Dunedin with the RNZAF

Over the next few mornings I learned how to take off, and how to land the plane. I learned how to stall (above 5000 feet only) and how to recover from a stall. After 6 hours flying training, I went solo, which meant doing one take-off, circuit of the airfield, and one landing.

 Next we went up and did loops. Altogether, by the time my five weeks’ flying training was over, I had had 12 hours of training, all entered in my official log-book. 

The second half of the programme was a timetable of lessons in navigation, airmanship, meteorology and Air Force procedures. That and a couple of hours of marching each day. Also weapons training: we shot a few rounds from a 303 rifle, and a few from a Bren machine gun. We also got to handle but not fire a Sten gun. We did fire, once or twice, a revolver, and a shot-gun, because we were officers in training. We also had a couple of sessions on parachute operation.

 

And, because Tiger Moths had no seat in the cockpit, we had to wear our parachute each time we flew, not only for emergency use, but to sit on! 

We also had a good Phys Ed programme. We were introduced to Volleyball, which had recently been invented by PE instructors of the Royal Canadian Air Force. (They later also introduced their FiveBX fitness programme, which I later used to keep fit in India)

At weekends we got leave, from early Saturday afternoon until 10 pm on Sundays. The Air Force laid on trucks to convey us to Dunedin city if we wanted, and to bring us home each evening by 10. Furtunately I had two cousins living in Dunedin, Don, who was working for an insurance company, and Derry who was studying medicine at the University. 

Both of them had friends, and both attended the North-East Valley Baptist Church.  I

spent my weekends with them and their friends and the friends’ families, who were all very welcoming. I also had friends in the training squad, especially Geoff Keyte, who was a member of the Harrier Club with me, and we saw something of each other in the weekends too.  Geoff had friends at Anderson’s Bay, so that was another suburb to visit. 

I got to know Dunedin in this way and came to like the town. In December the same year I had a fortnight’s refresher course at Taieri; I don’t remember much about that.  In between I biked out to Mangere Airfield on Saturday mornings when the weather was OK to continue training on Auckland Aero Club Tiger Moths with their instructor. 

A few weeks after the refresher course in Dunedin, it was announced that as the Tiger Moths were all to be scrapped, our course was to be stopped too. I never heard anything else from the Air Force, except a letter with a discharge certificate in the mail.