NZ Finds Its Wings - Ohakea Impressions

[Dave Homewood]

From The Auckland Star, 12 November 1940

N.Z. FINDS ITS WINGS

FINE TYPE.

AIR TRAINEES.

OHAKEA IMPRESSIONS.

FLYING IN SERVICE PLANES.

(By CHAS. E. WHEELER.)

Ohakea air station provides one of the most vivid examples of the great development of the Royal New Zealand Air Force. It was planned in peace-time, for home defence, and its two immense concrete hangars were to house Wellington bombers. But war accelerated the pace tremendously, the Wellington bombers were used in active service over the Continent, and instead of two hangars there are now five, a proportion being required for maintenance work.

Fortunately the station was planned on spacious lines, but expansion for war needs has been so rapid—it is still going on—that except for the landing field there is not much room unoccupied in its site of nearly a square mile.

The foundations of air service knowledge having been provided in the month's intensive course at Weraroa, airmen who will continue their training in New Zealand go to Taieri, Bell Block (New Plymouth), Harewood, and shortly Whenuapai (Auckland). These are the elementary training stations, where they make their first acquaintance with aircraft—the sturdy single-engined biplanes so useful in the early stages of instruction. Not only are the pupils taught to fly, but they must know the principles of the internal combustion engine, the science of aerodynamics, also the structure of the whole machine.

The young airman at this stage soon operates training aircraft, and he knows exactly how it works, and the reasons why.

Passing out from this elementary stage, the airman has done 50 hours' flying, half solo and the other 25 hours with an instructor in a dual machine, ready to take charge if needed. Some recruits from the aero clubs have completed the elementary course with 120 hours of flying to their credit.

Handling Service Aircraft.
The pupils are ready for the intermediate and advanced courses, which can be taken at Ohakea or other R.N.Z.A.F. stations. There is still much theoretical knowledge to absorb, and half the time of the airman at Ohakea is occupied with lectures, the other half flying, always in service aircraft, for he is now in the atmosphere of the real thing.

Two months are spent in the intermediate stage, and flying instruction is so much an individual matter that one flying officer has to be provided for four or not more than five pupils, and he spends his day in the air. Single and multi-engined aircraft are used, and the air is alive with machines throughout the day. Their roar commences, before 8 a.m., when the big aircraft are run out of the hangars and engines started to warm up.

Ohakea is one of the busiest air centres of the Dominion, for there is not only the traffic of the training station, but a constant stream of visiting aircraft piloted by airmen doing their test courses requiring a landing away from home.

The pilot navigator is required to fly a triangular course of not less than 150 miles, keeping a log, and working from strip maps. He is accompanied by an instructor, but there are solo flights of not less than 100 miles with a landing at another station. Another important test is the flight of 200 miles on a triangular course, with an intermediate landing, a complete log being kept of every phase of the flight. Tests are made of the pupil's ability on straight flying at accurate speed and height, and capacity to recover from unusual positions. Blind navigation is an essential qualification—the old days of a flight over the enemy's lines and back again are superseded by long trips of perhaps a thousand miles over enemy territory.

Apart from the ground tests in the Link trainer, which will be described, the airman is sent up to make a triangular flight of 35 miles with the hood over the cockpit—and a safety man at the dual control. Three night landings with an instructor and three solo are in this intermediate programme, and there is a height test in which the airman climbs to 10,000 feet and remains at that height for half an hour.

His accomplishments will also include skill in looping, half rolls and slow rolls. Having achieved all these things in two months, and passed many more examinations, the young airman has reached the happy stage of receiving his "wings"—the pilot's badge.

Gunnery and Bombing.
But there is still the advanced stage to face, wherein gunnery and bombing become the main features. Before leaving Weraroa on the first stage, airmen have familiarised themselves with all types of guns used in the air. At Ohakea they have range practice on the ground, and their first air experience is with the camera gun, which provides a clear record of results, and saves "the live stuff."

However, they deal with realities when an aircraft goes up towing a drogue or target 300 feet below it, and about a thousand feet astern. The gunner has to chase it and fire at the drogue with the front gun.

Practical bombing is done in a remote part of the district from a height of 6000 feet. The air gunner is regarded as proficient only if he lands a fair proportion of his bombs within 25 feet of the target. Results are obvious, for the practice bomb, designed to fall in the same way as the real thing, releases a chemical when it lands, and there is a cloud of smoke.

