"As you know, the first thing is to get the cockpit-drill spot on," explained F/Lt Hopgood. "You'll find it's rather different to the Manchester." 'Hoppy', as he was known, had done a few hours on the Mitchell in the eval unit, and, since the Group's HCU hadn't got going yet, was giving the other 106 Sqn pilots their introduction to the type. The fact that the Squadron effectively had a single instructor to train them didn't much matter, as the bombers weren't arriving particularly quickly either; and with the inevitable maintenance troubles of a new aircraft, it would take some time before the Squadron's equipped strength was enough to begin operations. In the meantime, un-'converted' crews would continue to fly their Manchesters on raids, albeit with some reluctance due to that type's continued difficulties.
Today, however, Hopgood was 'converting' his CO. W/Cdr Gibson had started the war on Hampdens, then done a tour on night-fighters which was truncated when Bomber Command needed experienced crews; the delays to the Spitfire V had meant that the Germans still held hopes of successful day attacks, and had not been pressing very hard by night. Meanwhile, the bomber force was undergoing rapid expansion — admittedly, mainly with Wellingtons, but it was hoped that soon the heavy bomber production lines would swing into action, and Bomber Command would have a corpus of hardened crews ready to spearhead the new bombing offensive.
"There are four sets of engine controls," Hopgood continued, "which are all grouped together here as you see. The flight-engineer has most of the corresponding instruments, but there are RPM repeaters to the right of the Sperry panel. Of course you've handled radials before, but it's only too easy to get confused if you switch back and forth between Manchester and Mitch."
"Guess I'll trust my flight-engineer to keep that straight," joked Gibson. "Where are the trim controls?"
"Right here, sir, behind the throttles. Except for some reason," added Hopgood, "the rudder trim isn't with them; it's on the bottom of the panel here. Rather awkward actually as the yoke gets in the way."
The two pilots went on to discuss such technicalities as flap settings, cruising speeds and fuel system layout. After the theoretical portion of the lesson was completed, it was time to turn to the practical, and Hopgood began the start-up checks.
A few minutes later, the big bomber was taxying out to the runway. The flight-engineer called over the R/T, "Hullo Control, F-Fox requesting take-off clearance — over." "Go ahead F-Fox" came the reply. The Mitchell turned onto the runway, ran up its engines, and released the brakes.
"She'll try to swing to port as the tail comes up," said Hopgood, his hands gripping the control column tightly, "but that's easily checked. Call out when we hit 110 knots, please." On reaching the specified figure, he brought the nose up — the flap improvements had lowered the take-off speed — and the aircraft left the ground. With the engines brought back to climbing revs., the undercarriage and flaps raised, the Mitch was now moving smoothly through the air with little vibration — not exactly comfortable, but as near as can be expected from a combat aircraft.
Hopgood demonstrated several tasks such as feathering an engine, 'ditching' the aircraft (in a flat stretch of cloud at 4,000ft), and the Mitch's particular variant of the '5 Group corkscrew' evasive manœuvre, before heading back to join the circuit at Coningsby.
"F-Fox cleared to land," came the call from Control. With thirty degrees of flap, the airspeed dropped to 150 at a moderate sink rate. The undercarriage was lowered as the bomber turned onto the runway heading; two green lights proclaimed both wheels to be locked down. The flight-engineer called out the airspeeds as the aircraft approached the runway, in a flattish glide and with the nose quite high. Hopgood's face beaded with sweat as he struggled to keep the heavy bomber in balance, until at last they cut the throttles and bumped down just beyond the threshold, coming to a stop after about a thousand-yard runout.
"There," Hopgood grinned, "now you have a try."
A Miles Mentor communications aircraft touched down and taxied round to the control tower. The passenger, AVM John Slessor, being somewhat lame was helped down from the aircraft by a nearby serviceman; meanwhile the wingco's car drove up to meet him. After the customary exchange of salutes, Slessor and Gibson got straight down to business.
"How are you finding your new aircraft?" asked the AOC.
