'Shackleton Boys'

[Steve Bond]

The next book I am doing in Grub Street's 'Boys' series will be 'Shackleton Boys' which is planned for publication in 2018. As with all the other titles in the series, the book will be mostly comprised of first-hand accounts from air and ground crew who flew in or worked on the Shack at any time during its long and illustrious service life.

I am already in contact with quite a few 'Shackleton Boys', but now the call is going out for as many more as possible who are willing to share their memories and anecdotes. No matter how long or short your association with the type was, I would love to talk to you about it.

So please get in touch - I look forward to hearing from you.

Thank you

Steve Bond

[Steve Bond]

Any aircrew lurking out there? Come on chaps.

[Steve Bond]

Gosh, over 500 views and no replies. I suspect all those interested have gone to the same appeal on Military Aircrew. Then again, I could be wrong (I often am).

[selkieflier]

You have a bite! I could help - suggest you email me [email protected]

[Steve Bond]

Many thanks, email on its way.

[Milt]

January 1957 was a short flying month, starting with yet another Navigation Bombing System test flight in a Valiant. By now I was rapidly becoming the resident operational expert on the Mk10 autopilot and its coupling units for Nav/Bombing and automatic landing approaches. The Beverley was also receiving my attention with autopilot trials.

In January I flew a Mk3 Shackleton for the first time. Having previously flown some flights in a Mk2 Shackleton, it was interesting to fly the later model which had been fitted with a nose wheel. The cockpit had changed quite a bit, as had the fit out of much classified anti-submarine equipment. My mission was to drop some bombs at the Imber range for clearance purposes.

On my return to Boscombe Down I became intent on achieving a smooth touchdown and for some reason not clear to me I translated myself mentally into a Mk2 version with a tail wheel. Following touch down on the main wheels in a tail down attitude I waited for the non-existent tail wheel to contact the runway. Instead the nose started to come down against my control back pressure. With the control almost fully back I yelled a warning to the crew to brace themselves, as we were going over on our nose. As soon as I had yelled the warning I realised what was happening and could have bitten out my tongue for having been so foolish. The nose wheel hit hard on the runway with the crew asking whether the emergency was over yet. To the delight of the crew, I bought beers all round in the mess that evening.

[autolycus224]

Send me pm. Ex 224.

[avionic type]

I too was with 224squadron at Gibraltar from 1951 to 53 as a SAC electrician ground crew and did the course at Avros at Chatterton flew as flying ground crew to the UK 4or 5 times and went on I think about 5or 6 weeks detachment to Shri Lanka [Ceylon] on a exercise to see if we could keep flying away from base with minimum support, and did exercises with the Far East navies all this on Shack 1s [are the noise] can send some official photo of the trip if that is any help

[Steve Bond]

Autolycus223 and avionic type - please check your private messages.

[Blacksheep]

Did you hear about the Shackleton that arrived back at base with all four engines running? The pilot had to shut one down as he didn't know how to do a four engine landing.

To be a bit more serious, I was filling out the ground engineer section of the Form 1022 for an in-flight shut down incident: the diaphragm of an oil pressure transmitter had ruptured, with the result that engine oil was steadily ejected through the breather vent. I had a chuckle at the following sentence in the aircraft captain's report - "Starboard beam lookout reported that No.4 was leaking more oil then usual"

[Steve Bond]

Thanks to everyone who has contacted me, it has now been decided that 'Shackleton Boys' will go to two volumes! Great stories coming in, but still plenty of room for more, so please don't be shy!

[avionic type]

Dear Black Sheep, During the 18 month period I was servicing Shack 1s in Gibraltar we only had 1 engine change caused by engine failure and 4 when on a training " circuits and bumps" and the crew forgot to lower the under cart, nearly a "Clang!!! Mind your fingers in the Door" and" aren't the apes pretty" moment for the ground crew ,we had a heavy flying programme ,apart from the odd mag drop they were reliable perhaps it was because they were new and not tired .Did you ever tried explaining to our American cousins why 1 propeller went 1way and the other the other way on a single engine [Put Anglo /USA relations back 10 years ] the reasons we gave, all leg pulls.:rolleyes::rolleyes::rolleyes:

[avionic type]

Foot note to above. How was your equivalent to ASV 13 radar? Ever seen Radar Mechs of 20 and above go grey in a week trying to keep the thing working?

[Rossian]

....but it would seem not.
Ballykelly, mid '60s, oh god oclock in the morning ready for a 14 hr crew trainer.
As we roared off and the usual after t/o chat finished, a small voice from the starboard beam announced "I know the exhausts are brighter at night but the flames from No4 are past the tailplane!"
No 4 shut down and captain announces that we'll land asap albeit more than a tad heavy and tells ATC of intentions. After a few mins ATC say "From your CO you are NOT to land. Go and burn off fuel while doing some training"
Captains says Stuff that we're landing. And so we do. Like a cat peeing on glass.
Get into dispersal and we all get out to see the damage. CO arrives in his mini in one of his (frequent) Hitlerian rages shouting that "I ORDERED you not to land"
No signs of damage to No4 at all. Boss gets even more apoplectic. Get back in the air was his demand. Capt now looking thoughtful.
We are about to trudge back into the aircraft when the FE's torch sweeps past NO3 - covered in oil and slowly oozing onto the pan. Capt feels better.
Griffons on odd occasions best known to themselves were prone to "gulp" and spit out the entire contents of the sump out of the starboard side of the engine. (Doubtless an FE will be along dreckly with the correct explanation).
This was what had happened and the ejected oil had gone straight into the exhaust flame on No4 where it burned rather spectacularly.
Had we done as ordered we'd have been out off the Irish coast with one engine shut down (Suspect fire) and soon another engine seized (No oil) and still at a very high weight. Ooooooer missus!!
Boss departed saying "I want the full report on my desk at 0900".
As a young aircrew person I learned a lot that night, particularly about the irrationality of some bosses. All this came about as a result of "chasing the chinagraph line" on the squadron Ops Room wall. Soon after, the staish put a stop to it.

