Sir Mike Alcock was invited to give the after-dinner speech at the general reunion in September 2005 which was held at The Prince's Hall in Aldershot.
15 of our year were present, so for those who could not make it, here is the whole text.

The Ex-RAE Apprentices Reunion Dinner

First some thanks:
To those who have organised this event and got us all here in good order to enjoy a meal together and each other's company.
To Bruce Legg, who does a great job as Secretary and looks after a splendid web site with a quite unique and valuable data base of all apprentice entries since the first one in 1910 until the last in 1992.
A nd my special thanks to Graham Rood as Chairman for inviting me here in the first place.
I t is an honour for me to be invited to speak on this our 95th Anniversary; an evening that is as much about nostalgia as about the association itself. So if you will bear with me I plan to reminisce awhile and see if any of it rings a bell with you.
I 'm glad to see that my own entry of' '53 is represented in some force. We of course had a wonderful reunion two years ago on the very day - 30th August -that we signed our indentures 50 years earlier in the by now demolished Assembly Hall. A day that was the culmination of our initial success in getting chosen from a cast of some 600 entrants in the Civil Service Commission Open exam and that led to our band of 37 new Student Apprentices arriving for a taste of something different.
W hat do we remember from those happy days at RAE? Who could forget their first foray in the Training Shop behind the old Tech College? I hope you have all still got your test pieces so lovingly crafted there. Here are my callipers and my tap-wrench all still wrapped in the oily hanky after 52 years! I certainly learned about shaping metal and the art of filing things properly - to limits of 2 thou! You never lose that experience, that's for sure! The Tech College was full of memorable people of course - Mr Peggs, the avuncular Principal and R V Smith his deputy, plus too many others to name, all of whom influenced our learning to some degree or other. I certainly recall our Thermodynamics lecturer, "Evans the Heat" (Brian Evans); he stands out because of happy hours playing, or rather conducting experiments, with a single cylinder Ricardo test engine that made experts of us all in understanding the innards of our various motorbike engines.
A nd who could forget Larry Joyce our lovable Physics teacher who made sure we understood things from first principles; he was full of never ending colourful quotes of things we would forget on the "road to hell" - most of which I have duly forgotten, so I have obviously trodden the road to hell!
C ollege was interspersed with a wide variety of placements in every conceivable department and workshop in the vast RAE campus, during which we were exposed to an amazing array of technology, much of it truly innovative and world leading stuff- though few of us recognised it as much at the time.
I recall the Brabazon flying in - captured in a memorable picture over Cody's Tree. We saw the Flying Bedstead mysteriously rise under its own steam, technology that led to the early Harrier and its current versions. We worked in wind tunnels, with supersonic models of Concorde.
W e worked in machine shops, tool rooms, chippy shops and we all knew my good friend Mike Wilkey from his time in the mecca of all jobs - the plating shop! We learned the art of skiving and of clocking on for ones chums who could never get to work on time. And I marveled at Johnny Appleford's ability to polish off The Times crossword during the tea break in the foundry. Not sure what it did to the foundry men but it sure impressed me!
W ho will ever forget Digger Armstrong, the Apprentice Supervisor and arguably the most important influence on our training, whom I last saw at the Apprentice prize giving in 1990 when I presented the prizes.
T he aviation industry as a whole was incredibly diverse and productive at the time. To illustrate, just recall some of the aircraft programmes of the day. The Canberra had been in Squadron service since 1951 and was in production at English Electric at Warton, as was the PI prototype for the Lightning fighter, Hunters from Hawkers at Kingston entered RAF service in July 1954 .The Swift from Vickers Armstrong's at Weybridge entered service in February 1954.
I n January 1955 the Valiant becomes the first 'V' bomber to enter service. On l0th March 1956 the Fairey Delta 2 captures the worlds absolute speed record at 1,132 mph, the first aircraft to exceed 1,000 mph in level flight. In May 1956 the Vulcan becomes the second 'V' bomber to enter service. In June 1956216 Sqn at Lyneham becomes the worlds first jet transport squadron equipped with the Comet. And on 11th October in 1956 a Valiant of No 49 squadron drops the first British nuclear bomb (Blue Danube) at Maralinga in Australia.
O n 15th May 1957 another Valiant of 49 Squadron drops the first British hydrogen bomb (Yellow Sun) at Christmas Island in the Pacific. And to complete the 'V' force the Victor bomber enters service at Gaydon later in 1957 the whole force protected by the Bloodhound SAM system which is first deployed in 1958.
A ll of these projects featured in the daily life of the RAE during my time and the whole place was a veritable "centre of excellence" in every aspect of aviation you could think of. Great events in aviation history were unfolding before our eyes, such as the ill-fated Comet accident investigation, and all of this was central to the position of RAE and all it stood for - and all of that experience rubbed off on us
I t was a marvelous place to learn about aviation in all of its facets, and we were being paid to learn! Not much though: 50 shillings a week, most of which went on paying for our hostel accommodation. We were also having fun!! And there was plenty of that in the hostel. Apart from Brian Benson, who remembers the exercise of getting his car on to the roof of one of the accommodation blocks, assisted by a suitable system of ropes and pulleys, not to mention motive power from George Rush's vintage motor cars?
