Blacksheep’s posting on New RAF Recruiting Ad says;
‘These bunches of scruffs were Britain's main defence against the Red Terror back in the sixties. Despite our appearance we could and would have deep-fried the Soviet Union without batting an eyelid, no messing, at just under two minutes notice’.
Colourful or what! And there’s a photograph of Luqa, Malta, at;
www.avrovulcan.org.uk/vulcan_people/tea_luqa.jpg
Now, this may likely have been an occasion when the sense of humour didn’t kick in! The portly chap in the middle is Geordie Thompson, and I hope he’s reading this! Cottesmore or Waddington, doesn’t matter. We were in the middle of receiving aircraft modified with X Band ECM equipment used to jam the interception and fire control radar of enemy fighters. Prior to that the reliance was solely on Red Shrimp etc to jam the ground radar of the fighter controllers. Can’t see the target then you can’t home in the fighters.
Midnight on Line Squadron and the X Band of one aircraft wouldn’t fire up. By judicious use of matchsticks I bypassed the plastic frangible covers on the emergency switches at the AEO’s station. This showed that the problem was lack of water glycol coolant flow to the X Band transmitter. No problem, get hold of a rigger and have the pump replaced. Problem, this particular rigger wasn’t going to be told by a fairy (I’ll explain later to any American readers) that his pump was stuffed.
What to do to convince him? Drive to the ECM bay, where Geordie Thompson happened to be on nights. Dismantle the coolant flow test gauge in the X Band test cabin, hacksaw off a pair of fluid couplings (fix them tomorrow) and back to the line. All watched with some interest by Geordie Thompson.
Plug the adapted flow gauge into the aircraft and switch on the pump. Demonstrate to rigger that his pump is knackered – accepted. Pump replaced. Job done.
Fast forward three months. I wandered into the ECM Bay where I found an Air Clues, or something similar, lying opened to a particular page. Picture of Geordie Thompson beamed out at me. The real Geordie Thompson looked over at me, and turned ashen. Then I started to read. The AOC, no less, had approved the award of £50.00 to Geordie Thompson for ‘his innovative modification of a flow test gauge to allow in-aircraft testing of X Band coolant systems. This is expected to save zillions of man hours in system fault finding’.
50 Quid! That was a months wages – and he offered me not a penny. Said he’d already spent it! I know you’re out there somewhere…………