I attended the new Design School run by a Mr Wiles and set up in Claremont Lodge at the foot of the long curving drive rising to the house. We spent two days a week there, with three-and-a-half days in our departments - mine was the Drawing Stores in the Kingston Drawing Office - and three nights at Kingston Tech. As a prize for coming top in the end-of- year exam I joined George Brailsford in Flight Research, part of the Project Office under Freddie Page, at Claremont but in a separate small room.
 
The Project Office had the task of seeing aircraft through their flight trials as well as creating the new designs to replace them. At this time there were special versions of the Tempest and several Fury and Sea Fury prototypes to manage. This burden remained through the years with the attitude, "You created these horrors; you put them right." Typical were two of the problems I met then: isolating the vibration on the Sea Fury and reducing the position error on the Tempest V. The excessive position error on the altimeter readings from the wing tip pitot-static probe made low level flying against the V1 'Doodlebugs' hazardous. Fortunately the solution was found quickly. Re-routing the static pressure line to a hole on the fuselage side below the cockpit reduced the variation in readings.
 
I had a closer view of the action in 1944, and again in 1945, when I was seconded to Flight Test at Langley, our 'shadow factory' and grass aerodrome, to stand in for Charlie Dunn who was taking the Tempests to Khartoum for hot weather trials. This gave me access to all the Flight Reports from No.1 by Philip Lucas on the Hart, including Frank Murphy's report on an incident when the instrumented Tempest V, JN729, reached 614 mph in a dive. I met a range of pilots, Company and RAF, based at Langley including 'George' Bulman, Philip Lucas, Bill Humble, Neville Duke, RN Muspratt and Capt HS Broad, and on a flying visit (and airfield beat-up) Roland Beamont in his personal Tempest V with its RPB fuselage lettering.
 
Back at Claremont in 1945 Freddie Page left for English Electric to work on the Canberra and I entered the office proper as the Technical Assistant with my own desk and drawing board. The P.1040 jet fighter was being schemed in detail and with various layouts, some being drawn with wing sweepback. Lickley asked me to see what I could make of a design with the Nuffield 100 hp piston engines being proposed by Morris Motors. The P.1058 five seat, twin engined air taxi was the result.
 
Although Sydney Camm was just across the corridor I cannot remember Lickley ever allowing him into the Project Office. Lickley was a bit of a tyrant, hard on the senior staff but generous to us, younger mortals. He used to bait Rochefort in Stress and we could hear his shrill voice in the many arguments.
 
Life at Claremont wasn't all that bad. Once you had evaded the V1s on the way to Kingston a coach took you to the House. We had two tennis courts and a swimming pool for lunchtime recreation, but the sight of the V2 rockets leaving shock wave condensation rings as they went supersonic falling on London was not very pleasant. More peaceful was the sight of Bob Copland flying his beautiful rubber powered Wakefield Trophy winning model aircraft over the large green slope in front of the House. We could also escape into the strictly out-of-bounds Claremont Park with its lake and folly, wild through lack of attention.
 
In the Project Office itself more attention was being given to the possibilities offered by new powerplants to meet the current and envisaged military and civil requirements. There was even a tail-less airliner project with boundary layer control air intakes along the swept wing. Parametric studies into optimum solutions were also performed. I suppose this incredible period ended in 1945, with the famous group photograph on the steps of Claremont.
 
By 1988, when the Kingston Future Projects Office was closed, I was the only employee left from that auspicious family and shut the door on one of the most successful teams in the world. It wasn't a bad training ground, either. Robert Lickley went  to the College of Aeronautics, Cranfield, as Professor of Aircraft Design and then to Faireys as Chief Engineer. Freddie Page ended up as Chairman of the British Aerospace Aircraft Group and Ken Bentley became a director of the British Aircraft Corporation. Alan Lipfriend, who had been studying law at that time, became a barrister and eventually a High Court Judge, and Wally Walford left to take up making specialised Chinese red clay pottery. Vivian Stanbury, who while at Kingston had rebuilt a De Dion veteran car for the Veteran Car Club Brighton Run, was for a time Chief Designer of Rolls-Royce Cars.
 
And of course Sydney Camm and Freddie Page received Knighthoods.