A-25

DESCRIPTION: "They say in the Air Force the landing's OK, If the pilot's still out and can still walk away," but no matter what the state of the crew, there is still the Form A-25 to fill out. Many flight problems are listed, none worse than the A-25
AUTHOR: unknown
EARLIEST DATE: 1979 (Hopkins-SongsFromTheFrontAndRear)
KEYWORDS: humorous flying soldier disaster derivative pilot
FOUND IN: Canada Britain(England(All))
REFERENCES (2 citations):
Tawney-GreyFunnelLines-RoyalNavy, pp. 100-103, "The A-25 Song" (1 text, tune referenced)
Hopkins-SongsFromTheFrontAndRear, pp. 130-131, "A-25" (1 text, 1 tune)
Roud #29401
CROSS-REFERENCES:
cf. "Vilikens and his Dinah (William and Dinah) [Laws M31A/B]" (tune & meter) and references there
NOTES [1372 words]: Among the aircraft and other weapons listed in this song are:
-- Seafire. The British, lacking a workable fighter aircraft for use on carriers (they were still using biplanes at the start of World War II! -- Worth, p. 79) eventually started navalizing their land planes, producing first the Sea Hurricane then the Seafire, a naval version of the Spitfire. It "naturally excelled in combat. In carrier operations, however, it had significant problems, and its introduction saw a high incidence of deck accidents. A tricky plane to land, it offered poor visibility on approach and inadequate speed control, compounding the hazard of fragile, bouncy landing gear. The overall structure lacked sturdiness; experience showed that arrester gear could snap a Seafire in two. Takeoff behavior was better, but upon ditching, the plane sank at once. Range never exceeded 800 miles even with drop tanks.... Thus the magnificent Seafire could not fulfill all the navy's fighter needs" (Worth, p. 80).
Plus it had been only minimally changed to make it a naval plane -- the biggest addition being the addition of an arrestor hook to stop the plane on landing, but both hook and plane proved fragile when snagged by the arrestor wife (Brown, pp. 127-128). Early versions did not have folding wings, and so were too large to go down the elevators of many British carriers (Brown, p. 128), so they never entirely replaced other carrier fighters. And their fragility probably meant that many pilots had to deal with Form A-25.
Brown's conclusion, p. 144, seems to be that it was a useful plane for the Royal Navy to have, but less because of its actual value than because it convinced Navy pilots that they, too, had the benefit of the legendary Spitfire.
The Seafire, like the Spitfire, was made by Supermarine, which is mentioned in one of the later verses.
-- The "batsman" was the crewman in charge of bringing in planes to a safe landing on an aircraft carrier; he stood on the deck and gave signals to the pilot. He was called the batsman because he carried two paddles, one in each hand, with the way he held the paddles conveying information to the pilot about what he needed to do to land correctly.
-- The Nelson and Rodney: Sister ships, the only two battleships built by Great Britain between the two World Wars (all naval nations had agreed on a battleship holiday; Worth, p. 92, calls them "misbegotten twins fathered by disarmament). With nine sixteen inch guns, they had the heaviest armament in the world at the time of their completion, and decent armor -- but all their guns were forward, restricting their firing ability, and they were slow; they were "innovative in many ways, but successful in few" (Worth, p. 93). Nonetheless they are mentioned in several British naval songs, simply because they were big and relatively new battleships. They were often mentioned in connection with the Hood, the other pride of Britain's navy, but by the time the Seafire was in production, the Hood had been sunk. The British had by then built newer battleships -- the King George V and her sisters -- but they didn't have the fame (or the main armament) of the Nelsons. For more on the Nelsons and the Hood, see the notes to "She's a Tiddley Ship."
