Intermission 2

Five months before Ernst Muller made his first flight in CF-FAM, my father was getting ready to leave the African plains for destinations unknown.

Work had either dried up in the equatorial sun or grown too stale and boring for his lofty tastes.  In a pattern that would be re-exhibited several times over his life, my dad went on to something else.

His last flight in Africa was on April 19th, 1973 - a half hour, lunch time aerobatic jaunt in the RF-5. 

He spent two weeks in Germany, in the Hesse town of Bottenhorn in the foothills of the Westerwald mountain range.  He logged 46 minutes in ASK 13 gliders, did a dual flight in a Scheibe Falke motor glider and then ferried a Cessna 172 back from Breitscheid before continuing "home" to San Giacomo.

My dad's glider logbook and an appropriately stern Hessian gaze in the accompanying photograph. (Family Collection)

The 1st page of his glider logbook showing a dozen flights - 9 dual, 3 solo - for a total of 46 minutes. (Family Collection)

After three months, there were still no suitable job offers - at least nothing that piqued his interest.

Then, one day in August, came a knock at the door. 

Instead of the postman and a job offer, there were two carabinieri, Italian State Police, with orders to take Antonio F. Rotondo to the nearest military depot to be drafted into the Esercito Italiano.

And with that, my father became a 28-year-old private in the Italian Army.

Dad in his full dress uniform, 1974. (Family Collection)

Until very recently, all Italian citizens were required by law to serve the nation - many of them through terms in the armed forces.  My father had left Italy before being drafted and could return as long as he didn't stay longer than 3 months.  He had overstayed his welcome by a week.

At 28, he was at least 5 years older than the oldest of his draftee class and not well suited to the typical barracks tomfoolery.  The Italian Army hadn't won a battle since the height of the Roman Empire...and running around a field wantonly firing a sub-machine gun for enough money to buy a Coke and two slices of pizza wasn't his idea of a good time.
He immediately made an appeal to his commanding officer to be transferred to the Air Force given he was an educated man with pilot training - not a hoodlum or a kid straight out of high school.  His captain did the best he could - sending him to Naples in February to take a six-month course in becoming a wireless operator. 

Stamps and signatures from flying clubs in Bottenhorn Germany & Naples Italy. (Family Collection).

In Naples, he found the Aero Club di Napoli and, after a check ride with instructor Orazio Puccini, bookended his course in Morse code by indulging his hobby on three Italian built Partenavia P.66 Oscars.  As of 2010, all three (I-POSI, I-MERG & I-MISE) remain in service with the Aero Club at Capodichino Airport.



Aero Club Di Napoli's fleet.  I-MISE is first from the left in the middle row, I-POSI is second from the left in the back row and I-MERG is second from the right in the middle row. (Photo Courtesy: Aero Club di Napoli)



P.66 I-POSI pictured in December 2008.  This was the first P.66 my dad flew and the one he did most of his Naples flying in. (Photo Courtesy: Aero Club di Napoli)

In June of 1974, he returned to his unit as a Marconista (wireless operator) and participated in manoeuvres where he rode around in a Armoured Personnel Carrier festooned with antennae in order to signal the other APCs and tanks in the battallion.  He and his fellow wireless ops thought this was great fun until they realized, should their unit ever be sent into battle, their APC would be the first to be targeted. 

With his mates outside their barracks near Bari, 1974 or 1975.  My dad is 2nd from the left.  (Family Collection)

Despite the forced nature of their employment and the futility of their actions, these were happy times.  My dad recalled that they had little to worry about except to ensure that their boots were shined and pants pressed.  Gags like exploding shaving cream canisters and swapping out tapes of Morse code signals for the chart topper of the day were common.  They were well fed, well equipped and well respected.  In those days, a soldier in uniform could hitchhike home and often did.

Two Italian Army wireless operators in full dress uniform.  My dad is on the left. (Family Collection)

My father was discharged from the army in the winter of 1975 after 18 months of service.

In August, just a month shy of his 30th birthday, he returned to Canada where he had been offered a job.



