The Beast You Had To Get In

Initially you’d join up for aircrew and you passed the medical. Then the key thing there was the Link Trainer and that was the beast that you had to get in and you were shown how to do it and if your coordination was good enough and you didn’t spin in and wreck yourself. And particularly when they closed the hood, then you would go on as a pilot trainee. If you flunked that then you’d still stay in aircrew but you’d go into the streams for navigator, bomber-aimer, whatever. The Link Trainer was like a simulator built by a man by the name of Link in the States and it was like the simulators they have today, very sophisticated. This was a stubby little machine with little wings – blue – if I remember correctly, or grey. You got into and it’s like a cockpit. You had a control stick. You had your rudder pedals. You had basic instruments and it was all powered actually, I think, by air and bellows. But they could put in turbulence and so on. And they give you direction and you’d turn. You could climb and dive and climb and you had to watch the instruments and you could spin them and you’d crash, sort of thing. It was the... and we did this all the way through. You did because they could simulate different courses and approaches and so on and that was part of our training to get our wings. And even when I was instructing you had to go in the Link Trainer to do some procedures and so on. It was, as I said, it was the beast that you had to overcome. That was the initial hurtle. And everybody wanted to be a pilot. But if you did that ... and of course other people got washed out later because of air sickness ... what have you. But that was the start of it.

Mr. Fox describes the Link Trainer, a device used to test a recruit’s suitability for pilot training.

Charley Fox

Mr. Fox was born in Guelph, Ontario in 1920. He signed up in March, 1940, and was called up the following October. Mr. Fox excelled during pilot training, but a bout of scarlet fever prevented him from accompanying his squadron overseas. Once returned to health, he became a flight instructor, during which time he married. A short time later, he was sent overseas and joined the 412 Spitfire Squadron. He was involved in air support for D-Day and flew many follow-up missions destroying “targets of opportunity” in France and Holland. After the war, Mr. Fox returned home and became a retailer. He now resides in London, Ontario.