Tag Archives: pilot.

Colin Smith: WWII, 1945, glider pilot

I was a pilot and trained out in Canada mostly and then came back to this country.  I was scheduled to go onto fighter bombers or something like that but time went on, month after month.  Whether we didn’t lose enough of planes or what it was, I just don’t know.

Somebody came down one day and wanted some volunteers to go to the Far East to fly gliders, troop carrying gliders.  Now the army had lost a lot of their pilots over at Arnheim and places like that of course, but they had these ready trained pilots all waiting to go somewhere.  We went out there and were going to be on operations within six weeks, but we never did see any operations.  The Fourteenth Army at that time started pushing the Japs back down through Burma, then we were going to go into somewhere further down, Rangoon, but that never came off.  We did a bit of flying as kind of push out crews for a while on Dakotas flying supplies over Burma and dropping them by parachute and things like that. Just an ordinary looking type of aircraft, the Dakota, but marvellous really.  They’re still flying today.  Quite incredible really I think.

We went up first of all into Assam. From there, we moved round to various places around India and down into Ceylon as it was then.  It was a very pleasant time really.  We were annoyed that they hadn’t sent us in   We had a nice time up in the mountains up north, through Kashmir and places like that.

Print showing 'First recorded loop of a Hadian (Waco) Glider by Flight Lieutenant Jack Hayward and Flight Sergeant Colin Smith, 1945', from print belonging to Colin Smith

Print showing ‘First recorded loop of a Hadian (Waco) Glider by Flight Lieutenant Jack Hayward and Flight Sergeant Colin Smith, 1945’, from print belonging to Colin Smith

We were co-pilots on these gliders – Waco Hadrians. I was co-pilot with a man called Jack Hayward; he later became Sir Jack Hayward, a multi millionaire.  We’ve had quite a number of get- togethers for 671 squadron as it was then.

I didn’t do as much flying as I wanted to do.  We came back to this country and while we were waiting to Oxford, they sent us on some wonderful course, flying Tiger Moths again, or something like that and another course doing aircraft recognition and this that and the other, a waste of time really. I had four years in the RAF altogether.

Ron Wallis: WWII dogfights and planes 1940s

Whilst we were living at Lower Hamstead, there were two things regarding aircraft that stick in my mind. One was watching a dogfight overhead and seeing two aircraft come out of that dogfight.
There was apparently a squadron of Hurricanes intercepted two squadrons of German J38s and ME109s and one Hurricane got shot down in flames and landed at the top of Cranmore.  That would have been Battle of Britain time I suppose, 1941.The pilot bailed out and landed at Thorness successfully.  He was burnt but he was OK.  There was a 109 I think also came down, but I think out in the Solent some place.
And the other thing concerning aircraft was when I was “helping” as a six year old, mother and an auntie, harvesting potatoes in one particular field. There was a sudden roar and I remember mother shouting: ‘Lay down! Lay down!’  And it was a German, it was a Henkel 111 I think. I can remember it had a glazed nose, came in at tree top level, came in off the Solent, and I can remember seeing the pilot in the cockpit as he went past. I just stood and watched it and it roared over the trees only a matter of 200’ high at the most, then it went out towards the Channel and hopefully home, I suppose. He’d done his worst and he was off home as soon as he could make it.  But that was very loud and I can remember seeing the pilot in the glazed cockpit; it just sticks in my mind. You could see the silhouette of the pilot. Mother thought the end was nigh.