Air Force Blue: The RAF in World War Two – Spearhead of Victory. Patrick Bishop

to attract a disproportionate number of celebrities of one sort or another. Aircrew trainee Edwin Thomas was delighted to tell his mother that among his intake group at the Torquay reception centre was the England fast bowler Ken Farnes who was so tall that ‘he has got to wait three months for a uniform because the RAF can’t find one to fit him’.29 Farnes was later killed when his aeroplane crashed on a night-flying exercise. His England colleague Bill Edrich flew with Bomber Command, won a DFC and finished the war as a squadron leader. Another famous cricketer Cyril Washbrook served as a PT instructor.

      Tommy Farr, the Tonypandy ex-miner who had fought Joe Louis for the world heavyweight boxing title in 1937, volunteered the day after war broke out and ‘wanted to be an air gunner or an observer’. During a routine medical while training he was found to have a defective ear and eye, probably the result of punishment in the ring, and given a medical discharge. ‘I feel very miserable about it all,’ he said when the news became known. ‘I was very happy with food and conditions in the RAF and believe me I am terribly sorry to leave the force.’30

      Actors flocked to the RAF. Richard Attenborough, Richard Burton, Denholm Elliott, Rex Harrison, Christopher Lee and Donald Pleasence all served. So too did the playwright Terence Rattigan whose Flare Path was an early example of the dramatic potency of the RAF experience. Not all showbiz aspirants were welcomed. David Niven made his way back from Hollywood in the autumn of 1939 but withdrew after a bruising first interview. On arrival at the Air Ministry he was besieged by secretaries asking for his autograph which got him off to a bad start with the group captain assessing him.

      ‘The man restored order and eyed me with distaste,’ Niven remembered.31 ‘He knew who I was. Unless he was blind he couldn’t have avoided it. Nevertheless, he went through the motions of asking my name and occupation and what I wanted to do. When I told him, he pursed his lips, sucked in some breath with a whistling sound and shook his head.’ He then asked him whether he knew Wilfred Lawson, a highly regarded theatre and screen player who had flown as a pilot in the last months of the First World War and had rejoined the colours. Niven replied that he was a ‘wonderful actor’.

      ‘He’s also a heavy drinker,’ said the officer. ‘We took him on and we’ve had trouble with him ever since.’ By now Niven was losing patience and told him: ‘I’ve come seven thousand miles at my own expense and I’d like to join the RAF.’

      ‘So I’ve read,’ the officer replied. ‘But we don’t encourage actors to join this service.’ At this point Niven stormed out, and ended up in the Rifle Brigade after a chance encounter in the Café de Paris nightclub.

      Musicians were also drawn to the Air Force. The number of well-known artistes volunteering or choosing to join encouraged the authorities in 1940 to form the Royal Air Force Dance Orchestra. Among the fifteen members were several who had played in the Bert Ambrose Orchestra, the hottest act of the day, including saxophonist Harry Lewis who was married to the band’s vocalist Vera Lynn. They became famous as The Squadronaires, by far the best known of the service dance bands, and played all over the country as well as being broadcast on the BBC and cutting records for Decca. They generated a lush, big-band sound, and their great hit ‘There’s Something in the Air’ would ever after evoke for hundreds of thousands of servicemen and women memories of crowded dance halls, the smell of cigarette smoke, perfume and spilled beer and the last bus back to camp.

      The Squadronaires (© Imperial War Museums, CH 15079)

      For aircrew, the progress to a squadron was long and jerky and there were many obstacles to overcome before you finally got into action. Edwin Thomas was eighteen and a half when the war started. Like many, probably most, who aspired to fight in the air, he wanted to be a pilot. He was summoned to the combined recruiting centre in Romford on 29 October 1940 for assessment for the RAFVR, by now the conduit for most wartime entrants. Edwin had the benefit of a secondary education at Canterbury Road Senior School and Snaresbrook College in east London but his reports marked him down as a plodder. ‘He is a thoroughly honest and trustworthy lad,’ declared his head teacher, T. H. Moore. ‘He has shown earnestness and painstaking ability in his work. In manner he is quiet, serious and gentlemanly.’32 Thomas’s weekly letters home to the family’s semi-detached mock-Tudor home in the east London suburb of Wanstead describing his life as a trainee provide a detailed account of the rigours and disappointments of the process, as well as a touching picture of youth, innocence and devotion to duty. The meeting with the selection board went well. A week later he was installed at the Babbacombe Hotel near Torquay, about to begin a fortnight’s drilling with forty-nine other novices before being sent off to a two-month course at an Initial Training Wing (ITW).

      They were starting on the lowest rung of the ladder, classified as Aircraftmen 2nd Class (Group V) and receiving 2s. a day pay. From the beginning cash, or the lack of it, looms large in the correspondence. ‘It is amazing how much money is spent on necessities such as copying ink [and] the VR badges that aren’t on the uniform and cost 6d a pair,’ he wrote on 13 November. There were no complaints about the food, though. ‘For breakfast yesterday we had porridge, fried egg and mashed potatoes, bread and butter, marmalade and a terrific mug or two of tea,’ he reported. ‘For dinner: a lovely stew with potatoes and veg: for sweet an apple conglomeration with custard and an apple: for tea plenty of liver and gravy, bread and butter, jam and a piece of fruit cake. Cake every day. Supper: jug of milk, liver between two crusts and a slice of cake.’ In the evenings there were trips into town ‘to play billiards snooker or table tennis and end up with a glass of Devonshire cider … we are too broke to get tipsy.’

      By mid-December he was at the Initial Training Wing at Pembroke College, Cambridge, one of five colleges requisitioned by the Air Ministry to house about a thousand trainees. The course was a mixture of gruelling classroom work – navigation, signalling by Morse and Aldis lamp, armaments, maths, law and administration, hygiene, ship and aircraft recognition – combined with large doses of PE. Like all the armed forces the RAF was keen on the noble art, believing it cultivated a fighting spirit. ‘I put my name down for boxing,’ he wrote, ‘and in the afternoon had three rounds with a fellow of my own weight.’ His partner ‘had never boxed before and his defence was an opponent’s dream’. Later the PE instructor, a corporal called Harry Mizler and a celebrated East End Jewish bantamweight who represented Britain in the 1932 Olympic Games in Los Angeles, ‘bounced medicine balls on our stomachs to strengthen the muscles’. They then set off on a two-mile run.