Fragment 18: The Life & Times of a Social Experiment

Per certamen ad celeritatem (through the struggle for speed)

And so it was that I pointed my little black Austin A30 north-eastwards from Leicester and drove the fifty or so miles to the Royal Air Force College at Cranwell in Lincolnshire.

My intake was 92B and I found myself in the company of an impressive bunch of chaps. Most were British. Some, in a nostalgic echo of ‘the few’ who flew in the summer of 1940 in the Battle of Britain, drove MG T-types - particularly the TD and TF variants. Our number also included three Saudis, headed by Bander bin Faisal Al Saud (1943-2015), one of the nine children of King Faisal. He drove a Ferrari 500 Superfast which rather put my A30 in the shade.

I had a thing about speed. Although I was not ‘a sporty type’, I was attracted to machines that went fast, on the ground or in the air. Back in Leicester, Tony’s brother Nick was into cars and, via him, I had experienced such exotic machines as a Brabham-modified Vauxhall¹ that I would later borrow, and even a monster Railton Straight-Eight that I was told had once been owned by the English comic actor and singer George Formby (1904-1961).

That first trip to Cranwell took place in 1965. Less that two years earlier, when our Air Training Corps Squadron had done well in some exams, I was presented with an award by a chap called Dick Protheroe, or to give him his full title, Flight Lieutenant Dick Protheroe, D.F.C. (RAF Ret.). [See photo² at top of this piece, which is from the Market Harborough Advertiser and Midland Mail dated June 20, 1963.] Dick, who lived in the village of Husbands Bosworth near Market Harborough, was a vice-president of the squadron’s civilian committee.

Born in 1922, Dick had attended Cranwell before joining Bomber Command and flying Wellingtons and Lancasters during and just after World War 2. He took part in the Berlin Airlift of 1948-1949 and, in the 1950s, trained aircrew on the Vickers Valiant and Handley Page Victor that, along with the Avro Vulcan, constituted the nuclear-equipped, strategic V-bomber force that was part of Britain’s contribution in the West’s Cold War battle with the Soviet Union.

He also raced cars and was particularly well-known for his support for, and successes with, the Jaguar marque, including the Jaguar E-Type. A racing accident during the 1950s caused him to be blind in his right eye.

To me, he was a hero: a real-life, up-close example of what Tom Wolfe would later immortalize in an American context as The Right Stuff³. And when I arrived at Cranwell it was, not least, the fulfillment of something that he had encouraged me to do.

BUT … as outlined in an earlier fragment, and as was apparent from the eyeglasses that I now wore, the dream was not what it had originally been. I had made it to this iconic location, and into the company of a great bunch of people whose camaraderie and support was everything one could have hoped for, and yet I was denied the one thing that had originally motivated me to get there. Hands-on flying.

For some nine months I stayed the course. I enjoyed the camaraderie. I even got involved in some sports, including running and squash. I was one of two of us to join a flight from Cranwell to Scotland and back in a Lancaster. I made some good friends and introduced one or two back home. Remember ‘J’ from Fragment 14? She had a fling with one of my mates - well, I did say she was an enthusiast! And I had no problem at all with the study and desk-work that we were required to do. But the more my contemporaries talked about their flying exploits, the more difficult I found it all.

Could I bear it? There was a lot of soul-searching and, eventually, I decided that the answer to that question was ‘No!’ I said that I wanted out. It was a terribly arbitrary decision - I was in a position where I didn’t know what to do for the best and felt that no-one else could help me. The proximity to hands-on flyers was just too painful. But there seemed to be no good options for dealing with it.

Everyone was extremely sympathetic and my discharge document accorded me an ‘Exemplary’ rating. So, that was that. I arrived home to a rather bewildered George and Nellie. “What will you do?” they asked. I answered, truthfully, “I don’t know.”

Postscript 1

Shortly after all of this, on 28 April 1966, during a practice session at the Oulton Park motor race track in Cheshire, Dick Protheroe crashed the Ferrari 330P that he was driving into a tree. He died. He was just 43 years old.

Postscript 2

It occurs to me that this post is something of a commentary on masculinity. There’s no reason that women cannot indulge themselves in similar activities. I’m sure many do. But, mostly, I think it fair to say, driving cars at speed and flying fast machines is more of a male thing. And I suspect that, today, more people than once was the case would regard these activities as a bit of a waste of time or, even, entirely pointless. I’d disagree.

Dick Protheroe was a role model for me: a man whose enthusiasm motivated me and whose bravery, along with that of others, helped advance motor sport so that it is, today, far safer than it once was.

I remember, too, my trip in the Lancaster and the tiny bit of experience it gave me of the excruciating cold with which aircrews had to cope. And that was a peacetime flight with no-one firing artillery in our direction! It is salutary to recall that, of the 125,000 RAF Bomber Command aircrews in World War II, 55,000 - more than 44 per cent of the total - died.

Thanks for reading.

1. Jack Brabham (1926-2014) was an Australian racing driver who was Formula One World Champion in 1959, 1960 and 1966.

2. For any Market Harborough folks, the complete line-up in the photo is as follows, from left to right: 1084 Squadron C.O., Flt. Lt. G. Riseley; Flt. Lt. Dick Protheroe DFC (RAF ret.); F.O. L.B. Gilbert; W.O. J. Burbidge; yours truly; civilian instructor Mr D. Low; P.O. I. Burford.

3. Wolfe, Tom. The Right Stuff (1979)