Stanley and MPA Tales
March 1986, 1312 Flight RAF Stanley – I was flying the Herctanker when a F4 spoked our basket. That night we had a party on 1312 and I was talking to OC23 when one of mygroundcrew who had repaired said basket mentioned the incident and the old tradition that a spoked basket equalled slab of beer for the groundcrew who had to do the rebuild. This tradition had sadly been abandoned by the previous OC23 (after his own personal incident). On hearing this, current OC 23 demanded to know the culprit F4 crew, called them over and very succinctly said “slab of beer go, deliver to 1312 go” – tradition resumed.
He then turned to me to say “But the other half is that if you ever fail to pass fuel that means a slab of beer for the F4 crew” – fair enough.
A few days later out at play with 2 F4s our hose would not trail. Try as we might we could only get it out in jerks and never to full trail. Loadie and Ground Eng down the back were slaving away, hitting the HDU with hammers and tensioners and doing other engineering things. Meanwhile we had a F4 sitting on each wing with all 4 crew members grinning and making jubilant drinking signs. Just before they had to depart we finally succeeded with the hose and all was well with us but less so with the F4s although they did get their fuel.
Tanking in the Herc the Loadie was our eyes and would provide a commentary on the F4s, their positions relative to us approaching and in formation and then progress on the refuel. The commentary normally went something like – “he’s in the stabilised, moving forward, 5 feet, 4 feet,…. in contact, pushing in, holding stable…..”
One day, by now we were all at MPA, out playing with the F4s and we reached the refuel. All was well until “he’s in the stabilised, moving f*** me that was fast.” It turned out that that F4 had a loose reheat gate (apologies for truckie description) and nobody had told OC23.
Last edited by Xercules; 17th Aug 2012 at 09:17.