C Flight – Ah-ten-shun, the corporal roared,
Four weeks of lectures and bullshit on the ‘square’:
Your country needs you – What! For this O Lord?
It’s wings we want, and combat in the air.
Rifle-drill, fatigues, PT and ‘Who goes there?’,
Airframes, Engines, King’s Regs and ACI
A grounding this – to help you they declare –
Yours not to learn nor ask the reason why.
Learn Air Force Law – full-pack and extra drill,
We yearn for Spitfires screaming overhead
The war will end before we make a kill
Then came Dunkirk – invasion next they said.
And after ITW we learned to fly –
Now disciplined to fight – to live or die.
Squadron Leader Peter Fahy AFC DFC
As the Second World War approached, and re-armament gathered pace in many parts of the world, so the recruiting, induction and training systems of the armed forces began to react and reform to cope with the many thousands of new airmen and women who would be needed. The numbers required for rapid expansion would have completely overwhelmed a peacetime system, and of course as operational losses mounted, so did the need for yet more replacements. In fact the numbers of volunteers coming forward resulted in many people having the start of their service deferred, often by several months, as the training schools struggled to cope.
ROYAL AIR FORCE (RAF)
In the years prior to the outbreak of war, most civilians entered the RAF via one of three recruit depots at Cardington, Padgate and Uxbridge. With the coming of general mobilisation, many more recruit centres had to be opened up to cope with the huge influx of conscripts and volunteers, with Uxbridge alone receiving an average 600 recruits per month by 1937. In that same year a sub-depot was opened at RAF Henlow in Bedfordshire due to lack of space at Uxbridge (officially recruits were required to be accommodated on a scale of 60 square feet per man!).
Flight Sergeant John Whitaker enlisted as a wireless operator/air gunner (WOp/AG) that same year, and after training at Uxbridge and Cranwell, was posted on his first tour with 38 Squadron at Marham, which was the only unit to fly the Fairey Hendon bomber.
“After a medical board examination at the Aviation Candidates Selection Board, which declared me fit for flying duties, I enlisted as an aircraftman second class (AC2). At Uxbridge I found myself in the same room as David Lord, later to be awarded a posthumous Victoria Cross for extreme gallantry piloting a crippled Dakota over Arnhem. (David Lord’s 271 Squadron Dakota was hit by flak in the starboard engine while running in for a supplies drop, and caught fire. Despite this, Lord continued with two supply runs and then instructed his crew to bail out. Immediately they had done so, the starboard wing parted from the aircraft and Lord fell to his death.)
“We went on to Cranwell and were put in a hut: twenty of us, and it was pretty primitive, there was no central heating and with doors that didn’t fit very closely. There was no hot running water and the central coal-burning stove had to be cleaned out every morning and not re-lit until the afternoon. The chaps in the hut were a jolly good bunch.”
In the rush to expand the RAF rapidly during the immediate pre-war period, airmen might find themselves arriving at stations that were not really ready to receive them.
“On 1 September 1938, the first party of twenty-five airmen arrived at St. Athan, and for the next two weeks, these flight riggers were the only airmen on the station. They arrived by train carrying their own rations, since they could not eat in the dining hall until they had unpacked the tables and benches the next day. Although the station was largely complete, some building work was still in progress and it was extremely muddy under-foot. The first task of the advance party was to clean out the newly built barrack huts and make them ready for occupation. 1,000 trainees moved in by 18 October.” [3]
A few young men had already become exposed to what was happening in Germany well before the outbreak of war. Among them was Air Commodore Pete Brothers, who was to have a long and illustrious career, mainly as a fighter pilot. He initially flew Gauntlets and Hurricanes with 32 Squadron at Biggin Hill, Hurricanes with 257 Squadron during the Battle of Britain, then several Spitfire units including 457 and 602 Squadrons, and commanded the Tangmere and Culmhead Wings. In total he scored sixteen air-to-air victories, and finally retired from the RAF in 1973.
“At the end of ’34 or early ’35 I was sent to Germany to learn German. I lived with a family for three months, outside Nuremberg. Three boys, Otto, Walter and Harold was the eldest, he was about six foot three, he was older than me and he was Waffen SS. He used to wake me up at six o’clock in the morning, I’d look out of the bedroom window and there was Harold leading a bunch of black-uniformed chaps with spades on their shoulders, down the street, with a band playing. Otto was learning to fly at a local ‘aero club’. He was shot down on the Russian front as a bomber pilot. Walter, the youngest, was six foot eight, and was in the Guard of Honour for Hitler at Nuremberg, and he was the smallest!
“I was standing in the street when a parade came down the road, everybody Sieg Heil’d as the Nazi flag went past, except me. I suddenly had that feeling that somebody was looking at me; I looked to the right, and on the corner were two bloody great chaps, blackish uniforms, with daggers, pistols, and truncheons, and rocking on their toes looking at me. I thought discretion is the better part of honour; the thought of being shot out of hand or something.”
