A Weather-Guesser's Memories with the RAF

[langleybaston]

I offer these memories in the hope that they may entertain and inform. If not, please laugh and tear up.

The 41 years spanned an era of astonishing change, not least in the quality of weather prediction. Today we have a very reasonable hope of useful forecasting for the best part of a week. It is still true that ‘when I am right no-one remembers, when I am wrong no-one forgets’. It is also true that, for many, the only good forecast is an accurate one of good weather. In 1955 forecasting was dire.
My career was mainly with the RAF, serving Training, Fighter and Bomber stations in turn, Group HQs and RAFG HQs, Taceval and Army, so it gives me insights and anecdotes that I offer to share.

PLEASE LET ME KNOW IF YOU WANT SOME REMINISCENCES. IF NOT, I WON'T BE OFFENDED.
MET. COMES WITH VERY THICK SKIN.

[Expatrick]

Are you "Fishing" (1987)? 😀

[MPN11]

Go for it, LB ... your much maligned profession deserves its place in the sun. (Astral, not Tabloid)

[Canary Boy]

Seconded - reminiscing is an enjoyable function of our aged brains!

[langleybaston]

we shall see ....................................
As I was saying:.
Memory being dimmed by time, I may have told some of these tales before, and differently. All I can say is that I tell no deliberate lies, some names are withheld to protect the guilty, and the good guys sometimes get a mention.

In the autumn of 1955 I was a bus-conductor in leafy Hove, an only child, an only grand-child, with ten ‘O’ Levels, Physics at ‘A’ Level and fails in Pure Maths and Applied Maths. Also a Scoutmaster and Queen’s Scout, probably the cause of my poor Upper Sixth performance. Like all boys I was air-mad, and had nearly joined the Royal Navy at Dartmouth, but slight-colour blindness vetoed that and thus the Fleet Air Arm. A further snag was health: a burst duodenal ulcer at about 16 hindered education and employability.

My father [who had served as RAFVR flying barrage balloons] found me an advertisement for Met. Assistants, but the Board wanted to turn me down as over-qualified and likely to become dissatisfied They relented and I was trained at the Met. School at Stanmore , passed out second in course [every professional course ended with me second] and posted to RAF Uxbridge. At that time I think it was Regiment and Central Band, and a Main Met. Office. The Station Commander probably lived off-station, drove an open-top sports car with a black Lab, and his arrivals at the gate were greeted by a Guard turn-out.

The standards demanded of a plotter were high, and I was wrapped on the knuckles [literally] for a 280 degree wind arrow which the supervisor measured as 270. It mattered, seemingly.

National Service beckoned ‘In the Trade of Met. Assistant’ but the Medical did not want me. I was thus spared the square bashing and scratchy trousers but, as carefree youth, I was not too upset by the prospect. A few years later I had six National Service airmen as assistants in Nicosia, the last of the many, and all of them nice highly-qualified blokes.

The Uxbridge Chief Met. Officer took me off shift-work [£28 per month, wealth even when living in digs] and, as a great kindness not appreciated, had me posted to the big office at Harrow Wealdstone. This was so that I could have day release to bag the missing ‘A’ Levels and thus apply for promotion to Assistant Experimental Officer. Such a move promised three week’s extra leave and a chance to be a forecaster. These days were the depths of the Cold War, and the Wealdstone Office had a big Civil Defence team. Being rufty-tufty I joined and, ridiculously, ended up as the Rescue Team Leader, white helmet, big R, and two black stripes, overalls, boots, respirator and a green vehicle stuffed with ladders, axes, ropes, stretchers and lifting gear. All this at age 20 with some very senior old-boys as the team. Unimaginable today.

‘A’ Levels duly hacked, my promotion board turned me down. I applied to join the Atomic Energy Commission, was accepted and about to resign from Met. when my old boss from Uxbridge came to see me, exceedingly wrathful, and demanded that I sit a second “special” Board sitting. This was a farce, a rubber stamp exercise, but my joy was tempered by a rule change in the interim: no longer three week’s extra leave, but three days, with the prospect of edging up to three weeks if I lived long enough.

Although young men not out of their teens were entrusted with Her Majesty’s aircraft, forecasters were not allowed to brief the RAF until they were 23 year’s old. There was thus a gap, the equivalent of Holding, in which I went to the Central Forecast Office at Dunstable. Somehow my Civil Defence boots followed me, neatly wrapped, posted and presented to me publicly by admin. For the next two years I was “Jim Boots”.

A new unit had been set up to use the first-generation programmable computer. This filled a wooden hut the size of a village hall, and was a direct descendant of Turing’s work at Manchester. Called the Ferranti Mercury, six were built, the first for Joe Lyon’s cafes’ pay rolls and stock control. Jim Boots was trained on the job as programmer and operator. He was not very good, but good enough to be assigned the role of PA, gopher, bag-carrier and fixer for the brilliant Chief Forecast Research Officer, J S Sawyer. He was the brain, with Fred Bushby, behind our first successful weather forecasting model. I believe your laptop has more computing power.

I had met and married a Met. Assistant during this time, the best thing that ever happened to me. She gave me four marvellous children, packed and unpacked about every three years from posting to posting until retirement, and still tolerates me.

Having reached 23, I was posted to an Ocean Weather Ship rather than a forecasting course. Only the intervention of Sawyer and my dodgy duodenum saved me.

And so the prospective weather-guesser went to College.

[Robert Wyer]

As a navigator plotter, on Canberras in Cyprus , 249 Gold Coast Sqn, and subsequently Vulcans, 44 Rhodesia Sqn at Waddington I was used , on a regular basis, to the very high professional quality of our Met services. We used to always endeavour to provide Met feed backs post flight, if only as a back up. In the period 1963 to 1975, things were very different to today.
44 Sqn were fortunate because the Met Office was in the same hangar, next door. Thank you very much for the service provided.

[Beamr]

Sir, I am truly looking forwards to reading the next chapter. Keep up the good work!

[Wetstart Dryrun]

Having reached 23, I was posted to an Ocean Weather Ship rather than a forecasting course. Only the intervention of Sawyer and my dodgy duodenum saved me..


I remember Ocean Weather Ships that facilitated the prediction of the change from blue to red, with remarkable accuracy.

Rapid stack, and down to the Swan at Littlehaven to observe Brawdy's personal lump of fog on the cliff.


I think the met services took a while to recover from their withdrawal and replacement with satellite data. And computers!
,

[ShyTorque]

I recall a certain Met O at Gutersloh who did our squadron met brief one winter morning without mentioning the snow that was covering the back of his blazer as he walked in! Must have been a “good do” the night before.

Also, the tale told about another at his dining out at Linton on Ouse. Having been yelled at over the garden fence by Wg Cdr Ops because his bonfire was smoking him out he replied “Sorry I didn’t know the wind was blowing in your direction” :O .

[Hot 'n' High]

Go for it, LB ... your much maligned profession deserves its place in the sun. (Astral, not Tabloid)

Seconded! You Met guys & gals oft provided great entertainment! Cue a busy Wardroom on board a CVS due to bad weather having halting flying - for several days. The Cdr METO, who decided the climb up to the "Met Shack" in the island was too far to bother with, pokes his head into the Mess and innocently asks "I say, Chaps, anyone know what the weathers doing?"!!!!!!! Well ........ you can imagine the response from 20+ exceedingly bored aircrew!!!!!!!! To be fair, he took it all in good spirit!!! :ok:

LB, I'm sure you were far too wise to ever commit such a "schoolboy error"!!!!!!!! :E

[anxiao]

Please, please continue. You write very well and the subject matter is fascinating. Having been briefed by your ilk for 42 years I feel I know the metal of the character...

[WB627]

LB

First I always read your posts, they are amongst some of the most interesting on here.

Second I thank you for your service, as I am sure anyone who benefited from your forecasts did or does.

