Originally Posted by
Pontius Navigator
Finningley Boy. I was on the same sqn as John but he left in Sep 64. I don't know where he went after that.
He was wrong about UE which was 8 per bomber sqn but possibly correct about unit strength as the Coningsby Wing was receiving new aircraft from Avro.
UE is the number of aircraft for which a unit is established and on which its air crew, ground crew, fuel allocation is calculated. It does not always represent actual manning and equipment. An 8 UE Vulcan sqn had 1.25 crews per aircraft, plus 1 for QRA. I think the FJ sqns had 1.5 crews per jet.
RAFEngO above mentions IUR. In-Use Reserve. A cunning device to cut engineering man power, allow a sqn jet to sit in the shed, and the proper number of jets to sit on the flight line. I am not sure how they accounted for it during alert exercises.
In the V-Force, and I guess other forces, extra aircraft were 'scattered' through the Stats. Some were on CWP - contractor's working party - having extensive work done. Others on AWA - never found out what that meant - but while the Mk 2 Blue Steel was being re-roled to free fall the Blue Steel aircraft were swapped one for one.
Thanks for the insight Pontius, I don't know John's whereabouts now either. I Baby sitted his two boys one night, he struck me as a serious minded individual if that comes across right. I do recall his return from lunch in our interim CRAOC one weekend Saturday afternoon, he'd been listening to Radio Luxembourg, or something, in the mess, and was incredulous that the Labour Party at their 1980 conference had decided that if elected, would pull the UK out of the EEC!
Best regards,
FB