It was obviously a bad time in the early fifties. My personal experience wasn’t too bad. On the day we arrived at RAF Ternhill at the beginning of January 1956 to start flying training on the Percival Provost there was an accident that killed three of the four pilots, caused by a practice forced landing just after take off climbing into the belly of a Provost that had just taken off. The only other accident was about six months later when a solo student got lost, did a forced landing on sports field near Liverpool and hit the only telegraph pole. On the Vampire course, there were only two Vampire V accidents, both fatal. One was an Iraqi who crashed shortly after take-off, caused by a jammed elevator due to a spanner left in a tail boom. The other fatal crash was due to a loss of control in a dive during a mid altitude tail chase. We didn’t think flying was dangerous at the time, but then we were very young.