These tests are carefully noted, and one of the charts examined proved that a competent, bomber trained at Ohakea can land eight bombs within a radius of 18 yards of the ground target, and this from a height of 10,000 feet.

Moving Landscape Test.
Using up bombs and flying big service aircraft can be expensive, but much of this is saved by ground tests of marksmanship conducted in a lofty dark room with remarkably clever optical equipment. The conditions of practical bombing flights can be reproduced. The bomber pupil does not fly, but he lies prone at a height and looks down on a landscape which is constantly moving — it is the sort of thing he would see through the transparent front of a bomber. There is much insistence on the necessity of avoiding haphazard bombing. Aiming is highly scientific, for many factors, including air speed, drift, and even the variable force of gravity at heights must be brought into the calculations. The bomber does not aim by unaided sight, but endeavours to ascertain accurately all the conditions of the moment, and adjust his sighting instruments to take all these into account. Then, when the instrument sights show in line with the objective, he should hit the mark.

In the test room the pupil lies prone behind the sighting instrument, and on a floor above an officer operates the projector which throws beneath the pupil a moving landscape, the picture being 20 feet in diameter. It is always changing and the bomber must decide from indications on the landscape. What is the drift and the other factors to take into account. He is told to hit a particular object in the moving field, and release of what in the air would be a real bomb makes a flash record of results, to be duly considered, and the errors pointed out. Hundreds of these tests cost little, and save much petrol and practice material.

The Link Trainer.
Pilots are able to get much practical experience of flying conditions by doing five hours of tests in the marvellously-designed Link trainer, capable of reproducing in the lecture room almost every phase of actual flying. It resembles a miniature aircraft, the cockpit of normal size, but hooded. The pupil enters, pulls down the hood, and spends the next twenty minutes or so in artificial light. He is in communication with the instructor through earphones. The machine starts up with a drone simulating the engines, the pupil sees in front of him the typical instrument board and the instructor telephones him to make a certain course. There is no visual guide, but the competent navigator uses the compass—quite simple, but for the fact that the Link trainer will drift away off the course, it will uncannily creep away out of control in the matter of height unless the throttle is watched, and the hooded pilot may experience rough bumpy conditions, or even the phenomena of icing. These he must deal with as he would in service aircraft. 

The Link Trainer is constantly setting him some fresh problem in line with those of the open air, and it is a splendid test of a man's reactions, because this machine is more sensitive than the average aircraft. Concentration is developed, too. The instructor telephones to the hooded pupil a warning that he is losing height, and the indicators at the desk instantly show a more open throttle—but concentrating on altitude, the unwary pilot may have got off the course. This can be seen as the cockpit swings around, and it is also charted automatically on the instructor's desk. Many courses and turns are directed, and practical problems set for the pupil, who finishes by coming out into the daylight to examine the chart and get the instructor's opinion about his weaknesses, and his strong points. 

One has only to read of the splendid exploits of the Royal Air Force to realise the value of high proficiency in "Blind Flying." It means first-class navigation coupled with great judgment. Ohakea and the other advanced training stations of the R.N.Z.A.F. not only train in this way through the Link Trainer, but in the air, and there are night flying trips by big aircraft having five pupils aboard.

Sample routes are these:— Ohakea-New Plymouth-Otaki-Brothers Light in Cook Strait-Ohakea; Ohakea - Karori Rock in Cook Strait-Cape Jackson at entrance to Tory Channel-Stephens Island-Ohakea. On these flights the pupils take turns at navigating, and all keep complete records of course and flying conditions.

Engineer Behind the Airman.
Behind all these flying activities is the responsible work of the maintenance staff. It is said that to keep one airman in service, at least ten other skilled people have to be employed, and the size of the maintenance facilities at Ohakea supports this point emphatically. Every machine in the service hangars displays a large board carrying the word Serviceable. If reversed, the notice reads "Unserviceable," and nobody dare handle that aircraft until a responsible maintenance officer certifies in writing that it is again fit for the air.

The checks and safeguards are laid down in detail, in mandatory language. There are skilled inspections of planes between flights, periodically at 10, 20, 40, and 120 hours flying, the last being a major inspection.

At least twenty different trades are represented in the R.N.Z.A.F. maintenance staff. There are the fitters who deal with the power supply; the riggers whose concern is the air frame and controls; instrument makers and repairers; armament experts, and fabric workers who repair wings and rudders and keep in perfect order the parachute which each pilot must collect from store before he goes out on the landing ground.

