Absolution at last!
Danny, I thank you for your gracious response, and absolution is always a bonus! You kindly invite me say more - I hesitate to do so on the grounds that anything I (think) I know would always be secondhand. After all I wasn't born until 1947 so I just read the relevant books. My father (RAF pilot), stepfather (Fleet Air Arm Observer), and godfather (RAF Pathfinder Nav.) are alas, all now gone to the big crewroom in the sky, although I still enjoy reading their logbooks and looking at their 1940s charts. Perhaps I could persuade my mum who, although in poor health, is still with us, to tell me more about her war (she was one of the 'Jenny' WRNS) serving in the Fleet Air Arm. Danny you are that rara avis, an RAF Dive Bomber pilot with your VV, but I submit that there can't be too many ladies around who remember, when just a teenager, going on Dive Bomber Exercises in the CO's Barracuda. (The targets were moored in Nigg Bay, Cromarty Firth I think).
I reread the interviews with the Carlstrom cadets in Will Largents book last night, 42 E,F,G,H courses all represented. I am sorry to report that West Point Hazing was still a problem, a Lt. Kloppenstein being mentioned more than once, perhaps you recall him? I think you were lucky, in fact like anyone who has followed your story I know you were. (Ah, sure the luck of the Irish - as yer know yerself).
But enough, already, I have tested your patience long enough on this subject, I will leave it with one last excerpt from the book:
"Not a single letter (presumably read by the censors) from former RAF Arnold Plan cadets had a word of approval for the hazing system". "It eliminated more potential British and American pilots accidentally than the German Air Force did on purpose," one cadet said. "There was no reason for it at all."
IanBB