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Cosford, with its own railway halt, is near the village of Albrighton and about seven miles from Wolverhampton. It opened in 1938 for 4000 personnel. It was big with large brick buildings and workshops, a large modern cinema and a very large gymnasium. The living accommodation were wooden huts and the guard room, sick quarters, cook houses, dining halls and NAAFI were all wooden buildings. It also had an airfield. When we arrived there was a shortage of hut accommodation and we were put in the gymnasium.
When Cosford opened in 1938 it was to train airmen how to service aircraft for the expanding RAF. During the war over 70,000 Engine and Airframe mechanics, fitters and armourers were trained. Many of the instructors were civilian tradesmen and craftsmen.
The flight mechanics course started with hand workshop practice, most of which was precision filing: bolts, nuts, threads, taps and dies and drills and drill angles, metals and heat treatment. There was also corrosion and crack detection, carburettors, magnetos and airscrews, the stripping and assembly of engines, starting and running engines. There was engine instruments, aerodrome signals and the laying out of a flare path, forms and manuals and form 700. There were lectures and notes that had to be written up in a hard back notebook with drawings and diagrams. Flight riggers did riveting and exercises which involved tubes and plates and repair work on fuselage construction with the splicing of wire cables and wood joints. There was fabric work, the setting up of flying control rigging and hydraulics. There were also boy apprentices that did a three year aircraft fitting apprenticeship. The hours worked were from 0800 to 1600 or 1630hrs with a lunch or dinner break from 1200 to 1300. We worked Saturday mornings until 1200hrs. On Saturday afternoons we generally went to Wolverhampton. Some evenings we might go to Shignal. On Sunday afternoons we would often walk into Albrighton or beyond. Most Sunday mornings there were church parades, the building that served as a church being on the camp. In addition to the cinema we would sometimes get a stage show.
I am not sure what our pay was but I would guess about two shillings a day??? We were paid once a fortnight.
At Christmas 1939 we were given seven days leave and I was very proud to go home in uniform. A special train was laid on to and from London where a large number of airmen travelled, and like myself beyond. After Christmas we were taken by coaches to Wolverhampton to see a pantomime.
In January we were moved out of the gymnasium into a hut. There was then a very cold spell and heavy snow and parts of the station were frozen up and it was feared that there could be an influenza epidemic but it passed and with the approach of Spring we looked forward to completing our training.
In April we had our final exam, a trade test. It was an oral examination. If you achieved a mark of 80 per cent you were given the rank of Leading Aircraftsman: 60 per cent or over ACI and below 40 per cent — fail. I was disappointed, I thought I would make ACI but my marks were below 60 per cent and so I remained AC2 although I would now receive trade pay. There were no LACs in our entry, - one, a Scot, came close to it and was examined twice but only made ACI.
Two days later with five others I was posted to No 2 Flying Training School, RAF Brize Norton.

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