First Solo - Tony Cunnane's Life and Times

The course at South Cerney lasted just four weeks and in that time we had to cram 30 hours flying, including at least 5 hours solo flying. There was no night  flying, no instrument flying and no formation flying. Flying students always keep tabs on their fellows to see who goes solo first and who does it in the fewest number of hours.

My first solo, on the 6th flying day of the course was delayed by one flight because I made a basic error. Having made several pretty good circuits, approaches and touch and go landings on the grass airstrip, my instructor told me that if I did one more  good circuit he would then send me solo.

The final approach was going well but I started to go a little too low on the ideal path. I still made a good landing and I taxied the aircraft back to the parking area near the Air Traffic Control Tower.

"You went a little low on the final approach," said Flight Lieutenant Snell.

"Yes sir, but I got back OK," I replied.

"Tell me, Tony, how do you control the rate of descent on final approach? With the throttle or with the elevators?"

I hesitated and then gave the wrong answer.

"Wrong," said my instructor, somewhat wearily I thought. "Just now when you went low the first thing you did was to pull the nose up."

"But I was a little fast - I had some speed in hand so it was safe – wasn’t it"

"You’ve forgotten what I’ve drummed into you. You control the rate of descent with throttle and the speed with the elevators. If you are low on finals and you pull the nose up, as you just did, without first increasing power, the speed will  fall away and you'll be in danger of stalling. Remember: when you pull the nose up that immediately increases the drag and the speed will wash off quickly."

each other out - but I thought better of it. He made me fly another one hour sortie of circuits and landings with him before he sent me off for an uneventful but immensely satisfying solo flight. (See image above. Click on it to pop up a full age of my log book.)

I had cause to remember that lesson many times in subsequent years when I was a flying instructor myself and again when I had to land a Victor tanker at its minimum safe speed on an extremely short runway at Catterick, carefully controlling the rate of descent with four large throttles. (See this page)

On the penultimate afternoon of the South Cerney course, when I had completed all the syllabus solo lessons, I asked the flight commander if I could have one more solo trip just for pleasure. It was late in the afternoon of 22 March and to my surprise he said yes. It was a beautifully clear day with unlimited visibility. I was given a triangular navigation route to fly maintaining 500 feet above the ground. It went from South Cerney, north-west to Gloucester, then south-west to Newport, and finally back across the Bristol Channel in a straight line to South Cerney. I was told to report my position to South Cerney ATC at each turning point.

As I taxied out for take off, I noticed that all the other aircraft had been put back in the hangar for the night and I could see the rest of my course watching me. We always watched each other when we went off solo. I took off just after 4pm and set course for Gloucester. In those days there was no radar: the only navigation aid we had was the VHF radio – we could ask for true bearings from base, or magnetic headings to steer to reach base, if we needed them. We had no means of measuring distance flown so we had to rely on our pre-flight planning. However the visibility was so good that I did not need any radio aids and, in any case, Gloucester Cathedral stuck out clearly on the horizon. As I turned left at Gloucester, setting course for Newport in South Wales, I transmitted my position to ATC at South Cerney but did not receive an acknowledgement. I thought perhaps that South Cerney was out of VHF radio range since I was flying at only 500 feet. After a couple more tries I thought of calling RAF Kemble or even RAF St Athan but that would have involved looking up their radio frequencies so I decided against it and concentrated instead on my navigation.

It was not quite so easy to find Newport because the horizontal visibility had steadily decreased due to thick smog coming in on the westerly wind from the South Wales steel works. With more experience I might have climbed another 500 feet to get above the smog but instead I ploughed on, thoroughly enjoying myself. After the planned number of minutes, when I should have been overhead Newport, there was nothing recognisable – apart from the vast expanse of the Bristol Channel out to my left. I called South Cerney again and asked for a steer to check my position but got no reply. I turned left anyway on the planned time and set off on the pre-planned heading towards South Cerney.

I was beginning to get a little worried when I still could not get a reply on the radio. The ground underneath bore little resemblance to the ground marked on my map. I started looking for Cirencester – I knew the way to base from there OK. Suddenly South Cerney ATC called me and asked me where I was. I said, hopefully, that I was about 20 miles from base. The Controller came back and said, "Sorry we went off the air. The ground servicing folk thought all the aircraft had landed so they switched all the radios off. Call again when you have the airfield in sight."

It was a long 20 miles at a ground speed of about 75 knots but eventually the familiar landmarks around South Cerney came into view and I landed safely only about 10 minutes later than planned. No-one asked me where I had been – all the instructors and my fellow students had been in the Officers Mess bar for quite a while. When I joined them in the bar, I told my instructor that I’d had a really enjoyable time and I thanked the flight commander for giving me that one extra sortie. I didn’t mention that I hadn’t seen Newport. No-one ever mentioned the fact that ATC had gone off the air while I was still airborne and I did not see the need to tell anyone about that nor make any complaint.

We left South Cerney the following day at the end of the course. We had all passed and we met up again a few weeks later at RAF Leeming, No 3 Flying Training School in North Yorkshire.

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