I had a job as a salesman and was earning £1500 per annum in 1960. I was delighted to give it up for a crack at aircrew and was paid around £4 a week as an "orficer cadet".
By the time I married (being the only way of getting regular sex without upsetting the Air Force Board) I was earning £40 a month which rocketed to £85 when I married. I managed to move from a civilian "grottage" in Wiltshire where I paid £23 per month to a sub standard hut at RAF Rudloe Manor for only £12 per month. There was a bonus there in that the security light outside mysteriously wound my quarters electricity meter backwards. I fitted it with the most powerful bulb I could find and saved considerably. Further savings were made by burning the lino from the underground comms centre on my living room fire.
By the time I bought my first house I was earning nearly £1500 a year-but the house cost over £4000.
Eventually left in 1977 earning £6,000 as an aircrew Flt Lt and joined civil aviation where everyone gets to earn like an AVM.
...and I still have a guilt complex that I never got shot at like todays young men and women!
