Tony Cunnane's RAF Years

I was given just eight days leave after square bashing at Bridgnorth. I left home again on 28 October 1953, this time en route to the No 1 Radio School at RAF Locking. Wireless training had started as early as 1916 at Farnborough – two years before the RAF was formed. Initially, the school was known as the Wireless Operators’ Training School, which seems quite an apt name since wireless operators for the Royal Flying Corps were trained there. More advanced wireless training, under various names and at several different locations, continued until, in January 1950, No 1 Radio School was formed at Locking, near Weston-super-Mare.

I had a trouble-free journey on the 'Devonian' express train from Leeds to Bristol. We pulled into the magnificent Temple Meads station, with its very long curving plaforms, 21 minutes early. I then took a local train to Weston-super-Mare. On the platform at Weston I met up with three other airmen with kit bags who were obviously just out of recruit training, each wearing a gleaming new uniform and glancing around warily looking for drill instructors or ‘Snowdrops’, aka RAF policemen. They had done their square-bashing at other recruit training schools which is why I didn’t know any of them. A ticket collector at the barrier volunteered the information that the RAF station was about four miles away and the next bus was not for several hours so we agreed to share a taxi. It cost us two shillings each. On arrival we reported first to the Guard Room just inside the main gate to announce our arrival, then we collected bedding from an elderly corporal who had apparently been sleeping on a bed in a cell at the rear, and finally we set out to find, and move into, the Transit Hut.

Transit huts were, by and large, fairly depressing places, usually cold and uninviting. In the 1950s they were almost always the same type of long wooden huts on stilts that we had met at Cardington and Bridgnorth: 22 beds, one coal-fired stove at each end, a corporal’s single room (always known as a bunk), a tiny storeroom for floor bumpers and cleaning materials, and two doors, one to the outside world and the other to a corridor linking several huts together. The stoves were usually only lit when the temperature was really low because lighting them created problems as well as warmth. Firstly, you had to find some fuel and secondly, every morning before start of work the stove had to be completely emptied and cleaned out, the coal scuttle had to be emptied and polished, and any other implements had to be cleaned. Because the occupants of transit huts came and went each day, usually without warning, there was never anyone around willing to do the cleaning. Thus the permanent corporal in charge of the hut would grab the first airman he could and order him to do it. It’s no wonder, therefore, that corporals in charge of transit huts were usually ill-tempered, humourless individuals, often wearing World War 2 medal ribbons on their uniforms, and nearing the end of their RAF service. Every day they probably asked themselves, “What did I do to deserve this?”

Next morning a bunch of us made our way to the Education Centre where I was told that I was one of the 16 u/t (under training or untrained) wireless mechanics whose course was not due to start for another week. We sixteen were, therefore, allocated to Pool Flight – another RAF euphemism for any group of airmen who were available for odd jobs, called fatigues, around the station. Pool Flight was large enough to require several transit huts but with just one middle-aged corporal in charge. There were several dozen airmen already in Pool Flight when we arrived and new arrivals joined us every day while others left to do we knew not what. My week in Pool Flight was frustrating rather than fatiguing because I was keen to get stuck into the wireless training. There was a kind of hierarchy amongst us: those who had already been in Pool Flight a few days were looked upon by those who had just joined as the fount of all knowledge. It took but a few days for newcomers to reach that pinnacle.

In my first week I learned that such was the RAF’s demand for wireless technicians of all types that new intakes of 20 to 30 airmen started every week. The largest area on the station was called No 1 Wing where several hundred RAF aircraft apprentices lived and worked. Apprentices joined the RAF at the age of 16 and studied at Locking for three years before being let loose on the real RAF. Regular airmen trainees were part of No 3 Wing and were banned from visiting No 1 Wing while the apprentices were banned from visiting our areas. Quite what the RAF thought we might do to each other if ever we met, baffled us. I suppose the RAF as an institution took their in loco parentis role very seriously. I never discovered what 2 Wing was.

I can’t remember much about the Airmen’s Mess food at Locking but my diaries show that virtually every evening my friends and I went either to the NAAFI for a supper or into Weston for fish and chips. The buses to Weston ran only very infrequently. Usually we set off walking and more often than not some kind soul in a car or lorry would stop and give us a lift. About halfway to Weston the A371 road from Banwell passed close by Weston Airport on the left and aircraft landing or taking off flew only 6 feet or so over the main road. Then there was a humped back bridge over the railway from Bristol; there was even a single wooden platform there known as Weston Halt and occasionally troop trains used to pause there - although I never actually saw one stop there. Immediately after the railway bridge there was a T-junction at the A370 Bristol to Weston main road.

