Flying a Yale

A Yale was like a Harvard. It was a forerunner of the Harvard, only it had a fixed undercarriage. They’re all silver, you know, aluminum probably, they weren’t painted yellow like a Harvard. And they had been ordered for the French Air Force and the instruments were all in metric but they painted over critical marks, you know, so we could see the miles per hour and so on. And we went down there and they had 450 horsepower right whirlwind engines, low winged monoplanes. They had flaps and they had, which you had to wind down, not like our hydraulic, and they had two pitch propellers, fine and coarse. And the Yale was so easy and smooth to fly. The Tiger Moth you were forever having to keep it straight and level, on the controls all the time to keep it flying level. And this Yale, beautiful looking thing, you know to me, it would, it never, it just went along smoothly. In fact, it was really very much easier, well, the Tiger Moth would cruise at 85 miles an hour cruising. The Yale would cruise at 125 and it was very much easier to fly to take off and land in a Tiger Moth, I couldn’t believe it. In two hours and ten minutes on this thing the very same day, I went off solo in the Yale and just couldn’t believe it. You know you had to make sure you were in fine pitch on take off and in fine pitch for landing again and then wind these flaps down and that’s all. So the Yale, it was wonderful.