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17 year old in the RAF in 1947?

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AlexHunting
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17 year old in the RAF in 1947?

Post by AlexHunting »

Hi,

I'm hoping someone can guide me on a question I have about a family tree.

The family tree has an RAF man marrying a Hong Kong woman in 1950 and going on to have kids with her. But their first child was apparently born before they married with a birth date at the start of 1948. The (potential) issue is that the RAF guy was born in the summer of 1929 and for him to have been the father of this first child he'd have to have been trained and shipped out to Hong Kong by the start of April 1947 which means he would have only been about seventeen years and a couple of months old when he arrived in HK. Is this possible? He was a fireman if that helps work it out.

(I agreed to help start writing up what was already known about this tree before more research is done and military history is not something I know that much about. I've no idea what the time between someone signing up and being deployed would be for the period and whether completing training at 17 outside of wartime was routine or unusual. It's the nearly three year gap between the 1948 child's birth and their 1950 marriage and the guy's young age that's got me wondering if there might have been two relationships/fathers for the mother and kids but I don't want to rock any boats without checking first!)

Help!

Alex
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Re: 17 year old in the RAF in 1947?

Post by Tab »

All young men were called up at 18 years of age and life in the Army was rough to say the least. National Service men only got half pay as they were not classed as proper Soldiers yet they were expected to fight and die along side the regulars. To select what service they went in many young men would volunteer for the service they wanted and sign on for three years and by signing near there 18th birthday he could have gone into the RAF earlier and his parents would have probably agreed to this or he could have lied about his age and adjusted it by a period of months rather than years. When I was called up in the 1950's I became a trained soldier in just ten weeks, before going into the airborne and the P Course and the Parachute training took another two weeks each to complete, after that I shipped overseas for active service. Getting married would have taken his CO's permission, I would suggest that you get a copy of his military records from Cranwell and this will involve a cost but that should put your mind at rest.
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