225 sqdn sarawak 1965

[Aldons]

225 Squadron 1965

Hi Welshy43,
like you I am a pprune virgin, so apologies for any gliches.

I was surfing the net and pulled up 225 Squadron to find your question re your uncle. As it happens I was very much involved in this incident.

I joined 225 as a Jnr Tech at the beginning of Feb 1965 and was fortunate enough to be put into the line Rectification team under the care of Sgt Sandy Sandell. Sandy was brilliant, he had forgotten more about Whirlwind 10s than I ever knew, so great learning for me.

Within a month or so I was up at Simmangang with the 1/10th Ghurka Rifles, 3 Whirly 10s and a great detachment of pilots and ground crew.
One of the pilots was Sam Smith who I flew with regularly and who taught me how to fly a Whirlwind. Mind you hovering was a different problem.

September I was back at Kuching when the Army helicopter was reported missing. Here my memories are somewhat different to some. I seem to remember flying S & R looking for traces of it for a couple of days at least, and as anyone who has looked at treetops non stop for any length of time will know, after a while it all becomes a blur.

The morning of the 20th XP327 was on flight test post either a minor or minor * servicing. It was decided that PM it would fly an S & R search pattern with Sam Smith flying and Jack Canham the Squadron Navigation Officer. The two of us who had flown during the morning S & R were given the PM off, and I am pretty sure that it was 4 airmen, who were on their last week of tour, who were given a "jolly" as observers.

Mid afternoon XP327 crashed. After the crash the Sarbie signal was still transmitting so I was called out to go to the crash site. From what I remember it wasnt far from either Balai Ringin or Lubok Antu, cant remember which, but inaccessable by helicopter and winching.

First on the scene was a SAS team who secured the area and reported no survivors. My role then changed from rescue to investigation. With an Engineering Officer and a platoon of either 40 or 42 Commando (again cant remember which) we yomped to the site which was towards the top of a very steep hill/mountain.

I wont go into details of what we found, but during the investigation we discovered that the Servo Valve linkage to the fore and aft jack was hanging loose in pristine condition. Both lateral jack links had suffered damage. That plus an eyewitness account of how the aircraft crashed led us to believe that the aircraft had lost fore and aft control.

The net result was that a SNCO from the hangar maintenance team was charged with manslaughter due to negligence.

I was required to attend the Court Martial at Seletar in March 1966, and thus ended up doing a 14 month unaccompanied.

I have deliberately omitted the SNCO's name, and all the investigation results it seems to me that it would be inappropriate after all this time.

As regards the four lads in the back I think that they were from the Hangar and other units at Kuching, but I didn't know any of them or even their names til reading this thread.

I hope this gives you enough info, if not get in touch.