hard-standing on the side of the airfield close to the main road. I later went to visit them socially and had trouble finding my way there in the almost total night-time blackness, falling over some unidentified obstacle and cutting my shins on the way.
Our course manual, I think it was called 'The Manual of Fighter Control', covered all aspects of the task in varying amounts of detail according to the (limited) knowledge of the author - or so it seemed to me. There was one memorable statement in it which read "In flight the heaviest bomber is moved by the merest zephyr as completely and inexorably as a tuft of thistledown". Such was the prosy style of writing. At least I still remember that piece of what the man wrote.
We learned the basics of how radar worked, pulse widths, pulse rates, range, lobes, frequencies, permanent echoes, power, and much else, including the basic fact that the speed of light (and radio signals) was 186,240 miles per second.
We learned what radar was used for, the differing types of equipment, and their purpose, advantages, and disadvantages. It was only at this late stage of my RAF career, in spite of having been controlled by 'a voice over the R/T' when flying over Germany, that I was taught anything at all about how Fighter Control was done and why. It would have been of use to have been taught the basics of this during flying training. I have always thought this to have been a serious pilot training omission.
We were taught Morse Code, and practised it, and again I struggled (as before) to attain a speed of four words per minute in order to pass the test. The dratted Morse Code was the bane of my life, and this time I couldn't use the crib sheet I had sewn onto the leg of my flying suit!
When it came to R/T techniques and use, I was amazed to find that I was microphone shy. I had prattled away over the R/T when in the air and thought nothing of it. On the ground, in a room with other people, I found that using a head and breast set to talk to someone was a very different matter for me. I had to work really hard to overcome this totally unexpected disability. Otherwise there was little for me to learn regarding technique and terminology, except for a group of new phrases mostly concerning the control of night fighters and pertaining to their airborne radars. For instance, a failed airborne radar set was termed a 'Bent Weapon'.
Then came instruction on Command and Control organisation and how it worked, and where and when it was used. Filter room techniques were explained and practised. With our newly gained knowledge and very limited experience, we were, in turn, tasked with acting as Filter Officers so as to filter multiple plots from old plots, and identify friendly plots and hostile plots in a re-run of one of the raids of the Battle of Britain. This was a mind-boggling exercise, carried out in real time, using tellers, with plotters on a General Situations plotting table, as if it was the real thing. The plots were 'told' from timed scripts rather than actual radar sites and Royal Observer Corps posts. Plotters then placed and moved all the counters and markers on the table for us to filter out the confusion into a true(r) situation so that aircraft could be scrambled to meet each threat. Each of us had a go for 20 minutes or so, by the end of which we not only had brain fade, but were mostly more confused than when we started. The task demanded very clear thought and quick, decisive, interpretation and reactions, and a special aptitude as well. We all did better after about three attempts, and every one of us not surprisingly found it easier to criticise than to do the job ourselves. One taste of that, and I quickly realised the stress that Group and Sector Operations Controllers were under during actual wartime conditions. We, in our training, were being given an insight as to what might be expected of us should we find ourselves in similar circumstances, for this was a task very closely associated with our prime Fighter Control role.
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