Exploding Teacakes

'The teacakes disintegrated explosively and bits of chocolate and shredded marshmallow splattered all over the windscreens and instruments panels'

Since my V Bomber days in the early 1960s, when crews were thought to need extra sustenance to keep them going during the rigours of high-altitude flying, I had been used to the facilities of aircrew restaurants. I lived in the Officers’ Messes so I always availed myself of a full cooked breakfast before going to work. On flying days Mess breakfast was followed at about 10am by another ‘full fry’ in the Greasy Spoon, our name for the aircrew restaurant. We always took with us into the air a large box of in-flight rations which usually consisted of well-filled sandwiches various, chocolate bars of our own choice, crisps and fruit. We also carried a large flask filled with coffee or tea as we wished. After a typical five-hour sortie we usually had another two or three course cooked meal in the aircrew restaurant and then, if one was quick and the flight de-briefing was short, the livers-in could race to the Officers Mess in time for a late afternoon tea of toast and preserves before showering, changing and reporting to the Mess dining room for the normal three or four course dinner.

At one stage delicious chocolate marshmallows wrapped in silver foil became all the rage and most crews asked for a supply to be included in their in-flight rations box. Soon, these items of desire, often called chocolate teacakes, became the subjects of some rather unscientific in-flight experiments.

In normal peacetime flying conditions the crew cabin in the Valiants and Victors was pressurised to maintain the equivalent of about 8,000 feet even though the aircraft was actually flying at well in excess of 40,000 feet. This made for a comfortable working environment and there was no need for the crew to keep an oxygen mask clamped to their face. In combat conditions the cabin pressure inside the V-Bombers would have been maintained at a much lower level, the equivalent of 25,000 feet, which did require oxygen masks to be worn. The reason for this was that if the aircraft cabin was punctured due to enemy action, the subsequent explosive decompression from 25,000 feet to the real altitude of upwards of 40,000 feet would be much less traumatic than a decompression from 8,000 feet.

Since Gaydon was a training station, new crews had to practice the procedures for flying with a cabin altitude of 25,000 feet. It was uncomfortable, cold and unpopular. During one of these practices someone noticed that as the cabin pressure reduced, the marshmallow inside the chocolate shell expanded sufficiently to crack the chocolate. A fair percentage of the bulk of marshmallow is, of course, made up of air bubbles trapped within the gelatinous mass. Word quickly spread and this discovery kept crews fascinated for several days. Marshmallows were stripped of their silver foil coverings and laid out on various flat surfaces in the cabin. Notes were kept and tables were constructed to show which brand of chocolate marshmallow was the most resistant to reducing air pressure. Some aircrew discovered that the expansion was so great that they could no longer put the whole chocolate teacake into their mouth in one piece. The taste, however, appeared to be unaffected!

It was inevitable that sooner or later someone would take a batch of chocolate teacakes with them on a sortie which involved a deliberate complete depressurisation of the cabin. That ‘someone’ was one of the more mature instructor captains. Emergency decompression was a drill that was practised on training sorties when the aircraft was flying at or above 40,000 feet. The student captain of the aircraft was required to initiate an immediate emergency descent to a more hospitable altitude. It was always an exciting manoeuvre which sometimes had an alarming effect on one’s stomach and intestines as internal body gases rapidly expanded. On the occasion in question as soon as the instructor captain operated the switch to depressurise the cabin there was the expected loud bang and the cabin, as usual, filled with icy cold vapour. The instructor had completely forgotten about the marshmallows on the windscreen ledge above the instrument panels. They disintegrated explosively and bits of chocolate and shredded marshmallow splattered all over the windscreens and instrument panels. This rather distracted the pilots from the immediate emergency actions they were supposed to take for aircraft and aircrew safety and so thereafter marshmallows were banned.

Security considerations and the need-to-know principle prevented me from making a news story out of these experiments – until now.

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