I continue from #2289 (We are at ITW in Newquay - May 41)
We did guard duty every few nights, with pick-helves (handles) to defend our billets from German parachutists. We did the usual two-on, four-off guard routine. By day we refined our trouble-dodging skills whenever we managed to get out, learning to keep well out of the way of NCOs, Officers * (rare), and above all Warrant Officers - far more threatening - who would be bound to pick you up for something. ** How else would the spuds get peeled in the cookhouse? The trick was to look out for stripes, and especially for brass buttons on lower tunic pockets (only officers and warrant officers have these). You could spot them a mile away and dodge round a corner.
Old habits die hard. To the end of my service days - and that would be a long time, I could never walk across a parade square without feeling uneasy, even though they'd mostly been downgraded to car parks, and I'd been an officer for years. For in the old days this was one of the blackest of crimes (you must walk round a square when not actually on parade, and I could hear the ghost of some long gone Warrant Officer or Sergeant roaring "AIRMAN!!!")
The six weeks flew by, I passed the Course exams and was on my way again, now a Leading Aircraftman on 5/6 a day - riches beyond the dreams of avarice!
On the other side of the Atlantic, things had been stirring. Officially neutral, the Americans (in particular the American forces) wanted to help us as far as possible, guessing (correctly) that they would be dragged in sooner or later. "All aid short of War" promised Roosevelt. "All aid short of Help" we mocked ungratefully.
One of their better ideas came from General "Hap" Arnold, the C-in-C of the US Army Air Corps. *** He knew that, in order to expand an air force quickly, aircraft production is a secondary matter. Once you have got the assembly lines going, you can turn out aircraft like family cars. But no air force then or since has been able to train a man from scratch to operational pilot in less than a year. That is your bottleneck. By helping us in that respect, expanding his facilities to train pilots for us, he might be doing himself a good turn further down the line (and so it proved).
He set up the "Arnold Scheme". He opened up new Primary Flying Schools (civilian schools taken over by the army), he enlarged his own Basic and Advanced Schools, and offered the extra training places to us. Needless to say, we jumped at it.
Notes:
* These would be "wingless wonders", young schoolsmasters and other professionals, who' d been commissioned as Pilot Officers in the Education and Administration branches. Having only been "in for five minutes", they were as green as we were. As far as we aircrew trainees were concerned, anyone without wings or WW1 ribbons simply didn't count,
** They were able to do this by virtue of Section 40 of the Air Force Act,
which provides penalties for Conduct prejudicial to Good Order and Air Force Discipline. This can cover just about anything at all. (The classic case is that of the Guardsman who was charged with "Being Idle on a Bicycle" - he was freewheeling!) If the W/O said your buttons were dirty, they were dirty, even if you'd been up half the night polishing them - you still got your seven day's "jankers" from your Flight Commander.
*** There was no unified US Air Force until after WW2. As a matter of historical interest, the same was true of our (Army) Royal Flying Corps in WW1. The Royal Air Force was not formed until 1st April, 1918 - a date which has raised a few wry smiles over the years. We went into blue, and invented new names for our ranks. The Americans changed to blue, but kept their old Army ranks.
EDIT: Gen Arnold was not the C-in-C of the U.S.A.A.C., but the Commanding General of the South-East Area Air Corps (in which much of the Primary flying was concentrated then).
Enough for the moment. More later.
Danny.
Gentlemen, today is the 10th.
Last edited by Danny42C; 8th Apr 2014 at 16:19.
Reason: Correct Error.