AFS Strubby
Can we hear a bit more about AFS Strubby ?
When I came to it in late 1961, it seems to have been the rearguard for all the thousands of Meteor pilots that had gone onto other aircraft or into the night.
As a corollary to the old stories of taking one’s aircraft away for weekend, I could mention how easy it was to join such a unit. Its function was to get up to speed pilots leaving ground tours for a jet posting. I was long-legged enough to be Meteor qualified already. When I found that I was being put on a later Canberra course than I expected, one telephone call to Strubby did it !
Bliss to be more or less unsupervised. I took part only as a spectator in the horrendous dogfights the instructors enjoyed. Otherwise I self-briefed myself into an F8 whenever it had no more deserving customer. A good way to learn: I particularly remember learning very briskly from a jaunt around Lincolnshire under low cloud - recognising just in time the stout steel legs at the very base of the radar mast of Saxton Wold for which I had been quite unprepared.
Naturally, as a very new pilot I was impressed by and wary of the instructors. It was not that they were united by experience but rather that they were so different. Puddy Catt has been mentioned more than once. (Bill ?) Loverseed later became a founding Red Arrow. There was a quiet Sqn Ldr, perhaps the unit commander or perhaps a student but marked out by the ribbon of the George Medal. There was one instructor whose only secondary duty seemed to be to manage the evening appointments of his hairdresser daughter, disposing duty young officer stints to each of us in turn.
The unit display pilot was “Rory” Rorison, of whom I never heard again. An unprepossessing figure on the ground, resolutely unwilling to do his promotion exams so that he remained Fg Off perhaps for ever, his display seemed to be a matter of refining the distinction between concrete and aluminium. I never found out if he toned down his display for public consumption, which would not be in character, or if in fact Strubby wisely kept him to itself.