The multitudes who read aviation magazines and followed the air races and the fortunes of celebrity aviators had little chance of becoming pilots themselves. Flying instruction at most clubs and commercial schools during the 1930s cost two pounds an hour when a young man starting out in a clerical or factory job would be pleased to get two pounds a week. A course aimed at securing a basic ‘A’ licence cost anything from £15 to £35.
The RAFVR offered a passport to the enchanted domain. It was open to any male between the ages of eighteen and twenty-five with a reasonable level of secondary education. Those accepted would receive flying training gratis as well as an annual grant of £25. The educational requirements were a barrier to a large proportion of British males, most of whom left school at fourteen. Many who came forward were from the ranks of the comfortably off. But there were also large numbers of bank clerks, shop assistants, and minor civil servants eager to seize what seemed a God-given chance to break out of their dull existences and realize their fantasies.
Despite the obvious attractions of the offer, the Air Staff felt the mood of the country was tricky. They detected a hostility to ‘militarism’ and were alarmed by the prevalence of pacifist sentiments. At an Air Council meeting in May 1936 Frederick Bowhill complained that ‘at present the Press give great prominence to pacifist manifestoes, particularly those from seats of learning, but make no attempt to inculcate a feeling among the youth of the country that service in its defence was a fine thing’. He proposed that ‘we ought … to aim at bringing about a change of heart in the Press’.30
Sensibly, the tone remained sotto voce, with publicity stressing adventure rather than patriotism, a wise approach given the mood of the times. In 1936 the Peace Pledge Union, inspired by a canon of St Paul’s Cathedral, was in its heyday, attracting hundreds of thousands of supporters across the political spectrum, united in their renunciation of war and determination to work to remove its causes.
As the threat from Germany mounted attitudes hardened and the service chiefs’ concerns about the willingness of the younger generation to fight would prove unfounded. When looking back, few would cite the worsening international situation or a sense of duty as a compelling motive for volunteering. ‘I was walking down the Strand and there was an RAF recruiting office with a poster in the window and it said “London businessmen join the RAF and fly aeroplanes at the weekend”,’ said Maurice Leng who was just starting out in the advertising business. ‘There were no patriotic reasons. I was interested in motor-racing but it was an expensive sport and I couldn’t possibly afford the cost of a decent car … here was this wonderful opportunity for flying these super aeroplanes provided by the government and that is exactly what I did.’31 Brian Considine was a trainee at Unilever when he joined in January 1939. ‘I was nineteen and I don’t think I was bothered by [the political situation],’ he recalled.32 ‘It was a way to learn to fly which was an expensive thing to do. In fact instead of paying out of one’s own pocket one was actually going to be paid to do it.’
Some who went on to have gallant wartime careers enjoyed emphasizing the unheroic motives that had impelled them into the Air Force in the first place. Christopher Foxley-Norris, who flew Hurricanes in the Battle of Britain, liked to claim that his main reason for joining the Oxford University Air Squadron was the £25 signing-on fee. It enabled him to buy a car which his older brother had told him was essential if he was to have any chance of attracting a girlfriend.33 But he also admitted that though life in the squadron was ‘enormous fun, at the same time most of us realized there was going to be a bust up … but at least some of us were doing something about it while the rest were just sitting around’.34
Tony Smyth, a graduate chemist working at the paint manufacturer Manders, did not ‘join the RAFVR … from patriotism, but only to increase my pay and show me the world’.35 Like Foxley-Norris he soon learned that the fun came at a price. When in the spring of 1937 he began his basic training as part of the first intake of volunteers at Prestwick elementary flying school near Glasgow, the CO in his welcoming address left them in no doubt as to what it was they were being trained for. ‘He told us … that the remilitarization of the Rhineland by Hitler had showed the world that German expansion as proposed in “Mein Kampf” was serious. An enlargement of the RAF was essential … to produce a reserve of civilian aircrew.’ As time passed the truth that they were learning to fight as well as fly became increasingly apparent.
If war was coming, the Air Force seemed a good place in which to spend it. Almost everyone eligible to fight had someone close to them who had been killed or maimed in the previous war and most of the casualties had been suffered in the trenches of the Western Front. Reluctance to repeat the previous generation’s experience was a powerful factor in choosing to serve in the relatively clean-seeming element of the air.
Tony Iveson’s police inspector father had been ‘shot on the first day of the Somme and very badly wounded. He had a huge scar on his chest … All my generation knew how horrible it had been.’36 Growing up in York he heard his elders talk in ever more pessimistic terms about the crisis in Europe. ‘I knew that there was going to be a war and I knew who it was going to be with so I came through my teens with that in my mind.’ Early on he resolved that when it came ‘I just wanted to fly’. Iveson joined the RAFVR and flew in the Battle of Britain before eventually joining 617 Squadron – the Dam Busters.
There was also the question of comfort. The RAF seemed to offer a cushier existence than you could expect in the Army or Navy. Sir Edwin Lutyens had been among those consulted on the design of the stations that sprang up in the 1930s. They were built to high specifications and airmen, or at least officers, were thought to live well. Charles Patterson was self-aware enough to know he could ‘never have stood up to the rigours of fighting on land and in the dust and heat and dirt’. When later at a recruiting interview he was asked why he wanted to be a pilot he boldly replied, ‘because the only way that I could consider it possible to fight was if one was provided with central heating and constant hot water’.37 The group captain heading the panel ‘gave me a broad smile and nodded approval and said: “Accepted. Recommended”.’
The first RAFVR entrants began training in April 1937. Tedder saved money by using the network of flying clubs across the country to supply the infrastructure, with the instruction being supervised by the RAF’s Central Flying School.38 The reservists did basic training at an initial six- or eight-week course, at the end of which they were expected to go solo, then returned to their regular jobs and kept up training at weekends at local airfields operating under contract with the Air Ministry. The volunteers had only a semi-detached relationship with the RAF. They did not wear uniform and were part of a mass reserve rather than organized into squadrons like the Auxiliaries.
They started flying on Tiger Moths and similar easy-to-master aircraft and gradually progressed on to new types like the Avro Cadet before finally getting to grips with aircraft then in service in the squadrons. They also attended night classes in local towns to study basic aeronautics and navigation.
For those who had never flown the initial trip could come as an unpleasant surprise. Bob Doe, who, despite having left school at fourteen with no qualifications was accepted into the RAFVR, got his first taste of flying in June 1938. He worked as an office boy at the News of the World and took the train from Fleet Street to Hanworth aerodrome in south-west London for his first ‘air experience’. The machine was a Blackburn B2 in which pilot and pupil sat side by side. His instructor, a former