The things you get up to as a boy recruit - how I was not court marshaled I'll never know

Woodbourne TTS 1957

For our second year we were sent to the respective TTS’s [Trade Training Schools]. The Engine and Airframe trades were taught at 4 TTS Woodbourne.

We were joined by five Adult Entry blokes who joined at the age of 18, without the year of BS. We’d just had.

As second year boys we were moved to a different barrack block, but still had to maintain the high degree of shine we had learned last year.

The Base is split in two by the main road from Blenheim to Nelson, and as there wasn’t a train that went between the two cities, all produce had to go by road.

There is a straight road from the outskirts of Blenheim for at least 7 miles, towards Renwick, a small dormitory village, and later to Nelson.

Woodbourne is 5 miles down that road, with a pedestrian crossing between the two halves of the camp.

The game began when we could hear a heavily loaded truck start to wind up through the gears, it seemed like about eighteen of them, as he pounded down the road, coming out of Blenheim.

We would try and time our crossing between sides of the camp, marching in our flights of 20, to coincide with the trucks approach, hear him quickly wind down through the gears again to help braking, hear our parentage yelled to us out of his open window, and hear him winding up through the gears again as he continued to Nelson.

We started our training with all the hand tools of a large workshop, files, hack saws, drills, lathes, welding etc. After two or three months we were given a piece of flat steel, six and a half inches long by two inches wide and one inch thick,

With this came a drawing that showed a U shape and a T shape to be cut out of the supplied block. Filed to size so that the T could be fitted into the middle of the U with any part, rotated both ways, and to top it off, two studs drilled and tapped into the top of the U so they would fit the holes in the top of the T.

Each side of the U was 1”, the gap was 1” and each part of the T was 1”. Because the steel was ‘flat rolled’ and could be slightly off size, we weren’t punished for errors in thickness, but it still had to fit sideways as well.

We were allowed .010” [ten thousandths of an inch. One hair is approx. 2 and half to 3 thousandths of an inch thick], and any deviation cost a point per .001”over our tolerance, we needed 75% to pass.

We were then moved to a different part of the hanger, split into fives, each group was given a wooden box.

When we got the lid off the box we found it was filled with grease. Inside the grease was a De Havilland Gipsy Engine.

We managed to get the engine onto its stand, had a quick course on how to use a Kerrick Steam Cleaner to remove all the grease, and start our (to us) real training.

We progressively stripped the engine to its last nut and bolt, examined everything and slowly put it all back together. As we did, the instructors would teach us about each portion, how it was made, how to repair it, where applicable, and what its job was to make the engine run.

When we got to magnetos,[a small generator that makes the sparks that ignite the fuel inside the engine] we found it paid never to be on the end of a line of boys, with their hands on your bare skin.

The record we managed was 18 boys in a line. And did he jump when no. 1 spun the magneto! [the spark travels through the body onto the next one and so on, the last guy wears it all].

I also found that the Drill Instructor there wasn’t a man of his word. During one weekly parade he passed comment on my hair length, “Get a haircut, or get a fiddle.”

At this time if you could reach behind the middle of your ear, grab hair between your thumb and finger, you needed a haircut.

Finance was a little tight, so next week I paraded with a fiddle. I thought he would explode, and I spent a week polishing the floors in the Base Medical Center every evening for my troubles.

One of the instructors had been in the RNZAF and reached retirement age. He had been rehired as an instructor on the Gypsy Engine.

We also learned that his old motorbike had a removable head, in his youth he had skimmed the head so the piston barely cleared it when rotating, this increased the compression ratio to more than the manufactures had ever dreamed possible.

He then took it for its test run down an unused road, wound the throttle open and let it go.

He claimed that the speed was making his eyes water so bad he couldn’t see the speedo but it was defiantly much faster than he had ever been before.

The next thing he remembered was waking up on the side of the road, a great feeling of pain. Ensuring he checked the family jewels for safety, and finding that they were still there, sat up and looked around.

The head had cracked off the cylinder, bent the frame of the motorbike, hit the rear of the fuel tank and lifted him off into an arc that carried him through the air to land on his back on the verge of the road.

He left the bike where it was and did the most painful walk home he ever did.

He also told us about flying over a lake near Christchurch, in a Tiger Moth, chasing ducks and geese in flight. Often upside down as well.

We always found his stories far more interesting that the stuff he was supposed to teach us.

The highlight of the course was at the end when we took the engines we had stripped and re-assembled and fitted them into a Tiger Moth, fitted the propeller, and hand swung them to start.

What a miracle, ours started on the second swing!

The Tiger Moth was reaching the end of its RNZAF career. Most had been sold or given to various people/clubs in NZ. To us it was still a real aeroplane, the first that we could work on.

We then were taught “how to marshal aircraft” using a Harvard [Texan to the Americans].

This being a single engine, tail wheel aircraft, meaning the pilot can’t see anything in front of him.

He has about a 30 to 45 degree blind spot. He would only move when he could see the marshaler and stop the second we disappeared from view.

