Frank Blinkhorn - Course 61

By Caroline Wyatt, BBC News correspondent - Frank Blinkhorn was just 17 years old when he joined the RAF in wartime Britain, and was given only eight hours' training in a Tiger Moth to prove he could go solo. He was then sent to Canada to qualify as an RAF fighter pilot flying Harvards. He won his wings on his 19th birthday, returning to England to fight the Luftwaffe. "I remember walking up Oxford Street with my fiancee when I came back from my training in Canada, walking past Selfridges, which was ablaze after being bombed. Many of his comrades died in the skies over enemy territory. He himself was lucky to return alive. “A lot didn't come back - and I nearly didn't," says the 86-year-old. "I was shot down over Boulogne harbour on 8 May 1944, just a month before D-Day. We were on a reconnaissance flight for D-Day, and one of our jobs was to fly out to Germany to do a weather recce for the big bomber raids coming up. We were coming back out of Boulogne and I got a ground shell in the engine - and in those days there was no ejector seat, so you had to ditch." His plane ditched into the cold waters of the Channel in the midst of a minefield. He was knocked unconscious, but was rescued.