Reflections-Avro Lincoln

Our instruction naturally concentrated on asymmetric handling and the effects of the various engines being “out” in turn. At the same time, since we were to be entrusted with the machine by ourselves it was fairly important that we learn how to get it into the air and back down again.

We flew two pupils to an instructor and would swap over half way through the sortie. It was great fun when not under instruction to look out from the Nav hatch during upper air work, particularly during steep turns when the wings flexed noticeably.

We were taught to three-point the aircraft, which didn’t seem to present a problem. The only difficulty was coping with turbulence on finals when the slow aileron response could result in your winding the wheel from one stop to the other as your tried to keep the wings level.

Came the great day for us to go solo and the honour fell to me to go first, not that it really mattered as my fellow student had spent most of his service time as a second dickie in a Lincoln squadron. My final landing before going off solo was with No 1 engine-out, which is the worst case. Our instructor patted me on the back and said I could have a go by myself and to try and not bend it.

Now I had read about “The Long Fingered Switch Flicker” in flight safety magazines but as a mainly single-engine pilot I had never come across one. For those not in the know, this is the copilot who has his fingers constantly flicking around the cockpit, switching on this switch and altering that control. Suddenly I had one sitting alongside me. Because hehad spent so much time as a copilot in Lincolns I thought he knew what he was doing as he did the checks for takeoff, hands darting all over the place.

Digressing slightly, I came across another Long Fingered Switch Flicker many years later when flying a light with another club pilot when this chap thought he was doing me a favour by doing my cockpit checks for me. I explained that he had been very badly brought up and a good way to prang an aircraft was for nobody to know who was flying it, and that if he did it again I would break his fingers!

Back to the Lincoln. We duly lined up and I opened up to full power and let her roll. Suddenly, just as I got the tail up, the rudder bar swung hard over one way. I instinctively counteracted and kept the rudder central but it was no easy matter. It didn’t take too much thinking to work out what had happened; we still had asymmetric trim on for No 1 engine out on the approach With full chat on, things were getting rapidly worse as we accelerated down the strip. As I was doubtful about our ability to stop in the runway remaining, aborting the takeoff did not appear to be an option. There wasn’t time to tell my copilot what the problem was so with a frantic yell “your throttles”, I reached for the rudder trim and started winding it off as fast as I could go. To my relief, things started returning to normal as I got the trim off and we duly settled in the climb. The rest of the sortie was uneventful and I really enjoyed my short hour in command.

I found the aircraft relatively easy to fly, one just had to be aware of its size and consequent inertia. Fortunately we were flying the Mk 30 and not the Mk 31 “Long Nose”, which I gather was an experience, particularly at night. I suppose putting the thing in context, someone with almost 2,000 hours at the time should have found it easy when you think that Bomber Command pilots flew its predecessor, the Lancaster, almost straight off course, and at night under a great deal of pressure!

It is a truism of aviation that any fool can fly, it’s knowing what to do in an emergency that counts. I would add on top of this that in military flying, you must have a thorough understanding of how to use your aircraft as a weapon system. In our Lincoln flying we were certainly out of the tool category, and I hope we would have coped in an emergency; but we certainly didn’t know how to use the aircraft as a weapon system.

I enjoyed my short acquaintance with the Lincoln; as I said at the beginning I felt honoured to be allowed to fly the successor to the Lancaster.

The next aircraft is the Hawker Seahawk, my favourite of all