MPN11,
Your:
"....and the Stn Cdr was Gp Capt A F Wallace CBE DFC who I seem to recall was a bit of a Tartar...."
You can say that again ! (he was a few years older than I, so by definition is almost certainly dead now and nil nisi bonum applies - but no one who did a tour at Shawbury under his command will ever forget him)".
I take it that the residents of the "adjacent island" (wouldn't be Guernsey, by any chance ?), choose French epithets, whereas you Jerseymen, more loyal to the Crown, use English ones ?
Commander Derrick ("The Admiral") and W/Cdr Elliot, of course ! And I'd quite forgotten that we let you lot into the Tower (Local and Approach ?) to hone your skills on (mostly) Marshalls' pilots, who (to be fair) had already developed a strong sense of self-preservation (vitally necessary when placing your life in the hands of u/t "Talkdowns" at Sleap !) Static model of an airfield ? (what was that ?)
Fine body of men ! Some time ago, I was sent my ('55) Course Photo. All the people were ex-war aircrew, and there was a marked contrast between backgrounds (our tumbledown tarred wooden shed "School of Air Traffic Control" and your gracious Georgian facade of the new building).
Sgt Coombe - that's an interesting one. He must have been one of the very first "admin" ATC Assistants to be put up for a Local Controllers' Course (which would involve immediate promotion to F/Sgt). Otherwise, I'd think he was more or less at a dead end.
As for Harry the Statistician, it would seem that he hit the jackpot and no mistake ! Wing Commanders left, right and centre ! I'm pleased to hear that Bob Warwick made it into that noble body, and very sorry to be told some time ago that he'd died quite young (but I have no details).
Looking back, it seems that the three years I spent "labouring in the vineyard" there produced some very fine vintages (and the instructors did quite well, too). We must have been doing something right !....D.
DFCP,
Leonard Trevallion now 99. Hope for us yet ! By my reckoning he would be Class 42D or E. A measure of the RAF's desperate need for aircrew at that time was that exemption was allowed from otherwise strictly "Reserved Occupations" (ie from call-up - a Metropolitan policeman would certainly be one such), but only for aircrew volunteers. By remarkable coincidence, I had another ex-Metropolitan policeman (Alan Morley) as my room-mate on OTU at Hawarden. Nice chap, never knew what happened to him afterwards....D.
IanBB,
It is nice to hear of the chivalry and courtesy displayed by the "Jolly Jack Tars" of that era towards a Wren (your mother), and of the ingenious way in which the "alarm" was sounded.
"Tempora mutantur, nos et mutamur in illis" - strictly translated (for the benefit of the non-classicists among us) as: "The times move [on], and we too move [along] in them." - but do we really have to ?..... D.
Fantom Zorbin,
Doesn't sound like the Harry I knew ! Perhaps he wasn't "quite right" that day. Good to hear that 'our' Harry got to the top in the end.
Now no more of this "deference" and "august thread". Come on in, the water's fine !...D.
MPN11,
The "Carlstrom Syndrome" strikes again ! Although I must have used the Static Airfield model a hundred times, I have absolutely no recollection of it now. But I must say that your Mk.2 (and I quote) sounds a much better idea:
"In my later career I was able to procure a proper dynamic visual simulator which allowed structured, progressive training. It went live in 1992/3, IIRC. Still in service ... It will be a relic one day!! (RAF Shawbury | Christie - Visual Display Solutions)".
Oh what it is to be a Wing Commander, and to be able to make things happen ! (did they give you anything for the idea, btw ?)
I quote:
"How could those Magnificent Men (in their Flying Machines) have got up and down without us ?".
Very well, in point of fact. The great untold secret of ATC is that the whole lot could vanish tomorrow; aviation would continue to function regardless. Admittedly the flyboys would have to look out of the window a bit more, and anti-collision radar might prove its worth.
After all, in the war we said: "If you can't see your friends, who mean you no harm, how will you see your enemy who is creeping up behind you with a piece of lead pipe ?" (I went through '41 to'46 (US,UK,India and Burma) with no ATC at all, and felt no pain).
And you can navigate, can't you ? So why would you fly into a mountain which is on your map ? The True Blue doesn't sail onto well-charted rocks, or go aground on marked shoals any more, does it ?
(but now I come to think of it..........pace Union Jack).
(All the above with tongue-in-cheek !)
Fine body of men ! No idea where our black huts were, somewhere in walking distance of the Messes, I suppose. And good for Sgt Dick Coombe (you can't keep a good man down !)....D.
andyl999,
The Terrell Year Book was well worth reading, and so well illustrated. HF Senior seems to have had a far more comfortable existence than we in the Arnold Schools (although I can only speak of Carlstrom).
I am still confused by the way that the BFTS, even before Pearl Harbor, were able to wear RAF forage caps with the white flash, and have RAF officers in uniform ordering them about, while we were skulking about in civvies and flying overalls, pretending to be civilians. Perhaps it was because we were at an Army school, and Terrell was civilian ?.
The records for the cadets will certainly exist - deep in the vaults of the Pentagon. Also there is the answer to the really big question: "What did the Army Air Corps learn from their cadets, (which they required to compose 20% of the BFTS intake) When they got them back; how did they compare with the home grown product ?...D.
Last edited by Danny42C; 30th Apr 2014 at 15:41.
Reason: Spacing.