AVM Tony Stables. No, I haven’t, but, in the context of SNCOs, I would offer an observation on the quality of my airmen aircrew. They had originally enlisted as 18 or 19 year-old sergeants and I found that the quality of leadership was almost totally lacking. In fact, when we came back to the UK I made two specific recommendations. The first was that airmen aircrew should probably be employed as corporals to begin with and that they should be required to earn promotion to sergeant, and the second, that they should be subject to an annual assessment or appraisal,which they weren’t in those days. The assessment aspect was taken forward but the idea of starting out as corporals was not implemented, and I can, of course, appreciate the difficulties that the recruiters would have encountered in trying to sell the attractions of this option to the highly educated group of young people that we seek to attract to serve as aircrew. Nevertheless, the limitations of some of my airmen aircrew were very apparent. In fact, when we went ashore in the Falklands, the man I appointed to command the groundcrew element was the sergeant chef, because he had the most amazing qualities of leadership, far above those of my master aircrew, the warrant officers who worked for me. It was a very interesting lesson.
Interesting points about Ocean too
Mike Meech. We heard that one of the lessons taught by the Falklands
112 experience was that the Chinook demonstrated that it was the helicopter of choice, yet we seem to have overlooked this when it came to designing HMS Ocean. That ship was commissioned long after the Falklands but it is very difficult, perhaps impossible, to get a Chinook into its hangar deck. Should we not have seen that one coming?