I am hoping that the members of PPrune can help me please. I am ex RAF WO who served 32yeras in the RAF, quite a lot of it in the Lincolnshire Air Force. During 1999 I was detached as an SNCO Ops Officer with the Waddington AEW Component to Aviano when we were conducting Operation Allied Force. As usual I went out there worked in the Ops HAS and got on with my job, which although tiring with very long shifts with very long drives to the digs at Azarno Decimo afterwards was the most exciting time in my whole RAF career. Sadly I didn't take a great deal of notice who and what was going on around me as we were just too busy!
Now I have been in Civvy street for 5 years and I am writing a book on the (true) History of AEW&C aircraft. Part of which of course will include Op Allied Force and Waddo's AWACs part in it. I have applied to the Media
PR folks at Waddington nearly 3 months ago for an opportunity for a day at Waddo to speak to the Air and Ground Crews and collate some background material for the book that my co-author and I have just found a publisher for. It would have been no fuss for the Waddington CRO folks as I would have been escorted by a good mate who is a FS there now doing my old job. Sadly there has been no response apart from a prompted email stating that my request had been passed up the chain to HQSTC for assessment!
I am not writing the book to make money in fact I will get coppers for each copy sold, I'm not bothered about that as I just want to tell the real story iaw the Official Secrets Act. It can be seen by the length of my membership of PPrune that I am no recently registered Troll so please don't think I am a Professional Journo or the like.
What I am trying to established (for graphics in the book) are where were our normal orbit areas, I should Know as I used to file the Flight Plans with Base Ops but I can't remeber apart from that they were somewhere in the Adriatic!
Also I remember a momentous day when a E-3D crew returned from a Magic mission during which they had just vectored their Dutch F-16 CAP onto a MiG29 that came at them from the weeds when the F-16's announced they had to go to the Tanker to refuel and had turned away Cold. A female WO Fighter Controller saw the MiG coming for them and asked the Cloggies to turn back in Hot and engage before the E-3D was shot down, fortunately for the crew they did and they splashed the MiG. The Ops Room in the HAS on their return was like a scene from Top Gun, I remember there was a lot of emotion all round and the WO spoke to the Cloggie pilots on the phone straight away and thanked them, phew what a day.
But, when was it? Can some one please tell me the date? Any other gen e.g who the ace WO was and which was Sqn the F-16's came from? Any gen at all (not classified ) that we can put into the E-3D chapter of our book would be very gratefully recieved. Fingers crossed someone can help.
Thanks for reading
Ian