A look back at the world outside RAF Locking during the 100th Entry’s three years of training — the headlines, the music, the films and the sport of 1962, 1963 and 1964 — together with the Locking Review magazines of the period.
1962
World Headlines
- France transfers sovereignty to new republic of Algeria (July 3).
- USSR to build missile bases in Cuba; Kennedy orders Cuban blockade, lifts blockade after Russia backs down (Aug.-Nov.).
- Cuba releases 1,113 prisoners of 1961 invasion attempt (Dec. 24).
- Burundi, Jamaica, Western Samoa, Uganda, and Trinidad and Tobago become independent.
Entertainment
- Marilyn Monroe dies of a drug overdose at age 36.
- The first transatlantic television transmission occurs via the Telstar Satellite, making worldwide television a reality.
No.1 Records
Click a song title to play it here in a pop-up player.
| No. | Artist | Title | Reached No.1 | Weeks |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Cliff Richard and The Shadows | “The Young Ones” | January 11 | 6 weeks |
| 2 | Elvis Presley | “Rock-A-Hula Baby/Can’t Help Falling In Love” | February 22 | 4 weeks |
| 3 | The Shadows | “Wonderful Land” | March 22 | 8 weeks |
| 4 | B. Bumble and the Stingers | “Nut Rocker” | May 17 | 1 week |
| 5 | Elvis Presley | “Good Luck Charm” | May 24 | 5 weeks |
| 6 | Mike Sarne with Wendy Richard | “Come Outside” | June 28 | 2 weeks |
| 7 | Ray Charles | “I Can’t Stop Lovin’ You” | July 12 | 2 weeks |
| 8 | Frank Ifield | “I Remember You” | July 26 | 7 weeks |
| 9 | Elvis Presley | “She’s Not You” | September 13 | 3 weeks |
| 10 | The Tornados | “Telstar” | October 4 | 5 weeks |
| 11 | Frank Ifield | “Lovesick Blues” | November 8 | 5 weeks |
| 12 | Elvis Presley | “Return to Sender” | December 13 | 3 weeks |
Top Movies
Click a title to open it on IMDb.
Top Books
Click a title to look it up on Goodreads.
- James Baldwin “Another Country”
- Rachel Carson “Silent Spring”
- Robert Frost “In the Clearing”
- Günter Grass “The Tin Drum”
- Ken Kesey “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’ Nest”
- Sylvia Plath “The Colossus and Other Poems”
- Anne Sexton “All My Pretty Ones”
- William Stafford “Traveling through the Dark”
- Richard Yates “Eleven Kinds of Loneliness”
Entertainment Awards
- Pulitzer Prizes
- Fiction: “The Edge of Sadness” Edwin O’Connor; Music: “The Crucible” Robert Ward
- Drama: “How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying” Frank Loesser and Abe Burrows
- Oscars
- Best Picture: “West Side Story”, Robert Wise, producer (United Artists)
- Nobel Prize for Literature
- John Steinbeck
- Grammys
- Record of the Year: “Moon River” Henry Mancini; Album of the Year: “Judy at Carnegie Hall”, Judy Garland
- Song of the Year: “Moon River,” Henry Mancini and Johnny Mercer, songwriters
Science
- Lt. Col. John H. Glenn, Jr., is first American to orbit Earth – three times in 4 hours 55 minutes (Feb. 20
- Mariner II, the first interplanetary probe, reaches Venus. Background: US Unstaffed Planetary and Lunar Programs
- Unimation introduces the first industrial robot.
- The commercially sponsored Telstar communications satellite is launched.
Sport
- Wimbledon
- Women: Karen Susman d. V. Sukova (6-4 6-4); Men: Rod Laver d. M. Mulligan (6-2 6-2 6-1)
- World Cup
- Brazil d. Czechoslovakia (3-1)
1963
World Headlines
- France and West Germany sign treaty of cooperation ending four centuries of conflict (Jan. 22).
- Pope John XXIII dies (June 3), and is succeeded June 21 by Cardinal Montini, who becomes Paul VI.
- British Secretary of War John Profumo resigns in the wake of an affair with Christine Keeler.
- Washington-to-Moscow “hot line” communications link opens, designed to reduce risk of accidental war.
- Kenya achieves independence.
