Once an Airman....

If anyone is interested, here are a few thoughts on some of the places I spent time working at over the years….

840SU RAF Siggiewi (Malta) (Sep 1959 to Feb 1960). Posted into Systems Control as a junior shift worker, the RAF soon moved me across to the remote HF transmitter site at Benghaisa where I worked with such exotica equipment such as the SWB8 transmitters of WWII vintage. Not to mention the ‘Gough Switch’ a fiendishly dangerous antenna switching system that needed great care if one was to avoid harming yourself, the equipment or, as happened whilst I was there, frying an unsuspecting tech working on the antenna farm (we called it the aerial farm in those days)and causing his death by the fall from height.
RAF Luqa (Malta) (Feb 1960 to Mar 1962). Someone then found out that not only could I spell ‘UHF’ I had actually got experience of it and so was moved from Benghaisa transmitters into the ground radio section at Luqa, which in those days was an international airport operated by the RAF. However, I retained contact with the SU world because I became the only person at Luqa cleared and trained on the ancient BID31 crypto (long since taken off the list of those things that one cannot speak of) and operated it twice weekly between Luqa and the UK.

OPERATION VANTAGE. In July 1961 Iraq threatened to invade Kuwait (as it did once again in 1991) which triggered Op Vantage and massive movement of troops, ships and aircraft. The first I knew of it was being met on by return to my billet after a boozy night out in Luqa village to be confronted by 2 RAF plods who said “get in the vehicle, now”. Plods in those days from the perspective of a junior airman were people to be treated carefully and with caution. I asked what had I done to be carted of in this way and was told “you are holding up operations and the AOC, Army and Navy bosses have been awaiting your return for the past 4 hours”. I quickly sobered up on realising that I must be needed for a special handling patch (a secure end-to-end personal conference between senior officers) and also that I was the only person cleared to operate the BID31 equipment needed for a conference with the outside world. I arrived at the conference room with the 3 keys needed to open the steel door into the ‘back room’ and to do that had to pass through the assembled senior staff, dressed as I was in jeans and shirt and no doubt reeking of beer, trying to ignore the menacing glances of the AOC downwards, entered the back room and locked the door behind me. My boss called me on the phone and said you are to stay there until we can get someone out from the UK to help out, so there I stayed for the next 24 hours being fed sandwiches and tea sent across by my boss. Another guy came out from the UK the next day, so we worked 24 on 24 off between us for a week and then it all settled down and I went back to work at the ATC tower. I doubt that there has ever been another occasion on which a lowly SAC ground wireless mechanic held up the start of a military operation in Malta (or elsewhere come to that) or have kept the Army, Navy and RAF commanders hanging around until such times as it was convenient for said SAC to return from the pub!

RAF Stoke Hammond (Nov 1963 to Sep 1964). This was an outstation of RAF Standbridge (Commcen Central), at that time the UK Master Systems Control Point (MSCP) for the Commonwealth Air Forces Network (CAFNET) long-haul HF communications circuits. Stoke Hammond was the “Red” receiver and the “Yellow” receiver site was with the Army at Bampton Camp. Many long-haul circuits in those days were Frequency shift keying (FST) to places like Delhi, Colombo and Singapore, with patches onto many other locations.

RAF EASTLEIGH (Kenya) (Sep 1964 to Sep 1966). I worked at a small, self-contained station about 12 miles north of Nairobi (where I lived with my family) and way out in the bush called RAF KAHAWA. This was another CAFNET HF Receiver site linked back to Nairobi. We had a huge antenna farm and theft of copper cables was a continual problem, partly resolved by letting a pack of large and angry dogs out of the gate on the evenings we suspected thieving activity might be going on. Being a self-contained site we had our own chef and a couple of plods and I remember the plods and dogs one dark night arresting 3 thieves on the antenna farm and bringing them back to the tiny guard hut. They called the Kenya police, who quickly turned up and without any explanation or warning beat the 3 thieves to the ground and slung them into the back of their truck. We never heard another thing about it. I was there when the Rhodesia oil crisis occurred and the Biera ship blockade was set up. No one told us that Rhodesia was not supposed to any longer be a part of the CAFNET and so we continued to communicate with them in the usual way. Until someone higher up the food chain found out…. Our much larger sister transmitter site was further north of us at RUIRU, later used by the British army and, I believe, is still in use. I was there when Kahawa was formally closed and handed to the KAF, but only after we had stripped the site of all equipment so quite what the KAF got out of it I know not…..

