section_path: Prince of Wales/Military training and career
section_name: Military training and career
paragraph_text: Military training and career
  
  Charles served in the Royal Air Force (RAF) and the Royal Navy in the 1970s. His military training began in 1969, during his second year at Cambridge, where he received Royal Air Force training, learning to fly the Chipmunk aircraft with the Cambridge University Air Squadron, and was presented with his RAF wings in August 1971.
  
  After the passing out parade that September, Charles embarked on a naval career and enrolled in a six-week course at the Royal Naval College, Dartmouth. Following his naval training he then served from 1971 to 1972 on the guided-missile destroyer HMS Norfolk and the frigates HMS Minerva, from 1972 to 1973, and HMS Jupiter in 1974. That same year, he also qualified as a helicopter pilot at RNAS Yeovilton, and during his training to be a helicopter pilot underwent commando training at Commando Training Centre Royal Marines at Lympstone. Charles subsequently joined a Royal Marines air support squadron of the Fleet Air Arm, 845 Naval Air Squadron, operating as a pilot, from HMS Hermes, flying the Royal Marines commando variant of the Westland Wessex helicopter.
  
  Charles spent his last 10 months of active service in the Navy commanding the coastal minehunter HMS Bronington, beginning on 9 February 1976. He retired from active military service in 1976 at the rank of Commander. Two years later he took part in the parachute training course at RAF Brize Norton after being appointed colonel-in-chief of the Parachute Regiment in 1977, and was a member of Parachute Course 841a. Charles gave up flying after crash-landing a BAe 146 in Islay in 1994, as a passenger who was invited to fly the aircraft; the crew was found negligent by a board of inquiry.