Transcript
Finally, I did get a posting. It was to a training area where I had to learn more about radio and more about gunnery and this and that and the other and then I got posted again to another place where I learned all about the secret application of radar turned out to be radar, and we were sworn to secrecy and all the rest of it and then I was posted to another place and I was hearing, on the grapevine, a lot of my mates, they'd gone on to operation squadrons, they'd been killed and, you know, so, what am I doing?
Going all around these training places then it suddenly dawned upon me, I was heading for flying boats and apparently you had to be a top notcher to get on to flying boats because they were different to land planes in that the crew did their own maintenance on their own aircraft.
Well that didn't happen with bombers or any of the others. It was all done with ground staff and in hangers and so on and anyway I ended up at 461 Squadron. It had just been started up at that stage.
The aircraft, the Sunderland, was a beautiful aircraft, very old and slow but it was designed from a commercial aircraft and it had all the benefits other aircraft didn't have, big and roomy, we had a kitchen and a wonderful toilet with a flush toilet and not only that, a big room with washing basin and mirror. You could comb your hair and there were four bunks. Big and roomy. It was a lovely aircraft.
