SINGAPORE 1972-75

Singapore. A pleasant change from Bahrein, spending 2.5yrs in the far east, complete with my family (wife Jill, David and Lindsey). This poor quality picture is of me about to take a winch launch into the wild blue yonder in a rather old glider with pretty low performance in the glide. But, it got us airborne......











This one is of me standing in the rear door of a RNZAF Bristol Freighter that we managed to 'borrow' from the squadron then resident at Tengah. The nose of the aircraft you can see inside the Freighter is an Indian-built 'Rohini' glider which one of the members of the ANZUK GLiding Club had found lying in a hangar at Ipoh, Malaysia. We had negotiated to be given it but had no way of getting it back to Singapore, until someone asked the RNZAF if they had anything going up that way. To cut a long story short, I flew up to Ipoh via Kuantan (vicious fighting there in WWII) and met the crew we had sent up by road, and after a bit ok juggling managed to get the very large and heavy glider tied down in the Freighter and we flew it back to SIngapore. Now, there were only two people on board the Freighter, me and the pilot so when I saw the RNZAF pilot chappie come down the stairs from the flight deck, I thought "hullo, so who is flying this kite?" As he passed by to the rear of the kite, pilot says casually "just going to tuhe loo - won't be but a few minutes". I got out of my seat and strolled casually to the stairs (rather quickly, actually) and shot up onto the flight deck to be confronted with an empty cabin and 'George', the auto-pilot in sole command of the aircraft. I checked the panel, saw that we were at 2,500 feet above endless jungle and looked for the auto-pilot disengage switch in case 'George' suddenly went mad - a not altogether unkown ocurrence in those days. And there I stayed until the real pilot reappeared..... SInce I was flying a lot in those days I wasn't frightened or even much concerned, just very, very cautious in trusting my life to a mindless machine which, although capable of flying the kite much better than a human being, could easily throw a sudden tantrum and dump us upside down into the jungle........


The Rohini hadn't flown for several years, so we carried out a pretty thorough inspection of everything, esepcially inside the laminar-flow wings before deciding that it was airworthy This picture is of Ray (barking-mad) Parkin, our inspiring Chief Flying Instructor taking a last few pictures before getting the kite airborne for the first time. We didn't use parachutes in those days but, for some strange reason Ray thought he ought to wear one for the air-test. It all went well, other than that we missed the bit in the Pilot's Notes for the kite where it said "be aware that deploying full spoilers restricts the rearward movement of the control column". Accordingly, when Ray tried to round out for landing with full spoilers he discovered that he couldn't pull back on the column far enough to round out.....
Happily, he got away with it, as did the Rohini. I only flew it a couple of times and didn't much like it. It was very heavy and for me, well over 6 feet tall, cramped. I much preferred the Slingsby Sedberg, Swallow, T31 and Tutor.