HMS JUFAIR (Bahrain) (20 Jul 1968 to 4 Aug 1969). This was a joint-service Comcen and SCP wherein I worked for 13 months as a Systems Control shift supervisor. This was at the bottom of a solar circle and maintaining HF circuit availability (by now they were no longer called CAFNET but DCN circuits) was often extremely difficult – especially to Masirah which I often had to try to engineer via a standby Morse circuit – that often being the only way of talking with Masirah. Thus I learned Morse whilst there which came in useful when decades later obtaining a UK amateur radio licence.

9 ANZUK SIGNALS REGIMENT (Singapore) (Nov 1972 to Aug 1974). Not that long after the UK withdrawal from the far east, instability in the area led to the formation of the Australian, New Zealand and UK (ANZUK) force, which of course needed its own communications facilities. And so, using a large range of outdated teleprinters, channelling and other equipment scrounged from the scrapyards of 3 nations, a commcen and SCP was set up in Force HQ where before the pullout jad been known as “HMS Terror” – a concrete battleship. I started off as a Syscon shift controller but soon became IC systems maintenance which, bearing in mind the diverse range of dubious quality communications equipment was, shall I say, a challenge at the best of times…

889 SU (Singapore) (Sep 1974 to May 1975) But soon “they” decided to cancel ANZUK force and yet another withdrawal, this time by all 3 nations started. Naturally communications had to be maintained and lo and behold, thus sprang into being 889 Signals Unit, where I spent the remainder of my tour doing the same thing but with ever-dwindling numbers around me. I was always convinced 889 was chosen as the number for this new signals unit because 88.9MHz was the frequency of the BFBS station in Singapore. ANZUK force, by the way, consisted of males and females of the army, navy and air forces of 3nations, which as you can imagine led to some interesting misunderstanding as to ranks and authority. For example, during much of my time there the absolute ruler of all was an Australian infantry RSM, with a twitch gained through having been in action in Vietnam…..

81 SU (South) RAF Bampton Castle (Dec 1975 to Aug 1980). When posted into Bampton Castle the installation of the brand new Strike Command Integrated Communications System (STCICS) hadn’t been completed. So I and the others who were going to be responsible for all engineering aspects of the new system were sent on a training course to RAF Locking. There, we discovered that not only did we not know much about the new systems, neither did anyone at RAF Locking. I am not joking when I say that training on some elements of the system consisted of being shown a photograph or drawing of what they thought it was going to look like. But we stuck through it and retained sanity by playing a lot of 5 a side football in the evenings for hours on end so as to burn off resentment at the lack of training. I spent a lot of time working on my own in the evenings trying to make sense of how it all fitted together and eventually produced a master overall system drawing, which eventually became a part of the formal training syllabus. Bampton Castle was the southern SCP for STCICS, the northern one being at HMS Forest Moor. Our transmitter site was at RAF Chelveston, theirs at Milltown and exchange visits became something of a regular feature. I remember before we became operational taking part in a ground to air comms test and since I was responsible for the engineering ops side of things, looked at the plan and told anyone who would listen that it wasn’t going to work, because the frequency prediction the experts had produced took no account of the fact that the aircraft was a moving platform using entirely different type of antenna and power. I calculated the frequencies given as being about 4MHz too low and thus it turned out – not because I cleverer than the experts, by this time I had decades of HF frequency management experience to fall back on. Eventually all settled down, all was installed and working and life became pretty much routine – so much so in fact that I was able to find enough time to pretty well manage a nearby RAF Gliding club at which I flew whenever possible….

