Squadron Leader Jerry Pook MBE DFC - Flying Freestyle

The RAF I joined in the early 60s still retained many aspects of the Second World War inspired professionalism and determination to achieve the operational task. Flying accidents were frequent, particularly in single-seat fghters. As an example, just ten years previously, at the end of the massive expansion caused by the Korean War, the RAF had lost nearly 500 aircraft in one years peacetime training. In the early 60s the service was losing, on average, fifty to sixty pilots killed each year in peacetime. These facts were well known to all of us aspirant pilots. In the main they caused no second thoughts or fears of mortality rather they were seen as an exclusive and stimulating cachet to the overwhelmingly thrilling prospect of military flying. There were no non-volunteers among us.

This is unashamedly a story about flying and the sheer lust to get into the air at all costs. It is about everything to do with becoming a military flying professional and the adventures, sacrifces and heartaches involved. It is about surviving the risks through sheer luck, guile and maybe some animal self-preservation instinct on my part. If my success was also due to any special flying skll then that was also good fortune on my part. Many of my colleagues and friends were killed in flying accidents. Of my Cranwell Entry of about forty pilots who graduated in 1966, seven were killed in flying accidents, three of them while flying Lightnings.

By the end of my service flying career I had flown some 5,500 hours on the Jet Provost, Gnat, Hunter, F104G Starfghter, Harrier and Tornado. I had also been an instructor on several of these types. I flew for twenty-eight years non-stop, without a Staff or Ground Tour. I flew overseas tours of duty in the Persian Gulf, West Germany and Belize. The majority of my flying took place during the Cold War, which was treated very much as a Hot War by our commanders. I also flew low level ground attack and recce missions during the Falklands War.

Looking through my flying log books I can fnd only about eight complete months during that twenty-eight year period when I did not fly at all, most of those periods being taken up by various Ground School courses on new aircraft types.

This is not a career offcers story and it is written from the point of view of a relatively junior pilot. I joined the RAF to see the world from a single-seat fghter cockpit, not to become an air marshal. A squadron commander whose opinion I valued, once told me that loyalty was something you owed to your subordinates as a bound duty, while getting it in return only if you had earned it.

I started writing this story shortly after completing my Falklands Diary , having discovered an enjoyment of writing for its own sake. I have concentrated on the flying, and there is scant attention to the domestic details of my life, for which I apologize to my loved ones, who may be disappointed not to find more reference to them. I hope this will not be seen as a sign of my indifference, rather as an indication of my total enthusiasm and absorption in the business of flying aeroplanes from an early age until the sad day in 1992 when I was stopped permanently from flying military aeroplanes because of ill health.

Jerry Pook
2008

The views and opinions expressed in this book are those of the author alone and should not be taken to represent those of HMG, MOD, the RAF or any government agency.