Third please continue with your memories as I and I am, sure many others will enjoy them and they will be a record for posterity.

Finally have you considered writing a book ? you can sign me up as a subscriber here and now.

[BEagle]

Your genuine reminiscences will be most welcome - and a blessed relief from a lot of the doom and gloom posted by keyboard warriors these days on PPRuNe!

We had a MetO at RAFC Cranwell in 1975 who briefed vile weather one Autumn night when the Dominie squadron was due to fly. So they stacked to the bar. On re-emerging some hours later, they were surprised by a totally clear sky and lots of stars. The next day their somewhat enraged boss went to see the MetO, who meekly advised "Sorry about that - I misplotted my tephigram".

It was another 2 weeks before conditions were again suitable for night astro!

[NRU74]

LB
I recall you did a time in Nicosia - did you do any stations in a*sehole places like Idris, El Adem, Khormaksar etc - they had good memories from myself but I'd never want to go back.

[langleybaston]

I recall a certain Met O at Gutersloh who did our squadron met brief one winter morning without mentioning the snow that was covering the back of his blazer as he walked in! Must have been a “good do” the night before.

Also, the tale told about another at his dining out at Linton on Ouse. Having been yelled at over the garden fence by Wg Cdr Ops because his bonfire was smoking him out he replied “Sorry I didn’t know the wind was blowing in your direction” :O .

That, I beieve, was good old Ken Dart?

[langleybaston]

LB
I recall you did a time in Nicosia - did you do any stations in a*sehole places like Idris, El Adem, Khormaksar etc - they had good memories from myself but I'd never want to go back.

No, the good fairy kept me away. I will tell a tale about "Manning" or "Postings" forthwith.

[langleybaston]

The Initial Forecast Course was [inevitably in those days] all male, eleven AXOs and one Chinese. Most of us wore grey flannels and dark blazers. Teaching was on a chalkboard. The senior instructor had a pet, simplified, model of a little chunk of air, he called it the unit cube, each axis one centimetre. To save him trouble, we painted [I painted] a cube on the board. Which went well not at all. I think we were at it for half a year, with much emphasis on punctuality and how to brief. Even now, in my dreams, I am late for the mass briefing. Theory and practice were well mixed, afternoons spent playing at station Met. Offices. Come the final exams the Chinese gentleman came top of course.

Postings must have been tricky because no sensible S Met O wanted a rookie on strength, but I fell lucky and went to the shiny new office at shiny new Gatwick, which had taken the flights and work from Croydon. Gatwick had a senior and a junior forecaster on watch, such that I had a succession of mentors. Like all workers, I soon learned to copy the good guys. In those days we prepared dedicated cross-sections for booked flights. Ken Richardson drew beautiful Constable-like cloudscapes so I emulated these, but always added an eagle among the Cbs. Rastus Racey drew charts with isobars like flowing rivers, and I tried to copy that too.

Captains were briefed individually, there were no despatchers or Ops staff, so we met famous faces like Douglas Bader and Sir Malcolm Campbell. The Independent newspaper launched, with flights to all quarters of the UK. Like Lars Porsena of Clusium, the messengers were sent forth, east and west and south and north, but this time by charter from Gatwick. Fortunately it was benign anticyclonic, so one bland forecast and a sheet of TAFs sufficed for most, and I was trusted with the whole job. The Channel Isles were fogbound, but the captains said they would line up with their usual church towers and deliver. Fingers crossed, and 100% success.

S Met O took a deep breath, rolled his eyes and signed -off my competency.

Now the infamous Postings people put the dartboard on the wall, picked up a handful of arrows, and the one marked LB stuck in the space called RAF Nicosia. In those days there were more overseas jobs than volunteers, Met. was slowly withdrawing from Home and Empire, and there were lots of stick-in-the-muds who had never left Lincolnshire or Yorkshire or HQ for an entire war. Neither my wife nor I knew where Cyprus was ………. I thought it was off the coast of East Africa.

Postings sorted passports, jabs, flights in no time so a green rookie junior forecaster and his 20 year-old beautiful wife arrived at Hendon on 1st April 1961, to sever all contact with home except by letter.

[FantomZorbin]

Station Ops brief cue Met Man:

"Station Commander
Gentlemen
Good morning
I see **Sqn are here so the weather must be good. Good morning"
and walked out.

[SpazSinbad]

OLD WWII era USN Met Officer cartoon chewing out DILBERT reproduced in Naval Aviation News
Dec 1973 https://www.history.navy.mil/content/dam/nhhc/research/histories/naval-aviation/Naval%20Aviation%20News/1970/pdf/dec73.pdf

https://cimg1.ibsrv.net/gimg/pprune.org-vbulletin/1626x1050/metdilbertcartoon_19d226f4a8d989561c47f8cc98898ae23ac19ba6.g if

[Maxibon]

1980s, Vale of York. Fog at CF - 10 O'Clock clearance said the metman (every day). The crewroom clock had 10 for every hour digit. Lovely people; terrible liars!!

[Chugalug2]

I can but endorse the welcome to what promises to be a fascinating and instructive experience as we peer behind the scenes of the personal met brief that was the luxury enjoyed by RAF Transport and Civilian Airline crews alike. Station forecasters knew their own backyard like the back of their hands and so could predict the timing of, for example, early morning fog with impressive accuracy. "What time are you due back?", About 0200, "Well don't leave it too late, Bath Eastern will be becoming fogged out by then and by 0400 so shall we", (we then being RAF Colerne). All that changed when Dunstable laid down the law and insisted that the central forecast was supreme and local forecasters were not to 'modify' it in any way, so you were just given the DS solution and the printout as though being handed holy script.

Meteorology has always been the butt of dissatisfied recipients. The BBC forecast in particular could be wildly in error, with much complaining from housewives who had taken a punt on its encouraging tone only to have their washing get an unexpected extra rinse cycle while hanging out on their washing lines. I remember my Physics master exclaiming in the late 50s that he had more confidence in his hall barometer than what the Home Service offered for the day's weather. It was a different world then and Met men indeed needed thick skins.

In truth though Met has always been an integral part of Flight Safety, and hence a force multiplier. Its product was considered Top Secret in the war, to be denied to the enemy at all costs. That D-Day forecast was a war winner in its own right.

[Shackman]

Even now, some 12 years since I threw my flying kit in the corner, my wife still looks out the window in the morning and if the weather is c**p says "Ten o'clock clearance dear?"

[red cuillen]

Even now, some 12 years since I threw my flying kit in the corner, my wife still looks out the window in the morning and if the weather is c**p says "Ten o'clock clearance dear?"
We had a clock at Wildenrath Met that was stuck at 10:00!

[langleybaston]

Joyce and I and a very young army officer were ushered into one room, and everyone else into a larger. A smart RAF officer thrust a bag at me, said I was senior officer on board the RAF Britannia, so take care of this and hand it in when you arrive. Me guvnor? Apparently a MoD Met. Assistant Experimental Officer outranked a second-lieutenant by a whisker, but rank meant nothing [and never did, except for the Mess subs] so I passed the buck. The flight was my first, and was backwards [seat configuration] and took forever. Nicosia at 0600 in April was magical, the smell of pine and spices is with me still. We were shagged-out, so S Met O kindly took us for a round-the-island car tour for a couple of hours. I was the first forecaster not to be armed with a pistol, the EOKA threat having been downgraded. We were expected to wear officer-cut KD, no badges, and join the Mess. Waiting for a Quarter on station, we had a hiring in Ayios Dimetios and a new VW Beetle. My wife, now pregnant, was the only licenced driver so took me to work and back home for about a year. The job was “Airfield Met” looking after resident RAF Hastings and visiting Javelins, and also all civil flights because Nicosia was joint-user. The station commander was Mickey Martin of DamBuster fame. Every morning he did a round of Met., Ops and ATC, all neighbours. In each he would pat his pockets, search for a cigarette, accept a freebie, beg a light, exchange pleasantries, and move on. Pat, fag, light, move. He was said to be the best low-level bomber pilot of the war, and at Nicosia he used to fly a Hastings through the Kyrenia Pass. Our big problem was the sea-breeze if it reached the airfield. This came late morning if at all, and brought a wicked wind-reversal. I wangled several flights in AAC choppers to fly instruments into the breeze to get some sort of science into forecasting, with modest success.

