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Description
Mr. Thorne describes being trained as a wireless navigator to potentially re-crew the RAF’s Mosquito fighter. He only gets one flight in training before the war ends.
Transcription
There was a two-man crew on the Mosquito, it was made of plywood by the way, and it was just coming to its own then, overseas. It was fast, 400 miles and hour. I think it had a merlin engine, but it had a pilot and they needed a radio operator and a navigator. The pilot had some navigation, but he depended on the navigator, having a navigator. So at that time of the war, it was necessary to train radio navigators. I went then to No. 10 AOS Chatham, New Brunswick for navigation. It was a navigation school and believe it or not the pilots, they were all civilians, they were not air force pilots. And we flew Ansons there. And on that occasion we had, well we did a lot book work, a lot of classroom work, but flying naturally was part of it, daytime flying, nighttime flying. We went there in ‘44 and that was a six-month course. That brought us into graduation in somewhere around March, in that area, as navigators and we all volunteered waiting for a call to go over and thrilled that we would have one flight each in the Mosquito. I loved it, fast, low, fifty feet above the water. That was thrilling and I couldn’t wait to get involved even though at that time I never thought I’d get shot down. Never thought, never once in my mind.