Escape Velocity

"Oscar-Zulu - Wilson Tower," a faraway voice crackled in his headset, "you may begin your manoeuvres at your discretion."
High above the stout tower building, white wings circled lazily overhead like a giant vulture drifting in rising columns of Savannah air.
"Roger, Tower," came the reply over the radio.
The right hand moves smoothly forward, taking the control column with it as the left hand comes back slightly on the throttle.  The whisper of the slipstream sliding by the long canopy builds its breath to a dull moan.  On the instrument panel, one needle creeps up as another unwinds madly.  Suddenly, the sunlight streaming into the cockpit is eclipsed by shadow. 
Eyes turn upwards, a smile creases sunburned skin.
A cloud - as soft and pure as driven snow.
"Beautiful," says the pilot. 
A rattle passes through the airframe.
The pilot mutters an airspeed, barely audible over the hum of the engine and the rising crescendo of the slipstream.
Then, a smooth pull on the stick, wings flexing and the earth falls away underneath the propeller's disc.
Arms heavy, that intoxicating feeling in the pit of the stomach...and Oscar-Zulu bounds upwards with vigour and grace.
Up, up and up - lean on the right rudder as the sound of the slipstream fades and gravity begins to excise its inevitable toll.  The RF-5 continues its upwards arc, cresting the top where up is down and down is up, and the pilot feels light in his seat and in his heart.
A quick glance down reveals the billowing top of the cloud...and Wilson Airport below and beyond.
Now, sweeping elegantly down the arc's reverse, the engine's hum grows to a moan, life returns to the stick, both man and machine brace as they hurtle downwards.
The needles do their familiar dance.
A rush of speed and Oscar-Zulu sweeps under the cloud's skirt and out the other end, clawing skywards in a vertical climb.
As the craft hurtles upwards, the pilot falls victim to the dream that perhaps they will never stop accelerating, never stop climbing.
Maybe, just maybe and only this once, they might reach escape velocity and break the bonds of gravity.
Alas, not yet and not this time.  The airspeed begins to decay.  The breath of the slipstream fades.  A more absolute silence has never been heard.  There is a mechanical clap as the pilot's left foot moves the rudder pedal to full deflection.  Some 20 feet behind him, the rudder responds and the nose is forced left through the pivot.  Muscle memory faithfully applies opposite aileron to hold the wing down and Oscar-Zulu slices cleanly through the horizon.
As the aviator hangs in his straps, once again falling towards earth, the flanks of the cloud slide by only inches above his head...the wispy tendrils caressing the aircraft's wooden frame.

The day is December 14th, 1972.  My father has fallen madly in love with aerobatics.  The notation in his logbook: "21 - loop, stall turn, chandelle."

The front cover and first page of my dad's copy of 5Y-AOZ's pilot'soperating handbook.  (Family Collection)

The very next afternoon, my dad returns to the airport and calls on "Biff" Hamilton and his Chipmunk.

A dozen flights would follow in Chipmunk KLY, Beagle Pup AKG and Cessna 150 Aerobat ARG.  The notations in his logbook provide a poor picture of the joy these flights inspired.

The pages of my dad's logbook from December '72 and January '73. (Family Collection)

In September 1983, two months before I was born, "Biff" Hamilton won the intermediate category in an aerobatics competition at the Gatineau Airport.
It is very likely that my dad was at that meet as a spectator.
An Ottawa Citizen reporter named Doug Kelly interviewed Hamilton after his win.  Hamilton called aerobatics "the purest form of flying."
"Some people play golf for their kicks, I fly aerobatics," Hamilton is quoted as saying.  "Does that seem so odd?"
At the time, "Biff" had left the African plains for his home in Stratford.  He told Kelly he had learned to fly 40 years ago.
"Biff" would be nearing 90 now.
5Y-KLY ended up in Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) as VP-WEV in the early 1980s.  It then surfaced some time later in South Africa under the registration ZS-VYU.  In 2005, it was acquired by a preservation organisation.

