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Old 30th Jun 2012, 06:41
  #2711 (permalink)  
Chugalug2
 
Join Date: Aug 2006
Location: West Sussex
Age: 82
Posts: 4,743
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Taphappy, and so the saga begins! Congratulations on going solo, hopefully these pages will witness many more such flights, each one another leg of a cross country flight through time. We have learned long ago that each one is unique, both in style and in content, and so it has proved from your very first words. No one can accuse the war time Royal Air Force of doing things "because that is the way we have always done them". There was it seems continual modification, no doubt driven by the course of "Events, dear boy, events!".
Air Force Law lectures though were always an essential ingredient. I remember the selection of example infringements itemised in MAFL of its various sections, chosen I suspect with a wry sense of humour. "The accused, whom I now recognise, then threw down his rifle and said, 'I shall no longer serve you', or words to that effect".
It also brought out the concept of the illegal order. The very idea that an order should not be obeyed, rather that it was your duty not to do so but to report it to higher authority instead, seemed fanciful. I certainly never had occasion to exercise this bit of RAF Law while I "got some time in", but as with so many other experiences others have related otherwise in this very forum.

Danny, so the mighty VV was indeed brought to heel. Its Achilles heel seems to have been its pneumatic tyres. It comes almost as a shock that such a vulnerability to this Dreadnought of the Skies had not been foreseen. I wonder if the good folk at Vultee had ever considered fitting solid rubber tyres instead?
Yer avin a larf, aintcher? Well possibly, possibly.
Ah, service inventories and inquiries into the losses thereof! It must have been some challenge explaining the loss of a "Pachyderm, tamping down for the use of". What was the stores ref? What was its serial number? I would have thought that the mahout was the one on the spot, rather than the RAF. How long would it take him to pay back the cost of this essential bit of heavy plant via stoppages of pay? Perhaps he might have done better to adopt the example of his steed and follow it into oblivion!
The weevils in your biscuits were not only a valuable source of extra protein but of entertainment and possible profit as well it seems. How lucky for you! Indigenous wild life has always lent itself to such uses. The beetles resident in the atap roof of what constituted the Kuching Mess could be brought falling out of it by the synchronised stamping of many feet in time with Bert Kaempfert's African Safari. Something to do with the resonant harmonic frequency, or possibly that it was the only LP in the Mess!

Thank you both, for we now have a duet to inform us of those dangerous years. We are truly blessed!

Last edited by Chugalug2; 30th Jun 2012 at 07:04.
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