And then a RAFP Alsatian nearly had my manhood for a snack.

[Expatrick]

I hope LB will forgive me for posting this but it was irresistible!

https://youtu.be/TGmTLl33uHY?feature=shared

[SLXOwft]

LB, I trust that your 'customers' had faith in your forecasts and didn't feel the need to turn to prayer like Patton as in this clip: https://youtu.be/PehCORojjtw?feature=shared

[Wetstart Dryrun]

I recall a beautiful morning at Linton on Ouse, cavok. Mid seventies. All trooped into met brief, metman promises more cavok all day. Sit through atc brief, stude reads extract from flying order book.

This is conducted in a curtained briefing room to facilitate the ohp legibility.

​​​​

All troop out again, braced for searing sunshine only to find a pea souper.. 15 minutes transition. Only saw it the once.

Shouts for a new met brief went ignored.

[langleybaston]

In those days all junior forecasters were passed as observers so the tradition was to allow the observer an hour sack time 0001 to 0100 Zulu when observations from all sources were staggering in. The forecaster did both jobs. We all had RAF airfield passes on lanyards and habitually took them off once inside the office. Even at Nicosia there was sometimes low stratus so the height of cloud base needed to be measured by cloud searchlight. One dark night I made my way to the post holding the sighting alidade, on a little roundabout, disguised by shrubs and with the mandatory white kerbstones. After noting the degrees, I was taken a bit short so decided the bushes were as good as anywhere. The dog’s hot breath interrupted my flow. With button flies agape and no ID, and only a stupid tale to tell I was escorted to the Met. Office, where there was nobody awake to vouch for me. The snowdrop saw the funny side of it, we had a coffee, and the dog a saucer of milk.

The sting was that I had forgotten the angle, so had to repeat the more conventional part of the exercise.

On more serious notes [and almost unbelievably] I cannot recall any flap, any awareness even, of the Cuban Missile Crisis of October 1962. No unusual movements, no tightened security, zilch. The news of the assassination of President Kennedy was broken at a party on OMQs in Comet Crescent. The party ended, some in tears.



Bloody Christmas 1963 , when Greek v Turk communal violence broke out in Nicosia and spread rapidly, disturbed RAF Nicosia like an anthill poked by a stick. Only two other forecasters lived on camp inside the wire, but they were not current, C Met. O. and his deputy. Within hours all personnel off base were told to stay indoors, and not a few forecasters had bullet holes in walls and broken windows. They were sustained by armed convoys carrying huge Union flags over the next few weeks. The Regiment emplaced a Vickers .303 at the bottom of my garden in Comet Crescent, and a Bofors next door but two. Thus we stocked up with NAAFI tea, coffee, sugar, milk and Jammy Dodgers and adopted ‘our’ gunners.

C Met. O, a Scotsman’s Scotsman, was unwisely outside the wire one day and was stopped at a Greek roadblock, shoved against a wall and frisked. “Ah, English, is OK, you can go!” To his shame he confessed to being English.

Workwise the three remaining Met. Men kept the airbridge supplied with forecasts. Large numbers of military were trooped in, and families near TOUREX were compulsorily sent home after some very cursory march-outs. These included my little family [a daughter and son had been born] and that is when my daughter learned to swear like a sailor. I went to live in a Mess bungalow [two to a room] and the Turkish orderly kindly offered me one of his very clean daughters, because I must be in need of solace.

We worked 8 hours on, 16 off for what seemed like a long, long time, and I have no idea what arrangements were made after I flew out exactly three years after arrival, April Fool’s Day. In those circumstances one doesn’t look back.



Leeming next stop.

[teeteringhead]

1980s, Vale of York. Fog at CF - 10 O'Clock clearance said the metman (every day). The crewroom clock had 10 for every hour digit. Lovely people; terrible liars! Recall one Met Brief where - after the obligatory "Any Questions?", someone asked:

"What time is the 10 o'clock clearance today?"

[langleybaston]

Meanwhile, what of the Ferranti Mercury [ours was called Meteor] forecast outputs using a three atmospheric level model operating on Europe and the western Atlantic? Whereas the essential equations [including those of water, always a big problem] were known, there was zero operational value. There were two problems, insuperable at the time, and originating in the slow and limited valve computer. One was the finite boundaries, from which errors spread alarmingly into the area of interest. The other was slowness; by the time a model run was completed, real time was past the time of the prediction. We were still in the steam age, albeit international leaders. A faster computer was needed.

I arrived Home with a Cypriot driving licence, not valid here. That was understandable; such licences were only gained by the driving instructor bribing the examiner with my NAAFI whisky. The instructor then bribed the professional queuer [yes, truly, they occupied half the long queue] at the Licence Office with yet more whisky plus cash. I also came home with a car, a big deposit for a £2800 three-bed semi and two genuine Rolexes. I still have the watches but cannot afford maintenance. My £140 Seiko keeps better time.

The posting to Leeming was very fortunate. The S Met. O Roger was a well-spoken, well-dressed good man to work for. The customer was 3 FTS with their new JPs, and I am certain that we dealt with more than a few Meteor night fighters with cockpits like greenhouses. Roger did the lecturing [later it was called ‘teaching’] and three young forecasters covered whatever hours the flying programme demanded. I learned a harsh lesson in responsibility by going home to Thirsk an hour before the last night flight landed. The justifiable rollocking beat the arrogance out of my “but I was confident the weather would remain gin-clear”.

The boss’s morning entry at 0800 was routine: burst door open, break wind, and attempt to throw his brown trilby across the room on to the MoD hat-stand. His mood thereafter depended on failure or success. All the eastern Flying Training offices from Acklington through Leeming, Linton, Dishforth, Church Fenton, Strubby and Manby fell under the Main Met. Office at Manby. This office issued twice daily guidance which was habitually taken with a pinch of salt if one was a long-term resident at the relevant station. There was a permanent but manageable shortage of junior forecasters, so detachments of a couple of weeks were very frequent. In three years I served at nearly all, driving our only car and stranding my family. The early starts and late finishes would not be tolerated these days. Like most others, we had no telephone.

Promotion to Experimental Officer was not considered possible without about five years’ experience, and without suitable reports. Reports were not open then, and not for many years. Out of the blue I was sent on the Advanced Forecasting Course, a precursor to promotion. As I was only 27 this attracted a lot of comment, and I could only suppose that C Met O Nicosia had written something exceptional about me in the emergency, and Leeming and Manby failed to correct that impression. [For context, an XO, later called Higher Scientific Officer, paid Flt Lt Mess subs].

Flying and forecasting was tricky in westerlies, the dreaded ‘gap wind’ and lee waves causing nasty gusts and direction reversals. The best forecasters were the long-timers of course, and this included the RAF on the longer tours. I co-authored a research paper to de-mystify the phenomenon. Perhaps it helped.

Meanwhile a new and much faster computer was running on a tuned version of the old model and producing sensible, if not always reliable, surface pressure forecasts. Like all models, there was a constant incompatibility between the need to produce a forecast quickly enough to be useful, covering a long enough period, and at small enough scales to be other than broad brush. The peasants in the outfield were not privy to this output, and the advanced course merely filled in the empirical knowledge of broad-scale development and gave a chance to fail exams. So I came second again. To a Chinese if you wondered.

