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On our way to school we used to look at the Old Wilts and Dorset garage where they used to be making Spitfires; Super Marines made them. Their factory in Southampton was bombed so parts were made in various factories. High Post aerodrome on Salisbury Plain was where they were taken to be tested and for final assembly.

During the war we had Portsmouth Junior Technical College evacuated here and billeted at various houses. I was at Bishops Wordsworth School and we went to school in the mornings while they went in the afternoons. We had double summertime which put 2 hours on the day, so it was dull and dreary in the morning when we started at 8.30.

We were sent out to a local farmer to help with harvesting. One of our 6th formers was trained as a tractor driver and he taught the boys to drive a Fordson tractor and trailer and also how to maintain it. It had no starter motor so you had to swing the handle, and no clutch. I enjoyed driving it when we went out harvesting in gangs of 4 in the holidays. We spent the whole holidays harvesting doing ‘our little bit for the war effort.’

There were Land Army girls on the farms who wore pork-pie hats, green sweaters, breeches and heavy boots. They ‘did their bit’ and did a very good job indeed. Many of them came from London and had posh accents and posh clothes but they got out the dung fork and mucked out the pigs!

Bishop Wordsworth 28 Air Training Corps was where I learned navigation from Officers of the Corps and where I taught others this skill and also aircraft recognition. I went to Boscombe Down, a grass airfield, for my first flight, which was absolutely magic — a lovely Spring day, April 1943.

I wrote off to be an airman but was put in the Civil Service, at 16 years of age on 17th November 1943. My job was to design the trials programme for pilots for testing new planes. As Flight Test Engineer, I was up in the air lots even though not a pilot. Several of my colleagues were in aircraft accidents, but not me.

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