This is getting a bit complicated!
First, to petet (2274). I wasn't very helpful on the Railway Warrants (we old chaps get a bit testy at times, I'm afraid!). If it were my problem, I would ask Network Rail if they had any old archives, inherited fom British Rail, in turn inherited from the old pre-War Companies which ran the trains in 1943.
It's a very long shot indeed - the Warrants may have been scrapped after the Company (and remember there were several of them: LNER, LMS, GWR, SR, etc) got its money back from the Government. (There was a big Wartime drive for Waste Paper). Or they may have been destroyed in the Blitz.
But it's always worth a try. Stranger things have happened. Persistence may pay!
(My 2273) To fredjhh (2297 and others of his Posts)
I think you're quite right about the boots. Only thing is: I can't recall wearing them. But then I can't recall wearing shoes either, and I must have been wearing one or the other! As far as I remember, I went from ARC to ITW with one kitbag, got my second (for my flying kit) at ITW.
And you're right about the watches. Nobody in our short-range squadrons in India had them, not even the Navs, for we map-read everywhere (and the pilots had a clock on the panel (this was always the first thing to disappear after a crash!) The Navs on our long-haul Squadrons (Liberators, Sunderlands and Catalinas) might have got them, but I don't know.
And was there any truth in the tale that one of our trouser buttons was magnetised to act as a compass (on the end of a bit of thread) as an escape aid?
Lastly, from Fred to TommyOv (2297 to 2266): It seems that the rigour of the Selection process was a case of "Post Code Lottery". All I remember about my Board at Padgate was that the President was a Group Captain Insall - a VC from WW1; one Member asked me "Where is Madagascar - and Formosa? and when I gave the right answers, seemed to lose interest in the business; the other, finding that I had a driving licence, quizzed me on the types I had driven and seemed to be impressed with my assertion that the Austin 10 was faster than the 12. This was true - everything was faster than the Austin Heavy 12 - but the inference was that I had driven both of them flat-out, and I suppose that may have counted in my favour. As for any Aptitude tests - there weren't any. Once you had got through the Medical Board, I think they threw you in the deep end (as Pilot or Nav) to see how you got on. Obviously, things were different at Cardington (and other places).
As for the terrors of the Medical Board, Fred seems to have had a much more sophisticated ENT man than mine. Mine went off to a far corner and whispered into a cupped hand "Can you hear me?" while I listened with a finger in each
ear in turn - of course it really wasn't right in!
The real killer was "Holding up the Mercury" - a test of lung capacity and endurance. A rubber tube was connected to a small glass U-tube of mercury. The other end of the tube had a mouthpiece with a narrow slot in it (but the slot had a "bridge" midway so you couldn't jam it with your tongue). You took a full breath, took the mouthpiece and blew. You had to blow up the mercury to 40mm, then hold it there for sixty seconds, to pass the test for aircrew. It was not easy, and if you failed first time, you would be too puffed to succeed on the second.
Bedtime now,
Danny