of us could have foreseen.
Eventually, the South African Air Force, perhaps impressed by my persistence, relented when I reappeared, and they accepted me for pilot training. The initial training was at Lyttleton, a cold and deserted-looking camp in the Transvaal veld near Pretoria. Our welcome was not encouraging for it was the habit of the cadets to shout âGo home!â as soon as a bunch of new recruits appeared.
The discipline at the initial training base was harsh. Thecommander of the base was a colonel. He had a large black dog that wore a majorâs crown on his collar, and we had to salute the dog every time we passed him. We all took this quirk in good humor, having been told that when saluting an officer we were saluting not the wearer of the rank but the Kingâs commission.
There were a mixed bunch of would-be pilots in our course: Afrikaners, Englishmen, and a few Jews. Food on the base was plentiful, but the timing of some meals was strange for when we got up in the early morning at 0430, we were often served either steak or mutton chops and mashed potatoes, a little hard to cope with at that time of day. There was much drinking by the cadets at the bar of Pollyâs hotel in Pretoria, making our way back to the camp in the early hours of the morning.
In time we were sent on a gliding course. The first time I saw the elementary instruction glider, I was surprised to see that it consisted of a bulky wing with a fuselage, which was an open-frame construction without any covering. It looked to me as though it was a cut-down model made to show us how it was constructed. The instructor was puzzled when I quite innocently asked when we would see the real glider.
We were strapped into this contraption and towed along at high speed by a cable attached to a winch. We released ourselves from the cable at 800 feet. We were encouraged to sing when up in the air in order to help us relax, and it was amusing to hear a pupil singing gaily high above us.
The next step in pursuit of my wings was at the elementary flying school, near the small town of Potchefstroom inthe Transvaal, to complete seventy-five hours on the yellow de Havilland Tiger Moth biplanes. They were fairly difficult aircraft to fly accurately and were therefore good for training. The flights in these fully aerobatic trainers with their two open cockpits in tandem for the instructor and the pupil were exhilarating. They were old but reliable airplanes and even some of the maneuvers, which demanded that I be suspended upside down with my head and part of my upper body hanging out in the slipstream, did not worry me. The Tiger Moths were constructed of aluminum tubing covered in fabric, which even at that time seemed old-fashioned.
My instructor was named Cohen, and a friend in the course ahead of me who was also Cohenâs pupil complained bitterly about his behavior. Was this coincidence, or was someone arranging for the âJew boysâ to be lumped together? Whatever the reason, we both attained our wings despite our instructor. Cohen was awful. Whether his nerves were shot from a tour of operations in a squadron in North Africa or from instructing I donât know. He screamed and swore at his pupils, and would get so enraged when we made mistakes that he would sometimes undo his harness and stand up in the front cockpit with his control column in his fist threatening to brain us. One of the senior pupil pilots, who had also had the misfortune to be assigned to him, had secretly bent the pins in Cohenâs parachute and planned to do a slow roll when he got out of his harness, hoping to get rid of him for good. Of course, he chickened out.
Cohen did not exactly encourage his pupils, but I managedto be assigned to another instructor who was a relief after him. After my dual time of seven and a half hours of circuits and bumps, the instructor removed his stick and said, âOff you go now. You are going to be all
Eventually, the South African Air Force, perhaps impressed by my persistence, relented when I reappeared, and they accepted me for pilot training. The initial training was at Lyttleton, a cold and deserted-looking camp in the Transvaal veld near Pretoria. Our welcome was not encouraging for it was the habit of the cadets to shout âGo home!â as soon as a bunch of new recruits appeared.
The discipline at the initial training base was harsh. Thecommander of the base was a colonel. He had a large black dog that wore a majorâs crown on his collar, and we had to salute the dog every time we passed him. We all took this quirk in good humor, having been told that when saluting an officer we were saluting not the wearer of the rank but the Kingâs commission.
There were a mixed bunch of would-be pilots in our course: Afrikaners, Englishmen, and a few Jews. Food on the base was plentiful, but the timing of some meals was strange for when we got up in the early morning at 0430, we were often served either steak or mutton chops and mashed potatoes, a little hard to cope with at that time of day. There was much drinking by the cadets at the bar of Pollyâs hotel in Pretoria, making our way back to the camp in the early hours of the morning.
In time we were sent on a gliding course. The first time I saw the elementary instruction glider, I was surprised to see that it consisted of a bulky wing with a fuselage, which was an open-frame construction without any covering. It looked to me as though it was a cut-down model made to show us how it was constructed. The instructor was puzzled when I quite innocently asked when we would see the real glider.
We were strapped into this contraption and towed along at high speed by a cable attached to a winch. We released ourselves from the cable at 800 feet. We were encouraged to sing when up in the air in order to help us relax, and it was amusing to hear a pupil singing gaily high above us.
The next step in pursuit of my wings was at the elementary flying school, near the small town of Potchefstroom inthe Transvaal, to complete seventy-five hours on the yellow de Havilland Tiger Moth biplanes. They were fairly difficult aircraft to fly accurately and were therefore good for training. The flights in these fully aerobatic trainers with their two open cockpits in tandem for the instructor and the pupil were exhilarating. They were old but reliable airplanes and even some of the maneuvers, which demanded that I be suspended upside down with my head and part of my upper body hanging out in the slipstream, did not worry me. The Tiger Moths were constructed of aluminum tubing covered in fabric, which even at that time seemed old-fashioned.
My instructor was named Cohen, and a friend in the course ahead of me who was also Cohenâs pupil complained bitterly about his behavior. Was this coincidence, or was someone arranging for the âJew boysâ to be lumped together? Whatever the reason, we both attained our wings despite our instructor. Cohen was awful. Whether his nerves were shot from a tour of operations in a squadron in North Africa or from instructing I donât know. He screamed and swore at his pupils, and would get so enraged when we made mistakes that he would sometimes undo his harness and stand up in the front cockpit with his control column in his fist threatening to brain us. One of the senior pupil pilots, who had also had the misfortune to be assigned to him, had secretly bent the pins in Cohenâs parachute and planned to do a slow roll when he got out of his harness, hoping to get rid of him for good. Of course, he chickened out.
Cohen did not exactly encourage his pupils, but I managedto be assigned to another instructor who was a relief after him. After my dual time of seven and a half hours of circuits and bumps, the instructor removed his stick and said, âOff you go now. You are going to be all
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