After a further 20 hours flying training, which included aerobatics, climbing turns, spinning, sideslipping, forced landings, x. country flights, both solo and under instruction, as well as 6 hours 30 minutes instrument flying, L.A.C. Kelsey passed his Elementary flying training on 18/4/1941. He was graded as "Average".
Now came the time for him to be assessed for the next posting in his R.A.F. career. In order to help work out where best to utilise this fledgling pilot, my Grandfather was posted to 22 E.F.T.S Cambridge.
R.A.F. Cambridge was located on the eastern outskirts of the historic University City, next to the village of Teversham. It was approximately 40 miles east of Sywell, and also utilised a large expanse of grass as a landing strip. The training at 22 E.F.T.S. was still in D.H.82 dual control Tiger Moths. These grass landing strips were often the nice soft saviour of many a bumpy landing!
The trainee pilots were billeted in Nissen huts on the northern edge of the airfield, which may explain my Grandfather's love affair with these structures! After retirement, in the 1980's, he spent many laborious hours in his garden in Norfolk turning one of these Nissen huts into a Nuclear Bomb shelter for himself and his nearest and dearest. The wartime billets were heated by one cast iron boiler in the centre and renowned for being freezing in the winter and boiling in the summer.
After his 47 hours in the air, I wonder if he was a bit put-out to only get a grading of average. If so, he needn't have worried as almost all the other pilots I have read about achieved the same grade.
The news of the war in April 1941 was going from bad to worse for the allies. German forces invaded both Greece and Yugoslavia simultaneously. Yugoslavia capitulated on the 18th April and on 27th German forces entered Athens.
For trainee pilots, as well as classroom theory and time in the air, there would be time spent in a machine called a Link Trainer. Designed in the USA in the 1920's by Edwin A. Link, this contraption allowed rudimentary piloting skills to be learned without fear of serious injury. As an introduction to night flying, all took blind-flying instruction in the Link.
Movement of the trainer is accomplished by vacuum operated bellows, controlled by valves connected to the control wheel (or stick) and rudder pedals. An instructor sat at the desk and transmitted radio messages which the student in the Link heard through his earphones. Inside the "cockpit", the student relied on his instruments to "fly" the Link through various manoeuvers while his navigational "course" was traced on a map on the desk by the three-wheeled "crab". Slip stream simulators gave the controls the feeling of air passing over control surfaces, and a rough air generator added additional realism during the "flight".
The 'Link' was the first true flight simulator, and provided safe training to hundreds of thousands of student pilots during the 1930s and 40s.
There were a series of standard exercises to be mastered on the link trainer and it was often housed in it's own purpose built building at many RAF stations.
My Grandfather spent 8 hours and 5 minutes training in the Link and passed with an assessment of 'Average'. I expect he was very pleased to see the back of it!
So the big moment dawned. This was going to be the test to see if H.C.Kelsey could cut it in the R.A.F. There were usually eighty trainees on the course but only forty would go forward. You were expected to go solo on the Tiger Moth at around 8 hours, certainly not more than 10. Otherwise you would be "scrubbed" and posted to a navigator's course or air gunner or bomb aimer and the likes. One after another, men would come in joyously saying they had gone solo and then there were those with long faces that said one word "scrubbed" and then were gone the next day.
From his Log Book, it looks as though my Grandfather had hit it right on time at 8hrs 10 minutes for his first 'Solo'. He was taken up for his 'Solo Test' by Sgt. Pawson on 14th March and perhaps Sgt Pawson recommended a bit more practise on 'Gliding Approach and Landing'? Then on 15th March 1941 he was up there alone for the first time, what a feeling that must have been! I can just imagine his beaming face when he landed and ran off to boast to his mates that he had done it..."Gone Solo".
Meanwhile, the War was hitting Scotland, as the 14/15th March saw the "Clydeside Blitz".
