Reflections — CAC Wirraway

We had it drummed into us during the pre-flight briefing phase that to use an aileron to pick up a wing drop during the hold off was a good way to return to Civvy Street. Opposite rudder was the cry, however the same amount of rudder if the wheel was on the ground. You had to be mighty fast with your thinking and your foot work to sort it out.

I can’t recall having a great deal of trouble in landing the Wirraway; the secret was not to hold off too high as this was inviting trouble. The only time | was involved in a ground loop occurred when my instructor was flying the aircraft. We had had slight trouble with the hydraulics and he decided that it would be best if he did the landing. The aircraft we were flying had wooden blocks fitted to the rudder pedals in the rear cockpit to improve the pedal adjustment throw. Needless to say my instructor screwed up the landing, lost control because of the wooden blocks (his story) and we did a monumental ground loop. The aircraft spun so fast that we turned through about 450 degrees and ended rolling backwards down the strip. The tyres were rolled off the wheels sufficiently to pick up bitumen on the wheel trim disks -from the sealing on the runway. The aircraft remained dead level throughout the manoeuvre and never showed the slightest sign of dropping a wing. Thinking about it over the years | came to realise that what had saved us was spinning so fast that we lost traction. It was just the same as when experts spin a car; they make certain that the tyres lose their grip, otherwise they would roll over.

Arealtrap for novice aviators in the Wirraway was the hydraulic system. The service required the undercarriage to be first selected by it’s control and then lowered by pressing a hydraulic power control button with your left elbow. One normally selected flaps after the undercarriage had been lowered and then lowered them as required on finals just by pressing the power button. The trap lay in having the flaps selected and then having to overshoot.

If you selected undercarriage up and hit the power button, the undercarriage would start to retract followed rapidly by full flap. In the ensuing confusion most people took their elbow off the power button which left the undercarriage half retracted; atthe same time, if full throttle hadn’t been applied the throttle would be left unattended! | only did it once. As we passed through the dangerous phase of a 100 hours or s0 we knew we were good and wanted to show off our newly learnt skills. Someone on course devised a scheme whereby if you were flying solo you would head for the You Yangs mountain range and look for another Wirraway to joust with. Having found one you would drop your undercarriage to indicate you were solo and, if you received the answering lowering of the gear, proceed to dogfight. Inevitably the instructors found out about our escapades and a student was duly set-up.

Threats of ‘off course’ put paid to any further unofficial displays of flying prowess. Human nature doesn’t change over the years. One chap pulled off a successful genuine forced landing on a racecourse during a cross-country and became the hero of the course. Shortly after we had a copycat forced landing followed by another which wasn’t successful and resulted in the only fatality of the course. Needless to say, cross-country forced landings ceased after that. We did some of our night flying at Laverton to ease the strain onthe Point Cook circuit. My father was an Engineer Officer with No. 1 Aircraft Depot at Laverton at the time and knew that | was flying one particular night. He duly made his way to the control van to proudly watch our efforts. The duty instructorin conversation volunteered that the aircraft on finals was being flown by a young Navy trainee by the name of Lee and that if he didn’t improve his approaches, he would probably write himself off. Dad was decent enough not to let on.

I must confess to some difficulty with instrument flying in the Wirraway, which | blame in retrospect on the very poor standard of instruction. | coped, but it left me with a distaste for instrument flying which took some time to overcome. Trying to do an instrument takeoff with the directional gyro caged didn’t help; it didn’t do much for the tower crew either who thought their last days had come as we often headed straight for them.

The Wirraway phase finally came to an end and we moved on to Oxfords, but it was not to be the end of my association with this splendid training aircraft. Following our post-graduate course in the United Kingdom, we joined our new squadrons at NAS Nowra. At that time Nowra had a number of Wirraways which were used for refresher flying and, since we hadn’t flown for six months, my CO decided to give us a check in the Wirraway. It was an exciting ride. | don’t think he had flown the aircraft from the back seat before and he underestimated the difficulty. After a few hairy attempts at demonstrating how to land, he quietly left me to get on with it.

My next encounter with the Wirraway was at Tocumwal where my father was now CO. When on leave | drew his attention to an ‘N’ order which stated that CO’s could authorise Navy pilots to fly RAAF aircraft if they were qualified on type. | persuaded him that | could provide a useful service by flying his category ‘B” aircraft (which had to be flown once a month). This would save getting a pilot up from Laverton. Tocumwal at that time was just a holding depot for aircraft and had no air traffic control or other services; it had three great flat strips. All went well as | enjoyed my busman’s holiday – it was great fun shooing the sheep off the runway and then just flying as | pleased.

Unfortunately, like all good things in life, it couldn’t last. In the Wirraway the rear control column had to be removed for solo flying. Sure enough, when carrying out a pre-flight inspection on an aircraft that had been signed up as serviceable to fly, | discovered the rear cockpit fire extinguisher sticking out of the control yoke. This could have been fatal and had to be reported. The outcome was that | had to give evidence at my father’s investigation of the matter, which was an embarrassment to us all as it was as mall community run in similar fashion to the ‘small ships’ in the Navy. Thus ended a happy period of flying. My final encounter with the Wirraway was at East Sale where | did my flying instructor’s course. We stretched the aircraft a bit more than we had been used toin the past but as usual it responded well to our ‘mishandling’. My most vivid recollection s of trying to demonstrate a landing from the back seat at night with a crosswind from the left. You could barely see the runway at the best of times at night as you were holding off, but this was almost pure guess work, instinct and survival rolled into one.

At this time (1957), the aircraft had been in service for almost twenty years, however someone in authority decided that it was about time something was done about the tendency to drop a wing on landing. It was decided to attempt to make the wing rootstall before it tip stalled by fitting wedges to the leading edge. The wedges were simplya piece of aluminium angle about a foot long which were taped to the wing. We would fly the aircraft and report back on any improvement to its wing dropping tendency and when the optimum position had been determined the wedges were rivetted in place. | can honestly say that | couldr’t really note much difference, but then I never really experienced the problem!

We did some gunnery and bombing which was quite exciting as we were using that dreadful device, the telescopic sight. If ever there was a piece of equipment designed to make you fly the aircraft into the ground this was it. The US Navy lost a numberof aircraft before the Second World War through pilots concentrating on the target, without outside reference, and recovering too

late. However, we all survived. Our fellow RAAF trainee instructors had come mainly from an experimental all-through jet course and they didn’t take kindly to having to slum it in Wirraways, or to even being on the course for that matter. However | think they came to appreciate the Wirraway’’s finer points in the end.

In summary, | believe the Wirraway was an excellent advanced trainer that wouldn’t be out of place today. The argument is not dissimilar to advocating sail training for modern mariners. You learn the pure aspects of your craft and if you can master your learning vehicle, you can cope with anything.

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