CNCS RAF Shawbury 1957 - Tony Cunnane's Life and Times

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CNCS RAF Shawbury 1957

SNCO Years 1956-59

After the completion of the Air Signaller's Course at Swanton Morley, the few of us who graduated were faced with a wait of several months because there was a blockage in the system which meant that we couldn't immediately be phased into Operational Conversion Units (OCU). I was sent, in May 1957, to RAF Shawbury in Shropshire, where the main station activity was support for the Central Navigation and Control School (CNCS) where they trained, would you believe, air traffic controllers and navigators. (Click on the images to pop up larger versions.)

Not surprisingly, there was no-one else in the Sergeants' Mess within about 20 years of my age. The non-aircrew warrant officers and SNCOs almost seemed offended that anyone so young could be a member of their Mess, while the aircrew types tended to keep a fatherly eye on me.

The aircrew told me that the non-aircrew members of Sergeants' Messes never really approved of aircrew belonging to their messes. It was the first time that I learned that during the war aircrew SNCOs had their own messes so that they didn't have to mix with the non-aircrew.

There were some conventions I had to learn. When the Station Warrant Officer, who also happened to be the Senior Member of the Mess, came into a room, you stood up until he invited you to sit down again. In the evenings you could not order a drink in the Sergeants' Mess Bar until the SWO had entered and bought his first drink - or someone bought a drink for him. In early June on the occasion of the Queen's Official Birthday, all the members of the Sergeants' Mess assembled at noon in the Bar dressed in No 1 Home Dress, aka Best Blue, to toast Her Majesty. As the youngest member, it fell to me to propose the Loyal Toast and they made me stand to attention on top of a bar stool to do it - which seemed rather incongruous!

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