Ohakea has fine engineering shops, and they are expanding so that the Air Force may become even more self-contained than in peace time. One new workshop just being completed is planned to deal with the general overhaul of engines.

New Zealand's Fine Material.
Throughout the Air Force in New Zealand is a generous supply of former Royal Air Force officers, some on loan, others who have come back into the service from retirement. Wing-Commander Hewlett, D.S.O., O.B.E., who controls Ohakea Air Station, has seen the Royal Air Force develop into its present splendid efficiency. Now he is handling New Zealanders, who are to reinforce that great fighting arm.

And what calibre of man is the New Zealand recruit? From a number of experienced overseas officers I got opinions readily given because they are so satisfied. "Absolutely first class," is the verdict. These English officers consider that there is more self-reliance, more initiative than they have formerly come across, and for that reason they say that, with equal training, the New Zealand airmen are among the best in the world

How long does it take to train a competent pilot or observer? It can he seen that from the details given in these articles that the course is intensive both on the theoretical and practical sides, but the Royal New Zealand Air Force training stations can turn out thoroughly competent men in six months. Even under the pressure of war's demands, this training is kept up to the highest standard, an assurance that with such good material to start on the Dominion's ' contribution to the R.A.F. is of sterling value.

[Dave Homewood]

It should be noted that the main aircraft based at Ohakea at that time with No. 3 Flying training School were Hawker Hinds and Airspeed Oxfords.

[Dave Homewood]

This is from the Evening Post, 7 September 1940:

OUR AIR BASE AT OHAKEA


A balloon about to be released for the measurement of the wind at various heights.

THE Royal New Zealand Air Force Station at Ohakea, planned under the Air Force development programme of 1937 to be, with a sister station at Whenuapai, the largest in New Zealand, is growing still, and growing so fast that only the immense field, roughly a mile each way, remains on the scale of the 1937 plan.

A personnel, of staff, instructors, ground staff, and trainees, of 300 was then intended; now that figure is to be more than doubled. Even for the accommodation of 300 a sizeable township was built in permanent materials; now to meet war necessities new streets of wooden buildings have built a town where there were farm lands a couple of years ago.

More men mean more aircraft, and though the two huge concrete hangars can house the aircraft at present on the station, their number will be trebled within a few months, and to house this new aircraft strength two more hangars and a hangar workshop are being built.

No Air Force station stands complete in itself: Ohakea is one part of the New Zealand Air Force training picture, huge though it is in comparison with anything that we had before the 1937 expansion plan was given effect. Trainees move from station to station as they pass from stage to stage of training.

All pilots and observers begin at the Air Force Ground Training School at Weraroa. There they swot theory, and gain experience in the atmosphere of the Air Force and its disciplinary and administration; systems, but do not fly at all.

Those who are to fly are transferred to Elementary Flying Training Schools at Taieri, Otago; Harewood, Christchurch; and Bell Block, New Plymouth, and later to Whenuapai, when this station is in full swing.

On passing out on practical and theoretical examination successes, they are transferred again to Service Flying Training Schools, Intermediate and Advanced, at other stations —Wigram, Canterbury; Woodbourne, Marlborough; and Ohakea, Manawatu.

But in the Air Force there are far more men on the ground than in the air, engaged in twenty, highly-skilled trades and crafts, and for these aircraftmen there are posting and re-postings as training gives increasing efficiency.

Rongotai, overflowing from the aerodrome proper to the Exhibition buildings, is becoming the main training centre in mechanical work and in stores practice; Hobsonville specalises in stores and repairs; but training and advancement proceeds at all the stations and bases. Wigram, Woodbourne, Ohakea, and Whenuapai are the big four, but they are nevertheless just parts of the whole.

THE EMPIRE AIR SCHEME.
Nor does the R.N.Z.A.F. stand complete in itself. It is part of the Empire Air Training Scheme, laid down since, the outbreak of war and only now beginning to gain effect, and this partnership in the Empire programme, to expand without limit while the war continues, has necessitated amendment and reamendment of the 1937 plans. Prior to the 1937 programme the greater number of New Zealanders joining the Air Force as flying personnel went direct to England and commenced their service training with the R.A.F., serving the period of their commissions in Britain, Egypt, the East, or wherever it might be, before returning to New Zealand as highly-qualified reservists.