Topcliffe next stop

[langleybaston]

Topcliffe next stop

RAF Topcliffe was very near to home in Thirsk and I had served a few detachments there looking after the Air Electronics school and Northern Comms squadron aircraft, a mix of Varsities and old Ansons if memory serves. During one such attachment I forgot where I was and answered “Duty Forecaster Leeming”. The caller knew me as David, was briefed, went back from his coffee to the JP and had a nasty moment of disorientation as he strapped in. Clearly not Leeming.

The staff at Topcliffe were exceptionally good, Jack the S Met. O had a difficult face-twitch having been torpedoed and sunk twice. Fatherly and kind, he was very well-read and achieved high authority. Ken was an alarmingly keen and accurate forecaster. Ken told me that I was coasting: “if you want to be 10% better, you must put in 100% more effort”. Thereafter he was cruel to be kind, and I thank him. Effing George was famously foul-mouthed, as was his six year old son.

Our customers included S/Ldr Tommy, with exquisite greatcoat and scarlet silk lining, and two Poles, who answered approximately to Sh1tslinger and Smackyourarse. For V Force dispersals they flew to Maccrihanish and brought us back boxes of kippers to order.

I was posted to Little Rissington without discussion. Being neither the most recent arrival, nor the most junior, nor alphabetically extreme, I pushed back. We were about to buy the dream 4-bed detached in Thirsk. The posters were obdurate, so I outflanked them by volunteering for RAF Gutersloh, cited my German ‘O’ level, had the right seniority, had a passport and …………….

RAF Gutersloh next

[MrBernoulli]

LB, your keyboard efforts are hugely appreciated, so keep the memories coming! I am enjoying your reminiscing, and when able to recall, in my mind's eye, a few of the places you mention, the stories come even more to life. Great stuff! 👍🏻

[langleybaston]

The Forum is replete with those who say that Gutersloh was their dream tour. Amen to that.
1967 found me, aged 30, briefly living in the famous Mess on this old Luftwaffe station, with a shiny new car. My new S Met O was disinterested, his successor was no better, and what I learned not to do if I ever became a boss was valuable. Very early on we had a big station Open Day. On flyaway day I was on the morning shift, walking through the woods towards ATC/ Ops/ Met when I beheld a comely young woman who had clearly enjoyed a good evening and a rough night. Did I perchance wish for a rapid procreative encounter? The very idea! Duty calls.

It later transpired that she was a new assistant manager in one of the service charity shops, just arrived. She subsequently had a dalliance with a very senior pilot and they disgraced themselves. ‘Some recollections may vary’.

The office was 24/7/365 and our Lightnings were on QRA [called battle flight I think]. We had two large squadrons, 19 and 92, the runway end being very near 29 Zeppelin Strasse, our OMQ on the top patch. The very noisy noise of freedom. Not to be outdone, 2 and 4 squadrons operated beautiful Hunters. Flt Lt R A F Sandy Wilson was a near neighbour, but his career prospered rather better than mine. We also had resident choppers and handled Trooping Flights so boredom was never a risk.

The weather was difficult, with Ruhr smoke trapped for days between the hills and under inversions. The winters were harsh, worse than any I had known in UK. Rain ice could be spectacular: wind the car window down and a sheet of transparent ice remained unbroken.

Unfortunately ’Personnel’ [not ‘HR’ yet] had not made any attempt to pick quality staff. The observers were fine [many went on to high rank] but my colleagues only went through the motions without enthusiasm or commitment to this sharpest of sharp-end locations. One such, a married man, ‘went to bed’ every night shift, climbed out of the ground floor window fully dressed, drove towards the first lay-by, pleasured his girl-friend, drove back, went to bed, and was truly grateful when awakened with a coffee. All RAF Gutersloh knew, a splendid advert for Met.
Participation in Mini-, Maxi- and TACEVAL was cringeworthy. LB made himself very unpopular, having failed to force through reforms, because he bent a few pilots’ ears over a pint and OC Ops told S Met O what he wanted. The simplest and best reform was to always prepare a complete suite of Warsaw Pact-facing forecasts every six hours. Hitherto they were generated on demand when the hooter sounded, thus hindering briefings and creating headless chicken responses. My confidential reports, unseen, could not have flattered.

When Czecho was invaded in August 1968 the office was thus better prepared than many. All was peaceful in the small hours, LB had sent the observer for a rest, and then an American chopper landed very near to the closed ATC building. Met was the first door on the right and the captain broke the news of the invasion. The station slept on. Taking a deep breath I phoned the station commander and introduced the pilot. Light the blue touch paper and watch!

All the forecasters had to have Dormant RAF commissions as Flt Lts, to be activated in TTW. I was the only one to ever wear combats because my secondary duty was as understudy to S Met O 1 Br Corps. Every field deployment found him [funny old thing] on leave, so I spent a lot of time in NBC gear and respirator in the Teutoburgerwald. I once managed to sleep for about eight hours in the respirator.



All good things come to an end, RAF Finningley next.

[langleybaston]

It was now 1970. The IBM 360/195 computer was being installed at Bracknell, and all the war-dispersed HQ cells had come home to roost. The 10-level Bushby-Timpson model, was based on the scheme formulated by J. S. Sawyer. My old heroes Fred Bushby and John Sawyer of Dunstable days were still leading world science. The model was a massive advance but was still not hemispherical. Useful rainfall numerical prediction was at hand.

RAF Finningley had a rather benevolent weather peculiarity: ‘reconnaissance rain’. When an active warm front was behaving, chugging along steadily from the west, the arrival of rain was very likely to be two hours early, briefly, followed by dry, followed by the rain.

6 FTS was the main customer, training navigators, there were also loadmasters, engineers and air electronics responsibilities. Met. was housed upstairs in 3 Hanger [I still have the brass key tag for the ablutions] when I arrived. S Met O was Mac, a hugely experienced and unflappable Scot, very well-liked by staff and the RAF. He led the extensive teaching programme but the demand meant that a second body was needed. We went in turn to the Ground Instructional Technique course at Upwood, the best course that I ever attended. The second teacher was taken off forecasting for six months at a time, this was universally unpopular because the shift-working premium was lost. Teaching relied on the Overhead Projector, and the navigators suffered about 40 hours of dry adiabatic lapse rates and clear air turbulence. The Duty Number Two decamped to the Nav school and shared an office with two screen navs. One such, married to an RAF doctor, took the bold step of selling both cars and made a long-term arrangement with a local car hire firm, apparently saving a lot of money.

Met. moved to the Air Electronics building quite soon: the transition must have been silky smooth because neither I nor any of the surviving movers can remember any detail. It just happened.

Low-level nav. was flown in JPs, high-level in Varsities and later in Dominies. We saw a goodly number of Vulcans dropping in, and there was still a SSA which S Met O was cleared to visit in order to check the conditions, so I imagine the cupboard was not bare.

My seven years at Finningley were interrupted by major elective surgery for the duodenal problems. The straight-laced Methodist Lay-Preacher, C Met O Wilf of Manby, on being told there was only a 10% fatality rate, took the news well and asked how soon I would be back at work.

Pay and conditions had become very poor and there was a well-supported strike which fell on my sleep day after a night shift. Mac was ordered to send in a list of strikers so I asked my name to be included. “Don’t be bloody silly, no!”

The most nerve-wracking forecasts were for the end of course nav flights to Gibraltar. This was because diversions were few, and landing in Spain was diplomatically a very poor idea. I think about four Dominies went, carrying students and screens away for the weekend. The TAFs issued by possible diversions were often difficult to believe, but the saving grace was that satellite images were readily available to us. Nevertheless the go/no go decision, made by OC Flying, was heavily influenced by the forecaster, and both over-optimism and over-caution would inevitably cost a great deal of money and time. I felt the weight of responsibility higher than ever before on those early Friday mornings.

At age 38 I now had 11 years seniority, and the field for promotion to Senior Scientific Officer opened at 12 years. Nevertheless I was summoned, took leave, swotted and appeared before a Board chaired by Fred Bushby of all people. After being put through the mangle for 90 minutes I was set free, the tick in the box, six weeks leave, and 1st class rail travel on duty.