EX RAF WG-315, 5Y-KLY, & VP-WEV now registered as ZS-VYU.  The aircraft is pictured at Rand Airport in Germiston, South Africa (Photo Courtesy S. Geer)

A newspaper article reporting the emergency landing of 5Y-AOZ near Wilson.  Wilken CFI Alan Coulson is crouching by the nose gear. The Fournier is incorrectly identified as a "Cessna". (Family Collection)

5Y-AOZ met a crueler fate.  She was sold to an owner in Germany as D-KCIQ before being registered in the UK as G-BDOZ in December of 1975. 

G-BDOZ at Leicester, UK on July 5th, 1981 - less than 2 months later, it would be destroyed.  (Photo Courtesy: Dave Mangham)

And then on August 30th, 1981, during take-off from Fenland Aerodrome, Holbeach St. Johns, Lincolnshire with pilot and passenger on board, Oscar-Zulu dropped a wing, descended sharply and struck the ground, tearing off the right wing and cartwheeling to its destruction.
The pilot was hurt.  His passenger escaped injury.
The post-crash investigation revealed no mechanical reason for the crash.  The investigators concluded that, during the right turn following departure, the aircraft passed over a field of burning pea stubble.  They believed the thermal instability caused by the burning brush may have led to the crash.
The insurance company sold the wreck to a chap in High Wycombe who stripped out the avionics the sold the rest to a J. Hassell.  Mr. Hassell wanted to rebuild the RF-5 but, in his words, "ran out of money and inclination."  In 1982, he sold "Oscar-Zulu's" carcass to a man at Southend Airport who broke it up for spare parts.
AKG and ARG have faded from memory.  They now live only in the sinews and synapses of those pilots lucky enough to have flung them about the sky with skill and abandon.
Aerobatics, however, is alive and well...and is perhaps, my father's most enduring gift to me.

Intermission 1

In the early 1950s, the skies over Europe had been quiet and free of bloodshed for several years.  The Commonwealth no longer had such a desperate need for eager young men to bravely take to the skies in defense of life and liberty.  Airfields across the United Kingdom were clogged with Dehavilland DHC-1 Chipmunk trainers...and the Royal Air Force decided to get rid of them.
The famed trainers, the mounts upon which post-war aviators had cut their teeth less than a decade ago, were scattered to the winds...an aviation diaspora.
A dozen found their way to Kenya.  At Wilson Airport, the Aero Club of East Africa saw the demobbed British aircraft as cheap and readily available alternatives to new trainers.  The Aero Club bought at least three.  It may have purchased as many as six.

Chipmunk VP-KLW (before change over to 5Y) at Wilson Airport on March 11th, 1956. (Photo Courtesy: Joe Barr)

Chipmunk 5Y-KLS equipped with the rudder from sister ship KLW captured at Wilson in August 1971. (Photo Courtesy: Dave Welch)

With the "new" airplanes, came at least one heart-sick aviator looking for a job and a chance to keep flying his beloved "Chippie."
On September 12th, 1947, Flight Lieutenant J.N. "Biff" Hamilton relinquished his Queen's commission in the Royal Air Force.  He had served as an instructor pilot and was old enough to have served during the second world war.
In June 1972, "Biff" Hamilton would have been 49 or 50 years old. Now a flight instructor at the Aero Club of East Africa, the Canadian was far from home but happy to be playing with the airplanes he knew so well.
Across the ramp at Wilken Aviation, my father was growing tired of the Cherokee 140.  So tired in fact, that he had been tinkering in a hangar for some time building, of all things, an airplane.  His intent was to fly it north to San Giacomo and land on a patch of grass carved into the sunflower choked fields of his hometown.  He would return home sooner than he thought.
To keep his hand in flying, he ventured across the ramp to the Aero Club and its small fleet of ex-military trainers. He did 5 flights under the greenhouse canopy of Chipmunk 5Y-KLY with "Biff" riding in the back. 
And then, on June 27th, one day after his 5th flight in the Chipmunk, my grandfather died.
Instead of returning home a conqueror atop the aircraft he had built, my father bought a plane ticket to Rome and rented a car.  Then he made the lonely three hour drive east to mourn.
When he returned in September, a little older and still grieving, not much had changed at Wilson.
"Biff" was still at it.
The Chipmunks sat in a neat little row, their highly polished aluminium skin simmering in the heat and shimmering in the golden sunlight...beckoning.
However, another siren's song soared higher.
In my dad's absence, Wilken had acquired a brand new Sportavia RF-5.

