THE WALLABY TRACK WITH LIONEL MUSSELL

RAF regulations required pilots to do training with an experienced pilot at Hong Kong ’ s Kai Tak airfield before going in themselves as the captain . It was a difficult airfield with hills on two sides covered by flimsy residential apartment buildings and the harbour on another side . Unless the wind was right , landing was very tricky , as the Hastings didn ’ t have enough power to climb over the hills if the landing had to be aborted on one runway .

On our training day for Flight Lieutenant ‘ Red ’ Bennett , we did a number of landings and between each landing , we did a ‘ touch and go ’, which meant you did all the things for a proper landing but as soon as you were safely on the ground you opened the throttles and took off again .

We made our final landing and Red applied the brakes to slow down as we approached the end of the runway . No brakes ! Murphy at his best ! The runway ended at the harbour and it looked like a wetting coming up . With no brakes we had

no steering so Flight Lieutenant McAdam tried to raise the undercarriage to drop us on our belly and avoid going into the drink while I concentrated on shutting down the engines , turning off the fuel cocks and disconnecting the electrical system to prevent a fire if we crashed . With weight on the wheels , a safety solenoid prevented the undercarriage lever from moving to the ‘ Raise ’ position and Mac couldn ’ t operate the override mechanism .

By a miracle we hit a drainage depression and this slewed us towards a large hangar where people were building boats . As we hit the building with one wing I glanced out of my window and saw workmen fleeing in all directions . There was no fire and the plane was badly damaged , but no-one was hurt . We all travelled back to England as passengers as it was a year before that Hastings was airworthy again !

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