Desford

On the 5th of January 1937, four months after returning to England from Aden, and six years after entering the RAF as an apprentice, my father achieved what must surely have been his dream. He started training to be a pilot. He was 21. This video captures, as well as is possible in the 21st century, what he would have experienced in early 1937: this is the same type of aircraft, the de Havilland Tiger Moth (this one has some additional modern instruments), and a similar English landscape (although in a very different season — picture bare trees, light drizzle, and a damp, penetrating cold).¹

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If he successfully completed his training and earned his “wings,” his working life would be transformed. He would be promoted to Sergeant (leaping over a couple of intermediate ranks), his pay would be tripled, his status inside and outside the RAF would go from well educated mechanic to dashing young man on the rise, and — perhaps most important of all — he would love his job.

But he had nine months of training ahead, with many opportunities for flunking out and a significant risk of dying in a flying accident.²

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The British government was belatedly taking the rise of Hitler and the threat of war seriously. The rapid expansion of the RAF had begun. Starting in August 1935, pilot training was divided into two main parts, and the first two months of initial (“ab initio”) training, which included the first solo, was contracted out to private companies. My father’s ab initio course, from early January through mid-March 1937, was at the RAF Civil Training College at Desford, Leicestershire, operated by Reid and Sigrist.

The school at Desford had been open one year, and the facilities were — by the standards my father had recently endured — very comfortable indeed. Four years later another trainee-pilot recorded in his journal: “We were billeted comfortably in bungalows on the camp, having a room each with all modern conveniences. . . We were living in the lap of luxury at Desford.” ⁴

My father’s first solo was on January 25 1937, after almost 11 hours of dual instruction.⁵ What a milestone achievement that must have been!

This was how Joe Northrop, a near-contemporary of my father’s at Halton, described what he called “the greatest moment of my life”:

“I had clocked up nearly ten hours of dual instruction and was almost sending Bill [his instructor] up the wall; something had to be done and it had to be fairly drastic, as what confidence I had started with was fast ebbing away. Bill, seasoned instructor as he was, realised my problem and on my next trip with him as we took off and climbed away . . I was startled to see him waving the control stick that he had removed from his cockpit round his head and singing merrily. “She’s all yours now, you really have her, show me that you can fly because I can’t do anything about it.”

After the initial shock I turned into the circuit with a newly-found confidence and executed a text book landing with Bill still waving the stick at me but saying nothing. As we stopped at the end of the landing run he heaved himself out of the cockpit, fastened the seat harness straps in position, stopped by me long enough to say, “Right, do that again without me and God help you if it’s not good.” With that he was gone still carrying the control stick in one hand, the other holding his parachute straps over his shoulder.

I took a deep breath then taxied into position for take-off and did a repeat performance concentrating on flying the machine so much that I was hardly aware I was alone in the air for the first time. As I taxied back from the landing run and parked the aircraft and switched off the engine Bill arrived back from his long walk and gave me a “thumbs up” sign and grin. It was just two o’clock in the afternoon on 25th February, 1936, the greatest moment of my life, when, after eleven hours of dual instruction, I entered the magical figure of five minutes flying in the solo column of my new and shiny pilot’s log book.” ⁶

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My father completed the ab initio course on the 13th of March 1937, with a Grand Total of 50 hours 25 minutes of flying, of which 24 hours was solo, and with the comment in his logbook from the Chief Instructor “uses sideslip too much”—a criticism he may have taken secret pride in, since experienced pilots skillfully used sideslip to lose height.

But this was only the first hurdle. He didn’t have his wings yet. Five weeks later, on the 20th of April, he started his intermediate training on Hawker Harts (an aircraft he knew well already from his time servicing them in Aden with 12 Squadron) at No. 4 Flying Training School at Abu Sueir, near the Suez Canal in Egypt. He likely had some home leave before he shipped out for Egypt. If he successfully completed the course, he would probably be posted to an overseas squadron, and would not see home again for five years.