-- Formid, i.e. HMS Formidable: one of four carriers of the Illustrious class, the others being Illustrious, VIctorious, and Indomitable. They were the first carriers to have armored flight decks, which were a major advance, but in every other way, they were a regression from the standards set by the Americans and even by the previous British carrier, the Ark Royal: they were slow by carrier standard (30.5 knots; Worth, p. 84) and had pitifully small air groups -- often no more than 36 planes (Preston, p. 61). Formidable had a hard war; newly commissioned and sent to the Mediterranean, her aircrew damaged the Italian battleship Vittorio Veneto and the cruiser Pola, leading to a British victory at the Battle of Cape Matapan in March 1941, but she was badly damaged by bombs during the British defeat at Crete (Preston, p. 77). Worth, p. 84, says she was never properly repaired. She then went to the Indian Ocean, where she flew the Martlet/Wildcat (see below) for a time (Preston, p. 104). Later in the war, she took two kamikaze hits, although they were less damaging than the damage she had suffered in Europe (Preston, p. 161); she had lost ten knots of speed by the time she was finally taken out of service (Worth, p. 84).
-- Martlet Mark IV. The real solution to the British Navy's fighter problem was to adopt an American plane, the Grumman Wildcat. The British called it the "Martlet" (Gunston, p. 118), and used them in war before the Americans did. (The Martlet was, in fact, the first American plane to shoot down a German aircraft; Munson, p. 84). It tells you something about the relative air forces of Germany and Japan that, in European service, the Martlet was considered a great success, but in the Pacific, it was outclassed by the Japanese Zero, forcing the Americans to develop better tactics and to try to come up with a more capable plane. The name "Martlet" was phased out by the British in 1944 in favor of the American name "Wildcat." The reference to a Mark Four implies a date around 1942, but I suspect the number is not significant; it was used for rhyme purposes.
-- Barracuda. The Fairey Barracuda was a torpedo plane, the successor to the pre-war Swordfish and the wartime flop the Albacore. "[A]n obvious advance [on the Swordfish and Albacore], yet still something of a disappointment. Not an easy plane to fly, it suffered several accidents due to its handling flaws. Its engine lacked power.... Nevertheless, the Barracuda had enough range and maneuverability to be useful" (Worth, p. 81). It went into service in 1943 (Munson, p. 63). Brown, who tested many British naval aircraft, on p. 99 describes his shock at seeing such an ungainly aircraft for the first time. Brown, p. 101, calls it very slow to climb, and had sticky controls. The pilots actually had to learn a whole new technique to fire her torpedo; the standard method was likely to result in crashes (Brown, pp. 103-106); indeed, on p. 100, Brown says that this torpedo plane "was never used by the Barracuda in action."
-- Tiger Moth: Munson, p. 189, calls this "surely one of the most famous and well-loved aeroplanes ever built," a de Haviland biplane intended as a trainer and with a top speed of just 109 miles per hour. (Hence the wisecrack in the song about "It does fifty knots or something fantastic.") But it was easy to handle, and thus a very good plane in which to learn to fly; she served from her introduction in 1932 until the late 1940s. A great plane for learning, but heaven help the pilot in a Tiger Moth who encountered an enemy aircraft....
-- Reliant: Presumably a reference to the Stinson Reliant, a navigational trainer used by both the British and Americans. Very slow (135 miles per hour top speed, according to Munson, p. 234) and used only in limited numbers, I'm surprised to see it mentioned in this song, but I know of no other World War II plane called a "Reliant."
-- The "pilotless plane" is presumably the V-1 "buzz bomb" (or "doodlebug"), which was indeed a plane without a pilot although the engine was unusual; the V-2 was a true rocket.
-- F.O.2: I have been unable to identify a British aircraft with this model number. But it sounds like a reconnaissance plane in the song, and in the American army air force designation system,"F" was the prefix for a reconnaissance craft. My wild guess is that it's the Vought OS2U Kingfisher, an American reconnaissance plane which the British used in the Pacific (Munson, p. 239), which fits the song.
Adding up all the hints in the song, it would appear that it dates from 1943 or 1944, though possibly this was an update to an earlier version from 1941 or 1942. It is curious to find it mentioned by Canadians -- every ship and plane mentioned is a British, which implies that this is a Royal Navy song, and the reference to the Fleet Air Arm confirm this. And, of course, Tawney-GreyFunnelLines-RoyalNavy has the song as well as Hopkins-SongsFromTheFrontAndRear. - RBW
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