Originally Posted by
ksimboy
Drag,
I recall dropping the Red Freds over Aldershot years ago from Albert, they jumped onto the expanse of grass opposite the stadium. It was an official drop.
I am not suggesting for one minute this did not happen or was an unofficial drop. In my time looking after the books from 99 to 2011 there certainly wasn't any clearances in place. I adopted a shed load of SDs which were soon reviewed and subsumed into the MAR or withdrawn. Under DERA/ Q2 rules they were able to use non military rigs for CT. aircraft had to be assigned to Q2 also any troops temporarily detached to Q2. Then there was the issue of who was paying! My boss was very much against this. He went ape s#1t when I asked him to sign off a Trials Instruction listing every man and his dog from several formations. There was quite a lot of nashing of teeth the term Klingons entered the vocabulary. One of the heads of sheds was nicknamed Judith Chalmers of wish you were here fame. As always I came out the bad boy having been told to strike certain individuals and formations from the list or invite them or their COs to provide written justification as to why their contribution to a specific trial was essential, particularly since the work up involved a couple of weeks of CT. We just did not have enough trials parachutists and had to enlist the likes of the Falcs, the Freds, PTS, JATE and a host of other specialist outfits. Then to support this rag packers, and Oxy trained techs had to be hoovered up from all over the place. I have to report a good time was had by all particarly in the bars around Ridgecrest, El Centro and Yuma. One last hurrah I guess.