Yes, of course I meant Chivenor. Confused myself with reading BEagle's post#28 about banging off tanks at Brawdy, as he is always banging on about his time there.
NIPVA #39 Disgruntled armourers? - never!!
DODGYOLDFART. This is more like the Airforce of that time that I remember. A lot could be acheived in a short time with a bit of good will.
In June 65, 45 Squadron was detached from Tengah to Labuan as Tengah runway was being rebuilt. We were stood down for the day with no kind of Standby requirement. So we obtained a couple of raiding craft and took them off to another island a few miles away for a day of snorkelling and Tiger drinking. At about 1630 a Whirlwind suddenly arrived ,piloted by the Sqn Cdr wearing a red beach shirt and flipflops, and landed two wheels on the beach. Out of the back jumps Sqn Ldr Ops in a blue beach shirt and flipflops to hand our Boss a signal. The Boss orders his crew. all in swimming costumes, into the helo and the rest of us to return to Labuan ASAP. We raced back finishing our beers as we went. When we hit the beach the Boss was there to order 4 crews to fly to Tengah ASAP with a fifth crew on the Rumble seats. We all climbed into/on one LWB Land Rover and drove to the airport. We put on Flying Suits over our swimming trunks, grabbed razors and toothbrushes and went to the aircraft as fast as we could. The first pair took off at 1730 with the other pair a few minutes later.. Landing back at Tengah on the Taxiway with the help of gooseneck flares. A few groundcrew were still at Tengah so they turned and armed the aircraft and we took up 30 minutes Standby in the crewroom.
The sudden flap was because HQ FEAF thought that the Indonesian missile firing boats might have a crack at HMS Eagle, and we were there to stop them if they did.
Three days later, in slow time, we returned to Labuan.