Boy Entrant; The Recollections of a Royal Air Force Brat (49 page)

During the month of January, the 32nd Entry graduated from ITS and came over to the Wings. It was from this crop of sprogs that we, the high and mighty Senior Entry, selected our bull boys. I must confess to taking advantage of the unwritten tradition that enabled Senior Entry boys to have someone else clean their kit, without reward. After all, I’d served my time when I too was a sprog and therefore felt every bit entitled to this very unofficial perk. But not everyone did. Richard Butterworth, to his everlasting credit, refused to have anyone else clean his stuff. His point of view, being somewhat different from mine, was that he didn’t like it when he had to do it, so he wasn’t going to inflict the same indignity on someone else. At the time, I thought he was making a very foolish choice, but with the passage of years I’ve come to believe that he was the better man for taking such a principled stand. That’s not to say that I was harsh to Adam, my bull boy. In fact, we became friends in the same way that Mick and I had been friends when I was his bull boy.

* * *

Although I had so far managed to remain in the 29th Entry, having narrowly missed relegation to the 30th (thanks to Mr. Dimbleby’s invitation for “coffee and biscuits”), I certainly didn’t feel secure in the belief that graduation with the Entry was a foregone conclusion. Occasionally, however, these feelings of insecurity were forced to take a back-seat by morale-boosting incidents that strongly encouraged me to make the grade at the first attempt. One such experience occurred early in the term, when Corporal Longfellow called all of us to the common room and then handed out forms on which we were invited to indicate our first, second and third choices of the RAF stations to which we would like to be posted on completion of our training. We were advised that there was no guarantee of ending up at any of our three choices and that this exercise was simply like buying a ticket in a raffle for three prizes, in which the ticket-buyer was not assured of a win. My first choice was RAF Ballykelly, near my home town and the second was RAF Aldergrove, near Belfast. I don’t recall my third choice, but, as events turned out, it was of little consequence anyway. Nevertheless, participating in this particular ritual boosted my morale and made me determined to pass the Final Trade Test as I visualized myself arriving at my new station, ready to reap the rewards earned after the rigours of Boy Entrant training.

* * *

A few weeks later, when we were about halfway through the term, it became time for the Final Trade Test—the focal point of our entire training. I had looked forward to this event ever since coming to the Wings, but also dreaded it. For weeks, most of us had been burying our noses in notebooks day and night, yet even on the morning of the Final Paper itself, not one of us could resist a frantic eleventh-hour flick through pages of notes, seeking to reconfirm some difficult-to-remember information that “just might come up”.

There was a solemn sense of occasion associated with sitting for the Final Paper that did nothing to settle the swarm of butterflies in the pit of my stomach. After being marched to the Education Centre at the appointed hour, we were assigned by name to specific classrooms. Seating in the classrooms was arranged in such a way that no two people of the same trade sat anywhere near each other. Education officers, who had taken on the role of the invigilators, ceremoniously handed out new, freshly-sharpened pencils.

The Final Paper, as I’ve already mentioned, was a multiple-choice type of question paper. The answer sheet consisted of 100 numbered rows, each containing four blank boxes. Each row represented a question on the paper. The columns formed by the quarter-inch square boxes were labelled A, B, C and D. This sheet of paper was placed in front of us after we’d taken our seats. The classroom invigilator then came around and placed a question paper face down on each desk. We were ordered not to turn the question paper over until told to do so, but were permitted to read the instructions at the top of the answer sheet. We already knew them by heart at this late stage in our training—“Select one of the options, A, B, C or D as the correct answer from the four alternative answers given for each question, then place two diagonal lines from corner to corner to form an “X” in the box represented by the column-letter and question-number coordinates unique to that answer”.

We were allowed one opportunity to correct a wrong answer for each question by drawing a circle in the box in which we had mistakenly placed the “X” and then putting another “X” in what we now thought was the correct box. The invigilator also advised that we should periodically check that the row number on the answer sheet agreed with the question number we were working on, since it wasn’t uncommon for someone to skip a line as they worked through the test, making the likelihood of correct answers from that point onward little better than if they were pure guesses, with failure a very strong likelihood.

The invigilating officer kept a watchful eye on the clock as it approached the fateful hour and then, as soon as the minute and second hands lined up exactly on 1000 hours, he pronounced that we should turn our papers over and begin the test. There was a quiet rustle of paper, immediately followed by an unearthly silence that would last for up to two hours. It was only interrupted by an occasional small sound, like a dropped pencil, that sounded like a thunderclap in the otherwise deathly quiet room. Heads were bowed as those of us taking the exam urged every available neuron to leap heroically across impossibly wide synapses and create the necessary flow of information needed to achieve, at the very least, the magic 60% mark that would spell the difference between pass or fail. At stake was the difference between a triumphant transition to the regular service, or a humiliating relegation to the 30th entry.

