From Air Gunner to Bomber Pilot

I convinced the recruitment officer to have a look at air crew and as a gunner. So he seemed to figure that that was not too bad. My schooling was just adequate for gunner so he said, “Well, just a moment I got another gentleman out here that I’m half and half what category to put him into so we’ll give you a categorization test.” So this test was straight mental arithmetic, you didn’t have too much time or that to sit and figure it out. And of the 60 questions on the first, I took it twice actually, so I had something like 46 right out of the 60. The other gentleman had a senior matriculation and had been working in railway machine yard for quite a while and he ended up with about eighteen. So he came down a notch and I went up a notch and we both were recruited as wireless air gunners. So then here they have all these people who are partially trained so they gave us another categorization test. Well, my luck being what it was, it was the same test. So my memory was pretty good so the second time I got something like 56 or 57 out of 60. So up I went again so I ended up in general air crew rather than as gunner or wireless air gunner. I went in then I made it through for the rest of it, and that was actually how I ended up being a pilot, it wasn’t my intention when I went into the recruiting depot.