PPRuNe Forums - View Single Post - Global Aviation Magazine : 60 Years of the Hercules
Old 2nd Sep 2015, 16:21
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1066
 
Join Date: Jan 2002
Location: RWB, UK
Age: 77
Posts: 73
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Blue/Green/KD/Green/KD

Those with young children in the 80s may remember Mr Ben, the children's TV character.
The 2nd day of a Belize schedule in the late 70s we were all Mr Ben only Albert was our wardrobe. (Mr Ben used to come out of his wardrobe in a different outfit and then have an adventure in his new outfit!)
Gander to airport in blue, change to green bags as above then for the refuel at Nassau the Ruperts had to change into KD just to go into the terminal to file the ATC flight plan and check the met. Back to Albert, back into green bags to Belize then KD to the hotel. I think it said in GASOs that shirts were to be long sleeved presumably because the shiny fleet operated in KD or blue. For a long time there seemed to be no concept that the Herc crews did not need to wear long sleeves because there was no flash fire risk off the a/c!
Forward to Feb '82. We were used in the Brize taceval to test the movers and armourers by taking lots of concrete bombs to Wittering and then bring them back to Brize. There was a fuel crisis at the time and the MT fuel budget could not stretch to bringing the bombs back by road!
The best bit was turning up to 10 Sqn as the ACC and seeing all the mature aircrew, who always looked down their noses at any Albert crew partly because we wore sweaty green bags, looking very uncomfortable in various sizes of ill fitting green bags. Hard not to take the piss!
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