Already by this time, Pete had taken flying lessons.
“In ’33 my father said, ‘This silly idea of yours, which you’ve had since childhood. You’ll learn to fly, and you’ll get bored with it. Settle down and come into the family business.’ My mother didn’t object to my trying to join the air force, because she reckoned I was a weakling boy who’d never pass the medical. I learned to fly at the Lancashire Aero Club at Woodford on the Avro Avian and Avro Cadet. Learning was great, and I had a civil instructor, First World War Sopwith Camel pilot, who I adored. After I’d gone solo, I used to take my father flying.
“I put my application in to join the air force, on 27 January 1936. I reported to Uxbridge to march up and down, have a uniform fitted, mess drill. There was a super little squadron leader who was in charge of us. First World War fighter chap, covered in decorations, stuttered terribly, Welshman – Taffy Jones. He gave us a lecture, and said, ‘There’s g-g-g-going to be a f-f-f-f***ing war. And you chaps are g-g-g-going to be in it. And when you get into your first c-c-c-combat, you’ll be f-f-f***ing frightened. And n-n-n-never f-f-f-forget that the ch-ch-chap in the other c-c-c-cockpit is t-t-twice as f-f-f***ing frightened as you are.’ It was wonderful advice. My first combat, I thought ‘This poor bugger in a ’109 must be having hysterics. I must put him out of his misery! So I shot him down.”
A lot of men had already started out on civilian careers prior to volunteering, and in fact some of those that survived the war found their previous employers were happy to take them back again so that they could pick up where they had left off. One such was Flight Lieutenant Norman Wilson, who became a pilot with 209 Squadron on Catalinas at Mombasa, before moving on to fly Sunderlands.
“I left school in July 1939 at the age of sixteen and commenced an aircraft engineering apprenticeship at Sir W.G Armstrong Whitworth Aircraft Ltd in Coventry. (They were building Whitley bombers at the time.) On my eighteenth birthday in 1941 I volunteered to join the RAF as a trainee pilot, was successful in selection, but had to wait until 10 August 1942 to be called.”
Flight Lieutenant Eric Clarke was a WOp/AG on 49 Squadron, Hampdens, Manchesters and Lancasters flying mainly from Scampton before moving to Fiskerton. He completed a full tour, which included the first two thousand-bomber raids.
“In the 1930s as I worked in a Doncaster office, I got used to seeing various aircraft flying around and in 1936 RAF Finningley opened and I also became accustomed to seeing the boys in blue in the town mostly wearing an aircrew brevet, pilot, observer etc., and the aircraft were Handley Page Hampdens. I did not fancy myself with a Lee Enfield .303 plus bayonet and I had some ideas about becoming one of those boys so at the first opportunity I visited the recruiting office at Sheffield and applied for aircrew navigation but was refused on the spot as I did not have grammar school education, but I was offered wireless operator/air gunner which I accepted. I was called up on 13 August 1940.”
Many such budding recruits had seen something of the unfolding air war even deep in the English countryside. Warrant Officer Jack Bromfield was brought up in Bletchley in Buckinghamshire, and went to work on the railway before he too became a WOp/AG with 158 (Halifax) Squadron at Lissett in Yorkshire.
“As a sixteen-year-old I rode from Bletchley to the top of Little Brickhill hill, and I could see the London docks burning. The first German aeroplane I ever saw was a Dornier 17. Where I worked they asked me if I’d be a messenger boy in the air raid precaution section…and when the air raid siren went, it was my job to go to the council offices. This particular day it was overcast, very low cloud. I was standing on the balcony of the offices, and this thing came down Bletchley Road. I was petrified, I couldn’t move. There used to be a painting in the Great Hall at Euston of an aircraft machine-gunning a train. It was that aircraft…we were on the main railway line into London. He aimed for the train and missed. His stick of about four ruined a perfectly good mushroom field!”
The peacetime RAF was largely comprised of career airmen, but wartime recruitment and initial military training needs demanded a very large and complex organisation. A system of initial training wings (ITW) was established with the first such dedicated unit 1 ITW being set up at Jesus College, Cambridge in September 1939. The primary purpose of these units was to transform a civilian into a military man or woman, and on successful completion of the ITW course, recruits moved on to training schools appropriate to their trade, which was not always the one they would have chosen.
Recruits spent several weeks at ITWs, many of which were established in sea-side hotels requisitioned specifically for the purpose, examples being 3 ITW Marine Court Hotel, Hastings, 7 ITW Bellavista Hotel, Newquay and 13 ITW Grand Hotel, Torquay. Here they were issued with a uniform and other personal kit and learned such things as Air Force Law, basic first aid, drill, physical training, route marches, and handling small arms. They were also subjected to a lot of medical attention, including the inevitable plethora of ‘jabs’, often in both arms at the same time.
