RAF Police
Ta17 and PN. As one of these RAFP back in the day, well late 70’s early 80’s, I can tell you that there was little or no training for the HAS guard tasked with the enforcement of the NLZ and release of the aircraft. Remember at this time shifts of RAFP at bases such as Bruggen, where I was based from 84 to 88, consisted of over 50 of us guarding SSA and QRA as well as “blues” duties and so we were frequently undermanned. HAS guard was just about the lowest job on the shift often allocated to the newly arrived LAC/A/Cpls as well as being a punishment job for those that were not to be trusted on blues. At its simplest of course there was no need for training – you were issued with a sealed envelope and the instruction that if the hooter went off (QRA for real, Sqn dispersal on exercise) your task was to open envelope and compare the 4 digit number with the one that the pilot would write (on something?) and hold up to you. If they matched you could open the HAS door and stand well back, if they didn’t under no circumstances were you to open door. I presume that if numbers didn’t match for whatever reason you could summon assistance by radio to sort out any issues although we were told that on exercise it could be a test that a WST team could throw in. The main complication that came up was in a HAS where there were 2 Jaguar aircraft and the one at the back was released first. Again this was an exercise scenario that seemed to be regularly practiced, although there was no formal instruction on what we should do if the front aircraft instead of just taxying forward to allow the other to pass just carried on and launched, although thinking now we could have stopped it at the outer dispersal gates which also had to be opened by the RAFP SAT Team.
Although individuals were not formally tested of course the whole Security Squadron was annually tested by the WST Team from the ASU on the overall procedures, just don’t mention Bruggen 85 when the Sqn failed for the only time – that was a fun few months before the retest, with leave and stand-down’s cancelled and even training off nights. Oh the memories.