Joining the Fleet Air Arm

In the introductory pages of I Think I Prefer the Tinned Variety: The Diary of a Petty Officer in the Fleet Air Arm during World War II I've written about my father's background:

"Norman was a working class lad who was born in 1924 and brought up in the village of Royston, near Barnsley, in South Yorkshire. He was fortunate, having passed his eleven plus, to have enough family support to go to the local grammar school at Normanton. He was studious, worked hard and passed his School Certificate. At the age of sixteen he was offered employment as a clerk at the salary of £1 - 0s - 0d per week (about £30 in to-day's money) in the Public Health Department of the West Riding County Council in Wakefield thus breaking three generations of the family's tradition of going down the pit."

Norman in 1939 aged 15 years.

Normanton Grammar School in 1920

Normanton Grammar School in 1925. Norman started there about ten years later.

In August 1942 Norman volunteered to join the Royal Navy opting for the Fleet Air Arm. He had kept a page torn out of the weekly edition of "The Times," dated 11th December 1940, entitled "On Board An Aircraft Carrier" which included photographs of a "Walrus" type aircraft being prepared for action. I speculated that it was this article that inspired Norman to try for the Fleet Air Arm (see a previous post). He also kept this image torn out of a magazine which was preserved in the back of his photo book.