[Wander00]

Aah, chasing the chinagraph line..... as a wee lad on 360 I was often sent off to chase the line - navs and AEOs hid back of the hangar and in the loos - reason I was the only "white card" on the squadron, and the launch was usually Friday afternoon (no tasking) and they knew I spent a lot of weekends diverted to Manston.

[Steve Bond]

Rossian, I've sent you a private message.

[denachtenmai]

BK, 1961, 204 Squadron, I am in bed after a late night shift, manders until about 0200 then A/F and refuel to max.
Being as I was radar mech with not much to do I help refuel.
Anyway, at about 10 or 1100 mates burst into the billet and start packing go kit.
"Where you lot off to?" says I, "the Caribbean" says them:eek:
"Am I going?" No was the answer.
About half an hour later Chiefy comes in to check and says to me "What the F*** are you doing in bed, you are going this afternoon".
I'm out of bed in a flash and tell chief that I need a Yellow Fever jab and start packing, he sorts out a visit to Medical, gets everyone else into the Gharry and goes.
I get my jab and ring the squadron to pick up me and my kit.
Now when I get to the dispersal it appears that the aeroplane which is taking me on a jolly:= is in ASF and won't be ready until late that evening, so up to the mess for food and back to ASF's pan where our Shack awaits.
Of course, being Ballykelly and January, it is now getting quite dark and the rain is threatening,again, so we load up the panniers and all climb aboard.
The usual start up procedures and after the normal 15 to 20min crew round up we start to taxi, straight onto the Grass:eek::eek:
One fully loaded, straight out of ASF after servicing, Shack buried up to the port axle in BK's soggy greenery.
Everyone out, defuellers called for, as much fuel as possible sucked out of the port wing, as much weight as possible taken from inside, couldn't drop the panniers because of the list to port.
"You, take the Donkey's Dick from", IIRC, "the No. one tank" said Chiefy :uhoh:
Now I had been on the squadron for about 8 months, it being my first posting from Cosford and whilst I was OK doing refuelling I had never been involved with defuelling, so I took my trusty GS and undid the jubilee clip connecting the hose to said Donkey Dick,cue quite a few gallons of Avgas liberating itself all over me.
Avgas, as I shortly found out, is a bad thing to cover yourself with, it burns the skin,even without being alight, so it was back to the billet tout suit for a shower and change into another uniform then back to the circus on the pan, where a Tug was just winching out the Shack.
The upshot of this is we had to 'borrow' an aircraft and set off 24 hours after the other two and why, when people are shown a photo of me and a couple of mates in front of a Shack on the pan in Jamaica, they say "so, you were on 210 were you?"

[Steve Bond]

denachtenmai, great story! Please check your private messages.

[pmills575]

Another tale from my time on the Orange Harvest test bench at St. Mawgan. Myself and another technician decided as there was not a lot of work to re-jig the test bench. This took a couple of days and once we'd completed it, it was time to test the whole setup to ensure it still worked. So it was all powered up and lo and behold we had a problem. The OH aerial had four "windows" to allow the received signal to enter the system, each window had a co-ox relay immediately after the window to protect the mixer crystal from high power local signals, these were called shutters. We had what appeared to be large signal that seemed to be coming from one window. Having radically altered the system we first suspected it was something we had introduced and spent a few minutes puzzling over what we could have done. Finally, a bit of logic was applied. We closed the shutters and the signal disappeared.
When we turned the aerial the signal didn't change, it still showed the same bearing. Finally we realised that the signal was external. The bay chief had become curious and when we explained what we saw he promptly disappeared. A Few minutes later a bespectacled, somewhat dishevelled Flying Officer rushed into the room. He was the Station Intelligence Officer and we showed him what we had found. He dashed off and left us to puzzle over the situation.

A couple of hours later we were told that a Shackleton T4 on local flying had been diverted to help find the source. They found it! It turned out to be a Russian "Trawler" parked just outside the 12 mile limit on the runway centre line with a height finding radar operating. It promptly left once they realised that they'd been twigged!

pm575

[Steve Bond]

Nice story, thanks Peter.

[Steve Bond]

Hi Rossian,

I have sent you a private message - need to chat.

Thanks

Steve

[Steve Bond]

LAST CALL FOR NEW CONTRIBUTORS!

Thanks to the tremendous response to calls for Shackleton stories, there will now be two volumes of 'Shackleton Boys', with the first planned for publication in the late summer of 2018. There is still time for new contributions, so if you have been thinking about getting in touch, please do it!

Thanks to all who have helped out so far.

Steve

[Steve Bond]

'Shackleton Boys' volume 1 will be launched on 1st and 2nd September 2018 at the Newark Air Museum. All are welcome!

[roving]

'Shackleton Boys' volume 1 will be launched on 1st and 2nd September 2018 at the Newark Air Museum. All are welcome!

Will you make mention of Jack Wales?


https://www.peakdistrictaircrashes.co.uk/crash_sites/peak-district/avro-shackleton-wr970-foolow/

[Steve Bond]

Will you make mention of Jack Wales?



https://www.peakdistrictaircrashes.co.uk/crash_sites/peak-district/avro-shackleton-wr970-foolow/

Yes of course, all those who lost their lives in accidents will be listed.