Thanks for the welcomes.
Brian 48nav asked for some more details of my Dad's time in the RAF. He actually joined twice! This is a summary:
Trained with the Czech air force for about 2 years – I have his flying log book.
After the German invasion he knew he had to leave and managed to get to France where he flew with the French Air Force.
In late 1940 he left from the south of France by ship and reached England. He went through an assessment and training centre which was at RAF Cosford.
He joined 310 squadron (one of the RAF squadrons with Czech pilots), initially based at RAF Duxford, where they were flying Hurricanes. The squadron moved around, which included being based in Scotland. He was flying Spitfires as well as Hurricanes.
He then went to Saskatchewan in Canada where he learnt how to train pilots to fly on instruments using Link trainers. After this he returned to England and was training.
At the end of the war he went back to Czechoslovakia and was stationed in Prague. When the communists took control in 1948 many of the former RAF pilots were imprisoned. He managed to escape from prison and always said that ironically it was a German man that helped him.
He then walked at night to Germany where he was detained in a displaced persons camp. The British and the Americans interviewed him there. The British offered him the chance to return to England and re-join the RAF and he suspected that the Americans wanted him to go back to Czechoslovakia as a spy. He chose the RAF!
For the next period he was instructing not flying (I think at RAF Little Rissington) and in the late 1950s was posted to RAF Khormaksar in Aden. He married my Mum there; she was a nurse and had gone to Aden to work in the Queen Elizabeth Hospital.
From there he returned to RAF Uxbridge and then moved to RAF Binbrook in Lincolnshire where I think he started working on air traffic control. The next move was to RAF West Raynham in Norfolk in the mid 60’s. He then moved to RAF West Drayton (LATCC) in 1969, initially on the military side. He also had a couple of short postings to RAF Lyneham in Wiltshire and RAF Ballykelly in Northern Ireland.
When he retired from the RAF in 1972 he moved to the civilian side (CAA) at LATCC and became an ATCA. He helped manage the documents and the air traffic control training courses that were run from Hurn, near Bournemouth. He did 10 years with the CAA and then retired.