RF-5 5Y-AOZ in March 1974 at Wilson.  (Photo Courtesy: Terry Murphy)

The RF-5 was a light sport motor glider.  In layman's terms, the pilot could take off and fly under the power of the engine but, due to the aircraft's glider pedigree, had the option of shutting down the engine and gliding to earth.
Over the next few weeks, my dad learned to fly the unique craft with gorgeous lines...finding unconditional comfort and promise in its gull-like grace.

Wings

My dad earned his wings on May 6th, 1971 after passing the private flight test on his first attempt.
He had used 9 pages of his logbook and logged 62 hours and 5 minutes of flight time - nearly 12 of which was solo.
A man named McAuliffe signed him off.  His mount for the flight was 5Y-AJI - the same aircraft he took up solo for the first time.

East African Private Pilot Licence (Aeroplanes) No 2110 (K.1964) issued  May 10th, 1971. (Family Collection)

His private flight training was done exclusively on Wilken's fleet of Piper Cherokee 140s.
The men who sat next to him were Sinton, Lennox, Amos, Corner, and Coulson.
Each man had a hand in shaping my father as a pilot.
Sinton, by far, made the greatest impression.
My dad spoke fondly and often of Coulson.
He characterised Amos as "mean" because he was known to rap his students on the knees with a bony fist if they made a mistake.
Either Lennox or Corner carried a pen knife - reportedly as a way to swiftly and painfully bring a student back to reality in the event they ever froze on the controls and thus lessened the instructor's chances of  dying peacefully in bed as an old man.
These men have all receded slowly into the crawling abyss of the past but not before leaving an indelible mark.
The aircraft too are likely gone...
In the best case scenario, they are still flying - tended to lovingly by a pilot who has no idea of the role they played in this story.
Some are rotting in the African sun, pushed up behind a Quonset hangar in the corner of an overgrown field, the once shiny aluminium skin pockmarked and bleeding rivulets of reddish brown rust; registrations worn off, vinyl seats cracked and vomiting yellowish padding, windshields chipped, yellowed and cobwebbed.
In the worst case scenario, they've been melted down into kettles or garbage tins.
I know the certain fates of only two...and a tantalizing detail regarding two others.

PA-28-140 5Y-ALG breaking formation near Nairobi, 1970 or 1971.  Murray Sinton is likely riding right seat.  ALG was involved in an accident of an unknown nature on November 3rd, 1974. (Family Collection)

5Y-AGE was sold to the Seychelles Aero Club.  It crashed on the African island nation December 11th 1973 after running out of fuel during a cross country flight from Mahe to Praslin.  The pilot and lone occupant was killed.
5Y-ALG is the subject of a cryptic article in the Kenya Gazette from November 5th, 1974.  In it, D.C. Stewart, Chief Inspector of Accidents, solicits anyone with information regarding an accident at Savani Air Strip near Nandi two days prior to come forward. 
5Y-AJI also appears in the accident investigations section of Kenya Gazette.  On February 27th, 1975, it was involved in an accident 500 yards from a private strip owned by A. Roote. The government made the same appeal as it did in ALG's case.
5Y-AIB crashed into Tanzania's Rufiji River on September 11th 1985. The pilot, a 43-year-old man named Herring, was practising a forced approach into Mtemere Airstrip when he deliberately shut down the engine. The aircraft was destroyed. Herring lived.
It had been less than 70 years since Orville and Wilbur Wright gave up on bicycles to build flying machines and despite the soaring heights the industry had attained, flying could be dangerous. Aviators lived, and often died,  in spectacular fashion.
Three of my dad's friends starred death in the face - and two blinked.
The first flew into power lines while on a pleasure flight with his pregnant wife.
The other taxied into a small ditch while on a solo cross country stop at a remote dirt strip.  He tried to free the aircraft by pulling on the propeller...but he had left the magnetos on. The engine caught - decapitating the pilot.  They found him two days later - the aircraft standing silent guard over its former master.  Her tanks had run dry.

