My First Visit to the RAF Aircrew Selection Centre

The final sentence referred to my Northern accent and ended with the words, ‘unlikely ever to become fit for commissioned service.’

Coronation Day 1953 was a public holiday. Even Dad had a day off from his duties at Wakefield Prison. We dared not ask him if the inmates would be watching television. We spent the whole day watching the Coronation on a neighbour's nine-inch black and white television set. Dad, having refused to buy a television, had spent the day on his own in our house. He realised he was onto a loser. Our family must have been the only one in the entire United Kingdom that bought a television set on the day after the Coronation.

The week after the Coronation my Office Manager, Mr Webster, the other junior and I made our way, in the Council’s time, along Cliff Parade, down Back Lane, past the high walls of Wakefield Prison, where my Father worked, and so to what was then called the Labour Exchange at the bottom of Westgate. We had a date with a Mass Radiography machine. While I was waiting my turn to spread-eagle myself on the fearsome-looking contraption, I just happened to notice a large wall poster which stated that young men with my birth date were required to register for National Service on Saturday 13 June - not by the 13th but on the 13th  - just four days later. Quite how I was supposed to know that, had I not happened to see the notice in the Labour Exchange that week, remains one of life’s little mysteries.

When I got home that evening I re-read the Royal Army Education Corps pamphlet which I had secreted in my bedroom and then wrote a letter to the Army Recruiting Office expressing my interest in signing on. I received a reply by return of post telling me to report for an interview at their Leeds office. Return of post is not a concept that many people understand these days, let alone the Post Office. The postal service, and businesses, were very much more efficient in 1953 so business letters were usually answered on the day they were received. The interview left me disappointed and depressed. Apparently there were very few vacancies in the RAEC and, although my educational qualifications were adequate, most successful applicants had university degrees. The next day, 13 June, I dutifully went back to the Labour Exchange and registered for National Service. I was the only one there.

A week later I filled in an application form, cut from the Radio Times magazine, to sign on as a regular airmen with the Royal Air Force. The advertisement was headed ‘There’s a Place for You in the RAF’. I cycled into Wakefield to post the letter at the main GPO in Market Street. I received a letter from the RAF, again by return of post, enclosing a recruiting booklet and inviting me to visit their recruiting office in Cookridge Street, Leeds, to see what they had to offer a 17-year old with 6 GCEs. The booklet, called ‘A Future in it’ claimed to tell the story of ‘…the men and women who carry on the traditions of The Few.’ It really was very interesting. There were photographs of all the new aircraft then coming into active service, all of which I flew, or flew in, later in my career. ‘The RAF does not offer you easy living but you will live your life to the full’ it promised.

During the interview the recruiting officer, a flight lieutenant with lots of medals, quickly decided that I was pilot material. That surprised me not a little because it was a career that had never occurred to me. I was easily persuaded that I had nothing to lose by going to the Aircrew Selection Centre at Hornchurch in Essex – and I would get a few days in London at the RAF’s expense. I had never been within a hundred miles of London and so I accepted the offer. I had not even told my parents that I had been to the recruiting office so it came as a great surprise to them when a blue letter arrived a few days later inviting me to attend the Aircrew Selection Centre. I went, with my parents’ rather bemused blessing, and it was an absolute disaster!

It was only the second time in my life that I had spent nights away from home and I was totally unprepared for the entire selection procedure. Many of the boys in my group of about 50 had been in either the Combined Cadet Force or the Air Training Corps at their schools so they had been well briefed on what to expect. In my case the interviews and group activities were a nightmare. For a start, I displayed my total ignorance of the RAF and anything to do with aviation and that, of course, was my own fault. I suppose I had expected the staff at the Centre to tell me what it was like to be a pilot in the RAF and then, having given me time to think the matter over, I could have decided whether or not to accept their kind offer.

My strange Northern accent, a mixture of Lancashire and Yorkshire dialects, must have sounded very common to the Centre’s officers and to my fellow applicants who were mainly public school boys. This accent issue was something that had followed me since my childhood - click here to read a much earlier example on my other web site. Apart from me, it seemed everyone spoke what we used to call ‘BBC English’ and which I now know to be called Received Pronunciation. I had spent my childhood living in both Lancashire and Yorkshire and I had a strong regional accent that was a curious mixture of both dialects. Such an accent was simply not acceptable in 1953 for commissioned service in the RAF - but it did amuse some of my fellow candidates, who possibly had never heard a Northern accent before unless they had heard Wilfred Pickles reading the news on the wireless.

The manual dexterity tests, the Morse aptitude test, and the extensive medical examinations created no problems but the teamwork exercises in a hangar were humiliating, especially when it was my turn to lead. ‘We’re more concerned with the way you set about the task you’re given than whether you actually succeed’, said the supervising officer, presumably trying to be helpful. My attempt to get my team of five across a simulated electrified fence using only the poles and ropes provided, resulted in all six of us being electrocuted. I fared rather better when I was not in charge and had to do what the next leader told me to do.

Why had not the recruiting officer in Leeds warned me what to expect, I thought, angrily. I have always suspected that he had a quota to fill and I was the best prospect he had come across that week or that month. On the other hand I did eventually become not only a pilot, but a flying instructor, examiner, and senior officer, so perhaps he had recognised some latent talent.

I slunk back to Yorkshire vowing that I would never again attend a job interview without extensive research and preparation. The inevitable rejection letter from Hornchurch arrived a few days later.

‘Do not be disheartened that we have rejected you,’ one sentence read. ‘You did very well but the standard now required is extremely high.’

Decades before word processors and templates with boilerplate text, this was clearly a standard rejection letter that had merely been topped and tailed. I still have the letter and I still think it very condescending. A follow up letter came from the Leeds recruiting office a few days later inviting me back for a further interview. I went, fully intending to give the officer a piece of my mind for deceiving me about my prospects but instead I signed on for four years as a wireless mechanic and he seemed quite relieved about that. Twenty days later I was in - and more than 46 years would pass before I finally took off my uniform!

Nearly forty years after I signed on, I had access to my own personal file. Such access was not authorised; personal files should never be seen by the subject. However, someone who shall remain nameless put the bulging file in front of me when I was working with the Red Arrows at Scampton.  She said I might like to look through it and then left me alone for half an hour. There, the very first enclosure, now tattered at the edges and browning with age, was the report of my 1953 visit to Hornchurch. It was by no means as bad as I had always imagined it would be. There were some quite complimentary remarks about my personal qualities, my manual dexterity, and my contributions to the leadership exercises. The final sentence referred to my Northern accent and ended with the words, ‘unlikely ever to become fit for commissioned service.’

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