If you were on leave on the V-force and there was a sudden call-out, you were normally exempt under day-to-day peacetime concessions. But you had to supply a contact number whenever you were away from home overnight, no matter what.
Occasionally the exercise directing staff might check the system; however, even they were human enough not to ring someone on leave in the early hours. I was on leave from my Vulcan sqn once when there was a Taceval Part One call-out - and the DS demanded later in the morning that a test call was made. This was long before the days of having normal civvie phone access at RAF station crewrooms....so the duty warmonger on the desk went through the tedious process of convincing some deaf old bat at a military exchange to dial my number....Ring ring, ring, ring......"Teesside Grain Company" came the reply. "Is that (my number)?" said the duty warmonger, "Nay lad, it's foo*kin' TEESSIDE GRAIN COMPANY!" came the response! Fortunately the DS saw the funny side (I was on holiday in Menorca at the time!).........
Then it happened again! This time I was staying with my lady friend; they didn't have a phone but the old biddy who owned the flat would take messages for them. But when the Sqn callout bloke rang at o-dark-hundred and asked to speak to Flt Lt (BEagle), she grandly replied "Young man, I do not accept telephone calls from strangers in the middle of the night. Kindly call back tomorrow" - and put the phone down on him! I then left in the morning as planned and didn't get any message until I got home that evening at 1900. By which time the exercise had long since finished!
I'm surprised that we didn't have more accidents caused by people racing in to work from their beds in the early hours for a Mineval, possibly only a couple of hours after a few drinks in the pub.....
VC10 scrambles were much more civilised. Phone went at o-dark-thirty, get out of bed, throw on flying kit, drive to Ops, get brief, drive to sqn, grab kit, bus to jet, get in, crank up and roar off - took about 40 minutes including a 20 minute drive. At least you could then have a wash and shave in the aircraft loo on the way to RV with the QRA Phantom - and breakfast, of course as we had a freezer full of frozen QRA meals in the crewroom. But just occasionally it went wrong; we were hanging about at 30 minutes readiness and rang Ops yet again to find out what was going on. They in turn rang the Master Controller who said "OK - you can let them go".... Ops rang back, "OK chaps, you can stack now". Half way through having a cup of tea the hooter went and the Tannoy yelled for us to scramble..... It seems that "Let them go" was supposed to have meant "Scramble"! Which is why we always had a 20 minute cuppa before stacking from being On State in case They had cocked up again or changed Their mind.
On the Phantom, Q scrambles weren't pleasant. You had to be airborne within 10 minutes, which included getting up, throwing on the rest of your kit - g-pants, goon suit, boots then head under the cold tap to wake yourself up if there was time, then on with LSJ and bone dome, up the steps, start the left engine, strap in, start the right, gennies on when the nav was happy with the INS, wave chocks, out of Q shed, down the access, hang a left onto the RW, then full A/B and away..... After I'd finished my F4 time I was holding as an assistant Ops Off one day when an alert tone came over our system. Grabbed phone, flash to Neatishead, "You've got 30 secs to tell us WTF is going on because Q1 and 2 are scrambling" I yelled, "Standby, standby" replied the Master Controller...meanwhile over the telebrief came "QI on....Q2 also....Sitrep please!", "Maintain cockpit readiness and standby 30 sec", I replied, "WELL NEATISHEAD...WHAT GIVES!!!". "It's OK, false alarm, stand them down, time blah I authenticate blah blah...". "Q1 and 2, revert to Readiness ** ", I ordered, "...and I'll ring you as soon as I find out what caused the flap"...... I soon found out - it seems that some idiot had decided to do a periodic test of the external telescramble line continuity without checking first - and his test tone was identical to the tones used for the most urgent no-notice scramble alarm....equivalent to what the civvies called the Four Minute Warning!
There must be hundreds of such anecdotes around, but Cold War times were certainly interesting right up until the collapse of the Eastern bloc.
Last edited by BEagle; 20th Dec 2003 at 17:13.