They Spread Their Wings (32 page)

Sunderland GR5, NJ272 ‘U’ of No 88 Squadron over the Malayan jungle during Operation Firedog, 1951. (V.M. Reeve via John Evans & Pembroke Dock Sunderland Trust)

No sooner had they returned to Seletar after op No 14 – with seventy-four hours on Firedog operations to Alan’s name – than Flt Lt Hunter was ordered to transit ML882 to China Bay, Trincomalee, in Ceylon to participate in Fleet Exercises. The twelve-hour transit flight was made on 5 August and soon Alan was engrossed in two weeks of radar interceptions and shadowing exercises with surface vessels from the Royal Navy and Royal Indian Navy. On 18 August they were back in Seletar, bringing a ‘new’ Sunderland, RN303, up to top line ready for Korean ops. There was a small, pleasurable diversion for Alan and his colleagues when, on 1 September 1951, they were part of the splendid sight of no fewer than nine Sunderlands in a formation flypast over Kallang, Singapore. Next day, with Alan in the crew, Flt Lt Hunter made the two-day, eighteen-hour transit to Iwakuni via Manilla in the Philippines.

The crew’s second phase of Korean ops began on 4 September 1951. On op No 22 Alan was signaller on the nine hour forty minute, dusk/night weather recco over the Yellow Sea. There was a little light relief when, nearing a US Navy carrier in the darkness, RN303 was intercepted and investigated by a jet night-fighter launched by the carrier. A few days later, while on op No 23 – an air surveillance patrol in the Tsushima Straits – they came across a suspected blockade runner. It was signalled visually to stop but seemed reluctant to oblige. Alan was told to man the front gun turret and fire across the bows of the vessel to encourage it to stop and, as he noted in his logbook: ‘He did!’ Op No 24 was a similar but uneventful eleven-hour patrol on the 9th, then it was another ‘all change’ and back to Seletar via Kai Tak for a spell of Firedog operations – no rest for the wicked!

Airborne at 09.00, Alan’s Firedog op No 15 was a nine-hour shipping recco patrol on 19 September that took ML882 up the Malayan coast as far as the Thai border with Indochina, then back to Seletar. Two days later, Firedog No 16 deposited 240 bombs and 6,000 rounds into an area of Bahau, but a little light relief was provided – literally – during the following evening when Alan helped man the bomb room of ML882, as the squadron put on an airborne pyrotechnics display, tossing out 4in flares and firing off assorted other pyrotechnics while flying over Singapore to mark its City Day celebrations.

Alan was allowed to let his gunnery skills have free rein over the jungle during October when Firedog ops 16 to 25 were flown, including one on the 20th when they took the Senior Air Staff Officer (SASO) from HQ Far East along for the ride. During these ten ops a total of 1,974 x 20lb HE was dropped and 43,000 rounds of. 303in and. 50in calibre ammunition were sprayed on the CTs during repeat visits to the Cherok, Raub and Fraser’s Hill areas – but it was rare indeed for the crew to detect any visual result of their efforts. In the middle of November 1951 it was back to Kai Tak, then a VIP ferry trip to Iwakuni, before going back on Korean ops with the joys of winter weather to look forward to.

Alan’s Korean op Nos 25 and 26 were quiet, ten-hour ASPs in the Tsushima Strait; No 27 was a night-time combined weather recco and ASP up the east coast of Korea, but again there was nothing of note to report. As November drew to a close, No 28 was a long, eleven-and-a-half-hour ASP sortie but it included providing an escort to three ‘chicks’ – a group of Army Co-operation Austers – making the over-water leg of a transit flight from Ashiya, near Osaka, to Pusan, South Korea. Alan’s final Korean op, No 29, came on 30 November 1951 as radar operator on an ASP and convoy escort which actually turned out to be his longest sortie to date: thirteen hours and ten minutes – perhaps accounted for by the terse comment ‘wrong convoy’ against his logbook entry.

On 2 December the crew returned to Seletar via Kai Tak with VIPs on board: Maj Gen K.F. Mackay-Lewis, Director of Royal Artillery at the War Office, and his entourage, who were returning from a tour of British Army artillery units in action in Korea. The crew of ML882 managed three weeks’ leave this month and also flew with a new skipper, Flt Lt Houtheuson, but there were only two Firedog ops – Nos 26 and 27 to Ipoh and Grik – completed on 29 and 31 December. Alan flew these as gunner and sigs/gunner respectively.

January 1952 opened with Flt Lt Hunter back in command of the crew of ML882, making its first night-time Firedog sortie with Wing Commander McKenzie going along for the ride. This was Alan’s FD op No 28, with the usual bombing and gunnery profile over a designated area, but this time the tracks were made as timed runs from vertical searchlights operated by troops on the ground. For a change, Alan was one of the bomb-handling ‘bods’ on this sortie and he manned a. 50in calibre on the next one: No 29 to Klawang on the 26th. In between these last sorties they had to make a seven-hour each way transport flight, carrying a football team from Seletar to Sandakan in Borneo – but he did not say how the match went! On 31 January Alan again helped to dispense bombs during Firedog No 30 to the Kuala Lipis area.

Whether there was a flap on is not clear but every day from 4 to 10 February, Flt Lt Hunter’s crew flew a Firedog operation. Nos 31 to 37 had Alan back at his signals desk while ML882 covered Klawang, Butterworth, Bentong, Telok Anson and Pahang in sorties lasting between four and seven hours and depositing the usual load of ordnance upon the heads of the CT. And then it was all over – at least as far as Alan and the Far East was concerned. On 9 March he flew out of Seletar for the last time, arriving in England on 11 April, at which point he took some well-earned leave before starting his next posting.