My dad, a friend and his sister with a Cessna 172 (likely 5Y-ALW) at an unidentified airfield.  ALW crashed  in September 2001 - killing two. (Family Collection)

Dad riding back seat. (Family Collection)

Despite the obvious risks, my dad took to flying with a voracious appetite.  As soon as he finished his private licence, he embarked on finding and mastering new airplanes.
He started with the venerable Piper Super Cub.
Then came the stalwart Chipmunk trainer and finally the graceful Fournier RF-5.

These experiences would be his first tastes of tail-draggers and aerobatics...which would, in turn, lead him to C-FFAM ten years later.

First Solo

September 2nd, 1970.

C-FFAM is still in paper form - sketches on the ruled pages of a black notebook.  Her registration is still unclaimed - one of thousands on the Department of Transport books. 

It would be months before someone picked up the notebook with any real intent.  

It would be years before the red and white Mini-Plane would spring off the pages of that tiny notebook - its 85 horsepower engine breaking the silence of an Ontario airport.

Dad and a colleague with the company Land Rover near Nairobi, 1969 or 1970. (Family Collection)

Thousands of miles away, across one ocean, three continents and the heavy heat and thick haze of the equator, my dad is driving his Landrover to Wilson Airport.  

The red dust churned up by his tires catches the rising sun in gritty flashes of tawny golds and browns.  The air of this September dawn in pleasantly crisp and cool.  The sun's newborn rays have yet to tease the Kenyan plains with their warmth.

In the distance, an airplane's engine coughs and catches.

Today is my dad's 25th birthday.  He woke at the ungodly hour of four in the morning.

The Kenyan uniform: T-shirt, khaki shorts, flip flops...and a Land Rover in Nairobi, 1970. (Family Collection)

Today's lesson is the circuit.  The last 15 lessons - roughly 13 hours in the air - have been the circuit.  My father has the racetrack patterns around each of Wilson's two runways etched in his mind. He could, if he wished and was devoid of any common sense, fly the circuit with his eyes closed. For exactly one month, all he has been doing is take-offs and landings, downwind and pre-landing checks, rotations and round-outs.  For most of that time, Murray Sinton has been sitting next to him, helping to hone a ham-handed student into one that stands a reasonable chance of leaving the earth in an airplane...and returning to it in one piece.

Today is different.  

When my father yells "clear" and cranks the engine on 5Y-AJI, the instructor is Lennox.  Lennox is checking Sinton's work. 

The time is 6:15 when Juliet-India climbs away from Wilson Airport.  The horizon is beginning to boil under the east African sun.

Half an hour and four circuits later, the Cherokee returns to earth and taxis slowly to the Wilken ramp.  The door is shoved open against the propeller's idle breath and Lennix slides out onto the wing.  He turns back, crouches behind the shield of the door, cups his hand to his mouth and shouts a few words to the pilot.  A curt nod and the door is pushed closed.  Lennox claps his right hand on the top of the Piper's cabin and steps off the wing's trailing edge to the ground.  He walks backwards for a few feet as the Cherokee's engine picks up and the plane taxis for the runway.

At 6:45, Alpha-Juliet rattles into the air with my dad at the controls solo for the first time.  It is every pilot's first test and every pilot's most private feat of accomplishment.  It is a rite of passage...for when one returns to earth, they do so changed, older, with a hint of swagger in their step and a heart swelling with pride.

The page for September 1970 from my dad's logbook.  His first solo is on the 3rd line. (Family Collection)

I can only imagine what happened inside the sanctum of the cockpit since my dad never spoke of his first solo - at least not in any detail.  About the most I ever garnered only came on the heels of my own first solo some thirty-two years after his.

"I soloed today," I'm speaking into the handset of an ancient, mildewed and rusting payphone in the anteroom of an equally ancient, mildewed and rusting mess hall of a little used, sand-choked scout camp near Les Cedres, Quebec.

