ML,
He may be big, brave and full of integrity but anyone reading his post will see his rather nasty and spiteful comments as nothing more than that. The suggestion that unless you were once an SAC you should not be in a position of responsibilty is, not only ludicrous, but made out of of pure jealousy
As someone who served in RAFG in the 80's, and despite being a techie my war role was to help guard 31 Sqn Jag's, I would like to take you to task on a couple of your suppositions
"Remember, the whole point of the RAF, the whole point, is to put a bomb-aimer over an enemy target in times of conflict. Everybody else is just there to support this action, everybody.
In the 1980s, this was NOT the point at all. Never was."
WHAT
Every Tac/Min/Maxeval I did during my time, 81 - 84 was for the purpose of generating as many servicable aircraft in as short a space of time in order to hang a bucket of sunshine on them for the one way trip east
we were regularly live armed when the site went hot and the di staff were close in attendance as the quicker the upload the better the score and the less time spent "masked up"!!!
If you honestly believe a shed load of Albert delivered goods was going to stop the Soviet hordes driving west then.....................good grief
What kept the status quo was not the threat of a conventional confrontation as we would have be "rubber dick fu@ked oh yeah" by Ivan! It was the threat of a massive nuclear retaliation that kept them at bay.
So as Bee alluded whatever hardships you endured here on the Calne strip pale into insignificance for those who were going to man the jets for the outbound leg..........only and for those left behind in RAFG as the retalitory airbusts or a whole host of T72's etc were coming our way...........sobering thought at the time as I recall
all spelling mistakes are "df" alcohol induced