BAHREIN 1968-69

1968 found me stationed in Bahrein, working at the Joint Communications Centre with the Army and Navy communicators at HMS JUFAIR. In those days, despite the fact that my daughter was born a few months before my posting, it was to be a 13-month unaccompanied tour with a break in the UK half way through the tour.
The accommodation was seriously horrible - for the first few months I lived in the Army barracks, which were in so poor and unsafe a condition and with almost useless airconditioning that the verandahs were sealed off, being in danger of collapse. Soon I was moved into the Navy accommodation for while. That was OK, other than the fact that it was right under the junior ranks bar, where brawls and noise were more annoying than dangerous. The brawling usually broke out when the crews of the minesweepers came ashore after being at sea for a long time in fairly primitive conditions - booze as ever being the root of the problem.
Most of the civilian support staffs were Goanese and when they were provided with new and improved accommodation, the RAF took over their old buildings for our use. So I moved into what was once the Goanese kitchen; the airconditioning actually worked but the ceilings were painted reeds or something somilar from which the stink of cooking could not be eradicated.
We took our meals in the Navy mess and more or less got used to basic and sometimes horrible food - the worst being the eggs, all of which came from the Lebanon after being injected with some chemical to preserve them en route. They were truly, truly horrible things which few people ate.
And it came to pass that I struck up a friendship with some of the crew of the USS LUCE, which was on station then in the Gulf area. Now the US Navy eats well and so I joined them whenever I could and spent many an off-shift hour on board. The LUCE was a DLG-7 guided missile destroyer also fitted with, if memory serves, a 5.5" gun turret. Over the months I was shown all over the ship and one of the guys I met was the senior gunner, who asked me if I'd like to see the gun dry-fired. So I got settled in the firing seat and noted that the gun was pointed at the Sheik's palace a mile or so away and very pretty if looked, shining bright white in the sunshine. I was briefed on how the gun worked and the turret was powered up and I was told to push down on the firing pedal. I did so and the turret came alive with huge bits of machinery crashing to and fro. There were no shells or charges involved, of course, but the shell hoist, rammers, breech block etc were all thrashing around with a hell of a lot of noise, which I watched with interest, keeping the firing pedal down all the while.
Suddenly someone screamed "Stop!" "Stop!", so I let up the pedal and wondered what the panic was. It turned out that a safety man monitoring the shell hoist had spotted a live round going up the chain; by the time I stopped the dry-firing sequence it was only three away from being rammed into the breech. Had we not stopped, in the next 15 seconds or so the Sheik's palace would have taken a direct hit and, who knows, it might have altered the whole history of the Middle East? Believe it or believe it not - this really did happen.....

MALTA 1962 - the first Gulf War

Almost anyone asked "in which year did the first Gulf War with Iraq take place?" would say "1992 after Iraq invaded Kuwait". They'd be wrong - the first "war" was in July 1961 when Iraq threatened to invade Kuwait. Hardly anyone remembers that but, at the time, I was stationed at RAF LUQA in Malta where I worked in the ground wireless section in the Air Traffic Control tower. Out of the blue "OPERATION VANTAGE" was set going and the first I knew about it was when I returned to my billet from an evening in Papa Joe's "Friends Bar" in Luqa village. I was then on my first day off from shift and was consequently scruffy and pretty well oiled by the time I got back to my billet, to be confronted by two irritated RAF Police who said that they had been looking for me for the past three hours. They wouldn't say what they wanted me for, which worried me that some forgotten 'crime' had surfaced but they just rushed me into their Landrover and off we went..
As we sped around the airfield and passed the bomb dump, I realised that we were heading for the building wherein sat the secure communications equipment which, at that time, only I at RAF Luqa was authorised to operate on weekly tests of the crypto equipment to the UK - both to HQ Bomber Command and the MoD. On our arrival at the building, on entering the outer room I found myself being glared at by a crowd of very, very senior RAF and RN commanders who looked far from impressed at the late arrival of the scruffy and partly boozed junior airman upon whose pleasure they had been awaiting for urgent communications with the UK.
The most junior officer there was my flight commander (Flying Officer Fraser) who rushed me into the "back room" to the crypto equipment and urged me to get it going as soon as possible. Which I did and we watched with interest (strictly speaking, not allowed) the operation orders streaming into Malta. That went on for about three hours, during which time I was provided with coffee and sandwiches in the outer room by the Officers' Mess stewards until the tele-conference, all conducted via teleprinter, ended. I thought, "that's it, back to bed for me" but was told, "you are to stay here until relieved". I said "but there isn't anyone else at Luqa to relieve me." "Correct", said the high-priced help "so you will have to stay here until we get something sorted out".
And so, unwashed, by now sober and still attired in my scruffy jeans I remained at my post for the next 36 hours, having meals delivered as and when someone remembered to arrange it. My relief arrived off an aircraft from the UK in a state of some confusion, having been dragged out of his work somewhere and stuffed onto a plane for Malta and thereafter we worked 24hrs each turn and turn about until things returned to more like normal some two weeks later.
The background to the first Iraq 'war' can be summarised as follows: Following Iraqi claims on its oil-rich neighbour Kuwait, the threat of invasion prompted the ruler of Kuwait to request British military support. Between 1 and 6 July, 7,000 men and 720 tons of material were flown into the Persian Gulf area from airfields in the United Kingdom, Cyprus, Aden and Kenya. Two squadrons of RAF Hawker Hunter ground-attack aircraft were also despatched to Kuwait, English Electric Canberra squadrons from RAF Germany were concentrated in the Persian Gulf, and aircraft from the 'V-force' were held at readiness in Malta. The operation successfully deterred any aggression, and British forces were gradually withdrawn.
From 1961 in Malta, we now roll forward to 1992 for the second Gulf War with Iraq, which found me serving at HQ No.1 Group as a communications systems engineer desk officer. Because my senior officers had all been pulled away into the conflict I found myself being responsible for attending the daily 'prayers' meeting to brief the Air Officer Commanding (AOC) on all aspects of the communications links. The run-up to each 'prayers' meeting was for all of the desk officers to gather to discuss events and decide on what the AOC should be briefed about. Quite early on signals were flying around about sending Jaguar fighters to Barhein, some saying Bahrein and others referring to Muharraq which I knew as being the same place.
A senior air operations officer - a Wing Commander who looked to me like 17 years old - asked the assembled desk officers "I am confused, we seem to be sending the same Jaguar aircraft by fin number to two different airfields - that is, Bahrein and Muhurraq" so does anyone know what's going on?" With much shuffling of feet amongst the assembly, no one wanting to expose either themselves or the Wing Commander as being ignorant, none spoke. Me, being unworried about such things said "Sir, they are the same place - the main airfield in Barhein is called Muhurraq and, when I was stationed there was called RAF Muhurraq - Oh, and by the way Sir, this is the second time I have been involved with going to war against Iraq, the first time being in July 1961 with Operation Vantage.
No one present had ever heard of it and I felt rather like a dinosaur but not yet quite dead......

