) and settled down to take some pretty pictures of the pongos frantically dispersing and throwing nets over their vehicles, which made them even more conspicuous.

Soon after that I got a call from Brian. His voice sounded a bit faint and shaky as he said he thought he was losing fuel from his Ventral. That’s all he said!  I told him to head for home and I would take a look.  Well yes, there was fuel streaming from his Ventral, which did not look quite the usual shape. I made reassuring noises and suggested a straight-in approach at Abu Sueir, where he landed uneventfully with crash-trucks chasing him down the runway. Taxying into the Sqn dispersal I noticed a large throng gathered around Brian's aircraft, "ooing" and "erring". The Ventral was virtually flattened and the underside of one engine nacelle was also bashed in and the jet-pipe damaged. But the good old Derwent had not batted an eyelid. Brian was still very shaken. Evidently while concentrating on photography with a port-facing oblique F24 (you could only carry one F24 and its mounting - port, starboard or forward-facing - was fixed before take-off) he had got too close to me and picked up my vortices. He flipped almost onto his back at about 200 ft and only just managed to get the right way up with a bootful of rudder, outside engine and full aileron, before he thumped the desert and bounced back into the air.

We were talking all this over on our way back to Flights when there came much "ooing" and "erring" from a group gathered around my aircraft. I wandered over and found someone's legs sticking out of one of the intakes while he threw out handfuls of what looked like copper tubing. There were telltale nicks in the top and bottom of the intake rings. Army radio antenna, said our radio man. I phoned the army unit and asked if they were missing anything and they said, “Well yes, could we have our antenna back?” I asked how long it was and he replied about 10ft. I asked if he could make that 250 ft as the Form Dog had said NB 250 ft.

Not a very successful exercise! They took a Summary and were going to court martial me at one stage, but the CO of the Army unit wrote a splendid letter to the AOC, praising our contribution to the exercise. "Full measure, pressed down and running over" was his biblical quotation. So I had a brisk chat without coffee with the AOC. Brian went on become a Senior Captain on 747s with BA and, after he retired, with Singapore Airlines. He now lives in Australia.