I was on my way back from Wick and flying at about 2000 feet when the engine spluttered twice and stopped. By the grace of God I was near a small aerodrome backed by a purple range of mountains and opening on to the sea. There was no time to make a circuit, so I banked and, feeling decidedly queasy, put down right across two incoming machines to pull up six yards from the sea.

Of cloud and formation flying. I shall never forget the first time that I flew really high, and, looking down, saw wave after wave of white undulating cloud that stretched for miles in every direction like some fairy city. I dived along a great canyon; the sun threw the reddish shadow of the plane on to the cotton-wool walls of white cliff that towered up on either side. It was intoxicating. I flew on. Soon I could see nothing and had to rely on my instruments. I did a slow roll. This was extremely stupid apart from being strictly forbidden. My speed fell off alarmingly. I pushed the stick forward: the speed fell still further and I nearly went into a spin. I could not tell whether I was on my back or right way up, and felt very unhappy. I lost about 2000 feet and came out of the cloud in a screaming spiral, but still fortunately a long way above the earth. I straightened up and flew home with another lesson hard learned.

Formation flying was the most popular and exciting part of our training. At first I was very erratic, perilously close to the leader one minute and a quarter of a mile away the next. But gradually I began to improve, and after a few hours I was really enjoying myself. We had a flight commander who, once we were steady, insisted on us flying in very tight formation, the wing-tip of the outside machine in line with the roundel on the leader’s fuselage. He was a brave man and it certainly gave us confidence. Landing was a simple ritual of sign language; undercarriage down, engine into fine pitch, and flaps down, always without taking one’s eyes off the leader. There was a tendency to drift away slightly before touching-down, but we invariably landed as close as we dared, even among ourselves, until one day the C.O. of advanced training stood and watched us. I think he nearly had a stroke, and from then on we confined our tight formations to less public parts of the sky.

Of the scenery, which was superb. Many times of an evening I would stand on the shore and look out to sea, where a curious phosphorescent green was changing to a transparent blue. Behind the camp the setting sun, like a flaming ball, painted the mountains purple and gold. The air was like champagne, and as we were in the Gulf Stream the weather was beautifully mild. While violent snowstorms were raging in England, we were enjoying the most perfect flying weather and a day which lasted for nearly twenty-four hours.

On leave for four days, Noel and I drove across Scotland to the west coast and took the ferry over to Skye. The small stone quay was spotted with shops; a bus was drawn up by the waterside, a hotel advertisement on its side. I looked at Noel and he nodded. We had come prepared to be disappointed.