"Beautiful," came the muffled reply.  "How was it?"

"Awesome," seemed to be a fitting answer. 

"Did they splash you with water?"

"Yeah."

"Hot or cold?"

"Hot," I said.  "Then cold."

"Mine was cold."  

I could almost hear the twinkle in his eyes.

First Flight

July 15th, 1970.
Wilson Airport in Nairobi, Kenya, East Africa.
My 24-year-old father is sitting in the left seat of a Piper PA-28-140 Cherokee bearing Kenyan registration 5Y-AJJ.

The aircraft is likely only a few years old and, sitting on the tarmac of an East African airport with the engine turning smoothly over at idle, a long way from its home of Vero Beach, Florida.
In the right seat is rookie instructor pilot Murray Sinton.  My father is his first student. 40 years later, my dad would remember him fondly as his best instructor.

It's a work day and dad is likely on his lunch break.  At any rate, he's the boss...and who would question him if he stole away for an hour?  Furthermore, who would find him in the skies above Nairobi?

And it's clear my dad is excited.  After all, he had received his student pilot licence Number 2918 (K.337) from the Directorate of Civil Aviation East Africa only the day before this first flight. Why wait?




The cover of my dad's East African Licence booklet. (Family Collection) 

Student Pilot Licence 2918 (Family Collection)

The weather in Nairobi is typical for the season - sunny, with a few puffs of cotton ball cumulus and a pleasant 20 or 21 degrees Celsius.  Despite the moderate climate in Nairobi, it's stuffy inside the Cherokee's cockpit so Sinton has the only door propped open with his foot and the tiny storm window on my Dad's side of the canopy is hanging open.  A soft breeze is drifting back from the slowly turning propeller.

My father's copy of a Wilken Flying School checklist for the Piper Cherokee.  This is likely one of the first pieces of kit my dad would have bought for his training. (Family Collection)

Wilson Airport has two asphalt runways: 07/25 at 4,798' and 14/32 at 5,052'.  Oddly enough, the runway orientation is exactly the same as Ottawa's International Airport.  It isn't possible now to know which runway the two men used on their first flight together but we can draw some conclusions.

After receiving clearance from the tower, Sinton yanked the door closed and snapped the lock above his head.  He likely called for my dad to close the storm window before advancing the throttle.  Alpha-Juliet-Juliet then began rolling forward, engine at full power, Sinton's left hand on the throttle and his right resting on the control yoke.  Wilson sits at just over a mile above sea level so Sinton likely held the boxy trainer on the runway a few beats longer than usual before easing the yoke back.

As Alpha-Juliet-Juliet's wheels left the ground at 12:25 p.m. that Wednesday afternoon, my father, a captive passenger, was hooked forever.

The cover of my Dad's logbook. (Family Collection)

The flight lasted only half an hour - Sinton landed Alpha-Juliet-Juliet just shy of 1 o'clock.  The notations in the dad's logbook, set down in his hand 42 years ago, betray none of the emotions he must have felt.  On cream-colored paper, in blue ink, the particulars of the flight are recorded dispassionately: date, aircraft type, registration, captain, etc, etc, etc.  In the remarks section of his then-new log book, he wrote down "No. 3" - the lesson number for "Effects of Flight Controls".  It is a rather poor estimation of the effect that flight had on my dad that day...and for decades to come.

The first page of my Dad's logbook.  The flight in question is at the very top.  Half-way down the right side is Murray Sinton's signature confirming the hours flown in July, 1970. (Family Collection)

I don't know what happened to 5Y-AJJ.  I can find no record of its fate or where it is today.  I'm equally ignorant as to Murray Sinton's whereabouts.  I only know that, when my dad was issued his private pilot's licence, he gave Sinton one of 6 silver eagles he had made by a Nairobi jeweler. Sinton was overjoyed.  Some time later, my dad had several more made in gold - of which only one survives.

I do know that my dad's first instructor and the plucky American-built, East-African transplanted trainer sparked a lifelong love that would have three generations gazing skyward in awe.