Part 39.
October, 1940
MAINTENANCE WORK
BY A FLIGHT SERGEANT OF COASTAL COMMAND
I am a flight sergeant in charge of a maintenance party at a Coastal Command station of the Royal Air Force. Our squadron uses American-built Lockheed Hudsons, which go out over the North Sea every day on reconnaissance duty.
I was piloting myself until an accident put me on ground duties. Now my job is to keep the Hudsons in the air.
The aircraft repair section of any station is a pretty busy place. All day, and all night as well, you hear the buzz of electric drills, the rattle of compressed air riveters, the hum of paint-sprayers and the roar of engines. It's not a peaceful life, but it's a very interesting one. There's plenty of work for us all, from the youngest reservist to the station engineer officer.
Talking of youngsters, I have a very useful lad who is a modern counterpart of the chimney-sweep boys of the past. He's only four feet six inches, and of course is called Tich, and is the only person on the station small enough to crawl right to the tail end of the fuselage of a Hudson. He was away one day, and another rigger took his place. This man got to the end but became wedged, and we couldn't move him. It took two hours' work to get him out. He had gone in feet first, and got stuck on his back between a couple of cross-bracing struts and the roof. We had to turn him over on to his stomach and pull on his shoulders to get him out. After that, Tich reigned supreme in his own sphere.
Ours was the first squadron in the R.A.F. to be equipped with American aircraft, and anyone who wanted to know the difference between the English and American language should have come to our workshops then. Many of the engineering terms are quite different. Most people know that petrol is gasoline, and engines are motors, but did you know that the American equivalent of chassis is "structure", oil or petrol feed-pipes are collectively called "plumbing", a handfuel pump is a "wobble pump", and a tailplane is a "horizontal stabiliser"? There are many more curious terms we had to learn when we first got Hudsons. We could have done with a dictionary. We had the very willing assistance of Lockheed and Wright-Cyclone engine experts to smooth the difficulties, but even they unwittingly misled us on occasions. For instance, they would talk about seeing a ship out at sea, and while we would look on the water they were watching an aircraft in the sky.
In a way, we are rather like surgeons who take a pride in performing restorative treatment. We replace broken sections, and graft on new metal skin. If you could see the damaged condition in which an aircraft sometimes returns, you would think it could never be repaired. But we can do wonders with a few days in the workshops—or even a few hours—and it comes out again as good as new.
When an aeroplane returns with battle-scars we make a thorough examination to check up the full extent of the damage. It's amazing how some bullet-holes hide themselves away. On one occasion we thought we had finished the repairs, but a final check-over revealed a bullet-hole through a bolt holding a wing in place. The bullet had neatly removed the core of the bolt without damaging anything else, so it was difficult to see that anything was wrong. Then, sometimes, a scrap of shrapnel will play havoc with the complicated wiring system of the instrument panel. When something goes wrong with that box of tricks, you need the patience of Job to put it right again.
One of our most interesting jobs was repairing a Hudson which became known as the "corkscrew plane". It was badly damaged near Norway, and limped home with rudder controls away. The crew almost baled out, but decided to try and put it down, and made a sort of side-slip landing in the dark. They were all safe, but the aircraft was a mess! We got to work that night. The tail control wires were all wrapped round each other like a ball of wool after the cat's got it. We had to rebuild the entire port tailplane, but that aircraft was flying again within live days, and is still doing its patrols to-day.
We did a quick-change act on another Hudson which came back 300 miles over the sea with one engine seized up. The pilot radioed that one engine had packed up, and the moment he landed we had a new engine and all accessories ready. The aircraft arrived back in the evening, and we had it flying again the next day.
It's a great help to us that the engine unit of a Hudson is amazingly compact. Each of the two 1,100 h.p. engines is held to the wing by only a very few main bolts. We can take out one engine and bolt another in position in a quarter of an hour, and it only takes another couple of hours to connect all the pipe-lines, controls and exhaust system ready for starting up.
Every man on the maintenance side knows the responsibility of his work. The crews of our aircraft give us their complete confidence. Their successes against the enemy are ample reward for our work. They place their lives in our hands, and we do our best to be worthy of the trust.
Servicing a Hudson. The tail is raised so that the guns can be checked.
