Aircraft Apprentice Scheme

The Aircraft Apprentice Scheme was a training programme for Royal Air Force ground crew personnel which ran from 1920 to 1966.

Hugh Trenchard had been appointed Chief of the Air Staff and quickly discovered that specialist groundcrew were in very short supply.

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.

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.

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.