My Dad, the RAF navigator 1945
Ladies and gentlemen of the best thread on the Forum, I discovered this thread three months ago after a tip-off on PistonHeads and have been spellbound ever since. My reading has only taken me to page 277 so far but I feel I just have to share some details and mementos of my Dad's training in South Africa with you now rather than wait until I am completely up to date.
Norman Frank Hibbert was born in August 1924, left Hackney Downs School on 17th July 1940 not quite 16 years old and went to work for Anglo American Oil Co. Ltd at Esso House. There he received his RAF welcome letter from The Secretary of State for Air dated 3rd December and post marked 4th December 1942. I have the original. It looks the same as the one posted earlier in the thread, including the phrase "Arrangements will be made to help you with your studies, and you will be told about these in due course.".
Quite when and where he started his training I have no information but he was out in South Africa at 45 Air School, Oudtshoorn on Course 43 'C' Flight and only graduated in June 1945. I have a welcome information pamphlet for Cape Town, some 43 Course dinner cards including the graduation dinner on 19th June 1945 signed by all course members and some group photographs. The highlight is a 64 page final issue of "The Sprog" (the official magazine of 45 Air School) dated March 1945 containing a history of the Oudtshoorn Training Station and a large number of group photographs for each of the sub sections of the permanent staff. I also have three small booklets. The first is a pale buff coloured paperback entitled "Far Eastern Survival Land & Sea", the second an untitled pale blue paperback with A-Z tear-out pages advising how to communicate with people in Assyrian, Azerbaijan, Arabic, Persian, Kurdish, Turkish and Russian. The third is a cloth booklet entitled "Pointie Talkie in Chinese".
He told me that the training was on Avro Ansons (most of the group photographs include an Anson) and at some time, presumably after qualifying and before being demobbed, he navigated Avro Yorks on the "far east mail run".
Sadly he died from cancer at the age of 54 when I was 24 and I regret never pressing for more information. But he did leave me a box of photos and stuff that I will share with you later. I need to accumulate 10 posts first!
And he taught me how to read a map and navigate.
He would take the family to air shows where I got my lifelong passion for aircraft and flying. The three incidents that I vividly recall from the 1960's are watching a four ship Vulcan scramble at an RAF Finningley airshow, being gently rear ended in our Ford Zodiac Mk 2 in the traffic queue for an RAF Waddington airshow and hitting the deck in the grass car park as a Buccaneer bounced the crowd from behind at about 200 feet! Now that was some arrival! And I can't remember where that was. Wouldn't be allowed these days.
We lived in Grimsby right under the outgoing and incoming Binbrook Lightnings on QRA. We counted them out and back (30 minutes later) three times a day all through my teens.
Best wishes
Jeremy
Man is not lost, man is temporarily unsure of his position.