RAF Brize Norton

John Austin is awarded his pilot’s badge, his ‘wings’. Anticipating the previous war’s slaughter being repeated and, as he told me, ‘wanting some choice in the matter’, John joined the RAF shortly before the war. He started his flying training in June 1939. He is tall, possibly too tall for a Hurricane cockpit, and certainly too tall for a Spitfire. Since the end of March 1940 he has been at No. 2 Flying Training School, learning to fly the Airspeed Oxford, an advanced twin-engined training aircraft.

Sergeant Austin will continue his training on the Oxford before being posted to an Operational Training Unit. There he will complete his pilot training on larger twin-engined aircraft before being posted to an operational squadron. The pilot-training process will have taken about two years.