South Cerney - Tony Cunnane's Life and Times

I arrived at the RAF Elementary Flying Training School at South Cerney at the end of February 1966 to start my pilot training. I was feeling a little apprehensive because, as I explained on the last page, very few aircrew officers had ever been allowed to convert to pilot from another aircrew category. At the time I thought I was the first but I later learned that at least one flight lieutenant navigator had preceded me by a few weeks. I was, at the grand old age of 30 when I started, certainly the RAF’s oldest-ever pilot student. I was very much aware that all my former AEO colleagues would be watching my progress with interest from afar, as would my last two Bosses at Headquarters No 3 Group, Squadron Leader Dougie Fish and Air Vice-Marshal 'Splinters' Smallwood.

This was a period when the RAF had been trying for some years, and with less than 100% success it has to be reported, to train new pilots entirely on jet aircraft. It was seen in high places as desirable to be able to claim that the RAF was the first air force in the world to train its pilots entirely on jets. Inevitably some student pilots failed early on in their flying training and this wastage was proving expensive. Eventually someone realised there were many under-utilised Chipmunk aircraft still in service, mainly used to give Air Training Corps and Combined Cadet Force cadets air experience flights. Since most cadet flying was at weekends, using the Chipmunks during the week to run short ‘grading’ courses for newly-commissioned officers before they moved onto the main flying training schools seemed like a good idea.

Each flying hour on the single piston-engined Chipmunk cost just a fraction of an hour in a Jet Provost so the RAF chiefs, without publicly abandoning the all-through jet training scheme, were looking to see if a short course on the Chipmunk was a reliable way of assessing a student’s potential. Official figures I remember being quoted at the time were £4 per Chipmunk flying hour and £40 per Jet Provost flying hour. Makes you think, doesn't it? Mind you, my diary shows that en route to South  Cerney from Mildenhall I filled my Mini Cooper car "to the brim with 4 gallons of 'super' and got a few pence change from £1."

As far as I know, the RAF never acknowledged that the Chipmunk courses were designed for 'grading' purposes. However, when I arrived at South Cerney rumours about just that were rife. The instructors were putting it about that they were not allowed to fail anyone which, if true, seemed to negate the reason for the courses. Unsurprisingly, the students at South Cerney were not entirely convinced and they considered the system unfair because some of their contemporaries had gone straight onto Jet Provost  courses, bypassing the Chipmunk course entirely.

Their reaction at my entrance completely surprised me. They immediately sprang to their feet and one of them called out smartly, “Good Morning, sir”. At first I thought an instructor had followed me into the room but then I realised that the greeting was for me. For the last few months they had been taught that flight lieutenants were God’s gifts to the Royal Air Force. They had assumed that because I was a flight lieutenant and wearing a flying brevet on my uniform (albeit an Air Electronics Officer brevet) I must be a member of the Directing Staff.

Seating myself at a vacant desk in the middle of the room I said, “Do sit down, please - and relax. My name’s Tony, there's no need to call me Sir, and I’m a student on your course.”

They looked unconvinced but they did sit down – only to stand straight up again, as did I, when the class instructor walked in. It took some days for the rest of my course to accept me as one of them. Eventually they confessed that they had thought I was a plant – a spy for the staff. That may sound far-fetched today but it was perhaps understandable bearing in mind the fact that these students already thought they were under special watch because they had been sent on the Chipmunk course instead of direct to a Jet Provost school. I explained to them how someone with many years of service, and at least 10 years older than most of them, came to be on a course with them. I assured them that I would get no special attention - just more pay!

All the Chipmunk flying instructors, apart from the Squadron Commander, were flight lieutenants but they were considerably older than I was, and I had no difficulty in keeping to the RAF tradition of always calling your flying instructor “sir” irrespective of rank.

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