2SU Detachment RAF Edlesborough (Nov 1981 to Aug 1983). This was a highlight of my time up to then – a huge HF transmitter site of which I was the boss and 22+ NCOs and staff to do all the running around. Edlesborough was a remote site (as was the other transmitter site RAF Greatworth) under the control of 2SU RAF Stanbridge, at that time still the master DCN SCP. Many a tale I could recount of my time there, including the time a rigger contractor went by Bosun chair up an antenna the foreman had assured him was not connected to a transmitter, until finding that his rubber suit caught fire every time he was swung by the wind into the feeder that the foreman had cocked up his site map. Or like, getting a semi-whispered ‘phone call at the start of the Falkland Islands war from a MoD RN officer who asked me if I had an antenna pointing in a certain direction. Which certain direction I enquired? You know where, said he. I guessed I knew what he wanted so I said I do have a Rhombic pointing very close to where I think you mean (its shoot had been to Gibraltar before the circuit was closed), but it is not connected and will need a fitting party to erect a dozen poles and run in some new open wire feeder; we can do the rest. That call was on a Friday and by Saturday afternoon it was on the air, never seen contractors move so fast, before or since…

RAFSEE Henlow (Aug 1983 to Jun 1985). I was moved from RAF Edlesborough (with my agreement) to the RAF Signals Engineering Establishment (RAFSEE) to work in uniform as a system designer to help a project which had fallen way behind at RAFSEE, who claimed it could not be done unless the RAF provided some support. So I became DES RAD CTS2A and hence a design authority working on the design and development of a fairly complex new SCP for RAF Bampton Castle, which was planned to take over from RAF Stanbridge in 1985. A driving factor behind the need to get the Bampton Castle SCP into being was that the MoD had agreed to the sale of RAF Hendon and the people there were to move into RAF Stanbridge. So the SCP had to move on time or the MoD budget plans would be busted right out of shape. Incidentally, the ‘Castle’ was added to Bampton because snail-mail often went to RAF Brampton, and they were getting annoyed with it all. So I worked at developing the design of the new system, much of the hardware was being built in the Radio Engineering Unit (REU) RAF Henlow, so I worked closely with “the factory” helping them to sorting out a range of production and other problems such as drawing errors. In late 1984 I started to work more on site at Bampton Castle as the essential works services and some of the equipment got under way. I count (but won’t!) recount a lengthy list of problems, foreseen and unforeseen up to and beyond the point at which we started the master cut-over plan to transfer all of the Stanbridge circuits to Bampton Castle. From around May 1985 I effectively moved into Bampton Castle to work as the on-site designer able to authorise changes as and when needed to the installation drawings, in effect being the boss of the REU Henlow installation fitting parties. This worked pretty well and then came the day to start up the systems, check them out for full serviceability and then start the 'master plan' of transferring the lines from Stanbridge to Bampton Castle. It was a lengthy complex affair involving liaison by 'phone, fax, signal with just under an hundred other organisations, including BT who were key to the success of the plan. We started on time at 0800hrs on Monday the 17th of June 1985 and completed the plan 2 hours ahead of schedule at 1400hrs on Thursday 27th of June and at that point were declared as fully operational. And there I stayed until June 1985 as IC systems engineering operations. And then onto yet another post..

Over the years, when not engaged with the above I served with the Tactical Comms Wing (through it changes of title) several times, at RAF Tangmere (where I alone was the only authorised aircraft marshaller (that's another story!) RAF Benson and RAF Brize Norton. One way and another I managed to get around a bit during my time in the RAF and one day might blog Ascension Island, the Falkland Islands, other places and the trials and tribulations of preparing the communications systems (more installation design work but this time as Technical Agent for HQ Strike Command) at RAF Coningsby for the introduction of the Typhoon into service. Wouldn’t have changed any of it for the world, but that’s another story….