Danny is in sight of the end at Valley
Perhaps two-thirds of "A" Flight's flying was on the Spitfires. the rest being on the Vampires which were used for high-level Calibration runs for the Ty Croes experimental gun-laying radar unit. As with all calibration flying trips, there was normally nothing memorable about them, but I particularly remember one such run from East to West across Anglesey.
It was late on a spring afternoon, for once there was little cloud, and from 35,000 ft I could see clear across to the Wicklow mountains on the Dublin side. But in between, the low sun reflected in the Irish sea, turning it into a wide, blazing lake of pure molten gold spread out before me. It was one of those sights that stays with you for a long time.
The spring had come, and I had two questions to settle before the end came in September. The Boss had now had me on the Squadron for eighteen months. He would know me now as well as he ever would. I put in a formal request for consideration for a Permanent Commission. He said that he would put it forward with his support.
And what was in store for me by way of my next Posting ? Obviously Ground Duties - I could not expect two consecutive flying posts. An interesting possibility appeared in an AMO. It appeared that all the Services were in need of Russian speakers - or at least translators. The London School of Oriental (or Slavonic ?) Languages would run a basic three months Course there, starting in October.
The RAF would put you up in London with a Russian-speaking household during this time. If you successfully completed the first part of the Course, you would be shipped out to Paris (presumably under the command of the air attaché in the Embassy) and again boarded out with a (White) Russian family for a further three months. The thinking was that, by this point, the basic Russian you'd just learned would be better than any French you'd managed to remember from your schooldays. As your Parisian hosts had been screened to exclude any English speakers, you'd have to speak Russian 24/7, with the result that you should become moderately fluent by the end of the three months. Then there would be an examination conducted by some sort of International Institute of Interpreters.
The A* people might get a job as some General's interpreter in Berlin. The less gifted Bs and Cs would be put on radio monitoring. The Ds would be sat down with a whole pile of old technical Russian magazines and told to look for anything which might be interesting. Whichever, you were attached to the Intelligence Branch for the rest of your tour.
This sounded to be a rather attractive option; both Niel (sic) Ker and I applied. I simply cannot remember if we had to go to London for interview (does "Bedford Square" mean anything ?), or whether it was all on paper. Whichever it was, the outcome was the same. Niel, with the fluent Urdu/Hindi that any Indian Army officer had to have to get past 2nd Lieut., was a shoo-in.
I humbly proffered my HSCs in French and Latin. "Go away", they said, "Learn some Russian and come again next year". (I believe many ex-Grammar School NS airmen were selected for this Course, which was probably a good idea, as their brains would be at their most receptive). Niel got through in the middle tranche and ended up radio monitoring in Habbaniya. (I visited him in London and Paris during his Course, but those are stories for another day)
But I was now left at the mercy of whatever would come out of the P2 bran tub. It seemed that I was to be the next Adjutant of No. 3608 (Fighter Control) Unit of the R.Aux.A.F. in a place called Thornaby. Where was Thornaby ?
But a good deal of water had to flow under the Menai bridges before I had to worry about that.
Goodnight chaps,
Danny42C
You never know your luck.