And bloody Bracknell.

[anxiao]

Wonderful stuff LB, humorous and fascinating.

I liked the point about the forecaster drawing the transept with Constable cumulus. In the days of BEA Tridents into Gibraltar in the early 1970s the three of us front end trooped up to the met office with the English newspapers and received in exchange an absolute work of art of what we should expect on the return flight. The skipper trousered it but I would like to have had one of those on my study wall in later life. Professionalism personified.

[Chugalug2]

LB, your story is not only about you, or your family, or the Met Office, or the various RAF Stations you were posted to. It is all of those things and much more; times, places, events, that were common to most of us. So perhaps we could share your journey? I have in mind the gentle meanderings we enjoyed with Danny42C; the by-the-ways, obscure details of cars, pubs, messes, railway journeys, etc, etc. In other words, blatant, defiant, and inexcusable thread drift! I think that Danny was briefed by his predecessor on the Obtaining an RAF Pilots Brevet in WWII thread to pace it out. Let the audience do its own reminiscing too, asking questions, answering them, and generally wander around at leisure. By which time they are eager to read your next episode. In other words, keep 'em waiting! I only offer this as a humble suggestion because you need to know that your story is important; to those who were your customers then, and to those who came after and are interested in what the RAF was like then, and what it was like being a civilian so intimately involved in its core activity, the flying!

Hopefully others may concur with my view that this thread should run and run. I'm not suggesting that it would compete with the hallowed thread that is pinned to the top of our Military Forum, but there is no reason that it cannot take it as a model. As I say, this thread is not simply your story, it is our story: those who served in the RAF then, those who serve in the RAF today, and those who did neither but are interested in its story.

Perfectly willing to be poo-pooed of course, your call Sir!

[langleybaston]

Wonderful stuff LB, humorous and fascinating.

I liked the point about the forecaster drawing the transept with Constable cumulus. In the days of BEA Tridents into Gibraltar in the early 1970s the three of us front end trooped up to the met office with the English newspapers and received in exchange an absolute work of art of what we should expect on the return flight. The skipper trousered it but I would like to have had one of those on my study wall in later life. Professionalism personified.

I have neither a cross - section copy, nor a N Hemisphere 0001z chart, plotted by me, analysed by me and treasred by me.
All are Legal artefacts. Only in old age did I become vain!

[langleybaston]

LB, your story is not only about you, or your family, or the Met Office, or the various RAF Stations you were posted to. It is all of those things and much more; times, places, events, that were common to most of us. So perhaps we could share your journey? I have in mind the gentle meanderings we enjoyed with Danny42C; the by-the-ways, obscure details of cars, pubs, messes, railway journeys, etc, etc. In other words, blatant, defiant, and inexcusable thread drift! I think that Danny was briefed by his predecessor on the Obtaining an RAF Pilots Brevet in WWII thread to pace it out. Let the audience do its own reminiscing too, asking questions, answering them, and generally wander around at leisure. By which time they are eager to read your next episode. In other words, keep 'em waiting! I only offer this as a humble suggestion because you need to know that your story is important; to those who were your customers then, and to those who came after and are interested in what the RAF was like then, and what it was like being a civilian so intimately involved in its core activity, the flying!

Hopefully others may concur with my view that this thread should run and run. I'm not suggesting that it would compete with the hallowed thread that is pinned to the top of our Military Forum, but there is no reason that it cannot take it as a model. As I say, this thread is not simply your story, it is our story: those who served in the RAF then, those who serve in the RAF today, and those who did neither but are interested in its story.

Perfectly willing to be poo-pooed of course, your call Sir!
OK ....... Dinger Bell and the tale of Finningley Homos open for input!

[Hydromet]

As neither an aviator nor a meteorologist, but a professional client of our civilian 'weather guessers', I'm enjoying these tales immensely - please keep 'em coming.

[Chugalug2]

OK ....... Dinger Bell and the tale of Finningley Homos open for input!

Finningley? Never been there AFAIR, so much for my suggestion then! We'll have to wander rather more off-piste than that I'm afraid, LB. How about 5FTS, RAF Oakington October 1962? I and my fellow students, shiny new POs all, were training on the Vickers Varsity prior to moving on to various ME operational types. Saturday the 27th happened to be the day following my 21st birthday and a group of us repaired to nearby Cambridge to acknowledge such a solemn occasion in the traditional way. As we mingled in various bars with the local population, mostly university types of our age group, it became clear that the last thing on people's minds was the Cuba Crisis, which in retrospect reached a crescendo on that date. Nearby RAF Wyton, together with the rest of Bomber Command, unbeknown to us was brought to its highest state of readiness in the crisis but we returned to Oakington, albeit somewhat the worse for wear and in blissful ignorance, knowing no more of the situation than the rest of the population, ie what appeared in the newspapers and on the radio and TV that a U2 had been shot down over Cuba.
So, a not dissimilar experience to yours in Cyprus, LB.

[ex-fast-jets]

1970 - RAF Valley.

Usual start to the day - Met Brief.

We (most of us) freshly released from Fort Cranwell sitting attentively with our regulation short (very!!) back and sides.

Met Man - youngish (older than all of us studes, but relatively young) briefs us. He is dressed very casually - no jacket and tie - with long hair tied back in a ponytail. Quite "hip" probably, if hip was a word in use then. He gives us the full brief, and finishes with "That is what I am required to brief you - what is really going to happen is......................"

He was more often correct than the official version. The benefit of local knowledge, I suspect, and the courage to disagree publicly with his directive from on high.

[Krystal n chips]

1970 - RAF Valley.

Usual start to the day - Met Brief.

We (most of us) freshly released from Fort Cranwell sitting attentively with our regulation short (very!!) back and sides.

Met Man - youngish (older than all of us studes, but relatively young) briefs us. He is dressed very casually - no jacket and tie - with long hair tied back in a ponytail. Quite "hip" probably, if hip was a word in use then. He gives us the full brief, and finishes with "That is what I am required to brief you - what is really going to happen is......................"

He was more often correct than the official version. The benefit of local knowledge, I suspect, and the courage to disagree publicly with his directive from on high.

I knew him (initials R.P I recall) as I played cricket with him. Nice bloke, albeit not quite the spinner he liked to promote himself as being.

Other encounters.

Bruggen, G.C Duty pilot one weekend, one element being to get the Met from Rhein D. Dutch TV on Friday, shows very deep Low heading our way, Sat arrives and 40kts plus / most of the N.Sea / cloud base around 100ft, ish. Call RD and forecaster says will send fax ( this dates it ! ) now, Fax arrives showing....weak to medium thermals up to 6k, 10-15kts etc !....show the rest of the club whose responses cannot be printed on here.

Repeat on Sunday...same local wx and....same fax ! speak to said forecaster and offer my sentiments as to his forecasting skills / personality and alternative employment options.

Seemingly, he was a very sensitive soul because two days later, I had to waste my time " listening" to some Wing Commander telling me I was never, ever, to speak to such an important person in that manner again. When asked if he had seen the forecast fax, said Wing Commander, as I understood the rant, said no.

Same think happened again to a friend a few months later...similar wx, similar fax.

[Nugget90]

LB, your excellent story has awoken a few memories of events that occurred whilst flying Hastings aeroplanes from RAF Colerne alongside my friend and colleague Chugalug 2. I trust you will remember the vine that grew in or just outside the Met offices in Nicosia? One tendril of this vigorous plant was trained to grow up the wall inside the office and then across the ceiling, back and forth, with little notices suspended at intervals recording world events of importance. This lasted for some years, growing ever longer and garnering many more little notices, until one day it vanished, never to be seen again!

