Nanga Gaat
Tiger Mate...
The HQ Building had a Verandah about six feet (sorry, "two Metres") wide. I seem to recall the Western end of the verandah had an office which was the width of the building, which was entered from the verandah.
Dress at The Gaat was very casual. Everybody knew one another and what their purpose was there. Only the "Base Commander" wore a K.D. shirt with his rank, he was the only officer on a one year tour there, all other officers were transients and all would normally be aircrew based at Seletar, Singapore. Aircrew officers and "airmen aircrew" arriving for their one month rotational tour would be in flying suits anyway and rarely wore K.D. shirts when not flying, except for some Flight Commanders, that is. Aircrew officers off-duty walked around in shorts and singlets or casual shirts. Dress usually was K.D. shorts and a civvy short sleeved shirt if going to a meal for instance. Displays of rank were not always on show.
The Line guys wore K.D. shorts, K.D. socks rolled down and S.D. Shoes (black), not boots. The Army "runner" type fabric ankle boots with rubber soles were popular and the Army freely gave those out together with their nice good quality grey wollen socks, I used to wear that combination. Some guys wore thongs (no not that kind), the kind called flip-flops... but that was frowned on due to the danger of foot injury.
See the "Confrontation" thread on Key, there are pics of the Line guys working on the beasts.
The thing about The Gaat and indeed other detachment places was that with the spirit that existed there the choppers were always serviceable as the guys willingly worked until they were "S". Same thing in Bahrein on the 6 Argosies of the detachment, they were always serviceable. It was the nearest thing to the old type "Squadron" life for a lot of the guys even though by then the RAF had what they called "Centralised Servicing" where personnel worked on different Squadron numbers with different a/c types.
DB...
Last edited by David Billings; 11th Jun 2012 at 20:27.
Reason: spellin.