FLYING IS A HAZARDOUS OCCUPATION

In the 1950s life in the crash and salvage crew at Lee-on-Solent was eventful. On one occasion a pilot who was on a visit for a few days asked if he could fly one or two aircraft whilst he was there and got the necessary permission. The Captain had his own personal Seafire which was painted black, and as it hadn’t flown for a couple days the Captain gave permission for the visitor to fly it. However, when the aircraft came in to land the undercarriage collapsed, so it was goodbye to the Captain’s aircraft. The next day the visitor asked if he could try again and so off he went. Unfortunately he had an emergency in flight, so the crash crew were called out. We waited a safe distance from the designated crash site; the aircraft landed and broke into four pieces with the cockpit all on its own in the middle of the wreckage. The pilot stood up, got out of the cockpit as normal and to our amazement strode off without a scratch. Then on the third day he went over to one of the squadrons stationed at Lee-on-Solent and must have told them a hard luck story because they lent him one of their aircraft to fly. Off he went and when he came back he had his third wheels up landing in a row. He got out of the cockpit, returned to wherever he came from and was never seen or heard of again.
 
At that time Lee-on-Solent was the HQ of the Fleet Air Arm Home Air Command and had a resident admiral and staff. As part of his normal duties the admiral used to visit other air stations and bases under his command, sometimes accompanied by his staff, sometimes on his own. To enable him to do this an Expiditer, which was an American twin engine communications aircraft, had been fitted out to a VIP luxury standard with all mod cons and with all its paint removed down to bare metal, so that it was bright and shiny. It was kept in its own hangar and looked after and maintained by a crew from Lee-on-Solent Station Flight who had no other duties other than to look after the aircraft, and under normal circumstances nobody else was allowed near it. Each morning, weather permitting, it was pushed out of the hangar on to the hard standing for its normal daily inspection and cleaned and dusted inside and out. All metal parts, including the fuselage, wings and engine cowlings were polished with metal polish to a high shine and the tyres painted with black lacquer and it was known as ‘The Admiral’s Barge’. One morning, following the usual routine, cleaning commenced. All of a sudden there was a shout and all activity stopped. One of the cleaners had put his hand through the fuselage! There was pandemonium. The aircraft was booked to make a visit to another air station on the following day and was having an extra special clean. An immediate inspection of the whole aircraft was ordered whereupon it was found that the aircraft had been polished to such an extent that the skin was paper thin and was better suited as aluminium foil rather than part of an aircraft structure and the constant application of tyre lacquer had resulted in the tyre rubber becoming crazed. Obviously the aircraft was in a dangerous state and was not airworthy. What was more, it had obviously been like that for some time. The aircraft was immediately put back into the hangar whilst the next moves were considered, such as who was going to tell the admiral and what was he going to |be told? Also, if the aircraft had a routine daily inspection why hadn’t the problem been found before? Some questions needed answering!
 
In the meantime the hangar was locked and placed out of bounds, the maintenance crew being disbanded and its members incorporated into the Station Flight complement. There was to be no other action until appropriate orders were given and no further discussion or conclusions drawn until the official results of any enquiry were made known and official sanction given for them to be published. No conclusions were ever made public.
 
In the fullness of time the defunct aircraft was discreetly removed, normal routine carried on as usual and the whole incident was eventually forgotten. The Admiral’s Barge was not restored to its former magnificence, a standard Expiditer continued to be used and the Captain’s black Seafire which he lost as the result of the crash was not replaced. If he wanted to fly he used a normal Station Flight aircraft.

Ernie Coster
March 2013

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Supplement by Philip Ouvry living near Perpignan Novenber 2016, a fellow FAA engineer’s experience to confirm that "Flying really is Dangerous'.

 I was based at RNAS, Lossiemouth, on and off from September 1959 to April 1963 first with 738 Naval Air Squadron and later with 803 Naval Air Squadron (and again in 1972 with 809 Naval Air Squadron).   Sometime in the autumn of 1962, 803 Squadron (Scimitar aircraft) were based in a hangar on the far side of the airfield.   The air station was a master diversion airfield but on this particular Sunday was non-operational.   We had to work on the aircraft over the weekend so about 1600 I was driving back round the airfield when out of the mist a Cessna aircraft appeared and landed.   He stopped so I drove up in my car, switched on my indicating lights and signalled to him to follow me.   I then led him round to the hardstanding for visiting aircraft where I went over to help him out of the aircraft.   It turned out that the pilot had just made the first singlehanded transatlantic crossing from Canada in a Cessna aircraft.   He had expected to land in Lerwick but, that airfield being fogbound, he had come down in the first place he could find.