Originally Posted by
dragon166
. . . about the severe penalties that will ensue if weapons are lost . . . no duff incident occurs . . . searching for his weapon,
Long before Tacevals were invented the realistic exercises were limited aircrew escape and evasion exercises with army units acting as hunter force.
These were not small scale exercises in places like Salisbury Plain but much larger play areas like the Yorkshire Moors. Lots of aircrew very large hunter forces and worse, civpol and the local population all brought to play through the local press.
Naturally the aircrew were slowly rounded up and put in a holding pen. Now this was not a first for some aircrew who had had previous experience of the real thing. Anyway one managed to spirit away a Sten Gun. This was stripped and the parts distributed around the tent in which they were held. These were then buried.
When the exercise was terminated and the army did a tally they were a Sten short. They guessed where but no one could remember exactly where the aircrew holding pen had been
These exercises seemed to peter out in UK in the mid-60s and I have not heard of the BK ones in a long while either.
(I remember the tale of a solo escapee in the 50s, a sqn ldr, his photo in the national press, with a particular challenge or a couple of hundred miles)