Flight of the Tiger Moth

1. Title Page
   
2. Book & Copyright Information
   
3. Dedication
   
4. Quotation
   
5. Chapter 1
   
6. Chapter 2
   
7. Chapter 3
   
8. Chapter 4
   
9. Chapter 5
   
10. Chapter 6
    
11. Chapter 7
    
12. Chapter 8
    
13. Chapter 9
    
14. Chapter 10
    
15. Chapter 11
    
16. Chapter 12
    
17. Chapter 13
    
18. Chapter 14
    
19. Chapter 15
    
20. Chapter 16
    
21. Chapter 17
    
22. Chapter 18
    
23. Chapter 19
    
24. Chapter 20
    
25. Chapter 21
    
26. Chapter 22
    
27. Chapter 23
    
28. Chapter 24
    
29. Chapter 25
    
30. Chapter 26
    
31. Historical Notes
    
32. The De Havilland Moth
    
33. Nursing Sisters in the Second World War
    
34. Personal Notes
    
35. Acknowledgements
    
36. About the Author
    

© Mary Woodbury, 2007

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior written consent of the publisher or a licence from The Canadian Copyright Licensing Agency (Access Copyright). For an Access Copyright licence, visit www.accesscopyright.ca or call toll-free to 1-800-893-5777.

This novel is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is coincidental.

Edited by Barbara Sapergia

Cover design and photo montage by Duncan Campbell

Cover painting by Dawn Pearcy, "Close-up Of a Pilot Smiling" by Superstock

Book design by Karen Steadman

Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

Woodbury, Mary, 1935-

Flight of the Tiger Moth / Mary Woodbury.

ISBN 978-1-55050-364-7

1. World War, 1939-1945–Canada–Juvenile fiction.  2. Tiger Moth

(Training plane)–Juvenile fiction.  I. Title.

PS8595.O644F58 2007      jC813'.54      C2007-901731-2

Available from

Coteau Books

2517 Victoria Avenue, Regina, Saskatchewan Canada S4P 0T2

www.coteaubooks.com

The publisher gratefully acknowledges the financial support of its publishing program by: the Saskatchewan Arts Board, the Canada Council for the Arts, the Government of
Canada through the Book Publishing Industry Development Program BPIDP), Association
for the Export of Canadian Books and the City of Regina Arts Commission.

To Clair, David, Robert, Ian, Peter and Sean,
who gave me the inspiration and courage to write
about young men learning to ­fly.

­
Once you have tasted ­flight

You will forever walk the ­earth

With your eyes turned skyward,

For there you have been, and ­there

You will always long to ­return.

—Leonardo da ­Vinci

Chapter 1

APRIL­ 1943

Jack Waters sat crammed into the front cockpit
of the Tiger Moth, the motor in front of him roaring as they rolled down the runway gaining ­speed.
“Hold on tight!” Sandy hollered through the Gosport, the speaker slung around Jack’s ­neck.

The bright yellow biplane bumped along the runway, then suddenly lifted. They were airborne! Jack’s stomach felt like it was plastered to his throat. Sweat trickled down his neck and back. It was hotter than blazes in the flying suit, helmet and goggles. Sandy had warned him that it was plenty cold when you got up in the air. He was uncomfortable, but he felt like a real ­flyer.

“Look down!” Sandy ­shouted.

Jack turned his head and risked a glance. The city of Moose Jaw lay beneath them, its houses on the grid of streets like houses in a model train set, its cars as small as Matchbox ­toys.

Jack gulped air like a diver to clear his ears and the roar of the engine rushed ­back.

Ahead of them stretched the prairie. In the distance Jack spotted grain elevators alongside railway tracks. A miniature train moved across the wide expanse of grain and hay fields. Farmhouses dotted the prairie landscape like spilled sugar ­cubes.

Jack was flying. Really flying! His mother had finally agreed to let Sandy take him up and it felt fantastic! Sandy, his sister Flo’s fiancé, was a flight instructor at the Moose Jaw air base, twenty miles ea
st of Jack’s village of ­Cairn.

From the ground the air looked blue, but when you were travelling in a plane it had no colour. No shape. The propeller turned so quickly that all Jack could see was a whirr and a blur. The solid wooden prop on the ­flimsy-­looking metal, wood and cloth airplane moved so fast it was transparent. He’d been on a Ferris wheel at the local fair, but this was fifty times more ­exciting.

Soaring over the endless prairie, far from the city, Sandy put the plane through its paces. He banked, rolled and looped the Tiger Moth. Jack couldn’t help grinning, even
though the metal seat bit into his ­skin.