‘Zoom’ Summerson returned to England in April 1952 with the rank of master signaller and a total of 2,645 flying hours to his name. In addition to his seven operational sorties with about twelve combat hours total during the Second World War, Alan had flown twenty-nine Korean and thirty-nine Malayan Firedog operational sorties, with 341 hours and 234 hours respectively – a total of seventy-five operational sorties and 587 operational hours. He had also received a second Mention in Despatches, gazetted on 29 August 1952, for distinguished service during the Malayan campaign, to add to that awarded for his exploits in France. The Korean War ended in July 1953, by which time the three FEFBW squadrons had between them flown 1,100 operational sorties and 12,500 operational hours. The final Malayan Firedog sortie by RAF flying boats was flown on 17 September 1954, by which time 400 sorties had been completed, with No 88 Squadron having contributed 165 of these.

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In the period between June 1952 and November 1953 Alan was posted to No 1 Air Signallers School, based at RAF Swanton Morley, as a Radio and Radar Instructor. During this time he still had plenty of opportunity to increase his time in the air by accompanying signals students in the back of Avro Anson Mks XIX and XXII aircraft. Then, in February 1954 he was sent on a one-month course at No 1 Maritime Reconnaissance School at RAF St Mawgan. Here he studied the theory and practice of air-sea warfare related to his role as a signals and radar operator. The course included flights in Lancaster GR3s while practising sono-buoy attacks against a submarine in co-operation with surface escort vessels. At the end of this course Alan found himself back on Sunderlands with a posting to the Flying Boat Training Squadron in Pembroke Dock, where he was the signals leader. Three months later Alan was posted to No 201 Squadron – still on the Sunderland at Pembroke Dock – and for the next two years flew mainly navigation exercises and anti-sub exercises of all shapes, sizes and durations from Rockall to Malta and all points in between!

In May 1956 Alan Summerson’s rise through the RAF took another significant change of direction when he was selected for training as an officer cadet at RAF Jurby on the Isle of Man. He was 36 years old upon completion of his course in August of that year and commissioned as a pilot officer in the Air Signals Branch. Alan was now to begin a long association with jet bombers and his first posting was to No 232 Operational Conversion Unit (OCU) at RAF Gaydon, Warwickshire, to fly in the Vickers Valiant B1, the first of the RAF’s jet-engine V-bombers. At this unit he would acquire new skills in the field of air electronic systems that would become common with the advent of the new V-bomber force. It was here in October 1956 that ‘Zoom’ Summerson teamed up with Sqn Ldr Fallas and became a regular member of his crew. After completion of the conversion course Alan was posted, with Sqn Ldr Fallas, to No 7 Squadron at RAF Honington, where he flew regularly as an air electronics officer (AEO) in the latter’s crew, often in XD826, until June 1959.

Officer Cadet Alan Summerson stands ramrod-straight in the foreground on the end of the row, while inspected by HRH Duchess of Kent, RAF Jurby, Isle of Man, 1956. (John Summerson)

Vickers Valiant B1, XD826 of No 7 Squadron Honington, in which Fg Off Alan Summerson flew many sorties as AEO in Sqn Ldr Fallas’s crew during 1957. (Tony Clark Collection)

In August 1958 Alan was sent off to RAF Hullavington to attend an advanced signals course at No 1 Air Electronics School and upon completion was promoted to flying officer and confirmed as an AEO in the General Duties Branch of the RAF. He returned to No 7 Squadron at RAF Honington until posted in June 1959 to No 232 OCU at RAF Gaydon to convert to the Handley Page Victor. At the end of this course Alan joined No 57 Squadron, which operated the Victor B1 from RAF Honington, before moving to RAF Cottesmore in September 1959. It was with the Victor aircraft that Alan would be associated for the remainder of his RAF career and he became widely known in the RAF as the man who trained many of the AEOs that served in the Victor fleet.

In October 1960, now a flight lieutenant with No 57 Squadron, Alan became involved with the aftermath of the 350th anniversary of the founding of Jamestown, Virginia, as the AEO in Flt Lt E. Matthews’ crew; celebrations had taken place during 1957 on both sides of the Atlantic. On 4 October 1960 Flt Lt Matthews and his crew were on a routine training detachment, with an overnight stop at Goose Bay in Labrador, Canada, to Offutt US Air Force Base in Nebraska. Upon arrival they were asked to carry back to England three plaques commemorating John Smith (the colony’s founder) from the Jamestown Foundation, for distribution to places in Lincolnshire (he was born in Willoughby in the county) and London. The London-bound plaque was to be inset in a new statue of Smith, in Cheapside, due to be unveiled by the Queen Mother on Monday 31 October 1960. For the return flight on the 7th and 8th, Victor B1, XH645 was routed via Goose Bay to RAF Mildenhall, where it landed in a violent rainstorm, having completed the final leg of 2,200 miles in four and three-quarter hours. Others in the crew were Flt Lts A.G. Farlam, co-pilot; S.G. Templeman, navigator; and P.R. Bentley, radar operator.

Another event that caught the eye of the media occurred while Alan was with No 543 Squadron at RAF Wyton, to which he had been posted in August 1966. The Victor SR2 as operated by No 543 Squadron was a formidable reconnaissance aeroplane that could carry an impressive array of cameras, photo-flares/flashes and fuel in its modified bomb bay. Its superior performance brought a photographic coverage capability twice that of the PR Vickers Valiant. It was able to photograph, by conventional camera or radar, some 400,000 square miles in eight hours. In two hours it could cover an area the size of the UK and four SR2s could cover the whole of the North Atlantic in six hours. Radar reconnaissance equipment allowed it to operate by day or night and the services of the squadron were called for all over the world.