This website is dedicated to the young National Servicemen, and a sprinkling of regular airmen, who joined the Royal Air Force in the early years of the Cold War and were trained as Mandarin Chinese linguists on a one year intensive language course in the U.K.

A previously hidden fragment of RAF Signals history, from 1955 to 1961 the RAF organised and ran this Chinese language programme at various stations in Britain. During that period there were 11 courses, starting at six monthly intervals, involving around 270 national servicemen. In the period preceding this RAF initiative, from 1951-1955, very small groups of servicemen had been taught Chinese at the School of Oriental & African Studies, London University, on a yearly basis. All of the linguists, on successful completion of their courses, were then posted to Hong Kong for the rest of their National Service, where they sat on top of The Peak to carry out radio monitoring duties on Chinese military communications.

On this site you can meet the men who took part in this work, and find out about their lives since, read their memories and accounts of their service life in those days and see the photos taken on camp in the U.K. and in Hong Kong.