The AD, as requested above, a couple of Beverley yarns.
The place is hot and humid, the year 65 or thereabouts and the task is to move a cargo of ammunition and other stuff across the mountains to another base.
The Beverley has a big hold and hence plenty of capacity, bulk wise but it’s always careful to make sure the payload doesn’t affect the range.
Anyway, the Army made up and packed the load which they then presented to the RAF air movements staff, together with a schedule of the load and its various weights and dimensions. The duty movements officer accepted the load (a bit like liar dice, I suppose) did not check weigh it or even a sample of it and it was duly put into the aircraft, with the trim sheet calculated using the offered weights.
The aircraft used almost every inch of the 6600 feet offered and staggers into the air. The crew then warn ATC that they are having problems and suspect they are significantly overweight. The captain decided that it was unlikely that he will be able to climb over the mountains and after considering the options decided to fly around the coast to the destination and on arrival, carried out an overweight landing procedure.
The load was offloaded and check weighed and is found to have been some 7000 lbs above the aircraft’s max AUW. Needless to say there was a big stink about it but it could so easily have been a fatal accident.
The second story was told at the RM Museum Eastney, Portsmouth on 12 Dec 12, the occasion of an event to mark 50th anniversary of the Brunei Revolt.
The British forces responded rapidly to the revolt and flew in troops and equipment to Labuan before getting across Brunei Bay.
It was decided to lift a company of the soldiers into an airfield on the Brunei coast and it would possibly be an opposed assault. The captain of the Beverley told how the clamshell doors had been removed and that the company would stand up in the hold and secured from falling out but capable of deplaning rapidly. He had decided on a ‘tactical approach’, difficult with the clatter of four Bristol Centaurus engines and told how he had approached from the sea, popped over the trees, slammed the aircraft on the ground and threw it into reverse – then, as he stated to huge laughter, ‘I opened my eyes’! Once the troops were gone in a matter of seconds, he roared off down the remainder of the airfield and took off. He recounted somewhat indignantly, that on return to Labuan a bullet hole was found in the fin.
There were two events that day which aren’t really to do with the Beverley but are worth telling.
First, Major General Julian Thompson invited those who attended to make a contribution and said a ‘silent collection’ would be taken – no coins only notes!
The second relates to an attack on the town of Limbang, in which 5 RM were killed but they released all the hostages, amongst them a young baby girl. One the RM corporals called Rawlinson, had been awarded an MM for the rescue and I was sitting at his table for the lunch. The principal host brought a woman to the table and introduced her to Rawlinson and the rest of us. The woman then said to Rawlinson: “You won’t remember me but I’m the baby whose life you saved and I’ve come from Australia to thank you” – there wasn’t a dry eye in the house!!
Old Duffer