"Rather decent for the most part," answered Gibson, "but, of course, we have had our snags. The main one is this business of the bomb-release gear. Apparently there's some electrical issue, because if you have the engines running, the moment you switch the ground-flight switch to 'flight' all the contacts open. F/Sgt Loftus was rather surprised when his load of practice bombs fell onto the tarmac!"
"Sounds most eventful. I trust a solution is being worked on?" said Slessor.
"Yes; the trouble's been traced to noise from the alternator, and a couple of erks have bodged up a choke fitting. We're testing it this afternoon."
The AOC asked if there were any other issues, and Gibson mentioned a problem that had shown up when practising escape drill. "If the bomb-aimer isn't careful, he bangs his head on something on his way out of the nose — it's just a bit too cluttered down there."
The conversation turned to the overall qualities of the Mitchell, Gibson opining that it was "a real pilot's dream to fly," though adding that they hadn't yet done any night-flying in the type. "We've got a cross-country pencilled in for tomorrow night, though," he continued.
"Good, because I want at least one flight operational within a fortnight," Slessor replied. "Pierse wants to get all the heavies in action, says really serious tonnage of bombs will silence Bomber Command's critics. You should hear what he says about 3 Group when they can't put up more than a dozen Stirlings."
Though the bomb-release had been fixed (the choke proving successful), the stream of issues had, of course, continued. The night cross-country exercises had exposed an unexpected problem: the long parallel windows along the sides of the cockpit produced an endless series of reflections from the navigator's working light, impairing the pilot's vision. The curtain intended to cordon off the navigator's station failed to prevent this, as it only blocked the light from shining directly at the pilot, leaving the nav's window open for observations. To fully resolve the problem, it would be necessary to practically split the cockpit into two sections, rather than being glazed all the way along; this had been communicated back to Supermarine's for consideration in the B Mk. II development. In the meantime, extra (non-openable) curtains were added around the nav's station, producing an 'office' with no view outside; if he wanted to check up on the bomb-aimer's map-reading, the navigator would have to 'pop outside' to reach a window.
However, despite the difficulties, the 106 Sqn crews were optimistic about their new aircraft. After all, despite being brand new and untried, they were already causing fewer hassles than the Avro Manchesters they were due to replace. The ground crews, too, were finding that the rugged air-cooled Hercules was a welcome change from the temperamental Vulture, and maintenance of the airframe was just as straightforward as it had been with the Avro type. Some other parts of the equipment, though, were causing nuisances, particularly the defensive armament: the rear-turret had a tendency to jam after any particularly hard landing, due to a ball-race jumping its groove, while the waist guns tended to freeze up at altitude unless carefully wiped free of oil before take-off. It was hoped that an electrical heating system might be devised to deal with the latter problem, but the turret would need a re-design — until an improved unit could be fitted, the erks would be kept busy with a 'turret job' for every few sorties dispatched.
All things considered, the Service introduction of the Mitchell B Mk. I was proving to be neither especially smooth nor excessively troublesome; just another new type for the RAF to learn to operate.
But no battle plan, as the saying goes, survives contact with the enemy. The ultimate test of the new bomber was about to begin.
Aircraft Readiness Report 5 Group (extract), 10/8/41
No. 106 Sqn.
Manchester: of 12 IE + 6 IR, 10 offered for tonight
Mitchell: of 6 IE, 4 offered for tonight
106 Squadron Order of Battle, night of 10-11 August 1941
To attack oil targets in Hannover, target area G:
A-Apple, F/O Stoffer
C-Charlie *, P/O Ambleton
H-Howe, F/Sgt Cooper
L-Leather, F/Sgt Shaw
N-Nuts, P/O Smith
O-Orange, F/Lt Wooldridge
Q-Queenie, F/Sgt Ullason
Z-Zebra, F/O Worswick
To attack marshalling yards in Hamm, target area B:
B-Beer, F/Sgt Walker
D-Dog *, W/Cdr Gibson
F-Freddie *, F/O Kershaw
P-Peter, F/Sgt Jameson
Y-Yankee *, F/Sgt Loftus
Withdrawn J-Johnnie u/s engine failure.
An asterisk * indicates Mitchell; other a/c are Manchester