Nicosia was the general place at which we Hastings crews would recuperate after a long flight out via Luqa (Malta) from Lyneham (that we had to use for clearing Customs before leaving the UK). I recall being there, in the city where our hotel accommodation was located, when we received the news of President Kennedy's assassination. Two days later we flew on Exercise Solinus II that involved some 30 Beverly, Argosy and Hastings aeroplanes flying in trail at night around most of the Cyprus coastline before depositing our loads of parachutists or stores on (or near) a remote DZ. If you have never taken part in such an exercise then you haven't lived!

When back at Nicosia we were supposed to land in the same numerical order in which we had been 'in trail', and the first aircraft did just that. However, someone on board left his transmit switch selected to 'transmit', and so everyone else on that frequency was treated to the somewhat critical thoughts on the conduct of the exercise expressed by the pilots, navigator, flight engineer and signaller/air electronics officer! Yes, it was a crowded flight deck, but we could all voice opinions when we wanted to. With the Tower frequency blocked out, the second Hastings crew decided not to chance a landing and went around. Then another crew, seeing an opportunity to do so, snuck in to land well out of sequence. Thus there developed a fine old mix-up of Hastings processing round the circuit until finally some order was restored and the last aircraft got down safely. The after-show party went on quite late that night!

One other memory, triggered by reference to Constable clouds, was whilst I was flying Hercules C130 A Models on an exchange posting with the Royal Australian Air Force in the mid 1960s when we staged through the Cocos Keeling islands en route from Pearce (near Perth, Western Australia) to Butterworth (Malaya) to avoid Indonesia and 'Confrontation'. These flights involved flying through the Inter Tropic Front or Inter Tropical Convergence Zone that was generally marked by an East-West band of cumulus clouds of varied descriptions. We had a flight engineer who was a gifted artist, and he would depict the shape of the clouds in forms worthy of Botticelli, the results being given to the met staff on Cocos Island for their information and entertainment. I wish I had kept one! Of course after leaving Cocos we had to stay well clear of Sumatra before changing course for Butterworth, but due to a longish over water track coupled with low clouds masking the land mass in the gathering dusk, there were times when we got a little too close to the forbidden territory. Then the 75 megahertz airways marker beacon might start to flash, picking up harmonic signals from, as I was told, Indonesian gun radar, thus a very early form of electronic warning system (?). A gentle turn towards the West sorted this one out. Aah, happy days!

[langleybaston]

Nugget 90:
Two days later we flew on Exercise Solinus II that involved some 30 Beverly, Argosy and Hastings aeroplanes flying in trail at night around most of the Cyprus coastline before depositing our loads of parachutists or stores on (or near) a remote DZ. If you have never taken part in such an exercise then you haven't lived!

I did the mass brief!
In retrospect it was a very risky job to give a baby forecaster. A mile up the hill was Main Met. Office Eastern Med., one C Met O [about senior Wg Cdr Messing rates], his deputy, five SSOs of long experience, and a host of helpers. Meanwhile next to ATC was the airfield office [14 ft high hollyhocks outside, refreshed with nocturnal urine] in which a very junior and inexperienced LB was frantically genning up on 'Met. for Parachuting' [the booklet was still gospel when I retired]. My opinion is that one of the big boys should have got off his arse and taken responsibility.

Watching the Beverleys lumber out with clamshell doors removed, my heart was in my mouth. There a few broken legs and a few bent Landys but no fatalities. No thanks to my colleagues.

Bearing this in mind, when I became the man up the hill I insisted on doing or checking the drops forecasts and the Hercules special weapon movements.

[langleybaston]

I cannot leave Dinger Bell and the Finningley homos to drift. I think I have told this before, if so, a recap,
Mid morning in the coffee room, Nav School. Staff and studes mixed, as we were encouraged to do. Dinger, a professional Flying Officer, was holding forth.
"The RAF" quoth he to a sizeable audience " recently decided to post homosexuals [consenting adults being now legal] to a special unit"
"Bloody bad idea" said several.
"Where" asked one.
"FINNINGLEY DARLING!" and Dinger caressed the stude's upper thigh.
Stude disappeared upwards through figurative hole in ceiling.
Much mirth.

[Ninthace]

Had something similar in the RN.
All lined up outside our building our No 5s waiting the fast black to appear with VVIP on board. Just as it hoves into view, CPO(MA) hisses out of the side of his mouth, "Just found out, Sir, one of the staff is a homosexual". "Who?" I hiss back, "Gizzus a kiss and I'll tell yer" says he.
VVIP arrives wondering why spirits of the receiving party are high.

[BEagle]

When involved in VC10K3 'Secondary Role' exercises and operations, we often had a tame weather guesser with us, who would consult his seaweed, beetles, fir cones and various other tools of the trade, in order to assess the most likely area for a good 'sniff'. But it was quite hilarious listening to the arguments between 'Atomic Arthur' from Aldermaston and the MetO - they often had professional disagreements about the target area. Which could be a largish chunk of remote airspace.

With the advent of the 'Cray Twins' at Bracknell, the tide began to turn in favour of the MetO's 'mesh models' though. But on the last operation in which I was involved, the art and science of the MetO found us a good time and area for the search in a much more flexible manner than the information we'd received from our colonial cousins at Patrick AFB!

At RAF Brawdy, local knowledge was vital. When a new MetO arrived and gave a standard brief, the older hands merely smiled and said "He'll learn"... One vile day, we were sitting around at Morning Met waiting for the Stn Cdr to appear. As he entered, he threw a snowball at the MetO, which bounced off and landed on the OHP slides. The wonderful art work dissolved in a splurge of various colours; drily the MetO announced "Thank you Sir, I couldn't have put it better myself - today's weather will be vile!".

[langleybaston]

Nineteen weeks.

HR believed that taking newly-promoted [and presumably fairly proficient] outstation forecasters and swapping them with notionally forecaster-trained desk-jockeys was A GOOD IDEA. In my case they excelled themselves and, remembering my young days as a very indifferent computer programmer, they sent me to the Central Forecast Office on the ‘Intervention Roster’. This roster’s task was second-guessing the very good computer output and inserting bogus observations – bogussing. The team of two per shift was led by a Principal. Most of the bogussing had to be removed, the model was better than we were.

My shifts were often dreadful nights, but one Principal was a joy to work for. I shall name him, because he nursed me through some difficult times, times that recur as nightmares to this day. ‘Tam’ Bradbury was the younger brother of the Bradbury who eased me out of Uxbridge and on the path to a career. Tam, a renowned glider expert, seemed an old man to me, bespectacled and with snowy hair. One night he confessed to being dreadfully tired. Knowing that there was a Rest Room, Principals for the use of, I suggested that he got his head down. “Nobody ever uses it, and I am not going to start” said Tam. “Mr Bradbury, do you not trust me to cover both jobs for a couple of hours?” And I became instantly famous as the man who sent Tam to bed. Thereafter he had a kip most nights. A lovely kind gentleman.

The unique selling point of CFO was the posting letter: “on probation, if you are no good we will get rid of you and [afterthought] if by any remote chance you don’t like the conditions, colleagues, job or the fact that a weeks’ leave excluded both weekends …… you can opt out”.

After 19 weeks of Hell I was told how lucky I was, the job was mine. Two days earlier I had been head-hunted to be a senior lecturer at the Met. Office College, Shinfield Park near Reading. CFO was amazed that somebody could give up the very substantial extra pay, but our mortgages were always taken on the assumption of flat basic income. We lived in Yateley, leafy Hampshire, opposite the church and near the very good Yateley School. Joyce was a full-time mother to our four children. There were periods when another income would have helped, but we coped. Decimalisation meant a very tight few months. The car was a white Viva estate which often developed oily plugs. Perversely, when we lived in Yorkshire, we tended to holiday in the south-west, and when we lived in the south we went to Scotland.