At first, the ITWs were fed from two receiving wings (RW), at Babbacombe and Stratford-on-Avon, but in 1941 these too became ITWs and were replaced by a system of aircrew reception centres (ACRC, colloquially known as ‘darcy arcy’). The first and perhaps best known of these was No.1 set up in requisitioned properties at St. John’s Wood in North London, in and around Lord’s Cricket Ground and close to Regent’s Park and London Zoo. At its peak, this ACRC had over 5,000 men in attendance at any one time for their three-week stay.
Flight Lieutenant Ted Mercer enlisted in August 1941, and reported to ACRC. He subsequently became a pilot on 83 (Lancaster) Squadron at Wyton, then 44 (Lancaster) Squadron at Dunholme Lodge.
“I reported to Lord’s Cricket Ground, and there the catering arrangements were rather abysmal. Breakfast time, the tea was terrible, the story being that it was laced heavily with bromide to keep us quiet, if you know what I mean.”
Similar memories of ACRC came from Flying Officer Mike Nicholson. His flying career as a pilot was mainly with 358 (Liberator) Squadron in the Far East right at the end of the war.
“I went to the aircrew reception centre at St. John’s Wood, where we lived in new commandeered flats which had never been occupied. I can’t imagine what state they were in when they were handed back. We had our meals in the London Zoo, which says something.”
At first, an airman would be earmarked for a particular aircrew category at either the RW or ACRC stage, but this was changed in 1942 with the introduction of the pilot / navigator / air bomber system (PNB), where the final category was not decided until the airmen reached the end of the ITW phase. Flight Lieutenant Eric Barfoot recalls his own induction; he went on to complete a distinguished wartime career as a Wellington pilot with 37 and 70 Squadrons in the Middle East, then switched to Dakotas with 216 and 267 Squadrons in Burma.
“I had been turned down by the Fleet Air Arm as too young to be trained as a pilot. They had graciously suggested that I might fulfil the role of marine or stoker. I had therefore offered my services as a pilot to the RAF… and in October 1940 I reported as requested to Uxbridge, hair well Brylcreemed, and I was interviewed by three senior officers. They asked if I had studied trigonometry for school certificate. Did I know what a tangent was? Did I know where the Great Bear was? I did? Good. Did I know where the pole star was? Good. ‘You’ll do nicely.’
“I was posted to 13 ITW in Torquay. My pay was two shillings and sixpence a day, less barrack damages. We lived in a room at the unfurnished Regina Hotel, drilled on the quayside outside the old Spa Ballroom, and marched all over the place. We did our square-bashing on the jetty. I thought I was an example of a good square-basher, but they called me a ruptured crab. I never quite lived that down.” [4]
Flight Lieutenant John Caird had been working for an insurance company in Leeds before joining up. He trained as a pilot and went on to fly Liberators with 159 Squadron in the Far East:
“The first step was to go to a recruiting centre…I was there for three days. The first time away from home and I was very nervous about the whole thing. Did I take pyjamas? Would there be sheets on the bed? How would I like sleeping in a barrack room with a lot of other recruits?”
Flying Officer George Cook, WOp/AG with 49 (Hampden) Squadron at Scampton, completed a full tour, including the first two thousand-bomber raids, before transferring to 205 (Catalina) Squadron at Koggala in Ceylon.
“I joined up in 1939, before the war, a VR wireless operator, and I was called up on the Friday night; that was on 1 September and the war started on Sunday. Then I was posted to Kenley on the Saturday, square-bashing and learning the intricacies of the Lewis gun.”
Flight Lieutenant Joe Petrie-Andrews had tours as a pilot on 102 and 158 (Halifax) Squadrons, and 35 Squadron of the Pathfinder Force, which flew the Halifax and later the Lancaster from Graveley. He completed a total of seventy operations.
“In 1940 I was at school, and I decided I would leave the Home Guard and join the air force, so I went along and stuck my age up and they wanted me to be a wireless operator/air gunner, while I’d set my mind on being a pilot. But they said, ‘no thanks’, and I came away. I went back a few months later and at another recruiting office everything went well. He asked, ‘how old are you?’ I said: ‘I’m eighteen sir.’ ‘You don’t start pilot training until you’re nineteen, but you look older than you really are, perhaps you will go through straight away.’ I got in and they sent me to America to do my training.”
By the time Sergeant Harry Hogben enlisted, the tide of the war had begun to turn in the allies’ favour, and the massive training system was beginning to produce more aircrew in some categories than were being lost on operations. Consequently, many men found their service deferred until such time as they could be accommodated.