Suddenly Sandy pulled the plane into a ­heart-­stopping stall. He dived, banked, rose and did a complete roll. Jack’s stomach lurched. The seat belt dug into his shoulders. Sandy laughed, straightened the plane and flew in a circle, heading down and skimming over the ­fields.

“Do you want to try it?” he ­asked.

“Sure,” Jack gulped. “But not if I have to do fancy manoeuvres.”

“Not yet,” Sandy said. “Just try keeping her on course.”

Jack’s mouth dried. Sandy had drilled him on the basics over the last couple of weeks. Jack had even sat up in bed reading the flight manual late at night. But he was still getting used to the pitch and wobble, the shaking and the noise. He spent most of his time with his feet on the ground or on the pedals of his bike or the family­ car.

“It’s a lot to remember, sport. But I’m here to take over at a moment’s notice.”

Jack breathed as if he was running a marathon. Nothing, but nothing, in his whole life had been this thrilling, this scary. “I’ll take it,” he said. He took over the controls, with Sandy prompting him from ­behind.

He concentrated on trying to keep the Moth straight and level. But as soon as he got the rudder centred and stopped the plane from yawing, the nose crept too high. The ­rate-­of-­climb indicator reared up and the wings tilted. The black ball in the ­turn-­and-­bank indicator rolled to the side of the ­dial.

“We’re ­side-­slipping!” Sandy called. “Make the corrections.”

Jack’s toes were scrunched up in his shoes in an effort to nail his feet to the floorboards. His hand on the stick was stiff, his heart raced. His innards ­cramped.

But he felt ­terrific.

“Let’s try that again,” said Sandy. And so it went. Instead of the short flight Jack had been promised, the one his mother, Ivy, had only grudgingly agreed to, he spent the whole morning in the ­air.

>>>

Jack climbed out of the cockpit
after the first two hours in the Tiger Moth, feeling as if he’d been pummelled by his arch-enemy, Jimmy Boyle. Sweat trickled down his face and he wiped it off with a freshly ironed ­handkerchief.

He grinned at Sandy. “That was swell.”

“If you’re up for it, we’ll go again this afternoon.”

“Sure thing.” Jack felt pulled apart physically and mentally, frightened and exhilarated at the same ­time.

“Might as well make hay while the sun shines, as my dad always said.” Sandy, his tall, muscular frame released from the cockpit, loped across the tarmac to the ­lounge.

Jack wobbled after him. His legs felt like a sailor’s on shore leave. He wasn’t sure his body would cooperate if they did much more of ­this.

The pilots’ lounge at the flying school in Moose Jaw was filled with shabby but comfortable furniture. It smelled of stale cigarette smoke and dust. Jack threw himself down on an old brown couch without waiting to be invited. A couple of guys playing cribbage looked up and ­laughed.

“First flight, eh?” one of them asked. He tugged at his red ­moustache.

“You must be Flo’s little brother,” the other one said. “You’re from Cairn, eh?” Jack ­nodded.

“This is Jackie, all right,” Sandy said. “Jackie, this is Walter here with the red hair and freckles and the poor devil about to be skunked is Bertie.” Both men nodded in Jack’s ­direction.

“He just saw the village of Cairn from a whole new angle. His mother won’t hear about that part, though.”

“Mums always worry too much,” Walter ­said.

“Yeah,” Bertie agreed. “A man needs to learn new things. Builds confidence.”

Jack grinned at the word “man.” He knew he didn’t qualify
yet, but he was getting closer. And he liked the ­sound.

“A little bird tells me you’re expecting the call any day, Sandy,” Bertie went on. “All of us instructors would love the chance to get to go.” Bertie sighed, looking sadly at Jack. “The rcaf keeps us here training the youngsters.” He shook his ­head.

“Are you going overseas?” Jack felt the world shift again, the way he’d felt when the plane rolled. “When?”

“Could be soon.” Sandy put his finger to his lips. “But keep it to yourself. I haven’t told Flo yet.”

His sister wouldn’t be too happy about this ­news.

>>>

After lunch in the airfield cafeteria,
Jack and Sandy went up again. At one point Jack looked down and saw the Cairn grain elevator in the distance, the clapboard bungalow where he lived with his parents, the untidy caragana hedge and the gravel lane behind it. He chuckled, wishing he could fly low and wave to his dad, sitting on the front porch of the family’s main street business, the Waters General ­Store.

If his dad could only see him now. Jack felt a year older than when Sandy had picked him up early that morning. He had even had the thrill of taking off on this last test flight. He was more in control of the plane and he was more confident too. He could fly this crate. Looking below at his village and the surrounding countryside, Jack felt his chest expand with pride. It was going to be really hard not telling his ­parents.

>>>