Originally Posted by
langleybaston
John Tucker very good cool and competent ..... it was my pleasure to be his boss, inspecting Cranwell was always a pleasure but I found little to complain about, waste of a day really!
I think the Valley man with stutter was KKKKKenny KKKKKemp? I had little to do with the western half of this sceptered isle until Cardiff/Bristol/Plymouth in the late 80s.
A succession of SMetOs at Linton failed to notice/ report that their anemo mast was 2 metres short, thus causing significant under-reading of wind speed. Ruddock, Hindley to name two. Outrage when I insisted we measured it! "Its been good enough all these years ........!" I borrowed a Chinook to airlift [slung] a spare mast from Cumbria, and the Linton dwarf went for scrap.
Oh! And I should also praise Peter jackson, Finningley, later SMetO Cranwell, also I think Wittering, with his passion for interesting cars driven too fast. Far too fast.
John Tucker more than once did a massed briefing to student pilots at Cranwell on dense foggy mornings. They were all expecting to remain grounded at least until the infamous 10Z, when John woke them up by saying "I know of a place not half a mile from here, where the sun is shining and visibility is unlimited". After a pause to allow brains to stir, he pointed upwards.
On other occasions he would set them on calculating how many million tonnes a CB cloud weighs. - 3caster