1911 flight operations

There were a lot of aircraft sorties, many different operations were carried out by the flight over the state of Johore on the mainland. The flight's area of operations ranged roughly from Malacca in the West to Mersing in the East and down the peninsular to Johore Bahru. The Western area was cultivated and mainly consisted of large rubber estates, Oil Palm and Pineapple plantations and thousands of smallholdings. But to the East this gradually gave way to vast areas of primary and secondary jungle and Mangrove swamps. This area was sparsely populated with isolated logging camps, small cultivated area's and remote villages.
The main tasks of the flight were dropping parachute marker flares for bombers, early morning sorties looking for terrorist cooking fires, supplies and leaflet drops, target detection, communications and a host of other assorted tasks.

The aircraft work was interesting and varied. In addition to the usual servicing and rectification I quickly had to apply my Airframe skills repairing damaged fabric, usually caused by aircraft hitting trees or returning with the odd lengths of telephone cable wrapped around the undercarriage! On one occasion a gunfire simulator failed to leave it's static line and battered a large hole in the side of the aircaft fuselage by the tail plane. I repaired it and repainted the aircraft tail number over the repair. Our CO at that time was pleased with my efforts. Soon I was able to get flights in the Austers as an "observer". A small payment was made depending on the number of hours flown in a month. This was a welcome addition to the normal service pay I received once a fortnight.
One of the earliest flights I made was somewhere to the west of Kota Tinggi. Leaving Sembawang early one morning I found myself sitting in the back seat of the Auster with a large sack of rice in my lap and another sack containing jungle boots on the cockpit floor where the front passenger seat had been removed. As was usual we flew with the doors removed!
Reaching the DZ in an area of secondary jungle, we soon made contact with the ground troops. Turning in on the approach we lined up with the ground marker and on the word of command from the pilot I heaved the sack of rice out of the door. Looking sharply over my right shoulder I was just in time to see the sack hit the ground, bounce once and nearly decapitate a soldier before disappearing into the scrub! Not a bad drop I thought until the pilot said the idea was to help the troops not kill them, after all they were on our side!
The second drop, the sack of jungle boots, also hit close to the marker. This time however the sack burst and I caught a glimpse of several pairs of size nine's being propelled into the bush no doubt to join the sack of rice! We turned sharply back over the DZ, waggled the wings in salute and set course for base.

One of the first times I helped with a parachute drop was over an area of Primary jungle. Once again I sat in an Auster with a cut out empty four-gallon fuel can (referred to as a flimsy) on my lap, attached to a supply parachute. The fuel can had a radio set packed inside which was to be dropped to a patrol in deep jungle.
Arriving in the area of the drop the pilot made radio contact with the patrol as we flew low over the treetops. Apart from flocks of green pigeons nothing could be seen. However the pilot was happy that he had the map co-ordinates of the DZ. He lowered the flaps, throttled the engine back and commenced his approach just above the treetops.
"There it is" he called over the RT opening the throttle again and raising the flaps. I had seen nothing! We circled around, made contact over the radio with the ground patrol, and then commenced the same procedure again. This time he said "I will count to three, on hearing the word three throw the 'chute out and don't delay".
Once again we were low over the treetops and as our airspeed decayed he said, "Steady. steady, steady " then "one, two, three". On the word three I heaved the 'chute overboard.
Just at that moment I saw this huge hole going down through the giant trees to a small marker far below on the ground. "Well done" said my pilot "I think that was successful". Moments later the confirmation came over the radio as we climbed away heading for base. I had heard that trees in the deep jungle were big but these must have been 250 to 300 feet high. I was very impressed but glad that I wasn't down there with that patrol!