Passing out photograph

Title

Passing out photograph

Description

No 14 initial training wing, RAF Bridlington. A large group of airmen sitting and standing in four rows on grass in front of a four storey building with other buildings on the right. Annotated 'LAC Geoff Beckett seated on right hand end of front row. Appended explanation states photograph show Geoff with 53 other trainees, six instructors and three officers. Continues with location of and journey to next posting to RAF LLandwrog. Mentions him starting a diary.

Date

1942-03

Temporal Coverage

Coverage

Language

Format

One b/w photograph and one printed document

Rights

This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.

Contributor

Identifier

SBeckettG622136v10037

Transcription

March 1942

Passing out Photograph

No 14 Initial Training Wing, [inserted] R.A.F. BRIDLINGTON. [/inserted]

[black and white photograph of four rows of airmen with the front row seated. In front of a large building with other buildings to the side]

L.A.C. Geoff Beckett seated on the right hand end of the front row.

[page break]

March 1942

Geoff Beckett
End of front row.

[page break]

The end of course photograph, taken in March 1942, shows Geoff with the other 53 trainees, whose ranks vary between A.C., L.A.C., and Corporal, with six instructors and three officers. Geoff is the only one apparently displaying a ‘good conduct’ stripe, for which he would have received an extra 3d a day.

On the 20th of March, Geoff was posted from I.T.W. to R.A.F. Llandwrog in North Wales. He left Brid’ at 8am with other airmen, travelling by trains, via Manchester and Chester, arriving at their new camp, very tired.

At this point Geoff started to write a diary about his time at R.A.F. Llandwrog, which is not only a unique record of wartime events, but enables his story to largely tell it’s self, for several months to come.

Collection

Citation

“Passing out photograph,” IBCC Digital Archive, accessed June 13, 2025, https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/collections/document/41288.