Having completed his Bachelor's degree, Dad could no longer defer his two years' compulsory military service. On 2 December 1952, he was drafted into the Royal Air Force, and became No.2578499 Aircraftsman Second Class (AC2) Mason.

Dad underwent recruit training with No11 Squadron, but three months later was selected for officer training. On 25 February 1953, Officer Cadet (O/C) Mason was transferred to the School of Control and Reporting at RAF Middle Wallop in Oxfordshire, where he began training as a Fighter Controller (ie someone who guides fighters to intercept potentially hostile aircraft intruding into friendly airspace).

From June to September 1953, Dad was a student at No.12 Officers Initial Course, at RAF Millom's Officer Cadet Training Unit (OCTU). From there he was posted for one further month's training to the OCTU at RAF Jurby, before being returned to RAF Middle Wallop to complete his Fighter Controller training. Upon his successful graduation from No.37 Fighter Controller Course on 26th December 1953, Dad received his Commission and was set loose on an unsuspecting RAF as a fully-fledged Pilot Officer.

CLASS PHOTOGRAPH - NO.37 FIGHTER CONTROLLER COURSE 26 Oct 1953 to 26 Dec 1953

BACK ROW:

O/C Reade, O/C Mason, O/C English, O/C Creswell, O/C Wilson, O/C Downman, O/C Boras, O/C Ralph, O/C Neville, O/C Exell, O/C Vicary.

CENTRE ROW:

Acting Pilot Officer (A/Plt Off) F C Pitcairn-Hill, Pilot Officer (Plt Off) R D Walker, Flying Officer (Fg Off) R Young, Fg Off W D Meredith, Plt Off R H G Kitcatt, Plt Off E J Healy, Plt Off K Carr, A/Plt Off A V Pink, Plt Off R C Ackerman, Fg Off A B Jones

FRONT ROW:

Flight Lieutenant (Flt Lt) K M Frost, Flt Lt H B Morris, Flt Lt V B Gray, Flt Lt R J Philpott, Flt Lt A H Siminson, Flt Lt W A E Herbert, Flt Lt R G George, Fg Off H A Seth, Fg Off F G Sully

Upon receiving his commission, Dad was assigned to No.12 Group of Fighter Command, and posted to serve as a fighter controller at RAF Boulmer. Boulmer is on the remote coast of Northumberland, and the job of the RAF station there was to detect and react to hostile (ie Soviet, at that time) aircraft intruding upon British airspace from the direction of the North Sea.

On 1 October 1954, Dad was transferred to the RAF Security Branch, and assigned to No.22 Group of Technical Training Command at RAF Uxbridge in London. He served at Uxbridge in a temporary opening as Post and Travel Controller at the Group Territorial Artillery HQ, but his mind must certainly have been on his approaching demobilisiation, as his two years' service was drawing to a close. His last official duty was to attend No.63 RAF Intelligence Course at RAF Uxbridge in November and December 1954.

Dad's last official day of service was Christmas Day, 1954, though he had already wound down early and left for home three weeks earlier. On 26 December he was transferred to the Reserves, attached to the Port and Travel Control Group in Chelsea (though he was never actually called upon to serve again during his years in the Reserve, and his participation in the unit was purely nominal). On 22 September 1955, he was promoted to Flying Officer, the rank which he held until he relinquished his Commission and finally severed his connection to the RAF in July 1964.

Summary

Unlike some of his fellow National Servicemen - who recall their time in the military as a two-year hell of being yelled at, cleaning latrines or peeling potatoes by the ton - Dad never seemed to have any outstandingly bad memories of being in the RAF. He just seemed to regard it as something that couldn't be avoided, and which could be relatively painless so long as one didn't get into trouble or draw attention to oneself (as did an acquaintance of his who served in an RAF Supply unit, and was horrified to find out just before he was to be demobilised that 2,000 blankets had been pilfered from his warehouse without him having the slightest idea that anything was wrong!).

The stickiest moment of Dad's RAF career occurred when he was in Fighter Controller School in Middle Wallop. A United States Air Force delegation was visiting the school, to observe RAF training, and Dad was selected to demonstrate his class's achievements by performing a mock intercept of a hostile intruder, under the scrutiny of the visitors.

Dad recalled sitting down at his radar screen, watching the blip of the approaching intruder, plotting the course that he (mistakenly) thought would lead to the intruder's interception, then watching with horror as the "friendly" blips on the screen headed off at completely the wrong angle, in a direction that ensured that they and the intruder would never cross paths.

He spent the rest of the exercise calling out random course changes in an extremely confident voice, which made it sound as if everything was going exactly as he had been taught. When, by some miracle, his aircraft turned at the last minute to make a successful intercept, the visiting delegation was impressed by how perfectly the exercise had gone, completely unaware that Dad had been flying on a wing and a prayer!

Dad's RAF training instructors, who had witnessed the whole incident with mounting horror and eventual relief, knew of course that Dad had been flying by the seat of his pants and, when the visitors had moved on, wasted no time in pointing out to him that he was the biggest idiot in the RAF, but also the luckiest. Though of course, thanks to that verbal gift which is common to all military instructors, they were able to express it rather more colourfully than that.

Calling RAF National Servicemen!

National Service seems to have been an experience that left quite an impression on those who lived through it. So, if like Dad you were called up in the early Fifties into the RAF, tell us what you remember about life as an RAF recruit. If there is anybody out there who knew Boulmer, Middle Wallop, or Uxbridge in the 1950's , we'd love to hear too about daily life at these RAF stations. Whether you knew Dad or not, your reminiscences might help us fill in some of the gaps in what we know of this most un-military man!

Web Author: The Mason Children