Originally Posted by
meleagertoo
The RN stopped drinking before flying in the mid '70s I believe. Until then it was perfectly normal, according to ex colleagues, to have a pint or two of lager in the wardroom after lunch and then go off on the afternoon flypro. And not just the helo pukes either, Phantoms and Buccs were still in service then. Apparently the signal 'Effective Immediate' was read out in the wardroom before lunch one day by Cdr(F) completely out of the blue and was not at all kindly recieved.
There are myriad tales since then, some of which must be true, of the OOD entering the bar at close to midnight on a friday or saturday, silencing the revellers and telling all SAR rated crews to report to their squadron for immediate launch.
The technique apparently was to go down the line and ask how many pints each had had and pick a crew from the lowest.
Indeed, many was the lunchtime beer before PM sorties in the late 60s/early 70s; not by me, of course.
I recall a few trips where someone wasn’t feeling the sharpest after a night on the tiles, but we all thought there was an ulterior motive when one Sea King driver mysteriously disappeared from the squadron after his ‘airsickness’ episode leaving Gib. Most of us weren’t feeling much better!
Following a night ditching of a Gannet off Ark there was a mad scramble to the 824 briefing room to put together a couple of crews to go off and retrieve any survivors: for some reason we had been celebrating in the wardroom when the call came. Only two of us had the (sober?) foresight to go via our cabins and don goonsuits so we took the second cab, as the Boss (in mess undress) had already manned the first machine. My offsider was copilot and spent pre launch following the Boss around the cockpit, rearranging the switches into an eye pleasing pattern such as Generators on, AFCS on, etc. They lurched airborne and actually found the Gannet pilot, and were called by Mother to hold off as the Ship’s Flight SAR Wessex was two minutes away with a doc and SAR Diver on board. The radio response of ‘I found him, he’s mine’ didn’t endear the Boss to anyone, least of all the Gannet driver who was water skied at the end of the wire before suffering an experience worse than the night ditching.
It was a year later that a limiting number of drinks per night per officer was introduced into the wardroom, effectively shutting down many a rowdy game of liar dice, cards, etc played to decide who stood the drinks at dinner or during the film.
Then I did a course with Aerospatiale at Marignane in 1976 where the French saw nothing untoward in having a litre carafe of wine at the lunch table.
Different times, but probably heavier drinking than in Dad’s time flying in North Africa in 1943 where they couldn’t get anything alcoholic to drink in most of the desert airstrips.