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‘You’re a natural for the fighter my boy!’[28] Most Anzac short service commission men, however, had not signed upwith a view to career climbing or post-RAF careers; they simply wanted to fly, and to their minds the best way to do this was in the single-engine fighter.[29]
    Like all RAF hopefuls, the Anzac pilots who made it through the elementary phase at civilian schools were then shipped off to the RAF Depot at Uxbridge. The pupils were now Acting Pilot Officers on probation. The two weeks among the dreary red-brick buildings at Uxbridge were an initiation into RAF disciplinary training and, as Wellingtonian Alan Gawith reasoned, to ‘try and make gentlemen of you’. The young men were inoculated, marched endlessly around the parade ground, lectured to, fitted out for their uniforms and instructed on the finer points of mess etiquette.[30]
    â€˜Square-bashing’ soon gave way to a posting to an RAF Flying Training School, and the civilian aircraft of the elementary schools were replaced with military machines. As early as possible in the intermediate term, the pilots were introduced to the rudiments of aerobatics in order to acclimatise them quickly to their machines and the frenzied cut-and-thrust of aerial combat. To these aerobatic manoeuvres was added an introduction to cross-country flying. Careful observation and thorough planning was needed for airmen to find the way to their targets and home again.
    Hillary’s first solo cross-country flight in Scotland nearly ended embarrassingly when his airborne reverie was interrupted by an irritating ‘winking’ red light. Within moments the engine cut out. ‘The red light continued to shine like a brothel invitation,’ recalled Hillary, ‘while I racked my brain to think what was wrong.’[31] More concerned with the prospect of ‘making a fool of himself than of crashing’, it was not until he had glided down to 500 feet that he remembered the light indicated low fuel and he quickly flicked over to the reserve tank. ‘Grateful that there were no spectators of my stupidity, I flew back, determined to learn my cockpit drill thoroughly before taking to the air again.’[32]
    One of the scarier, but necessary, skills was the ability to fly at night. It proved the undoing of many pilots. In his first solo night-flying session, Hillary recalled losing his bearings completely when the airfield’s ground flares disappeared momentarily from view.
    I glanced back at the instruments. I was gaining speed rapidly. That meant I was diving. Jerkily I hauled back on the stick. My speed fell off alarmingly. I knew exactly what to do, for I had had plenty ofexperience in instrument flying; but for a moment I was paralysed. Enclosed in that small space and faced with a thousand bewildering instruments, I had a moment of complete claustrophobia. I must get out. I was going to crash. I didn’t know in which direction I was going. Was I even the right way up?[33]
    Hillary rose halfway to his feet and with a sigh of relief caught sight of the flares, and, ‘thoroughly ashamed’ of himself, soon had the light biplane skimming the ground as he delicately brought the machine in for landing. His post-panic contemplation was cut short when it became clear that the very next trainee had lost sight of the landing lights and was headed towards the coast and open waters. The mangled plane and dead pilot were soon discovered by Hillary and the attending officer, straddling the beach and the water’s edge. ‘I remembered again the moment of blind panic and knew what he must have felt,’ reflected Hillary. In the dead man’s ‘breast pocket was ₤10, drawn to go on leave the next day. He was twenty years old.’[34]
    Even instructors could fall prey to errors of judgement. The six-foot, five-inch and seventeen-stone Aucklander, Maurice ‘Tiny’ Kinder, remembered one of the more gruesome