Originally Posted by
pr00ne
Al-bert,
Nope, never on SAR helicopters, (never chopped...) a mere FJ type for my 2 tours. And now there is NOBODY in the military on SAR helicopters!
I WAS NEARLY chopped at Cranners, when I told my BFT Sqn Cdr (Richardson?) that I only wanted to fly helicopters. "Wrong attitude, should've joined navy etc" thrown at me, so I lied and said "of course, what I really mean is Jaguars" which hadn't actually arrived yet! Actually, my only motivation for joining the RAF was to fly Mountain Rescue Helicopters, as I then thought of them - I was a keen climber/mountaineer. I realised my mistake on day one at Cranners but stuck it out, paid the price of two SH tours - Germany tick VG, N Ireland not quite so, but got the medal (unlike any 'mere FJ types' at the time...!) and then 22 great years in a select club that might as well have been run by the Salvation Army - although discipline and bull**** might have been more onerous if it had been. That only got ruined when the VSO's found that their train set was shrinking at an alarming rate and SAR got up-ranked so that instead of the whole SAR Wg being commanded by one Wg Cdr and two Sqn Ldrs (for nine flights with Flt Lt OC's) it then became SAR Force, which required a Gp Capt, three Wg Cdrs and six Sqn Ldrs to command six flights (we lost three flights as part of the 'improvements) - and as you say, it's now civilianised (in UK at least). It was, indeed, too good to last, but I was fortunate to get 22 years of the best of it!