KENYA Memories

Watching the tragedy unfolding in Kenya as a result of rigged elections reminds me of my time there, as I was stationed with the RAF in Kenya between 1964 and 1966 when the country became an independant nation. Independance day found my wife (Jill) and I living in a flat in the Parklands area of Nairobi and we went into the city to watch the events as they happened. I still have a faded copy of the "East African Standard" newsaper published on independance day, somewhere in the loft.
I remember the shouts of "Uhuru" and "Jamhuri" being heard everywhere - Swahili for freedom and independance. At that time many of the locals seemed to think that Jomo Kenyatta, the first President, would be giving each of them a house and a car, though I suspect that this was largely as a result of what we now call spin on the part of the politicians. Tom Mboya was expected to become a very high-flyer in the new goverment - he was a nice and very able politician but there was also another named Odinga Odinga, whom we nick-named as '007'. Tom was murdered in the doorway of a shop I used to use in Nairobi and throughout the time I was in Kenya, '007', being basically a Marxist, caused a lot of political problems.
Looking at the TV pictures of slums and shanty towns in Kenya, it seems to me that not much has changed since 1964 because back then there were areas of Nariobi 'out of bounds' to the RAF, especially the slums like in the inappropriately named part of Nairobi known as 'Jerusalem'. I worked at a small but secure remote communications site out in the bush, accessed by a single track which also led towards Jomo Kenyatta's farm and more than once I had to get off the track to avoid conflict with his convoy.
We handed over all of the RAF assets to the Kenya Air Force in 1966 and departed for home, taking in those times almost 3 days travel by air in a Britannia aircraft, making stops along the way and getting stuck at Paris because of widespread fog in the UK. I have never returned to Kenya but am sad (though not entirely surprised) to see what is happening there right now.....

RAF Cosford 1957

This is where it all started - RAF Cosford in 1956 and this is me in 1957, having got well used to wearing a hairy uniform. Not that I have sorted out what I might do with a blog, best that I start diggin into my memory banks! For the record - I was part of the 29th Boy Entrant entry at RAF Cosford where I was trained (and damned well compared with modern training systems) for 18 months to become a Ground Wireless Mechanic (Command). Which meant my training covered airfield communications, receivers, transmitters, power generators and heaven knows what else.