TACEVAL.
My first was to learn the ropes with John D., the previous incumbent. We went to Liege, clutching the TACEVAL Olivetti portable and the relevant passes. Hotels were pre-booked for the team, which was led by an RAF Wg Cdr. The billet was near the railway station, in the middle of the red light area. John and I went walkabout after dinner and ‘shop’ after ‘shop’ along the road had a skimpily dressed tart in the window, enough to rival Amsterdam or Hamburg. Our circular walk took a loop through the back streets, with a duty harlot on most corners. Spoiled for choice, early night and ready to pounce at 0400 next morning.
Every phase had to be written up and reported on immediately it finished. It was pointed out that harsh criticism, however deserved, would be watered down by the leader. Being the only civilians on the team there was constant strife with the home unit, and a fair bit of weapon waving. Entry to briefings was doubly fraught. In retrospect the Met. officer would have been much better off in some sort of uniform. An intractable problem on every evaluation that I did.
One Dutch office had some interesting vegetation growing on the window sills. “Yes, it is a little cannabis but that’s OK”. Really?
Whereas the British airfields had an Alternate everything, including Met., only the Germans had an impressive one. It was a really good, well-equipped office on a hard-standing surrounded by earth walls. But what were the wheels for? “This is the Altermet for all north Germany, we tow it to wherever there is a TACEVAL”.
I included US bases but the only memory is the impression that there was much reliance on central products, one size fits all, and the forecasters seemed to have secondary jobs such as ATC or hydrology.
By the time I left the role I was resigned to ‘tempering the wind to a shorn lamb’, we just could not apply the demanding RAF standards to most inspections.
Wildenrath denied.