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This story was submitted to the People’s War site on behalf of Wing Commander John JF Long (RAF retired).

In the mid-1930s there was deep depression in England and Prime Minister Baldwin sought to cure rising unemployment by expansion of the Armed Forces and to meet the threat posed by the rapid re-armament in Hitler’s Germany.
In my final year at school the best advice I could obtain from my careers master (and in view of my very doubtful suitability for any job in the current market) was his suggestion that I take the exam for RAF apprenticeship. In 1936 aged barely sixteen I duly arrived at RAF Cranwell in Lincolnshire to be trained as a wireless operator. Among other lads similar in circumstances to me, we considered ourselves to be the very cream of the unemployable, but the adult element of the RAF referred to us as those ‘Trenchard brats’ after Lord Trenchard who started the scheme. Life was tough and punishments harsh for any horseplay. On one occasion, having heard our dormitory was to be raided by a senior course from another block we prepared ourselves with buckets of water. After the battle, the invaders retired with drenched clothing and although our corridor was awash, the NCOs, who quickly identified the raiders, were puzzled they could find no wet defenders because we had fought quite naked and quickly towelled off.
After a year of training in radio theory, Morse code to 24 words per minute etc, we began air operating in a huge Valencia bomber converted as an airborne classroom. Next we flew in Westland Wapiti aircraft, which had an open rear cockpit where the operator was attached from his parachute harness to the floor by a ‘monkey chain’.
In the air the aerial was wound down from the aircraft by a long steel wire weighed down by a number of lead weights on the end. One lad, named Kelly, at the end of his flight forgot to wind his aerial in, and the weighted end killed a small pig on an adjacent farm as the Wapiti came in to land. In 1937, as part of pre-war publicity, a few of us in flying helmets were photographed by the Daily Mirror and described as ‘young eagles of the air’. Our drill sergeant preferred his description of us as ‘horrible little toads’.
On passing out I was posted to RAF North Weald and flew in Hawker Demons of No. 29 Squadron as a squadron air gunner. The Demon again was open-cockpit with monkey chain, but the rear cockpit was equipped with a Browning gun mounted on a Scarff ring. As the gun traversed it rose up a notch and down again to prevent over-enthusiastic air gunners shooting the tail off his own aircraft.
In 1939 I was posted to RAF Martlesham Heath near Ipswich, and as war began I flew in Blenheim aircraft of No. 25 Squadron up and down the North Sea looking for German shipping. My signals to base helped the secret station at Bawdsey to calibrate the new radar equipment. The chance to fly was infrequent, however, owing to the number of available operators and small number of aircraft, and my career wasn’t going anywhere. So I went back to Cranwell to take a course as a Ground Wireless Fitter. Passing out in the rank of Corporal, I quickly rose to Flight Sergeant at an Operational Training Unit near Lichfield in Staffordshire. There were many flying accidents among the Australians there. A Wellington flew one night into a cloud with a hard centre in Derbyshire. The aircraft hit the hill killing all the crew except the small Aussie rear gunner. I drove to near the site and clambered up to the wreckage to retrieve the secret ‘black box’ which had to be handled carefully, because it contained a detonator to destroy it and prevent its secrets falling into enemy hands. I then called at the local hospital to pick up the surviving tail gunner. About three weeks later I was on the airfield when a Wellington crashed onto the runway with wheels and engines breaking off as it slid along. When the wrecked aircraft came to a halt, I was amazed to see the very same Aussie air gunner jump out of the rear turret and dash like a hare to the traffic control tower. He was repatriated to Australia and medically discharged — I was told that he took up a paper round!

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