W/O D. Adams
In March, 1942, aged 19, he was accepted by the RAF for aircrew training, and immediately resigned from his civilian employment as a qualified draughtsman. He completed his five weeks of “square bashing” with No 9 Initial Training Wing at Stratford-Upon-Avon.
Douglas was posted in late April to an elementary flying training school to be “graded” for pilot, navigator, or air bomber training at No 31 PD at Moncton, Canada. After the 60 hours flying he accumulated on the course, he was selected for multi engined training, graduating to the twin engined Airspeed Oxford advanced trainers on No 34 Service Flying Training School, based at Medicine Hat, in the Indian prairie province of Saskatchewan.

After receiving his wings, Douglas was posted back to England, boarding a Liverpool bound ship for the “fast run” home. Then, following a spell of leave spent visiting his parents in Birmingham, he was sent, in January, 1943, to No 12 AFU (Advanced Flying Unit) at Grantham, in Lincolnshire.
On Saturday, 13th February, Douglas he found himself in the pilot’s seat of one of Grantham’s distinctively short nosed Mark Is for an unscheduled third solo on type. It was to be a short trip: at a height of just a few hundred feet, on the climb out, Adams’ scan of the instrument panel revealed a sudden cessation of oil pressure. Initially believing the hydraulics to have failed, he soon became aware that
the port engine had stopped dead! In fact, though he was blissfully unaware of either fact, the Bristol Mercury radials powering the Blenheim were prone to such sudden and complete failures, and the ensuing consequences were often fatal. Adams had no option but to continue around the circuit against the dead engine (i.e. to the right) in order to affect a normal landing, doing his best to maintain the height he had. As he gently nursed the Blenheim on he realised that, at this abbreviated altitude, the high tension power cables stretched across the hill to starboard on his downwind leg were at the same level. Even so, Adams was unalarmed, reasoning that at the last moment he should be able to pitch the Blenheim’s nose up to “hop over nicely”. Unfortunately, his confidence in the aerodynamics of a one engined Blenheim proved misplaced, since the up elevator Adams applied had no visible result other than to alter the aircraft’s angle of attack slightly, without the expected transient increase in height, and it continued onward to impact with the cables in a fantastically coloured shower of sparks. Adams remembers perversely enjoying that display; nonetheless, the cables had effectively cut the fuselage in two: the stricken twin plunged to the ground.
Douglas was admitted to Rauceby Military Hospital that evening with multiple injuries, particularly to his right leg. On reflection, he feels he owes his life to the short nose configuration of the Blenheim I, which allowed the engines to absorb the impact of the crash. Had he been flying a later model, where the pilot’s seating position was situated further forward relative to the power plants, the result may have been somewhat more final. The comparatively low height of the cables above the hill also undoubtedly contributed further to Adams’ survival.

With the onset of autumn, 1943, Douglas regained his medical flying category and, following a short refresher flying course, was posted to No 51 OTU (Operational Training Unit) at Cranfield, in Bedfordshire, to convert onto the night fighter variant of the Bristol Beaufighter. Douglas graduated from the OTU in February, 1944 and, together with Harry Brett, was posted to No 515 Squadron, flying Beaufighter VIfs from Twinwood Farm, in Bedfordshire.

Since the start of 1943, the writing had been on the wall for the Beaufighter’s continued employment in the night fighter role, most units using the type for nocturnal predations having by now re-equipped with the more capable Mosquito. So it came as small surprise to Adams when, together with Harry Brett, he was posted, in April, 1944, to No 264 Squadron, then based at Church Fenton, in Yorkshire, flying the thimble nosed Mosquito NF XIII, with its 10cm AI MK VIII radar, with a range of six and a half miles.

Douglas Adams found himself, at the turn of 1945, surplus to requirements and, under the direction of labour extant in wartime Britain, was removed from flying duties as a Warrant Officer and a commission in the RAFVR, and returned to his civilian occupation of draughtsman.
So ended the wartime flying career of Douglas Adams, without a shot ever being fired at the enemy in anger.

In 1947, however, his commission in the RAFVR was activated when, the threat of war with Russia now looming on the horizon, he was recalled into the service, reporting to Castle Bromwich, in the West Midlands, where he flew a Tiger Moth again for the first time in five tears. “We were warned that war with Russia could commence any time”, Adams recalls, “and therefore we were really on stand-by. This continued, I think, until the 1950s.”
In the intervening years, Adams has remained in flying. In 1975, he formed Vectair Aviation at Goodwood Airport, near Chichester, in West Sussex, who over twenty years later still boasted a fleet of two Cessna 152s and a Cessna 172.