That is how members of 'B' Flight on Monday and 'A' Flight on Tuesday came to find themselves sitting in single seat dinghies feeling very wet, cold and miserable in the English Channel. In this episode several personalities featured: Pete Botters and Graham Hounsell were conspicuous by their absence and spent the week at Derby studying the mighty Avon engine; Ray Offord and John Hext both pleaded colds and their respective Flight Commanders had compassion and they were spared the cold wet part of the proceedings; Bill Thomas and Tom Sheppard, both Gentlemen of the Royal Air Force College disdained the favour of being allowed to inflate dinghies and then get in as most people were only too thankful to do leapt into the water and did the whole thing up to the neck in oggwash. The last personality was one of our Northern friends Dickie Robertson who after installation in his seat was observed to be cheerfully imbibing the products of his native distilleries.

After poor weather on Wednesday morning a rumour that the C-in-C would perhaps be visiting us proved to be one effective method of getting the crewroom cleaned up. A few air-to-ground and the usual cine-quarter sorties were flown in the afternoon although there were only five or six aircraft available. Most influence on the daily lives of the pilots was exercised by Ray Offord who produced from an unknown source and placed in a most prominent position a large 'Art Study', and there were many eyeballs like organ-stops thereafter.

With six aircraft available on Thursday and fine weather it was hoped to have a good day; firing on the range (with the usual air-quarters of course) but mud in the target area made sighting the targets so difficult that the programme was quite severely curtailed. It proved to be the last day of firing and although everyone had managed to get at least one live shoot the envisaged programme was not completed by a long way.

Thursday ended with the first organised Squadron session held at the Lion House at Pagham; it started off very quietly and looked rather as if it would remain an uninspired evening until Dez started demonstrating Games with Fire which had the threefold effect of awaking everybody, scorching the Lion House ceiling and leaving Dez with a blistered chin.

Moose followed this lead and after three attempts was checked out on Ronsonol and whilst all this was going on John Barwell was dropping beer and Craig and King preparing sausages 'a la Gorbals' as Ray Offord and John Hext loaded their pockets with the remains of the buffet.

Ch 1 - Tangmere 06

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