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I was nearly 14 when the war started. The first 4 months were virtually extended holiday as I only went to school for one day a week, because there weren鈥檛 enough shelters against sir raids at the school. Eventually the school was moved to a Victorian mansion in Norton, where the grounds were big enough to allow the construction for many shelters for the whole school, so with the frequent breaks for air raids my education was continued.
When I became 16, I left school and went to work as a laboratory assistant at Davy United Roll Foundry at Haverton Hill. After about a years training I went on shift work in a laboratory to look after the analysis of 3 steel making furnaces. These furnaces were electric arc furnaces designed to make high quality complex steel, so the analysis was far from simple. I also had to calculate the additions which had to be made to the furnaces to make sure the steel was the correct analysis before it was cast. All this, of course, was liable to interruption by air raid warnings, particularly on night shifts.
There were 3 stages of air raid warnings. The first was a yellow warning which meant a raid was likely. The second was a red warning, when the sirens sounded and the third warning, known as the black warning, meant that the bombers were near and the lights in the foundry would go out in 3 minutes time. It occasionally happened that the steel was being poured into the moulds, when the black warning came, so the filling of the moulds had to be continued using the light provided by the molten steel.
After about 2 years of this work, I got tired of a life that was really just eat, sleep and work with no worthwhile social life, but it was a reserved occupation, which meant you could not leave, except if you were accepted to train as air crew. By this time there was a long waiting period for volunteers for the RAF, so I applied to join the Fleet Air Arm. To my surprise, I passed all the medical and intelligence tests and was accepted, so in the middle of 1944, I left the laboratory and joined the navy to train as an Observer. This training would take about 18 months, starting with 6 months studying 2 academic subjects, mathematics and geography, and the rest of the time doing practical and theoretical naval work at university.
After that it was all naval work starting with square bashing and basic training followed by some months doing navy signal systems including learning the flags flown by ships to pass messages and particularly the Morse code, which would be only means of communication when flying. When the signals course was completed it was off to Trinidad for the flying training. We crossed the Atlantic on the Queen Mary to New York where we missed the ship for Trinidad and had to hang for about 4 weeks for another ship. This was certainly no hardship. We eventually arrived in Trinidad in April 1945 to start six months of very intense training. The subjects covered where navigation, more signals, meteorology, theory and practice of radar, aerial photography, air gunnery, ship and aircraft recognition and the theory of naval warfare. If you failed to keep up with these subjects you were sent home.
There was a lot of pleasure to be had in the leisure time in such an exotic location, such as trips, most Sundays, to a beach called Balandra Bay on the Atlantic side of the island, which even had coconut palms hanging over the beach.
I finally got my Observers wings in September 1945; one month after Japan had surrendered. I feel that, as the life expectancy of fliers in the Pacific was short, the dropping of the atom on Japan saved my life.
I must, finally, end with a few words in praise of my mother, who ran our home and coped with all the problems of rations, shortages, queues that beset all people in Britain at this time. She also found time to write numerous letters to me and my father even when, at times she was not sure she had the correct address to send them to. She also had to wait anxiously for our replies.

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