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.