When my father, Ronald Piper (pictured in Valletta in July 1952), was fresh out of RAF training from Cranwell, England as a 19-year-old navigator in 1952, his first task with a similarly green crew on a Vickers Valetta T3 was to “ find Malta” (the name of the plane is pure coincidence!).

He recalls the pleasure of his first tastes of French food and wine on their stop over at Orange, in France after only ever experiencing the drabness of wartime rationing.

However, on his arrival in Malta, he could not believe the warmth both of the climate and the Maltese people and the bright colours of his surroundings and the turquoise sea. He was housed at the officers’ mess, in Luqa but spent some time at the officers’ club in St Paul’s Bay but cannot recall where exactly, just that it was somewhere within view of St Paul’s islands.

He knows this because one of the other young navigators was reprimanded strongly for swimming to the island by the commanding officer with the words: “It has cost the country and the RAF a lot of money to train you not to have you damn drowned before you start.”

Can any reader let me know where the officers’ club  might have been located and whether it is still standing? Any photos of it would also be much appreciated by my father who is now 83.