A certain well known captain at in the mid 70s at Waddo on being given a non-exercise code and OC Ops rapidly appearing on the airfield?
I don't know about that incident but there was an entertaining little one somewhat earlier. After QRA was stood down we retained a standby duty that was tasked to quickly generate a QRA force if required. One Sunday afternoon this contingency was exercised, the crews were called in and set about combat checking the allocated aircraft. All went well until an over enthusiastic MT driver rolled a crew coach with one of the crews on board. Fortunately no one was seriously injured and the crew continued to complete the combat checks. However a subsequent stock take with the MO resulted in the captain and plotter being declared hor's de combat. The Station Commander who had turned up to watch proceedings; clad in sports jacket and slacks; now stepped into the breach. He collared the wing NBS officer; a plotter; and appointed himself replacement captain allowing the station to signal 1 Gp that the required aircraft and crews were now available at RS15. this was followed in short order by the Bomber Box announcing a change of RS to 05. In response the crews proceeded to their aircraft lead by the newly (re)constituted crew in the Station Commander's Austin Maxi complete with flag!
So far so good, all crews checked in at 05, a "start engines" was declared, accomplished and we all waited. After a short time air traffic broadcast a reversion message and this is where things started to go wrong because it did not correspond with the contents of the sealed envelopes and the crews remained resolutely in their aircraft.
In the Station Commander's aircraft the wing NBS officer appeared on the ladder between the pilots' seats:
"I know what's gone wrong" he said, "They've broadcast the exercise termination code, the ops officer should then have been issued with the reversion code for air traffic to transmit"
"So why haven't they done that?" says Station Commander
"Because they can't get into the vault to get it" says NBS officer dangling the key he had on a lanyard round his neck!
Happy days!
YS
