AIR TRAINING CADET I look back with the aid of my diary over 66 years to a few months before my fifteenth birthday when, quite unauthorised, I joined the Air Training Corps before I was eligible. The country was at war and adventure beckoned. Why should a month or two debar me from the excitement when my friends were putting on the airforce blue uniform ?  Although it was within my own school no-one checked on the false date of birth which I had concocted and which did not tally with the official records.  By November of 1943 I had passed my Proficiency Certificate but had discovered that, because of an optical deficiency, I should never make aircrew to which I had so long aspired. During that summer I had struggled into my first parachute harness and made my first two flights from a local aerodrome without meeting any of the dreaded Luftwaffe. In the August of that year I went to my first summer camp at what had been a small private airfield owned by a member of the nobility but which the Fleet Air Arm had comandeered for war service. Here I had my initial encounter with the Supermarine Walrus on the Monday when we wheeled it from its hanger and fitted its wings. This small flying boat, equally at home landing on the earth or the water, featured in many dramatic rescues of fighter pilots and other aircrew who were shot down over the English Channel and left floating, either in  an inflatable dinghy or a life vest (called a Mae West ). The Walrus would land nearby and taxi carefully alongside the airman who, if all was well, would be hauled aboard and flown back to safety. If the sea was too rough or injuries too bad then the amphibian would summon the help of an Air Sea Rescue launch to complete the task..  On Wednesday a Sub-Lieutenant Brown took a few of us up for a flight and my abiding impression is that of the aircraft struggling manfully against a headwind over the South Downs which at times effectively reduced forward speed to a crawl and the earth beneath us appeared to be standing still. Eventually we did regain our base having passed a Handley Page Halifax four-engined bomber on the way to our great delight. Sadly, there was no more flying that week and it was not until the following year at R.A.F. Andover that I flew again in a Percivall Proctor aircraft with a pilot who filled the cabin with the vapour of his after lunch gins. This camp was particularly interesting in that the station was the first to house the new Sikorsky helicopters, newly acquired from the U.S.A., which were so sacred that only specially authorised ground crew wre allowed to push them out of their hanger. Familiarity training for the pilots meant that each morning before breakfast the small number of machines would make circuits of the neighbouring farms, land alongside the Landgirls working in the fields, and collect a basket of mushrooms to accompany the eggs and bacon on the mess table. In April and September of 1945 I attended two, week-long courses, at R.A.F. Halton involving combatant training with rifle and sub-machine gun, and law and administration which meant that when I did commence my R.A.F. Service in 1948 I was already pretty well equipped with useful knowledge. We were always treated extremely well despite being subject to military discipline and I look at the photographs which were taken on   those courses with nostalgia. April, 1946 was the best point of it all. Our camp that year was at R.A.F. Thorney Island; the war was over and the tension released but flying training still went on from which we cadets benefited. On the Monday we had a refresher course on the use of parachutes and how to handle a dinghy in the event of a ditching because we would be flying predominantly over the English Channel which came firstly on Tuesday afternoon when we spent over two hours in a Vickers Armstrong Warwick ( a larger version of the famous Wellington bomber) on radar testing, flying back and forth on predetermined courses  to co-ordinate the signals for the ground stations. The following day saw a complete change in that we reported to the motor boat section where a launch took us into Portsmouth Harbour to see ships recently returned from the war in the Pacific . The huge battleships H.M.S. Malaya and H.M.S. Ramillies with their attendant cruisers and destroyers occupied a goodly portion of the anchorage but the sight which remains with me was when were escorted to the bridge of the aircraft carrier H.M.S. Indefatigable which had been attacked by a Japanese kamikaze aircraft and we looked down on the flight deck, peeled back just as if a can of sardines had been opened with a blunt blade. On the way back to Thorney Island each cadet was allowed a 20 minute trek at the wheel of the powerful launch which had ,I believe, a Merlin engine below decks. On Thursday we really thought fortune had smiled on us for we were called to collect our parachutes for a trip in a famous Avro Lancaster bomber. I remember the thrill as the  throttles were opened and the aircraft hurtled down the runway and out over the sea with a terrific roar which calmed down as the power was reduced because it was explained to us that we would not be climbing but would make a low-level approach to skip our bombs through a target like a giant cinema screen, floating in the sea off Bognor Regis – Dam Busters technique for attacking enemy shipping ! All went well and we heard those familiar words over the inter-com, “Bombs gone !” and looking back we saw the holes which had been punched in the canvas as the bombs tore through. We didn't have to go home immediately so without increasing height we screamed across the water passing Littlehampton, then Worthing and Brighton until at Rottingdean the skipper took the Lancaster round in a wide circle and we headed back the way we had come. Just in time for lunch ! Our luck continued to last for on Saturday morning we were invited to join the crew of a Consolidated Liberator for another bombing raid off the coast but this time, not by sight, but by radar. The B-24 Liberator had the advantage of having two open hatches on each side for  the waist gunners, who were not needed on this trip, so we occupied these positions and between them lay the bomb racks stacked up so that one could touch them. When  the bombing commenced the doors opened beneath the bombs and one could lean over to look at the water racing past beneath the fuselage. Then the bombs were released, a few at a time as the bombing schedule progressed and one could see them float down to hit the target beneath. Unforgettable ! Many years later speaking to an American in a wheel chair I told him how I had stood in that position and he said, “Yes, I knew it well ; I was a waist gunner in a B-24 over the Philipinnes when a Jap cannon shell ricocheted off the interior wall and destroyed my legs.” It made my small pleasure suddenly worthless in the light of such an experience. So, apart from a friend who was awaiting demobilisation at a small airfield on the cliffs near Eastbourne and who took me up in a Piper Cub or an Auster for a flight over Brighton, the adventure came to an end. By that time I had been promoted from Corporal to Sergeant and was very pleased with life until I joined the Royal Air Force for recruit training where a “real” Corporal sneeringly said to me at a barrack room inspection, “You, a sergeant in the A.T.C. ? I wouldn't make you a patrol leader in the Girl Guides !” But he could not destroy those years which had given me so much purpose and a perpetual love affair with the aircraft which I treasure to this day.