[Chugalug2]

Ah, this is what I had in mind! Well done Nugget90, you have reminded me of a mass briefing for Exercise Tense Caper (no other was so well named). This was the culmination of para and stores drop training that gradually involved more aircraft throughout the summer. By Autumn it became three night streams of Argosies, Beverleys, and Hastings (we know a song about that, don't we boys and girls?) but not necessarily in that order, Sunshine! Poor weather had meant the repeated postponement of previous attempts of the mass formation drop, and tonight was the final opportunity left. The forecaster, who had put the kibosh on all the previous briefings was told that, thanks, but his presence was not required for this one. Instead a Gp. Capt. from Command intoned the night's forecast, which by eery coincidence was close to but very marginally better than the weather minima required. So, that night at Colerne the dozen or so Hastings taxied out to the holding point, turned into wind to perform their power checks before getting clearance to enter the runway in turn. Things didn't look at all promising; low stratus and rain with less than optimum viz. However, the first three thundered off into the night, the fourth entered in turn ready to go when the Stream Commander in the lead a/c scattered his trio and cancelled further take-offs. Sighs of relief from us (we were number 6 or so), taxy back to dispersal via the runway, shut down, and back to our respective messes. Eventually those who had at least something to enter in their logbooks joined us in the bar. Where did you go? "We filed an airborne Flight Plan, joined airways and flew around in controlled airspace until we felt it safe to return". How about you? "We simply held overhead Bath (a prohibited area!) and orbited there". Third crew, "At what altitude?". "2,500', why?" Long pause...."Which way round were you going?" .

Having no Botticelli inspired forgers amongst us, completion of the Airmet Form (RAF F....?) usually required on our Hastings the combined efforts of the Navs (all the boring numbers about position and time, and ETA next position, etc) on one side and corresponding columns overleaf for drawing the clouds below, at your level, and above, which we co-pilots completed. This was then passed to the Sig for bashing out on HF, or VHF if in range. At the end of the trip the completed form would be handed in to Met in a debrief. Thus it was that my masterpiece (there were those who used different coloured pencils for defining better the layered clouds, vertical extent, precipitation, etc but I felt that was all a bit gauche myself) was handed over to the Gan Forecaster. He graciously accepted it but simply placed it on his desk rather than using it to grill us further in order to better comprehend our en-route weather. The Captain queried this by asking if a previous aircraft had recently flown the same route. It hadn't but he now had these, and with a flourish produced time sequenced photographs taken from space of the area we had just flown through. The Red Hot Heat of technology was fast overtaking us, satellites were here, and soon the pencils and crayons were to become redundant.

[MightyGem]

AAC Sqn Met brief, Detmold, mid 80s. While giving his brief, the Met man glances out of the window and says, "Ah...man in raincoat running fast. Heavy rain".

Middle Wallop, Met brief for night flying, sun is just setting. Met man giving the brief, stating that cloud and viz will be good: ideal for night flying. Crews are looking on, watching out of the window behind him, fog rolling over the airfield.

[FantomZorbin]

LB were you at Finningley at the time of of the great fire?

[B Fraser]

And bloody Bracknell.

Amen (corner) to that.

cheers

Beef

(Met 08 and 19 before I saw sense.)

[meleagertoo]

columns overleaf for drawing the clouds below, at your level, and above, which we co-pilots completed. This was then passed to the Sig for bashing out on HF, or VHF if in range. At the end of the trip the completed form would be handed in to Met in a debrief. Thus it was that my masterpiece (there were those who used different coloured pencils for defining better the layered clouds, vertical extent, precipitation, etc but I felt that was all a bit gauche myself) was handed over to the Gan Forecaster.
Could you please expand on that procedure?
Aircrew drawing pictures of clouds? What on earth for?

[Stuart Sutcliffe]

Could you please expand on that procedure?
Aircrew drawing pictures of clouds? What on earth for?
I was never involved with such activities, but I will hazard a guess. Crews collected such information so that met organisations could do some validation of their forecasts with what the flight crews actually encountered on their route. Bear in mind, this was well before the internet age, or even the common use of satellites.

[teeteringhead]

When first married, Milady Teeters and self had a quarter at Gutersloh next to the S Met O. He had made a bar in his cellar (all the quarters had a cellar), and we went there for pre-drinks before a Christmas Draw or something. Emerging after an hour or so, we were confronted by heavy sleet.

"Oh" said S Met O in a surprised voice, "that shouldn't have happened!"

[blind pew]

Joined the Fleet in 78 and we completed them routinely especially on the North Atlantic. Iirc way points included the weather ships. Reports included wind and temperatures and were an aid to producing long range forecasts. No doubt started during the war by both sides.
Do remember the met briefings from the lads at Gibraltar early 70s.

[Ninthace]

Could you please expand on that procedure?
Aircrew drawing pictures of clouds? What on earth for?
To pass the time? Most aircrew are easily amused.

[WIDN62]

I was taught Met by a kindly old gentleman at Cranwell known, not very originally, as CuNim Jim. He explained everything as parcels of air being moved around. To prove his point one summer morning he took us outside and in the distance we could see the fair weather cumulus forming as the air rose up the small ridge at Leadenham out to the west. He actually instilled a real interest in me and if my training had gone badly, I might well have had a go at a career in meteorology.

In the early 70s when there was a bit of trouble brewing in Belize, we weren't allowed to use any diversions in Mexico or the USA. In their wisdom somebody in Air Support Command authorised us to regard Belize as an "Island Holding" destination where we just carried extra holding fuel rather than diversion fuel. This was really aimed at islands where the weather was usually predictable and not prone to long periods of poor weather. Anyway we set off from Gander in our Britannia in the early evening with a forecast of 10Kms+ visibility and 4/8 Cu at 2500ft (or whatever the terms were in the 70s). We flagged Nassau and the forecast for Belize was still the same. When we arrived at Belize just after dawn we were above solid cloud. The tower gave us the weather 10Kms+ and 4/8 Cu at 2500ft. We did an NDB approach which didn't even get us into the cloud and it became obvious that it was actually thick fog below us. The local fighter radar (Butcher??) gave us a talkdown which got us IMC but with no chance of seeing anything. I said to the tower "Could you please go outside and tell us what the cloudbase looks like to you". We could hear him push his chair back and open the door and when he came back he said "very, very low". Fortunately, my captain had taken as much fuel as we could from Nassau and we had a bit more than Island Holding. The navigator did some sums and announced that we could just make KIngston, Jamaica - Grand Cayman was closer, but the runway was too short for us. It was that or wait and hope the fog cleared. With no reliable forecast and no local knowledge of how long the fog might last we set off and arrived in Kingston sucking fumes some 2 1/2 hours later.

A few years later, on a Hercules squadron, our scribe wrote in the monthly station magazine an article entitled "The 10 most useless things to have on a flightdeck". No 1 was a recently serviced headset, no 2 was yesterday's met forecast, no 3 was today's met forecast. I can't remember the rest, but he managed to insult a number of other sections around the sation as well as the squadron navigators.

[Chugalug2]

Could you please expand on that procedure?
Aircrew drawing pictures of clouds? What on earth for?
Here is a Form 2347, front and back, printed in 1961. Later versions were redesigned and had more space for completing and less blurb, but for our purposes this is perhaps more explanatory. What on earth for? You have to remember that parts of the world then, especially the oceans, might just have well been on the moon for all the data that they offered to scientists, forecasters, researchers, etc. In the absence of an OWS, and other means of observations, these Airmets helped build the model of the atmosphere along your particular track and at your height. The nav would have determined the W/V from his air plot having taken sextant fixes from the sun or the stars as appropriate. No GPS, no Doppler, no LORAN, no Radar, just Dead Reckoning and an API. Only when your neared your destination could you tune in an NDB to update the plot (no VOR or TACAN either!).

