Ref post #83:
I suspect that "J D Mercer" is Jack Mercer, who was a QFI at Bristol UAS at the end of the '50s when I was a student there. He would be about the right age, and wore several WW2 medal ribbons. The last time I saw him was at Kidlington, about 1978; he was a flying instructor with what was then OATS, and I was there to do a civil IR.
Small world!