Previous page: Aden Next page: Abu Sueir

Notes:

1. This video shows the view from the front (instructor’s) cockpit. When a Tiger Moth trainer is flown solo, the pilot is in the rear, where the view ahead, particularly when taking off, is more obstructed.
2. For example, 218 RAF pilots or crew died in flying accidents in 1938, disproportionately in training. Wing Commander Jeff Jefford, Accidents–Investigation, Institutions and Attitudes, 1919-1945, RAF Historical Society Journal, 37, 2006, p.43. Accidents (only one of which was fatal) at the school at Desford happened at least twice a week in one month (March 1943–admittedly a much busier period). Roy Bonser, Aviation in Leicestershire and Rutland, Midland Publishing: 2001, p. 182.
3. Note that Air Commodore Tedder is not wearing uniform. This was a civilian training school, and no one, including the pupils, ever wore uniform.
4. Roy Cheney, quoted by Roy Bonser, op.cit., p. 180.
5. This was, I believe, higher than average at the time, and perhaps close to elimination from the course (which would almost certainly be his one and only chance at flying training, and mean he’d be sent back to his ground trade). The number of hours of training before going solo was, of course, one measure of your natural aptitude for flying. But by no means always. Dundas Bednall, who also did his ab initio training in 1937 (at a different training school in England), took much more than the average number of hours before going solo (he was told at one point by the Chief Flying Instructor that his “last chance was about to come up”), but ended up passing out of the No. 4 Flying Training School at Abu Sueir in Egypt top of his class with the very rare “Exceptional” assessment in his logbook. (Wing Commander Dundas Bednall, Sun On My Wings, Pembroke Dock: Paterchurch Publications, p. 16-18 and 32. His comment on his first solo: “What a marvellous quiet feeling of achievement.”) What was the average time to solo in those days? Group Captain Frederick Charles Richardson, CBE, who also passed out top of his course at Abu Sueir, in 1934, remembered: “If you couldn’t go solo with eight hours of instruction, you were regarded as a pretty poor starter and you were given perhaps another hour or two of dual instruction, but if you still failed to show aptitude to fly solo, then it was curtains for you.” Imperial War Museum Interview, Reel 2, 22:00, https://www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/object/80004583, accessed 7 February 2021. S.J. Carr (Wing Commander “Beau” S. J. Carr, DFC), who trained at Abu Sueir in 1929-30, remembers, “Average time to first solo was around eight hours.” (You Are Not Sparrows, London: Ian Allan, 1975, p. 20.) Wing Commander Frank Tams, OBE, who was in the 22nd Entry at Halton, and therefore overlapped with my father for most of his three years there, went solo at No. 6 FTS at Netheravon in 1936 “in nine hours and fifteen minutes, a little better than the average.” (A Trenchard ‘Brat’, Bishop Auckland: Pentland Press, 2000, p. 55.) Wing Commander Geoffrey Morley-Mower, DFC, AFC, who trained in the same year as my father (1937) recalls, “I had already flown seven hours and twenty-five minutes of dual instruction, and it was generally believed among the students that five hours was average, and seven hours the limit.” (Flying Blind, New Mexico: Yucca Tree Press, 2000, p. 6.) In fact, I believe that anything under five hours was exceptional: Air Vice-Marshal A.G. Dudgeon, CBE, DFC, was an officer-cadet at RAF Cranwell in 1934 and soloed after “only 4 hours and 20 minutes” and was the “first of my term to go solo!” (The Luck of the Devil, Shrewsbury: Airlife Publishing, 1985, p. 8.) A.E. Clouston (Air Commodore A.E. Clouston, DSO, DFC, AFC and Bar), who was a test pilot and a well known long distance air racer in the late 1930’s, and clearly an exceptionally gifted pilot, remembers, “Instinctively, I took to the air as a natural medium, and when I went solo after four and a half hours I knew that I should never be content with flying as a hobby alone.” (The Dangerous Skies, London: Cassell, 1954, p. 12.) Whatever the number, it stayed with you your whole RAF flying career, since your Log Book was reviewed by your Flight and Squadron Commanders every month.
6. Wing Commander Joe Northrop, DSO, DFC, AFC, Joe: The Autobiography of a Trenchard Brat, Square One Publications, 1993, pp. 69-72.
7. Ernest Folley, Imperial War Museum Oral History, Reel 4, 22:09 to 23:07, https://www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/object/80004659, accessed 7 February 2021. Ernest Folley did all his flying training, from ab initio through service training, at No. 4 FTS, Abu Sueir, Egypt, in 1933.