- President Kennedy shot and killed in Dallas, Tex. Lyndon B. Johnson becomes President same day (Nov. 22).
- Lee Harvey Oswald, accused Kennedy assassin, is shot and killed by Jack Ruby (Nov. 24).
Entertainment
- Viewers tuned into NBC witness Jack Ruby shoot Lee Harvey Oswald on camera – the first live telecast of a murder.
- Beatlemania hits the U.K. John Lennon, George Harrison, Ringo Starr and Paul McCartney, take Britain by storm.
- The Rolling Stones emerge as the anti-Beatles, with an aggressive, blues-derived style.
No.1 Records
Click a song title to play it here in a pop-up player.
| No. | Artist | Title | Reached No.1 | Weeks |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Cliff Richard and The Shadows | “The Next Time/Batchelor Boy” | January 3 | 3 weeks |
| 2 | The Shadows | “Dance On!” | January 24 | 1 week |
| 3 | Jet Harris & Tony Meehan | “Diamonds” | January 31 | 3 weeks |
| 4 | Frank Ifield | “The Wayward Wind” | February 21 | 3 weeks |
| 5 | Cliff Richard & The Shadows | “Summer Holiday” | March 14 | 2 weeks |
| 6 | The Shadows | “Foot Tapper” | March 28 | 1 week |
| 7 | Cliff Richard & The Shadows | “Summer Holiday” | April 4 | 1 week |
| 8 | Gerry & the Pacemakers | “How Do You Do It?” | April 11 | 3 weeks |
| 9 | The Beatles | “From Me To You” | May 2 | 7 weeks |
| 10 | Gerry & the Pacemakers | “I Like It” | June 20 | 4 weeks |
| 11 | Frank Ifield | “Confessin’ (That I Love You)” | July 18 | 2 weeks |
| 12 | Elvis Presley | “(You’re The) Devil In Disguise” | August 1 | 1 week |
| 13 | The Searchers | “Sweets For My Sweet” | August 8 | 2 weeks |
| 14 | Billy J. Kramer & The Dakotas | “Bad To Me” | August 22 | 3 weeks |
| 15 | The Beatles | “She Loves You” | September 12 | 4 weeks |
| 16 | Brian Poole & The Tremeloes | “Do You Love Me?” | October 10 | 3 weeks |
| 17 | Gerry & the Pacemakers | “You’ll Never Walk Alone” | October 31 | 4 weeks |
| 18 | The Beatles | “She Loves You” | November 28 | 2 weeks |
| 19 | The Beatles | “I Want to Hold Your Hand” | December 7 | 5 weeks |
Top Movies
Click a title to open it on IMDb.
Top Books
Click a title to look it up on Goodreads.
Entertainment Awards
- Pulitzer Prizes
- Fiction: “The Reivers” William Faulkner, Music: “Piano Concerto No. 1” Samuel Barber
- Oscars
- Best Picture: “Lawrence of Arabia” Sam Spiegel, producer (Columbia)
- Nobel Prize for Literature
- Giorgios Seferis (Seferiades) (Greece)
- Grammys
- Record of the Year: “I Left My Heart in San Francisco” Tony Bennett
- Album of the Year: “The First Family” Vaughn Meader (Cadence)
- Song of the Year: “What Kind of Fool Am I” Leslie Bricusse and Anthony Newley, songwriters
Science
Nobel Prizes in Science
- Chemistry
- Carl Ziegler (Germany) and Giulio Natta (Italy), for work in uniting simple hydrocarbons into large molecule substances
- Physics
- Eugene Paul Wigner, Maria Goeppert Mayer and J. Hans D. Jensen, for research on structure of atom and its nucleus
- Physiology or Medicine
- Alan Lloyd Hodgkin, Andrew Fielding Huxley and Sir John Carew Eccles, for research on nerve cells
- Quasars are discovered by Marten Schmidt (US).
- The first liver transplant is performed by F.D. Moore and T.E. Starzl. Background: Health & Nutrition
- The first commercial nuclear reactor goes online at the Jersey Central Power Company. Background: nuclear energy
- The sedative Valium (chlordiazepoxide) is developed by Roche labs.