Since it was November there were no holiday-makers around and the town centre roads and the promenade were dead soon after dark. Several small cafes stayed open late and offered small discounts for RAF personnel who were in uniform. I thought that this might have been a winter only concession but in fact it lasted all the year round. Presumably the owners believed that having RAF personnel in uniform eating in their establishment was a good advertisement and would encourage holiday-makers to come in. That is undoubtedly why the proprietors always sat us at a table near the window where we could be seen from the outside. One small coffee shop, rare in those days, was very popular with Locking personnel because it had a Juke Box and was frequented by local girls. It was called Fella's.

At the end of my time in Pool Flight, 40 mostly enthusiastic airmen congregated in a large classroom. I say ‘mostly enthusiastic’ because for the first time the regulars amongst us met National Servicemen. It was not simply a matter of the difference in pay either: regulars were paid seven shillings a day and National Servicemen only four shillings a day. We soon found that most National Servicemen resented being in the RAF at all although many seemed reconciled to their two-year fate. I also discovered that some were already qualified to various standards in wireless and radar theory. There were too many of us for one Ground Wireless Mechanics course, so we were divided into two. I was put into GWM159A, which comprised those of us who had no prior knowledge at all of wireless or radar. The remainder, who were supposed to have some knowledge of wireless, formed GWM159B. I imagine it was pure good luck that the numbers split more or less equally.

In early November I joined the 3 Wing voluntary band and started to learn to play the RAF valveless trumpet. There were certain advantages to being in the band: we had our own barrack block which was rarely inspected; we were not normally inspected on colour-hoisting and other parades either; and we were excused some PT and drill periods so that we could go along to the band room and practise. Playing the trumpet was quite a come down from my earlier aspirations to be a professional musician but I really enjoyed it and soon became very proficient and eventually the solo performer.

Money was a problem for all of us. At Bridgnorth we’d been encouraged to make a weekly allotment to our parents to “help repay them for all the years they’ve looked after you.” That was a very British thing to do in the 1950s and it was typical of the RAF to encourage us. I was very conscious of the fact that my parents had scrimped and scraped for many years to provide my professional music lessons, so I set up an allotment of 10 shillings per week which was deducted from my pay and sent directly to them. Most of the other regulars made similar arrangements. With our board and lodging paid for by the RAF, I considered that I should be able to manage on the remaining 39 shillings a week. Manage I did, but it was not easy. How the National Servicemen coped, I couldn’t imagine – perhaps their parents sent them money?

I couldn’t afford to go home very often. Fortunately, in the 1950s motorists were always very willing to give lifts to hitch-hiking servicemen in uniform. One winter weekend I described in detail in my diary my trip home.

“I caught the 5.15pm bus from outside the Locking Guard Room and got off at the Borough Arms on the main road to Bristol. I then set off walking in the dark along what was little more than a country road but quite soon got a lift to Bristol centre. I then continued walking miles up the long hill towards Filton airfield. Soon after Filton an RAF corporal picked me up but his car broke down about five miles short of Gloucester. He told me to go on without him. I got a ride on a motor bike to near Tewkesbury where a lorry driver picked me up and took me all the way to Manchester which was rather out of the way but still heading north. There I soon got a lift across the Pennines to Huddersfield. I then had to walk all the way to Dewsbury, about six miles, where I got a lift to Wakefield. I walked into home at 6am exactly.”

At the end of that short weekend I decided to take my bicycle back to Locking with me. A single railway ticket for me from Leeds to Bristol cost 21s 6d and I had to pay 11s 5d to put my bike in the Guard’s van. Once again I travelled on the Devonian express, leaving Leeds at 9.54am. En route I discovered that the train stopped at Weston-super-Mare after Bristol so I paid 2s 1d excess fare and arrived at my destination only 6 hours after setting out.

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Below:
A small ice cream shop with a coffee bar, rare in those days, was very popular with Locking personnel because it had a few high stools on which customers could sit whilst listening to the latest hits on a Juke Box and it was frequented by local girls. It was in the High Street and called Fella’s. This picture is reproduced from a small contact print and is one of only a handful of pictures that I still have from the large number I took during my time at Locking.
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Below:
Aircraft landing at Weston airport in 1954. Look closely on the right to see one of my RAF pals crouching in the grass right under the flight path to take a closer photograph than mine! The airport buildings, such as they were, are just visible in the far distance.
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Below:
G-ANDU landing at Weston Airport sometime in 1954.
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