R allying on our motorbikes featured, usually at night on obscure country roads, dreamt up by Richie Neeve and Lionel Hooper . And on the motoring theme there was the Mobilgas Economy Run when we were employed as Marshals. But it was motorbikes that were real fun - if that's how one can describe finding your roommate's oily cylinder head in the washbasin, covered in gunk degreaser, just when you needed to clean your teeth! Those bikes were endless sources of practical engineering experience too, let alone the numerous scrapes and prangs we experienced.
A nd how about the student Review shows? I certainly recall Tea & Apathy our 1957 Christmas review. And of course the Rags, and accompanying Rag Balls, which were pretty wild affairs. The Trojan Horse float built on a bomb trolley complete with articulating head and crew to lower it so that we could drag it through the streets of Farnborough and avoid the overhead cables.
O r the War Canoe, fuelled by a barrel of Scrumpy provided to lubricate the chanters' throats, most of which went down Russ Sowerby's throat, which probably explains why he did not reappear for the next 24 hours! We partied at the High Curley Stompers in the village hall at Frimley Green and learned to drink beer at the Vaults Bar in the Queens Hotel just across the road from the hostel. Let's not forget that during my apprenticeship significant world events were unfolding. The Korean War; The Suez crisis and subsequent abortive invasion in late 1956. Followed by the Hungarian uprising, which was the first manifestation of tension within the Warsaw Pact and hardening of the Cold War.
I guess we were pretty much insulated from such events, though we did learn to economise on fuel and even experimented unsuccessfully with trying to run our bike engines on kerosene, purloined from the airfield!
A ll in all it was a great way to grow up, to learn about all manner of new things, have fun with like-minded souls and all at a time of great change in the world and in aviation. B ut all good things come to an end and in late summer of 1958 we went our various ways into the wide world, in most cases to avoid the dreaded National Service. Unlike many, I did not fancy more learning and no earning at Cranfield and so I took up the offer of a post as a Technical Assistant to the then Chief Engineer (Airfield), Harold Behrens. The job only lasted a few months as the dreaded call up materialised, an event that coincided with the Royal Air Force offering short service commissions to graduate engineers.
A nd so it was that I found myself on the ferryboat to the Isle of Man on the 29th December 1958 to enter the Officer Cadet Training Unit at Jurby, Isle of Man. "Avro" Lancaster was on an earlier course and had already introduced the student body to the joys of rallying in hired cars -I seem to remember something about a pranged Morris Minor that was caused by a wall that got in the way of the car. George Rush was on the same course and we were to meet up again later in a different guise.
I recall it being a great relief to get down to earning some money, though not much, as initially a National Service and then a Short Service commission in the Technical Branch of the RAF was not the most lucrative career. My service began with a wonderful posting to an outfit called Bomber Command Development Unit; BCDU was responsible for all manner of development tasks on the then mighty "V" Force -the cream of the Air Force and the nation's nuclear deterrent force. As a very junior officer I found myself entrusted with huge responsibility and thrived on the challenges, in particular my first task to investigate a means of starting and scrambling in less that 4 minutes a flight of four bombers. My particular task was to oversee the development of a novel electrical starter system that would start all four engines simultaneously; we demonstrated a lash up system on a single Valiant after two weeks work one Easter and the following September laid on a convincing demonstration of four aircraft of each type taking off at the Farnborough Air Show.
W ithin a year the whole "V" Force had been modified on a self help basis without any help from industry, the significance being that the force was given a new lease of life to respond to the Soviet threat from ICBMs that would be detected by the "golf ball" radars at Fylingdales with some 4 minutes warning.
I n my early service there were trips to Khormaksar in Aden, Malta, Libya and Gibraltar and I recall a memorable three month job with a special Vulcan on the island of Gan in the Maldives Islands of the Indian Ocean, now a favoured destination for tourism but in 1961 there was plenty of sun, sand, palm trees & sea but, sadly, no girls! Life in the Air Force was great fun and professionally rewarding so having half heartedly tried a couple of interviews with prospective employers in the aviation industry I decided to transfer to a permanent commission, which was for 16 years or age 38. It did seem quite a commitment at the time. I do remember that one of the factors that persuaded me to stay on a while longer was that my apprentice training seemed to have prepared me much better than many of my Air Force contemporaries, many of whom were products of our best universities, all of whom seemed eminently better qualified than me. So I thought I could at least compete with them and hopefully succeed in a pretty competitive, if ordered, environment.
