Ormeside,
Your:
"Who will teach Maritime Air now if we ever have a Maritime Force again - read Big Steamers by Rudyard Kipling ?"
Know it well from boyhood:
"....And the joints that you carve/Are brought to you daily by all us Big Steamers/And if anyone should hinder our coming, you'll starve".
True when written a century since, proved true in 14/18 and 39/45: (Churchill said it was his greatest worry of the war). We were lucky that Hitler was a land animal. If he had only given Grand Admiral Raeder all the money he wanted to build U-boats, he could have had us on our knees in six months.
He nearly managed it as it was. In'41, he was sinking merchant tonnage far more quickly than it could be replaced. It was not until much later that Bletchley Park gave the Navy the vital edge over the U-boat.
That this nation, whose very survival may depend on keeping our sea lanes open (and has actually done so twice in the last 100 years), should leave itself almost defenceless in this respect, beggars belief.
As for the Neptunes, I'm slightly confused. I was at Leeming from 6/67 to 12/72. During that time, it first seemed to me that the skies over the Vale of York must have been crawling with Neptunes (four squadrons of them plus an OCU) from Topcliffe.
But then I never saw a Neptune, we never heard of them (and I'm not sure I knew they even existed). And my memory of Topcliffe is of some sort of Flying School for signallers or flight engineers, with Varsities flown by staff pilots (which I roundly cursed many a time as they came over our Thirsk house, max boost and revs after take-off) when I was just trying to get some sleep after a night watch at Leeming).
After some ferreting about, I learn that they were there '53 to '57. Would that be about right ? At that time ('55 -'57), I'd be in Strubby (Lincolnshire) well away from them.
It's nice to know that their time in Topcliffe is still remembered in an annual Memorial Service (but even if I were still in Thirsk, I'd still be unable to attend).
Geoff Finding certainly rings a bell, but I cannot put a face to the name. Think he was on the other Flight of 20 Squadron...D.
MPN11,
Case of "you pays your penny, you takes your choice !", I think. When your "glass ceiling" is Flt.Lt., all that remains to interest you is your surroundings. When I was "ploughed" by CMB, my options were Fighter Control and ATC. I
knew what Fighter Control meant - "down the hole" and a troglodyte life for the next 18 years.
Up in a Tower, I would see blue skies, white clouds and (yes) pointy noses. For an old pilot, a no-brainer !
Whereas, you, with a (richly deserved - particularly after the shabby way in which the Navy had treated you) full Career ahead, the Area Radar route was the obvious way to go....D.
Goodnight to you both, Danny.