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The Aircraft Apprentice Scheme was a training programme for Royal Air Force ground crew personnel which ran from 1920 to 1966.
World War I saw the beginning of aerial combat. By 1 April 1918 the Royal Flying Corps and the Royal Naval Air Service had amalgamated into the Royal Air Force. Hugh Trenchard had been appointed Chief of the Air Staff and quickly discovered that specialist groundcrew were in very short supply.
Wartime use of aircraft accelerated the development of new technologies. Aircraft power plants were vastly different from those that powered buses and lorries. Airframes, with their need to reduce drag and provide control in the air, were a totally new challenge. Armourers were asked to develop new fusing methods for equally new explosive devices like air-dropped bombs. Aircraft electrical systems included bomb release mechanisms and synchronised gun firing through the propeller via the use of an interrupter mechanism. The addition of a third dimension to navigation meant aircraft instrument makers had to produce new indicators for such things as turn and bank, air speed and an artificial horizon.
For these reasons and others, Trenchard instituted the Aircraft Apprentice Scheme to be based at RAF Halton No. 1 School of Technical Training. Because of lack of accommodation at Halton, the school was originally located at RAF Cranwell in 1920. In 1922 the school moved permanently to RAF Halton and was fully operational by 1926. The Aircraft Apprentice School at RAF Cranwell (Nos. 1 and 6 Radio Schools) continued to train apprentices exclusively for the ground and air radio trades. The apprentice school at Cranwell operated until October 1952 before being transferred to RAF Locking.
Entrance to the scheme involved a highly competitive exam, intelligence and aptitude tests, and medical examinations. Admittance was limited exclusively to males between the ages of 15 and 17½ and the Royal Air Force assumed legal guardianship of the boys in loco parentis .
Initially, training was a three-year course, although this was changed briefly to two years for some apprentice entries during the Second World War. Training took place over five and a half days a week, and consisted of both academic and practical training. In addition, basic military training was given. Originally, applicants were required to be British subjects and of "pure European descent" (and were required to prove this if there was any doubt). [1] Apprentices were later accepted from both Commonwealth and other countries.
106 Entry, which passed out in December 1966, was the last of the Aircraft Apprentice entries. A three-year Technician Apprentice scheme, a two-year Craft Apprentice scheme, and a one-year Administrative Apprentice scheme were initiated in September 1964, with 107 Entry being the first Technician Apprentice entry, 201 Entry being the first of the Craft Apprentice entries, and 301 Entry being the first of the Administrative Apprentice entries. A one-year scheme for mechanic apprentices was also subsequently introduced (the 400 series entry apprentices).
It is estimated that as many as forty per cent of the "Trenchard Brats" or the "Poacher's Brats" (as the Cranwell Apprentices were called because of their Lincolnshire connection), achieved commissioned rank, and a considerable number achieved Air rank.
Graduates of this scheme include several former officers of Air rank, including Air Commodore Sir Frank Whittle, father of the jet engine, Marshal of the Royal Air Force Sir Keith Williamson, Air Chief Marshal Sir Mike Armitage, Air Marshal Sir Graham Miller, and Air Marshal Cliff Spink
The Brats' alumni association, a registered charity, is called the RAF Halton Apprentices Association (RAFHAA), or Old Haltonians. It publishes a magazine called The Haltonian three times a year. A triennial reunion for Brats is organised by the association.
RAF Halton has its own memorial to the brats opposite Kermode Hall, very close to St George's Church, which contains stained glass windows commemorating the 40,000 or so apprentices who were trained there. Brats are also remembered at the Halton Grove, which is part of the National Memorial Arboretum, Alrewas, Staffordshire.
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Marshal of the Royal Air Force Hugh Montague Trenchard, 1st Viscount Trenchard, was a British officer who was instrumental in establishing the Royal Air Force. He has been described as the "Father of the Royal Air Force."
Royal Air Force Halton, or more simply RAF Halton, is one of the largest Royal Air Force stations in the United Kingdom. It is located near the village of Halton near Wendover, Buckinghamshire. The site has been in use since the First World War but is due to close by December 2027.
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Marshal of the Royal Air Force Sir Keith Alec Williamson, was a senior officer in the Royal Air Force. He served with the Royal Australian Air Force flying Meteors in a ground attack role during the Korean War. He was a squadron commander and then a station commander during the 1960s and a senior air commander in the 1980s. He was Chief of the Air Staff during the early 1980s at the time of the emergency airlift of food and supplies to Ethiopia.
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RAF Locking was a Royal Air Force station near the village of Locking and about 3 miles (4.8 km) from Weston-super-Mare in North Somerset, England. During the period 1939 to 2000, the station trained tens of thousands of engineers in the maintenance of aircraft then radar, radio and computers.
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Air Marshal Clifford Rodney Spink, is a retired senior Royal Air Force officer, who is now a Spitfire display pilot on the national air display circuit. The first Spitfire he ever flew belonged to the Battle of Britain Memorial Flight, during his tenure as Station Commander of RAF Coningsby. He also served as the 23rd Commandant of the Royal Observer Corps, the last but one officer to hold the post.
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The Old Haltonian Association, which was founded by Lieutenant Colonel AFS Cardwell in 1925, was an important feature of the earliest years of the Royal Air Force's Apprentice training at the No. 1 School of Technical Training. The objects of the Old Haltonian Association were to stimulate interest and comradeship between all ex-Halton Apprentices, to provide information on the progress and activities of ex-Apprentices for those still under training and to give each Aircraft Apprentice at Halton an insight into the functions of Service units. It was a flourishing activity with representatives on every RAF unit and in the aircraft industry who all submitted reports to the Association's Halton Magazine on the doings of ex-Apprentices worldwide.
Air Chief Marshal Sir Michael John Armitage, was a British senior Royal Air Force commander.
Raymond "Chaz" Bowyer was a Royal Air Force armaments and explosives instructor who, after he retired from service, wrote and edited over forty books relating to the operations, aircraft, and men of the Royal Flying Corps, Royal Air Force, and Royal Naval Air Service. He also edited for publication the memoirs of the pilots C.P.O. Bartlett, Eric Crundall, and Gwilym H. Lewis.
No. 2 School of Technical Training RAF is a current training unit within the Royal Air Force. The school formed at Cranwell in 1920, and was later disbanded before being reformed at a new base, RAF Cosford, in 1938. It was closed in 1994, but in July 2023, it was reactivated and has become part of the training environment at RAF Cosford.