At about an hour and a half into the test, the heavy blanket of silence was broken by the sound of a chair being scraped on the floor as someone stood up. The invigilator looked up expectantly as one of the examinees approached him and handed over his completed paper. After a short interval, another chair scraped and another paper was turned in. I was still struggling through the test, racking my brains on many of the questions, as I tried to match them to correct alternative answers. Even if you knew the subject like the back of your hand, the question could still be answered incorrectly due to carelessness in reading it or the answers. And if all the answers to a question appeared equally correct, it was a clear sign that you were in deep trouble, leaving just one tried and tested option—eeny, meeny, miney, mo…

The frequency of papers being handed over increased, until finally I was able to put an “X” on my selection to question number 100. A quick look over the question paper, which was so fleeting as to be worthless and I was done, one way or another. This time it was my chair that made a noise as I stood up and handed my hopes and dreams over to the invigilating officer. I noticed that a good few still remained bent over their papers, so I tiptoed out of the room as quietly as possible. Then it was back to the billet and the inevitable post-mortem with the other lads. We recalled questions from memory and then discussed what answers we’d given. Sometimes my heart sank as I realized that a particular answer I had selected was wrong and at other times my spirits soared when I was able to confirm that I’d got one right. All in all, I felt I had a fair chance. Not a “dead-cert” pass, but a feeling that I’d done all right. But, of course, we had yet to face The Board.

If sitting for the Paper was nerve-racking, it was at least civilized and predictable by being set for a certain time of day, for a particular duration and consisting of no more or less than 100 questions. But not so with taking the Board, which involved spending an unpredictable amount of time alone with one of the formidable senior NCOs from TSTS, the Trade Standards and Testing Section, who could ask as many or as few questions that he considered necessary to ascertain the extent of our knowledge. Since there were only a few of these examiners and many of us, we were obliged to wait until called individually. Awaiting my turn to be marched in front of a firing squad could have been worse, but only marginally so.

There were two waiting areas, which were used in serial fashion. The main holding area was our classroom in Workshops. Here we sat, frantically going over our notes and quizzing each other on how certain types of equipment and complex circuits operated. A TSTS senior NCO would come into the classroom every hour or so and read off perhaps half a dozen names from a clipboard. The chosen few would then rise and follow him to a smaller holding area close to where the Board was actually being held.

My name was eventually called as one of a group of six, so I dutifully stood up and followed the Senior Technician who had come to summon us. All six of us were as joyless as condemned men being herded to the scaffold. Only Charlie, the class swot who wore his beret pulled down over his forehead, seemed to be excited by his anticipation at what was to come. We were led to a small cubicle in the main practical application area of the workshop where, over the past few months, we had undergone practical training on the equipment. Consoles of aircraft electrical apparatus surrounded us on all sides and in the centre of the workshop stood the grounded Hawker Hunter jet fighter that I’d crawled over many times during various phases of instruction. The sight of all this was very familiar, since we had spent many hours in that same location. That investment of time would now be put to the test, when the TSTS examiner began prying and probing to determine the depth of knowledge that we had managed to absorb.

On entering the cubicle, we were told to wait there until an examiner came and called for us by name. And so, having brought our notebooks with us, we settled down once more into the relentless task of trying to cram every last little scrap of knowledge into our heads.

Very soon, a Chief Technician appeared at the door of the cubicle and announced a name. A boy entrant stood up and then followed the grim-faced NCO, who had turned and walked off in the direction of the equipment consoles. Shortly afterwards, another NCO came to the door and our number was reduced by one more. We waited for perhaps a quarter of an hour before a third examiner came into the cubicle, looked at his clipboard and then called out the name of the third victim. Another agonizing period of waiting and then the first boy came back. He looked ashen and as he came into the cubicle we all anxiously asked him: “How did you do?”

He rolled his eyes upwards as he picked up his belongings, “Tough,” was the only response we got before he hurriedly exited the area.

“Carlin!” Oh my god, it was my turn. I looked up to see the grim-faced NCO who had made an appearance after our initial arrival in the cubicle, now framed in its doorway. Just my luck, I thought.

“Chief,” I responded, whilst rising from the uncomfortable wooden chair. As before, he turned and started walking away from the cubicle, apparently confident that I was bringing up the rear. He came to a halt on reaching the equipment consoles and turned to face me, clipboard poised in one hand and a pen in the other.

“Carlin?” He asked.

“Yes, Chief.”

“What’s your service number?” I told him and he wrote it down on the clipboard. He continued writing for a few moments as I stood there, feeling awkward, exposed and vulnerable. When he had finished he lowered the clipboard and started walking towards one of the consoles.

“Okay, let’s start here,” he announced. “Can you name this piece of equipment?” As he said this, he placed his hand on a black-painted metal object that consisted mostly of nine-inch square cooling fins. Its rectangular base was bolted to a paxoline board and the various electrical wires connected to its terminal strip were banded neatly together, before disappearing into a hole drilled through the paxoline. They re-emerged through similar holes drilled at other locations on the console, from where they were connected to the terminal strips of adjacent black boxes. The colour of the equipment wasn’t particularly significant, since all aircraft electrical equipment of that time was painted black.

“It’s a type 23 voltage regulator, Chief,” I responded, knowing that this was only the preliminary question to a whole series that would test the depth of my knowledge, probing for chinks and flaws.

“What does it do in this circuit?” He asked.

I then went on to identify the circuit as the P3 generator power circuit used on four-engine aircraft and that the output voltage of each engine driven generator was controlled by one of these type 23 “slave” regulators, in a “master-slave” control system. A question and answer session ensued, during which I was able to confidently explain that the “master” regulator controlling all four slaves was a type 32 voltage regulator. We then got into the intricacies of voltage equalizing and load sharing and as I answered his questions, it felt as though there were two people inhabiting my body. One, a kind of stranger, was confidently expounding on all of this knowledge in answer to the Chief Tech’s questions and the other, whom I perceived as the real me, was watching with mouth agape in awe at this amazing performance by my alter ego. Luckily for me, the examiner was only aware of the first persona as we finished with the P3 generator circuit.