T ime, let alone your boredom threshold, does not permit more than a few anecdotes of my 37 years in the Air Force. It was a career that exposed me to an enormous variety of jobs, no two of which were alike and all of which were universally rewarding. I never expected in my time to be involved in an expeditionary war though, as all our operational postures were focused on the Cold War until the Berlin Wall began to crumble.
S o it was quite a shock to the system in August 1990 when Iraq invaded Kuwait; within 24 hours our first squadron of Tornado fighters was operational at Dhahran in Saudi Arabia, closely followed by a squadron of Jaguar fighter/bombers in Oman and I found myself responsible for the logistic and engineering support of all RAF forces involved in the Gulf War. I was also made Deputy Chief of Staff for logistic support for the whole operation at the combined Joint Force HQ working closely with RN and Army colleagues in a huge exercise to fight alongside the coalition forces. Long days, long nights and no relief from work underground in the High Wycombe bunker, l00 feet below ground as plans were made to deploy and operate over 300 combat aircraft and helicopters (plus virtually every 1000 pound bomb in our inventory), a sizeable RN task force plus two complete armoured divisions.
T alk about a strategic change from Cold War days! We had to learn fast. Virtually all of our squadrons were set up to operate from hardened bases in UK, so becoming an expeditionary force in the deserts of Saudi Arabia was a considerable challenge. The whole of Strike Command were working around the clock in the build up phase of the operation as we urgently installed numerous modifications to our combat aircraft and dealt with the unexpected problems from operating the fighters at very low level in the dust and extreme heat of the Saudi desert
I n purely logistic terms, the total effort moved far more kit than the Allied invasion of Europe in June 1945. The RAF had some 7,000 people in the Gulf for what we knew as Operation Granby, our transport force alone was flying some 600 tons a day into the region. The good news was that we had access to the largest concentration of fuel in the world! The actual campaign - the shooting war - lasted 42 days for the Allied Air Forces during which we flew more than 6.000 sorties, delivered over 3,000 tons of ordnance - l00 JP 233 runway denial weapons, 6,000 X 1,000 pound bombs (1,000 of which were laser-guided).and over l00 anti-radar weapons that were still under development trials at the time. At times the daily Allied air effort matched the numbers of the 1,000 bomber raids on Germany during the 2nd World War. It was an intensive air campaign and undoubtedly paved the way for subsequent operations, as well as a considerable reorganization of all three services.
C asualties were inevitable and we dreaded the post raid reports of downed aircraft, which were thankfully small. In all we lost 6 Tornado fighters - 2 on the first raid on the night of 17th January, including two crew killed and two who became POWs; Peters and Nicholls, whose tortured and beaten faces became instantly recognisable when they were paraded on TV after capture. The initial campaign moved very quickly from the pre planned missions dropping runway denial weapons to one of medium level (20,000 ft) toss maneuvers dropping conventional 1,000 pound bombs using our brand new, untried, 960 radar fuse. Three aircraft were lost during these initial sorties and we were at pains to understand the causes. Was it SAM, AAA or what?
O n 24th January one aircraft returned with serious shrapnel damage and at my request a sample was returned in a matchbox a few days later and taken to Farnborough to see if it could be identified. The then Director, Martin Peters, was a chum of mine and I gave him 24 hours to find out what it was. To cut a long story short the skill of those chemists and metallurgists at Farnborough, coupled with some impressive data retained by the RAF Armaments specialists confirmed that it was a fragment from the case of a 1,000 pound bomb; moreover that particular bomb had been to Berlin and back, and had been refilled three times during its long life, before being loaded on Tornado ZD 843 on the evening of 24th January.
S o we were able to refine a theory about our new fuses, which were being incorrectly set and were prone to early detonation from adjacent bombs in the stick, exploding whilst the delivery aircraft was still within the fragmentation envelope. Farnborough training helped me in that instance and in many others besides. I was fortunate enough to go on to high office in Whitehall to become the first ground branch officer in RAF history to serve on the Air Force Board of the Defence Council and to be the only Engineer officer ever to reach four-star rank, a distinction that I only achieved by virtue of my apprentice years.
T hose of my generation have lived in an ever-changing industrial era, let alone massive realignments in world power. Advanced technology is delivering amazing capabilities through the skill of engineers in every walk of life. In aviation, we have seen at first hand the Concorde from birth at RAE Farnborough into well-deserved retirement, having safely clocked up more supersonic time than all the worlds Air Forces put together. It is an amazing industry, which I still find full of change, challenge and interest.
I regret the passing of proper Apprenticeships, but one of the things we all cherish are the memories of our early years at RAE - the values we established, the friends we made, the fun we had growing up together. In a time of change such experience helps us to establish a stable benchmark from which other experiences are measured. To my mind that benchmark is the greatest enduring gift we share from our time at RAE. Let us give thanks for all those who trained us so well and let me close by asking you to join me in a toast to ...

"The RAE Ex-Apprentices Association".