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Description
Mr. Warren describes a shortage of Anson aircraft at Elementary Flying School in High River Alberta. His tongue-in-cheek sense is that more value was placed on recovering the wheels from a downed aircraft than on its pilot. Later, at RAF flying school in Medicine Hat, he retrains in a single engine Harvard which eventually leads him to becoming a fighter pilot.
Transcription
We were first sent to Calgary where they had Anson aircraft which is a large twin engine aircraft. And they said, “Okay, the course that’s here now hasn’t been able to finish their flying because we’re short of airplanes.” Particularly of the wheels and undercarriage they were short of. It was rather funny because if an airplane crashed or went... the first thing everybody asked was “Are the wheels okay? ” And if they were, they would take the wheels and put them on an airplane that had been up on jacks in the hanger and then use it. But that was the critical bit of a crash. I don’t think they ever asked if the pilot was okay, they just said, “Are the wheels okay? ” You know you could make all kinds of jokes about it. So we were sent to Medicine Hat, which was an RAF school. And again the same thing happened, it was Oxford aircraft. And they said,
“You’ll have to take the ground school first and then you can fly.” But then half way through they said, “No, this isn’t gonna work. We’ll bring in Harvards. You have to start ground school again for Harvards.” But this might have saved my life because we went on Harvards, which generally led to single engine fighters, Spitfires and Hurricanes, where had we continued in Oxfords and Ansons, we might have ended up on Lancasters and Halifaxes and Wellingtons, that type of thing. So we were very pleased.