Ian15th got right to the meat of the matter...
But, I've always been thankful that I CHOOSE to enter the RAF as a 15 year old
The direction he points to is the fact that for a long long time now
entrants in this age group were / still are volunteers exercising freedom of choice and, often in fact, facing a lot of competition to even be considered. The days of press gangs roaming about rounding up unfortunates have been gone well before anybody around today can even remember.
I include myself as one of those fortunate enough to have slogged my way through the selection process and won myself a place to be trained as an Air Force Boy Entrant. We worked hard, played even harder and when the time came moved into the real world of Air Force life with high expectations of what lay ahead and also of ourselves.
It was a sad day when Boy Entrant training was withdrawn from the AirForce