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Old 6th May 2019, 22:44
  #31 (permalink)  
pr00ne
 
Join Date: May 2003
Location: London/Oxford/New York
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Finningley Boy,

Not sure where you got your ORBAT figures from but they underplay a lot of the fleets of the time in terms of total numbers;

There were 24 Victor K2 tankers.

360 Sqn alone had more than 10 Canberra T17's. It was one of the first of the Thatcher cuts that trimmed it down to 12.

There were 12 Shackleton AEW2's and 2 MR2(T)'s. Again it was John Nott who cut the fleet in half to 6.

115 Sqn alone had 9 Andover E3's and E3A's. More were elsewhere.

I personally saw the Ops board in the COC at Gutersloh in 1980 that showed a squadron strength of 24 each, 21 GR3's and 3 T4's per squadron and 2 newly delivered T4's in Engineering Wing awaiting allocation. They all had where they were currently parked marked alongside the serial number and code.

I could go on but I won't. Your list does not reflect the strength of the RAF in 1979, more like a list of what happened to be serviceable and available on the line at a particular point in time.
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