The 1937 plan proposed that the direct entry system would be modified and that a proportion of Air Force officers, whether they were to serve in the expanding New Zealand Air Force or were to join the R.A.F., should go through intensive training in New Zealand, to the degree of efficiency required for service in the Regular Air Force. That training policy dictated the first great building extension which saw Wigram and Hobsonville doubled in accommodation and hangarage; Woodbourne, Ohakea, and Whenuapai commenced, and flying training schools established at New Plymouth and Taieri.

War descended and the Empire's air training capacity was replanned for greatest speed and efficiency under a common plan. The Empire Air Training Scheme reverses the New Zealand training plan in part, and increases its scope.

MORE MEN TO BE TRAINED.
A large number of pilots will still be fully trained in New Zealand before joining the Royal Air Force. In addition, pilots will receive their initial and elementary flying training in New Zealand and observers and air-gunners their initial training only before passing on to Canada to complete their training.

The observer is a man of many parts, navigator, bomb-aimer, photographer, radio-telegraphist, whose training covers the widest field. The pilot and the observer work hand in glove, with honours and responsibilities at least resting evenly.

When the change-over is made, towards the end of this year, Ohakea, which is now an intermediate and advanced training school for both observers and air-gunners, will become a service flying training school, and as such will concentrate on the training of pilots. It is to meet these new conditions that new hangars, more  dormitories, lecture rooms, dining rooms, stores, and offices are being rushed up at Ohakea, to accommodate more than double the number of men or whom the permanent quarters were designed.

The immense arched concrete hangars at Ohakea and Whenuapai—two at each station, with provision on the ground plan for several more later on —were designed for the specific purpose of housing between them the 30 Wellington Vickers long-range bombers ordered for the R.N.Z.A.F. as the main striking force of the expanding Regular Air Force. They were to have been flown from England to New Zealand by New Zealand pilots and crews, who had been selected and were practically ready to commence the first delivery flights when the war began. Men and machines have helped splendidly to build R.A.F. history in raids on naval bases in Germany and in record flights and raids on enemy bases in Norway and into the heart of Germany. Of their part we will be told the detailed story later on; their flight to New Zealand is long deferred.

Each of these arched hangars covers a greater area than a full-sized Rugby field, yet for all that span and depth each would have housed not more than nine of the long-range bombers. They house many more of the smaller machines used in training—Vincents and Oxfords (the types which flew over Wellington in formation a few weeks ago), and other types used for navigation and reconnaissance work, but when the further change in plan is made in accordance with the Empire Air Training Scheme the trebled machine strength will require more hangar space. Two more are at present being built.

HANGARS AND WORKSHOPS.
These new hangars are big, but are dwarfed by the vastness of the concrete arches of the permanent hangars, and, being of lesser span, are built in lighter material and comparatively simple truss design, leaving the full hangar space free of pillars or obstructions. Each has a floor 125 by 255 feet, with a door opening, closed by 10 panels, 20 feet high, running back on each side on rails.

The arched hangars are built for permanency, huge and solid, not intended to be bombproof, but designed to be blast and splinter-proof in walls, door panels (each one weighs 24 tons), and sweeping roof. The smaller hangars are built with heavy wooden framing, steel roof trusses, asbestos corrugated covering, and framed sheet-iron door panels.

Hangarage and workshops are combined in the permanent hangars, but the temporary hangars have a third hangar near them for overhaul and repair work and the training in maintenance of motors, planes, and controls that commences in specialised schools and continues at each base and station of the Air Force.

The field is, after more than a year's work, practically finished, though maintenance upon a mile square surface, truer than anyone's fancy front lawn, has not stopped and will not stop. There are miles of main and herringbone drainage under the grass surface and their effectiveness has been now well proved by winter rains. At most, while downpours last, the flood pools do not stop flying, and the drainage system carries all surface water off in a few hours.

A farm house and outbuildings have still to be removed from an outer area of the field, but the area is for the present ample for the types of machine flying at Ohakea.

Radio communication —station to station, station to plane, plane to ground—is vital in Air force organisation. The main radio station at Ohakea, for technical reasons, is well removed from the headquarters building, but it is, of course, in direct communication with the administration.

Ohakea has its own meteorological station, part of the Dominion system. Observations of barometric pressure, temperature, cloud, wind, visibility, etc., are taken round the clock and radioed to the Meteorological Office' at Wellington. Standard ground instruments, free hydrogen balloons for upper air wind observations, and flights by meteorological observers are used. Heavily-protected and guarded bomb and munitions stores are some distance removed.

