MPN11,
I'm very grateful for all the kind things you've said about the age-block of "old hairies", whom you found hogging all the mid-ranks of the RAF when you arrived on the scene. And, of course, your experience bears out the general analysis of RAF manning which I submitted a few days ago.
A point of detail: maybe I'm of a naturally suspicious nature, but (as you wrote):
"My first mentor on OJT * was a MPlt … a former a/sqn ldr on Typhoons who at War’s end was deemed unsuitable for holding a peacetime commission and to stay in the RAF was required to revert to Sgt Pilot".
A slight odour of fish hangs in the air. Did you
see any evidence to support his story (a log book would do very well, or perhaps there were people who knew his history ?) It seems very strange to me - unless he'd been cashiered, that is ! (there have been cases in the past of officers who've had to leave their Service "under a cloud", but then allowed to enlist in the ranks.
Of course the fact of dropping from M/Plt # to Sergeant would not occasion any remark - I myself finished in '46 as a War Substantive Flt/Lt, very briefly A/S/Ldr. They gave me a VR commission as a F/O in '47 or '48, and in '49 offered me a SSC (8+4) in that rank. It was "par for the course" in those days.
Sadly, there are "Baron Munchausens" in our ranks. About 18 months ago, surfing the Threads, I came across a veteran of 95 (not on this, I hasten to add). At first I congratulated him on his great age ("hope for us yet", I said). Then I looked at his CV and did the sums. It seemed that he'd been flying Hawk Is at age 57. I gently suggested that there might have been some mistake somewhere. He didn't reply and was never seen again (not on that Thread, at least !)
* BTW, What is an OJT ?
Cheers, Danny.
EDIT: # I seem to have got a bit mixed up here myself.
Of course, he would have progressed from Sergeant to Master Pilot when he came back in
after the war. If he
had been "shooting a line" (as I suspect), then he would probably have been demobbed in '46 as a Warrant Officer.
ricardian has answered my query (*) above. But I'm still a bit curious about the nature of the "on the job training" in which you were mentored by the M/Plt. What job ? Could it have been ATC ? Or was it earlier, before you came into the Branch ? (By a curious coincidence, I have earlier related how, at the end of the five months I spent kicking my heels waiting for a jet conversion [after coming back in and doing a month's refresher], I spent a month in Binbrook ATC as a supernumerary. I suppose you could regard that as a kind of "on the job training".....D.