RAF ISMAILIA
&
WING COMMANDER WILF SIZER
As Remembered By Harry Hodges, Flight Mech 71 OTU 1943-45
We all had a hand in constructing the RAF Cinema in Ismailia. This cinema was built out of one of the very smallest hangars and by the time the top shelf, second and third shelf “Brass” and “their ladies” had been invited there were very few tickets left. What was left was about a third for us, the NCO’s and OR’s and the rest and were divided between a few of the local camps. Even us on the Station who had helped to build it were lucky to get a ticket and had to go into a ballot the same as for the beer tickets.
Our Wing Commander was the original “Mr. Fixit” , having “acquired” some of the cinema gear from Aden (the Americans had supplied new equipment for Aden but RAF engineers at Ismailia had to machine up new sprockets) and some good stuff out of Italy, including his own five seater plane which we had to take out into the desert and camouflage with sandbags whenever any “Real Top Brass” arrived for a visit or inspection. He had quite a lot of nerve as well as being an extraordinarily good pilot.
Our Chief Instructor was Wing Commander Wilf Sizer and was a wonderful officer to all his crews, Air and Ground. His own personal Spitfire he’d had the paint stripped down to bare polished aluminim and then waxed to make to go faster. It used to make our arms ache a bit but it worked! On one occasion he took another machine up and it was reputed at the time to be the highest a Spitfire had ever been but be that as it may he put it into a terrific dive and he was getting very close to his ‘Maker’ - “but from the opposite direction” when he pulled out of his dive and landed safely. When we went out to guide him in we had to stretch upwards in order to reach the wing tips. Unfortunately this was not a thing you could broadcast at that time or most of the world would have known about it. He had managed to bend the wing tips upwards by exactly one foot which was in itself a good example of British workmanship, especially when you think the wing bolts were tough aluminim about two or three inches thick which one this occasion allowed them to bend otherwise the wings would have been torn completely off.
The above was confirmed in a letter from Wing Commander Wilf Sizer to Harry in 1990 as follows:
“We had a wonderful theatre built out of another one at Ismaila which had a lot of professional lighting, curtains, sound system, even the stage was built with the slope to the back. I was lucky enough to see Harry Roy and his wonderful band on two occasions as he set out to tour the Middle East.
At No. 71 OTU between 1943-45, do you remember Christmas time when for weeks before enormous efforts were made to decorate the billet resulting in some wonderful efforts that made it almost impossible to judge which was the winner – not helped by the fact that each had a bar.
I remember going round with W.C. Teddy Morris, the C.I. and having lengthy arguments as to the winner – singing “Green grow the Rushes - O” and having such a great and companionable evening that I don’t think anyone really worried who won.
Not always so good of course – there was the time when the whole Station
was inoculated against Bubonic Plague, which was killing the local Arabs in
Arashia Village on the
Sweet Water Canal. The huge dose was given in the buttocks and effects varied
from discomfort to one of the O.T.U. pupils who died. Mostly it stopped you
from sitting to long – I know that Ground School was done standing up
and even meals were a pain!
The business about the Spitfire was one of the results of a Sunday morning routine I got into – on the pretext of an air test. I took up an aircraft and flew it around the airfield on a sort of beat-up and aerobatic display, thinking it would add a bit of interest to the lads on the ground (apart from clearing my head from the night before) but no doubt you weren’t too pleased on that occasion as a fair amount of time had to be spent replacing the wings and wing bolts etc. I remember the Chief Engineer gave me a hard time but he obtained a four-bladed airscrew for me which added a bit of low level punch for my aircraft.
Were you there when we had Hurricanes so clapped out they were only doing 2½ before needing block changes or replacements? He backed my call to M.E.A.F. that we were unable to be responsible for further pilot training unless newer aircraft were supplied, and overnight, new Hurricane II’s arrived, to be followed a few weeks later by Spitfires.
I have a lot more reminiscences, both good and bad of ‘Ish. The swimming and sailing at Lake Timsah, with Cairo and Alex reasonably close, and above all a very happy and cordial relationship between air and ground personnel. I would like to think that such relationships exist in the RAF today.”
(Wing Commander Wilf Sizer, DFC died on December 22nd, 2006 aged 86. He served
as a fighter pilot during four major campaigns. He sustained facial injuries
when his head hit the Hurricane gun sight after being shot down during the German
invasion of France in 1940, causing him to crash land. Despite his injuries,
he swam across a canal to reach friendly territory, where his wounds were dressed.
He was back in the air two days later. As part of 213 Squadron, he saw plenty
of action involving fierce dogfights with the German fighters. On one such occasion
his Hurricane was hit and set on fire, but he managed to crash land just south
of Dunkirk)