Off the regular landing field is the bombing range, plastered with practice bombs from elevations from low to high, up to two miles and more. Low cloud kills bombing practice on the range for the day or the half-day, but that merely means more hours when conditions are good enough, for the courses of instruction have a crowded minimum of work to be carried out.

BOMBING INDOORS.
Bombing practice goes on at the station, indoors, whatever the murk and however low the cloud outside, with the ingenious A.M.L. (Air Ministry Laboratory) bomb dropping teacher. It has everything but the expense, the bang, and the misery. The A.M.L. teacher is housed in a tower room. The ground floor is a whitepainted space to serve as a screen, upon which a landscape is projected from the top of the tower. The pilot and his bomb aimer work from a platform twelve or fifteen feet above the floor screen. The "insides" of the A.M.L. are above them again. The landscape moves fast or slow across the floor to represent air speed, elevation, and favourable or contrary wind. It runs straight, or swings this way or that as the pilot flies his imaginary plane at the direction of the bomb aimer, lying prone beside him and picking out his target over the bomb sights. If the wind is dead ahead or dead on tail the picture landscape flows directly fore and aft; if there is a side wind it crabs underneath.

At ten thousand feet or with a plane that flies at 150 miles per hour, the landscape crawls below, but with low; bombing or the last word in bomber speed it slides. From 10,000 feet a bomb strikes in, say, 15 seconds, from lesser elevations in proportionately less time. The A.M.L. teacher is adjustable to give as many combinations of air speed, wind effect, elevation, and time of bomb fall as there are, but it cannot give bumps and trouble from antiaircraft crews below. The combination of conditions —machine speed, wind (velocity and direction), and elevation —are set on the projection apparatus and the bomb-aimer adjusts his sights to the same conditions—250 m.p.h., 25-mile-an-hour wind, so many points off course—and the landscape moves across the floor screen. The plane is swung this way or that, held to it, swung again and held, until the bomber has his sights on the target he has picked out.

He "releases" the bomb, and a light glows on the landscape floor. That light spot is where, for the conditions under which the practice is made, the bomb will strike. The landscape keeps on crabbing or crawling or sliding while the theoretical bomb drops through unexpectedly long seconds determined by the apparatus above, till the bomb strikes and the movement ceases. If the calculations and sighting were correct the cross roads, or whatever it is, will be plumb under the light; if the sighting was faulty the miss will be shown.

No indoor apparatus, however cleverly designed and minutely accurate in operation, can reproduce all the endlessly varying conditions of the bombing range, but the bomb dropping teacher is a most valuable introduction to actual bombing practice and a tremendous saver of bombing range time, though it gives always ideal conditions, no bumps, silence, and unhampered concentration, and visibility without one wisp of cloud.

COURSES OF STUDY.
Flying and bombing are backed by study, study, and more study—navigation, airmanship, signals, photography, Air Force law, discipline, and administration.

Navigation, a difficult art before it left ship deck and went into the air, involves study of instruments, navigation, some meteorology, maps and charts, and, always, mathematics.

Armaments lectures and practice cover all types of guns and munitions, the theory of stoppages and dismantling of various weapons. Camera guns determine accuracy beyond argument in air practice.

"Airmanship" is comprehensive in the extreme, dealing with such widely differing subjects as the rules of the air, signals, the theory of flight, the work of various officers on the station and in service flying, the object of formation flying, and reasons for air manoeuvres, the effects of high altitude upon craft and its physical effects upon the crew, medical considerations arising from service flying, the qualities of a leader, etc.

The parachute section, in addition to maintaining the parachutes, instructs in their handling. "Rigging and engines" embraces the theory of engine and flying controls, the purpose and usage of flaps, the retractable undercarriage, trimming tabs; the carburettor and supercharger; a hundred engine items come in along the list.

Eight words a minute on the buzzer are required of a pupil after his signal course and six words a minute on the Aldis lamp. In advanced training instruction in the use of radio is given in the air. And those lectures, studies, and courses—and there are more besides— explain why, from the boundary of the station, so little seems to happen on days when clouds hang low and no flying is done. On those days the 300 men now at Ohakea might seem to be in bed, waiting for the sky to lift; but far from it in fact: they are building the foundation, on the ground, in workshops, lecture rooms, and special equipment and study sections, from which Air Force success begins.


The A.M.L. bombing trainer, with which the art of bomb-drop ping is practised indoors.


Part of the cooking equipment in the kitchens of the Ohakea station.


An impressive view of the big hangars at Ohakea