Sport
- Wimbledon
- Women: Margaret Smith d. B.J. Moffitt (6-3 6-4), Men: Chuck McKinley d. F. Stolle (9-7 6-1 6-4)
1964
World Headlines
- Nobel Peace Prize: Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
- Nelson Mandela sentenced to life imprisonment in South Africa (June 11).
- Khrushchev is deposed; Kosygin becomes premier and Brezhnev becomes first secretary of the Communist Party (October).
- China detonates its first atomic bomb. Background: nuclear weapons
- Jack Ruby convicted of murder in slaying of Lee Harvey Oswald.
Entertainment
- Folk musician Bob Dylan becomes increasingly popular during this time of social protest.
- Psychedelic bands such as The Grateful Dead and Jefferson Airplane enjoy great success.
- Peyton Place premieres on ABC and is the first prime-time soap opera. Color television makes its way into U.S. homes.
- The Beatles appear on The Ed Sullivan Show.
No.1 Records
Click a song title to play it here in a pop-up player.
| No. | Artist | Title | Reached No.1 | Weeks |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Dave Clark Five | “Glad All Over” | January 16 | 2 weeks |
| 2 | The Searchers | “Needles & Pins” | January 30 | 3 weeks |
| 3 | Bachelors | “Diane” | February 20 | 1 week |
| 4 | Cilla Black | “Anyone Who Had A Heart” | February 27 | 3 weeks |
| 5 | Billy J. Kramer & The Dakotas | “Little Children” | March 19 | 2 weeks |
| 6 | The Beatles | “Can’t Buy me Love” | April 2 | 3 weeks |
| 7 | Peter & Gordon | “A World Without Love” | April 23 | 2 weeks |
| 8 | The Searchers | “Don’t Throw Your Love Away” | May 7 | 2 weeks |
| 9 | The Four Pennies | “Juliet” | May 21 | 1 week |
| 10 | Cilla Black | “You’re My World” | May 28 | 4 weeks |
| 11 | Roy Orbison | “It’s Over” | June 25 | 2 weeks |
| 12 | The Animals | “House of the Rising Sun” | July 9 | 1 week |
| 13 | Rolling Stones | “It’s All Over Now” | July 16 | 1 week |
| 14 | The Beatles | “A Hard Day’s Night” | July 23 | 3 weeks |
| 15 | Manfred Mann | “Do Wah Diddy Diddy” | August 13 | 2 weeks |
| 16 | The Honeycombs | “Have I The Right” | August 27 | 2 weeks |
| 17 | The Kinks | “You Really Got Me” | September 10 | 2 weeks |
| 18 | Herman’s Hermits | “I’m Into Something Good” | September 24 | 2 weeks |
| 19 | Roy Orbison | “Oh, Pretty Woman” | October 8 | 2 weeks |
| 20 | Sandie Shaw | “(There’s) Always Something There to Remind Me” | October 22 | 3 weeks |
| 21 | Roy Orbison | “Oh, Pretty Woman” | November 12 | 1 week |
| 22 | The Supremes | “Baby Love” | November 19 | 2 weeks |
| 23 | Rolling Stones | “Little Red Rooster” | December 3 | 1 week |
| 24 | The Beatles | “I Feel Fine” | December 10 | 5 weeks |
Top Movies
Click a title to open it on IMDb.
Top Books
Click a title to look it up on Goodreads.
