Although the practice attacks, which were carried out against Royal Navy Corvettes and other training vessels, usually went off pretty smoothly one particularly hair raising experience will forever linger in my memory. On this particular overcast, calm day, Art and I were flying the inside position on the right of the leader. When he called "deploy" we along with the plane on my right swung out in a gradual curve which would bring the target ship into sight in about three minutes, We were flying about 230 m.p.h. and I slowly brought the Beau down to ~0 feet above the water. when the ship came into view I could see the angle was right so I concentrated on getting the plane in the proper flying attitude and then lining up the ship using the torpedo target instruments. At about 1,000 feet out I dropped the fish and just at that moment Art shouted over the intercom "watch the bloke on the right". Taking my eyes off the instruments I glanced out and saw the left wing of the Beau beside us only two or three feet above my right wing. As it was impossible for me to bank off in either direction without risking a midair collision, I shoved the nose down a little and jammed the throttles through the `“gate", which allowed the Hercules engines to operate at maximum power in emergency situations. The plane seemed to leap forward and we flew very low over the Navy gun boat we were attacking, so low in fact that we took out the ship's wiring that stretched between the forward mast and the middle superstructure.

At the enquiry which was held the following week the ship's first officer said he thought we had "bought it", as some of his crew, those who hadn't dived for cover, saw spray from the calm sea as the aircraft pulled out from its shallow dive. Ironically it was another New Zealand pilot who had his log book endorsed as a result of this enquiry. For my part I don't think I stopped shaking for a week.

At the end of each flight we had to complete a "Pilots Torpedo Attack Form" which recorded various data pertaining to the flight. Art Butler kept a detailed log of the necessary figures, which we then plotted on graph paper after our return. From a review of my old charts which were in the back of my log book, I learned a number of things I'd forgotten. A copy of the form is attached. From the amount of data which the pilot had to keep calling off while on his run to the target, it's no wonder the chances of a midair collision over the target were slightly higher than a remote possibility.

The other major aspect of our training course involved rocket firing exercises against target ships using dummy rockets, and cannon fire. We would usually fly in a close "V" formation of five aircraft at about 1500' above the water and upon spotting the target maneuver into position where it could be attacked from the side. At about a half mile out the formation leader would give the command to dive. At about 600' the rockets were fired using the gunsight to focus directly on the ship's waterline. The Beau carried eight rockets and two (one from each wing) were fired on each attack. After their release the attack was continued down to about 200' using the four 20 mm cannon under the nose of the aircraft. Dummy ammunition was of course also used. on our first few training flights we tended to not get too close to our wing-men for fear of having an accident while concentrating on the attack.