it a thousand times up north and I had plenty of clearance between me and the concealed tops of the mountain range below. How wrong I was! I shoved the Harvard’s nose into the cloud and the next moment found myself more or less upside down, feeling that some great hammer had hit the underside of my wings. Those cumulus formations were in no way like those at Gwelo and were in no way to be treated lightly. Not being either brave or foolhardy, I turned back, landed again at Capetown, and found Dunford had experienced the same problem. That was June 28th. We failed to get away until the weather cleared on July 2nd. I had been told to take two days over the journey home, for this was a much longer flight than that from Durban, but in spite of a not-too-early start I was determined to do it in one day. The first leg was to Beaufort West, where for some reason I landed after a flight of 1 hour 20 minutes. Then it was on to the next stop in another 1 hour 30 minutes, with the great landmark of the black conical hole of the world-famous diamond mine making it unmistakably Kimberley. From there it was across the Orange Free State and on to Zwartkop, back on familiar ground. That leg was another 1 hour 40 minutes and it was getting on in the afternoon, so that I was urged to stay overnight. But I knew the last leg of the route like the back of my hand, and headed north up the railway line, to the gap in the hills, the crossing of the Limpopo just west of where it is joined by the Shashi River, and then the green flat top of the Doro Plateau. It was fast getting dark, and in those latitudes twilight is short, but I had carefully checked my compass course up to that point and I knew that there would be night flying going on, with a welcoming flarepath at Thornhill. So I finished the flight in the dark, with a leg of 2 hours 35 minutes, which made it a total of 7 hours 5 minutes flying time from Capetown to Gwelo. It was the first Mark III Harvard to reach the Colony.


One of the airborne pleasures out there was night aerobatics. On the darkest night there were always the lights of Gwelo town to give a horizon either in front of you for a roll or behind you for a loop or a roll off the top of a loop. Pupils used to enjoy it and it impressed them no end! My friend Terrill and I did quite a lot of night flying formation with each other. We would do a night cross-country down to Bulawayo and back, flying – literally and without exaggeration – with little more than six inches between one leading edge and one trailing edge of our respective wings, and with illumination provided by no more than our navigation lights on the wingtips.


My time at Thornhill was fast coming to an end, for I had been promised only two years out there, and that would be up in the first days of October 1943. I badly wanted to get home to the family, to see my wife and my small son John whose babyhood I had lost out on. So, in good time, I asked for my transfer back to the UK. It was in vain. I was told in succinct terms that they intended to keep me there – I was an experienced and valuable instructor and they were not going to lose me. I think by this time I was a good instructor, too, and by


81


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