I have been Frank’s neighbour for the last 30 years. At 93 he is nearly 20 years older than me and his busy life puts me to shame. Expressions like “salt of the earth” or “they don’t make them like that any more” come readily to mind when you meet this gentle, ”down to earth” character . After our last chat he presented me with a jar of “award winning” marmalade which he had made. This is in spite of suffering several bouts of cancer treatment which have left him walking with a stick. Until now he has always been reluctant to talk about his war experiences for reasons which will become apparent to those who will labour through my attempt to share his story. He probably carried out only about 10 missions against the enemy and he has calculated that he only spent a total of 48 minutes exposed to enemy action. Nothing compared with navigators in Bomber Command.
However, as the original purpose of this great thread was to highlight the various wartime training schemes for the two winged aircrew, I thought it might be interesting to record rarer details of one of those trained to keep some of them on the straight and narrow, at least in the air.
If anyone is still has the will to live after the first part of the story I can go on to share his short operational life and then some of his experiences as a guest of our enemies.
Frank was born in the North East in 1921. His grandfather was a miner but his father ran a family building company and, at 18, Frank was planning with little enthusiasm to train as a surveyor as part of the business. His main source of excitement was riding his 500cc BSA Sloper motorcycle which, Frank says, was one of the first motorbikes to have a twist grip throttle. As soon as war intervened he saw a chance to do something more interesting and immediately applied to join the RAF as aircrew. With the huge influx of recruits his entry was delayed until February 1940 when he was accepted for aircrew training. He then had to give his motorbike to his brother to sell while he reported to RAF Cardington where he was kitted out with his uniform. He had never seen boots before and initially he laced them up a bit too tightly. Three days later he was sent to a boarding house in Morecambe for 3 weeks of drill along the sea front where he soon learned why his boots were too tight.
Further basic training was performed at RAF Upwood before he was sent to Prestwick for pilot training in Tiger Moths. All this training was carried out by civilian instructors employed by Scottish Aviation and his initial flying training went very well. He managed the flying quite well, thoroughly enjoyed it, and went solo after about 6 hours. After this first solo flight, his euphoria was short lived as he entered the crew room to discover a notice which informed him, and one or two others, that they were being sent to the other side of the airfield to be trained as navigators. Along with his friend George Sproates (see Post7851) their initial reaction to this was that they felt “stitched up” or “sold down the river” and they were very angry. They felt like deliberately failing the course until they realised that it meant that they would probably end up with a worse job and, once he got started, he actually found it quite interesting.
He soon learned that his navigation training was designed to fast track navigators for two seat aircraft like the Mosquito and Beaufighter and was to cover daylight flying only. Apart from ground school, Scottish Aviation used the only existing Fokker XXXVI (G AFZR) as a flying class room. This unique, four engine aircraft was drafted into the RAF from Scottish Aviation and was used as a flying classroom until it was damaged during take off in May 1941, after Frank had moved on.
They also used Ansons but, for radio training, he was posted to Yatesbury where he flew in Rapides equipped with radios “from 1918” and which were so difficult to use they “would have confused Marconi”. Fortunately, he was later given a 48 hour course on new radios which were much easier to use.
After completing his training Frank, now a Sergeant with an Observer brevet and paid a handsome 12s 6p a day , was posted to Chivenor to join 272 Sqdn.