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Aha! Proof!

From The Times archive. GPops did go through Cranwell with Frank Whittle then……

9 thoughts on “Aha! Proof!”

  1. On a similar line, we’d always known that my Grandma was the first girl from our town to get a scholarship to university.

    Recently the local paper completed digitising and indexing their archives. A couple of weeks ago I searched through them, and found the school report:
    Harriet Harker awarded county scholarship to Leeds University.

    Wait? Leeds? Grandma went to London not Leeds, what’s this Leeds?

    I scrolled on a further week and found:
    Harriet Harker also awarded national scholalship to any English university.

    Wow! So, not only did Grandma get a county scholarship, she also got a *national* scholarship to anywhere she wanted. And naturally, she used that freedom of choice and went to London.

  2. I like these connections to the past. To imagine someone born at a time closer to the repeal of the Corn Laws than contactless or cancel culture.

  3. And he joined the sqn I was JEngO on. At the time Worstall very senior joined it operated from RAF Upper Heynsham in Oxfordshire flying Handley Page Hyderabads, a premonition perhaps of the Madras Presidency name that the sqn would attract in WW2.

  4. Incidentally, the official notice can be found in the London Gazette, though it doesn’t note his posting. Indeed, one can follow the whole career progression of W R Worstall (26076) with the right search, if you don’t mind a couple of oil exploration licences being detailed in amongst the results; the name Worstall is sufficiently singular that the Air Cdre seems to have been the only commissioned Worstall between 1928 and 1957.

  5. His last was aiding in setting up the Pakistani Air Force Engineering College. Not Hyderabad nor Madras of course, but service out there at least…..

  6. That makes sense -ish. Father would have been commissioned RN about that later time. And the name’s very rare in UK. So far as I know Mother, brother and I are the only ones left in whole country (Sisters married took other names). Not just ones related to Bill, but ones with the name at all.

    A few hundred in the US, but here, just us.

  7. R. G. AKHURST, J. R. ALDERTON, D. C. BANHAM,
    T. J. BIRD, J. M. BLAND, H. J. BONNENG, R. B.
    BROOKE, I. COCHRANE, J. S. COOPER, A. E.
    CUMMINS, J. CUNNINGHAM, J. J. H. HARRISON,
    W. J. L. HOLT, A. JAMES, J. A. C. KNIGHT, J.
    LEWCOCK, J. R. W. MARSH, S. W. MASON, A. R. B.
    NORRIS, C. W. PRESTON, J. L. SIMPSON, B. D. F.
    STREET, K. P. I. TIMMIS, J. H. WEBSTER, A. H.
    WOOD, M. V. WORSTALL. 1st Jan. 1954

    Bird, Ashley Cummins, Chris Preston, John Cooper, Timmis – I think – all swapped jobs around and along the way over the decades. At least three were on the same basic engnieering course (umm, Long Course 17?). One (Preston) still comes around for coffee occasionally. Ended up in and out of Polaris and then Trident over the decades. Cooper was fun – got to Rear Admiral then rather tripped. Was flying out of Dulles on the RAF flight into Brize Norton (VC 10 stuff). American naval Captain was whatever the things is, transport manager or summat. Cooper decked him – both in full uniform – in middle of Dulles airport. “Well John, yes, good shot, but…”

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