Vickers Virginia First Solo
 

https://cimg9.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.gmf...ab3c738eb4.jpg

He got 9 months commuted to 6.

That's ex-apprentices for you :)

Well, we did have an engineer get airborne in a Lightning, albeit not intentionally.

Yes and as I recall he was an ex-Brat too?

and he had a few hours on Chipmunks as well.

Apparently three Brats flew a Battle back from France in 1940.
( This was according to the late Haraka Snr.,who was also one of Lord Trenchard's little gentlemen)

Reporting style
 

I love the way this has been reported, factually, with a sense of proportion and without sensation.
The press has descended well into the gutter since then.

He had his wings as I recall but chose to continue on an Engineering path as was his original intention and had no piloting experience in a jet.

Wing Commander "Taffy" Holden ENGLISH ELECTRIC LIGHTNING Inadvertent Take Off Incident
Audio Interview with lightening related stills.
Quite Poor sound but it's only 5 mins.

A Memorable Fright - Beds & Herts Counties - The Royal British Legion.
This contains the text of an article written by Wing Commander Holden describing the incident in detail.

Astonishingly, the aircraft is preserved in the Imperial War Museum.

http://www.********************************/lightning/survivor.php?id=30
http://www.thunder-and-lightnings#co#uk/lightning/survivor.php?id=30
replace hashes with dots to get URL.

This is easier:
https://tinyurl.com/myjfhtp

I doubt he had much choice in the matter Jim - it was a fairly short lived fashion to train some Engo's up to wings standard,one of my Jengo's in the early 70's had 'wings' but he was still stuck with being a Jengo.I would imagine some of the winged Engo's possibly managed to fly TWA (Teeny Weeny Airways/Chipmunk) on ATC summer camps but not sure if any of them managed to get onto a normal flying tour.

When I was on 92 at Leconfield with the Hunter the Eng O did the airtests etc. At Fairford with the new Hercules one of the co pilots was an Eng O who went back to engineering after his tour. I think he was he was offered GD/Flying but preferred engineering.