Proficiency as Pilot - Average

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.