Some time in the May term in 1914, in my third year, my Supervisor of Studies told me that Mervyn O'Gorman, Head of the Royal Aircraft Factory, as it then was, would be visiting Cambridge and staying with Charles Darwin and might be looking for staff. He offered to arrange a meeting for me if I was interested. I had intended to be a civil engineer, but we agreed that aviation was a coming profession and it would be a good idea to get in more or less on the ground floor.

I went to see O'Gorman, and it was eventually agreed that if I got a good place in the tripos I would be taken on at the Factory at a salary of £1 per week and would report on the 1st August.