Pontius Navigator (your #58)
"....I don't know how much benefit the Eng branch got from a relatively small number of aircrew trained officers...."
One of the versions (at the time) of the inadvertant flight by W/Cdr "Taffy" Holden in a Lightning at Lyneham had him as having done one of these Courses. Don't know if it's true.
(And if it were, it certainly wouldn't have qualified him to fly a Lightning !)
The marvellous thing about that episode was that they managed to hush it up so successfully that the papers didn't get on to it for years afterwards. A side effect was that all manner of tales were running around in the RAF after it happened (on a Saturday, I think).
It reached the Instructors' Common Room at JATCS (Shawbury) on the Monday morning. We rang Lyneham ATC, but could get nothing out of them. Somewhere way back in the last three years I Posted our (highly coloured)version on the "Gaining a RAF Pilot's Brevet in WWII" Thread under the title "Le Pilote Malgré Lui".
D.
PS: Traced it - "Lightning Engineer Airborne" Thread: Page 3 #42. This was the rumour as it reached us at Shawbury - almost entirely fictitious and much embroidered !
