SOWING THE SEEDS

Sowing the seed…

Duncan Campbell recalls the factors in his early life that led to him learning to fly…

Iam sure that, without too much difficulty, we could all recall the experiences that led us from childhood to exercising our flying privileges. When, with retirement not too far over the horizon, I told my mother, rather apprehensively, that I had started learning to fly, she said, “I don’t know why you didn’t do it years ago, it’s obviously in the blood!” She was alluding to the fact that her first husband, her second husband, and my younger brother had all been aviators. Two had died flying. Hank had been killed when colliding with his squadron leader in combat in 1942, the squadron leader parachuting to relative safety, and three years developing tunnel carpentry skills in Stalag Luft

Three. On his return home, he had visited Hank’s widow, married her, and was my father. His death certificate noted that injuries received in aerial combat had contributed to his end. Mark, my younger brother, had died some years before in a Harvard with his friend Ted, crashing after an air race in Malta. The stuff of a major new mini-series this may be, and one day I may commit it to print but, fear not, dear reader, not here and not now! In the 1950s, when my age was still measured in single figures, my father was posted to RAF Negombo in

Ceylon, as the Officer Commanding Flying. My brother and I grew up in a tropical paradise, only half a day of schooling, our playground being the beach, the jungle, the monsoon storm ditches and the aircraft dump on the edge of the airfield. The margins of my schoolbooks from that era are adorned with my simple representations of the then current aircraft, witness to an early obsession with flying. Yet it was my younger brother who moved into the world of aviation at an early age. I liked school. Mark did not and, aged 14, started truanting. At 15, he had fixed up an old Vespa and, without tax or insurance, was making his way to Biggin

Hill where, courtesy of his appallingly lax school, he started cleaning and valeting flying club aircraft, and laid the foundation of what was to be a lifelong career in aviation.

My father, much to my puzzlement, had not continued flying after his Air Force career. He maintained a passionate interest in aviation, and delivered frequent presentations about life in Stalag Luft Three and escape attempts to RAF Associations and any other organisations that might invite him, but he rarely left the ground. He was also heavily involved in the development and running of the Biggin Hill Air Fair over the years. I well remember one occasion at Biggin Hill when he Above The author with his group operated Luscombe, comes from a family of aviators. went up in a Tiger Moth with an instructor, and I watched from the ground while another pilot explained, in great detail, how the extremely steep side slip on late final and perfect three-point landing with a ground roll of little more than the length of the aircraft, was witness to the incredible flying skills of the instructor. As they got out of the aircraft, he congratulated his colleague, who said, “That wasn’t me, it was Ken”. My father was grinning from ear to ear, a dog with two tails. It had been about 25 years since he had last flown anything. His last ever fight was in the aircraft then known as the Charles Church Spitfire. My youngest sister had orchestrated my father appearing in an episode of Noel’s Christmas Presents. By then, Ken was very disabled, his war injuries having eroded his mobility to the point where he could no longer even swim, which had been the sole

physical activity he had been able to undertake without pain. Chauffeured to a strip ‘in the middle of nowhere’, he was delighted to see a two-seater Spitfire rolled out. They used an engine hoist to lower him into the cockpit.

Happy times…

The aerial shots showed the Spitfire looping and rolling, my father clearly delighted, and the commentary reassured viewers that Ken was not flying and Reg Hallam, a very experienced warbird pilot, was. You’ll have guessed the next bit. Reg had handed control to my father immediately after take-off. In later years my father found it hard to talk about the experience without being visibly moved. He was able to fly the aeroplane with no discomfort at all, so sensitive were the controls. He did say, though, that it ‘wasn’t quite like flying a proper Spit’. My father had died before I started my flying training. I was approaching the end of my then career and unusually, travelling by bus. Two older gentlemen sitting in front of me were bemoaning having laid plans for retirement only to find that, once retired, they couldn’t afford to implement them. Though my life had taken a different turn, I had never lost a fascination with flying and, there and then, resolved that I was not going to end my days regretting lost opportunities to do anything! Presenting myself to the Sussex Flying Club, located upstairs in the beautiful Art Deco terminal building at Shoreham, just along the corridor from the then PFA, I Top Ken beside himself with excitement in 1990, having flown a Spitfire for the first time in 48 years.

Above B flight, 73 squadron, North France 1939. Left to right are Flt Lt Ian Scoular; Flying Officer ‘Cobber’ Kain; and with the jaunty forage cap, Sgt Pilot Ken Campbell (the author’s father). said that I wanted to learn how to fly. They said, “You’ll be wanting a trial lesson, then?” To my embarrassment now, I rather arrogantly responded, “No, I don’t need a trial lesson… I know I want to fly”. These days, on final to our farm strip, I often think of my father and have a passing regret that we never flew together. He was already a very experienced pilot when, in the very early days of WWII, as a member of the RAF Advanced Air Striking Force, he was flying in and out of muddy fields in France in a Mk 1 Hurricane fitted with a two-blade fixed pitch wooden prop. Were he beside me in the Luscombe, I imagine he could have taught me a great deal.

I wonder what your story is…■