- Donald Barthelme “Come Back, Dr. Caligari”
- John Berryman “77 Dream Songs”
- John Cheever “The Wapshot Scandal”
- James Dickey “Helmets, Two Poems of the Air”
- John Hawkes “Second Skin”
- Ernest Hemingway “A Moveable Feast”
- Katherine Anne Porter “Collected Stories of Katherine Anne Porter”
- Hubert Selby “Last Exit to Brooklyn”
Entertainment Awards
- Oscars
- Best Picture: “Tom Jones”, Tony Richardson, producer (United Artists-Lopert Pictures)
- Nobel Prize for Literature
- Jean-Paul Sartre (France) (declined)
- Grammys
- Record of the Year: “The Days of Wine and Roses” Henry Mancini
- Album of the Year: “The Barbra Streisand Album”, Barbra Streisand (Columbia)
- Song of the Year: “The Days of Wine and Roses,” Henry Mancini and Johnny Mercer, composers
Science
Nobel Prizes in Science
- Chemistry
- Dorothy Mary Crowfoot Hodgkin for determining structure of compounds needed in combatting pernicious anemia
- Physics
- Charles Hard Townes, Nikolai G. Basov and Aleksandr M. Prochorov, for developing maser and laser principle of producing high-intensity radiation
- Physiology or Medicine
- Konrad E. Bloch and Feodor Lynen, for research on mechanism and regulation of cholesterol and fatty-acid metabolism
- Ranger VII takes 4,316 high-resolution pictures of the moon. Background: US Unstaffed Planetary and Lunar Programs
- US Surgeon General Luther Terry affirms that cigarette smoking causes cancer. Background: nuclear energy
Sport
- Wimbledon
- Women: Maria Bueno d. M. Smith (6-4 7-9 6-3), Men: Roy Emerson d. F. Stolle (6-4 12-10 4-6 6-3)
Olympics – Tokyo
Twenty-six years after Japan’s wartime government forced the Japanese Olympic Committee to resign as hosts of the 1940 Summer Games, Tokyo welcomed the world to the first Asian Olympics. The new Japan spared no expense-a staggering $3 billion was spent to rebuild the city-and was rewarded with a record-breaking fortnight.
Top 10 Standings
National medal standings are not recognized by the IOC. The unofficial point totals are based on 3 points for a gold medal, 2 for a silver and 1 for a bronze.
| Rank | Nation | Gold | Silver | Bronze | Total | Pts |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | USA | 36 | 26 | 28 | 90 | 188 |
| 2 | USSR | 30 | 31 | 35 | 96 | 187 |
| 3 | Germany | 10 | 22 | 18 | 50 | 92 |
| 4 | Japan | 16 | 5 | 8 | 29 | 66 |
| 5 | Italy | 10 | 10 | 7 | 27 | 57 |
| 6 | Hungary | 10 | 7 | 5 | 22 | 49 |
| 7 | Poland | 7 | 6 | 10 | 23 | 43 |
| 8 | Great Britain | 4 | 12 | 2 | 18 | 38 |
| 9 | Australia | 6 | 2 | 10 | 18 | 32 |
| 10 | Czechoslovakia | 5 | 6 | 3 | 14 | 30 |
Winter Olympics – Innsbruck
Death and unseasonably mild weather hung over the ninth Winter Games in the Tyrolean Alps.
Two athletes, 50-year-old British luger Kazimierz Kay-Skyszpeski and 19-year-old Australian downhill skier Ross Milne, were killed taking practice runs less than a week before the Games began. And three years before, on Feb. 15, 1961, a plane crash in Belgium had killed 18 members of the U.S. figure skating team-including America’s top female skater, 16-year-old Laurence Owen.
Springlike temperatures plagued Innsbruck both before and during the Games, forcing the Austrian military to carry in over 50,000 cubic meters of snow from higher elevations.
Top 10 Standings
National medal standings are not recognized by the IOC. The unofficial point totals are based on 3 points for a gold medal, 2 for a silver and 1 for a bronze. Total medals are in parentheses.
| Rank | Nation | Gold | Silver | Bronze | Pts |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | USSR (25) | 11 | 8 | 6 | 55 |
| 2 | Norway (15) | 3 | 6 | 6 | 27 |
| 3 | Austria (12) | 4 | 5 | 3 | 25 |
| 4 | Finland (10) | 3 | 4 | 3 | 20 |
| 5 | France (7) | 3 | 4 | 0 | 17 |
| 6 | Sweden (7) | 3 | 3 | 1 | 16 |
| Germany (8) | 3 | 2 | 3 | 16 | |
| 8 | USA (6) | 1 | 2 | 3 | 10 |
| 9 | Holland (2) | 1 | 1 | 0 | 5 |
| Canada (3) | 1 | 0 | 2 | 5 | |
| Italy (4) | 0 | 1 | 3 | 5 |
Locking Review Magazines
The Locking Review magazines were published regularly during the period 1962 to 1965, and covered the 100th Entry pass out with a full list of postings in the Spring 1965 edition.
RAF Locking – Then and Now
Photos of RAF Locking before and after it was demolished, and the Locking ‘Arrivals Handbook’, are not currently archived on this site.