Of course we had never been in a Harvard before so we didn’t realize his problem. Fortunately the engine was too loud for him or the instructor to hear what was said, when he stopped and wouldn’t move no matter how hard we waved, until we moved back into his sight again.

During our second year we still weren’t allowed to own cars/bikes and still restricted to when we were allowed to leave Base - every second Friday 6.30 until 11 pm, and alternate Saturday nights 6.30 until 11 pm.

We were checked out and checked back in again, woe betide anybody that was late.

This made going to the dances [old fashioned, waltzes, foxtrots , where you actually got to hold a girl] a bit of a challenge.

How to chat up a girl, get her to leave the dance early so you could walk her home, and race back to the drop off point for the truck before it left.

During the second world war the RNZAF had bought/confiscated/acquired anything with wings to build up its force, most of these came from the aero clubs of the day.

To repay this, the Government had a system where they would refund/pay 100 pound [$200] after you got your Private Pilot’s License, average cost two fifty to three hundred pound $[500 – 600].

This also meant that you were allowed to leave base and go to Omakea, a small private airfield close to Blenheim.

There was almost 100% take up on the offer. Any excuse to get off base, and learn to fly as well as getting almost half the cost back. What 17 year old could turn that offer down?

We learned in the 4 Tiger Moths the aero club had, and it was great fun.

After about 7 hours dual, the Instructor stepped out and said “ Go and do a couple of circuits”. It is just as well Mum no longer did my washing.

At this time small bottles of Coca cola were not available in the north of the South Island, apart from Omaka.

image source

As a way to build up our flying hours, I vaguely remember we needed about 50 hours for PPL, we would take it in turns to fly a Tiger Moth across Cook Straight to Wellington.

Land there, taxi up to the Government Hanger, unload the empties, refill the front seat with fresh crates of coke, takeoff and fly back to Omaka.

On the map it doesn’t look far, but when you are all alone, with only one engine, and can’t swim, it seemed to take forever to do that half hour flight over the water.

Just waiting for the engine to miss a beat, cough or run rough. Fortunately on my trips everything went like clockwork.

At the end of the year we had all gone solo, most of us had our PPL, and the first year boys were in their tented camp in Rainbow Valley.

At dawn everything we could fly, there were some other aircraft there was well as the Tiger, but I have forgotten what, took off, loaded with small brown paper bags of flour, and a bomb aimer.

The paper bag was strong enough to handle carefully, but after plummeting 2 to 3 hundred feet, they would split wide open, spreading nice white flour.

It was hard to target a particular individual, like last year’s drill instructors, but we sure tried.

Back to Omaka, back to Woodbourne, back to classes, “Us, No Sir, we wouldn’t do a thing like that.” We have been here all the time.” They knew but let us get away with it.

One of the raritys the School had acquired was a propeller from an Australian Harvard. The Harvard could be armed with a .303” machine gun in the wing and another in the fuselage, firing through the propeller arc.

There is an interrupter system that is supposed to stop the gun firing when the blade of the propeller passes in front of the barrel.

This one didn’t, there was a hole in each blade of the propeller. The damage was dressed [smoothed] out and according to the damage limits, was serviceable [safe] to fly.

They did. Apparently the holes made such a whistle it was like a jet engine at full throttle [flat out].

We were allowed to own our own rifles, but they had to be kept locked up in the armory. We were allowed to draw them out on Friday afternoon and return them on Monday morning.

There wasn’t usually a roll call in the weekend days, so you could take the risk and go rabbit shooting in a dry river bed about five minutes’ walk from base.

The rules were strange, we could have rifles, but we couldn’t have them in the Boy Entrant dorms. This is where the Adult Entry guys were handy, they could have rifles in their dorm.

There were five of them living in a twenty man dorm, the other beds and mattresses were in the room, unused.

They also owned rifles of their own, [some of them had two]. There was a wide range, ranging from the usual .22” long rifle, to a couple that would have stopped an elephant (about .5”).

One of them had two triggers. The front one set the second trigger to a ‘hair trigger’ state. The slightest touch was enough to set it off.

They always argued whos rifle was the best. The easiest way we thought, was to line all the spare mattress up on end, at one end of the dorm. Stand in the doorway and shoot.

There were enough mattresses to stop the bullets reaching the wooden walls fortunately.

How we would explain a borer hole that size I don’t know. The big cannon was the winner.

These guys could own cars as well. They quickly became our best buddies, especially if you were trying to court a girl.

Some of the older cars had a footstep to make entering the car easier. Just before 11 pm there would be a couple of these old cars, fully loaded internally, and half a dozen hanging on the outside, racing back to the barracks for roll call check in. We were better than the old keystone cops.

One of the early lessons was how to change gear. If you were in the middle of the bench seat, sometimes you, sometimes the driver would do the clutch bit, your job was the gear stick moving.

Alright going up the gears, but the old gearboxes needed a pause between leaving the old gear, a spurt on the throttle, engaging the new gear. [called double de-clutching at the time]

If the timing was out there were some horrible noises made by the gears trying to engage at the wrong speed/moment if done correctly it sounded sweet.