As an example, pairs of 48Sqn Hastings supplied logistical support to Christmas Island (by then reduced to a Care and Maintenance Role) in the 60s. One aircraft would fly north 1000nm to Hickam AFB, the other remaining at Christmas to provided SAR backup for it, and then swapping roles next time round. At Hickam we would hand over the Airep, answer any questions their forecaster might have, and repair to night stop at Fort Derussy (a US Army R&R centre) on Waikiki Beach. It was, of course, shear hell but it just had to be done! The next morning the nav would be given his own winds back at Met Briefing, it was all they had!

Incidentally, the Hawaiian ADIZ had Gates, defined as TACAN radials and distances, that had to be reported when inbound (monitored by their radar of course). On the first flight inbound we were told to report such and such a gate. "Negative TACAN", reported the Sig. OK report established on ...VOR radial 180. "Negative VOR". They sensibly then dropped the ball into our court and asked what aid we would be using. A quick search of the En-Route Doc produced the answer. "Tell him the Radio Range, Sig". And so for the rest of the detachment we homed in on the Diamond Head RR, drifting through A's, to steady, to N's and back again. Before we departed for the last time the captain was required to sign an FAA disclaimer that he would not require use of that facility again, having been the first notified user in years. It was scheduled for demolition and future detachments would have to make their own arrangements

[Wetstart Dryrun]

A few years later, on a Hercules squadron, our scribe wrote in the monthly station magazine an article entitled "The 10 most useless things to have on a flightdeck". No 1 was a recently serviced headset, no 2 was yesterday's met forecast, no 3 was today's met forecast. I can't remember the rest, but he managed to insult a number of other sections around the sation as well as the squadron navigators.


....and sky above you, runway behind you and fuel in the bowser.


...maybe one more thing?

[pulse1]

Although I was never in the RAF I am really enjoying these pictures of the service taken through the lens of those who provide their best interpretation of our fickle climate.
My story of RAF Met comes from the bottom of the food chain where I am sure that some of you intrepid aviators started your flying career. ATC gliding.
Early one Saturday morning I left home to drive the thirty miles or so to Old Sarum for my regular duty as a lowly Cat C gliding instructor. I started my journey from Poole in thick fog and it was even more foggy when I arrived. From the Gliding School office on the ground floor of the Control Tower I couldn't see the airfield but, as the first instructor to arrive, I called the nearest RAF Met Office at Upavon for the official RAF gliding forecast. What happened then was that whoever answered the phone would read off the data from his copy of the forecast. My job was to write the same data on my identical form. When he finished describing a really good forecast I said that it looks like our fog was going to clear very quickly. "Fog?". he asked. "You've got fog?"

[WIDN62]

....and sky above you, runway behind you and fuel in the bowser.


...maybe one more thing?
None of those are on the flightdeck but I can't remember his other 7!

[Ninthace]

The loose nut behind the stick?

[langleybaston]

LB were you at Finningley at the time of of the great fire?

No, that was a hangar fire with a/c destroyed? Not guilty as charged.
A vignette:
We lived in Bessacar, nice 5 bed det. funded by overseas tours.
From the kitchen my wife could see the Rossington Pit area [Not Sir Rossington-Pitt, the bounder].
The evening shifts were movable feasts, in that the last night astro landing released LB for home.
Frequently "you'll not be kept this evening, the clag is thickening towards the Pit!" [Gin clear to the skilled met. man]
"Shall I bother with the snap-tin / pack-up [Yorkshire for food box]"
"Of course, please".
She was right 9 times out of 10. Toasted sarnies beckoned.

Footnote: I wonder. On a marginal evening with no snap, might I have cast the runes towards stack? Integrity v. empty stomach.

[Chugalug2]

Footnote: I wonder. On a marginal evening with no snap, might I have cast the runes towards stack? Integrity v. empty stomach.

Too great a risk though of it going wrong. Far too great. Just not worth it, surely?

[Jetset 88]

Met Men (or should I now say people?) - as I can't think of any alliterative term for both sexes to please the 'woke inspectors'.
Most enjoyable read of all these reminiscences from LB and other contribtors.

They say that there is no other job in the world where you can be wrong so often and yet still keep your job, as that of a Met Man. Be that as it may it was always a pleasure visiting the Met Offices down route and getting the verbal person-to-person wx briefings eastwards to Kai Tak and south to Gib too.

Just one 21st century question now........ The USA is probably the only country in the world still using Fahrenheit and even they went over to Celsius for aviation, a long while back...... (was it in the nineties?)
My question is, why oh why, do certain tv and radio Beeb weather presenters still persist in giving out fahrenheit temperatures in their broadcasts? Don't tell me it's for oldies who never converted when we went metric in the UK in about 1972. Even I learnt celsius/centigrade when educated back in the sixties. Presumably that classifies me as an 'oldy'? And .....
adding another Victor Meldrew whinge, why do they waste valuable seconds in their broadcasts telling us what the weather has been like earlier that day when, if we are still alive and breathing , we know already? It's like knowing how much fuel you've used, rather than concentrating on how much you've got left.

[Expatrick]

adding another Victor Meldrew whinge, why do they waste valuable seconds in their broadcasts telling us what the weather has been like earlier that day when, if we are still alive and breathing , we know already? It's like knowing how much fuel you've used, rather than concentrating on how much you've got left.

Because this the only situation where they can be (or should be) spot on!

[Nugget90]

On the subject of aircrew reports of met conditions experienced whilst in flight, I have attached a sample drawn my my father (I recognise his style) of a flight he made from Digri to Pyinmana on the 26th of November 1944 whilst leading a formation of 12 Liberators. This was made 20 years before the flights I made around the northern part of Sumatra that gave rise to the 'Botticelli' depictions I described in an earlier post. This sample is page 3 of a 4 page chart, but contains the most interesting embellishment!

https://cimg1.ibsrv.net/gimg/pprune.org-vbulletin/2000x1493/lib_route_3_5f6e55a625a45505850f4625a7058abf4c4d7670.jpg

[brakedwell]

I remember two met men at RAF Bovingdon in the early sixties. One was very short of hair and had a lump on top of his head. We called him Cu Nim Charlie and he was very optimistic in his forecasts. The other was a miserable type who tried to put us off flying anywhere in our old Ansons. If you managed to talk to both forecasters and took a line down the middle of there predictions you got a reasonably accurate forecast.

[MPN11]

Curiously, for an ATCO, I seem to have lacked any interaction with MetOs. Indeed, the only Met aspect I can recall was in Singapore, when our resident Lightnings used to call Tengah Local for a quick "How is it looking" before deciding whether to head for home or divert to Butterworth!

[Mogwi]

In the late ‘70s, we had a very good Meto at Güt who had two lovely daughters - and went on to gain stardom on the TV. On one Friday afternoon, he rang the Squadron and advised an immediate stack to the bar. This we duly did and 30mins later there was a half-inch of ice over everything and the tops breaking off tall trees. No one could get into their cars, which were then covered in a foot of snow, so we had to remain in the bar for hours! First time I had seen rain ice - and it didn’t melt for a week. The roads were absolute carnage until the gritters managed to get out.

On another occasion, I asked said Meto what he would consider to be a good forecast. He thought for a second and said “about 40% correct”. It was pointed out that we might be better to invert the complete forecast - something he readily acknowledged!

Mog

[langleybaston]

Initials BF?
A massive improvement on the two previous prats.
The second prat had zero sense of humour. A new young Greek lady cleaner arrived: little German sprach, no English.
She cleaned well and early, before prat S Met O arrived, so I taught her carefully. "When prat arrives, you must say GOOD MORNING BLOODY BILL !"
We rehearsed it carefully. Next morning "GOOD MORNING BLOODY BILL !".
"Langley, my office, now"
How did he know, I wonder?

[langleybaston]

The Long Hot Summer.

I pass lightly over teaching at our college, an ex-RAF wartime HQ in beautiful grounds, with a club and a bar that served Breakspears ale, smelling of sewage and tasting divine. There was no specific military focus, fully 50% of end of course students went off to civil aviation or Weather Centres. The interesting course was the annual long ‘Stream One’. These were new recruits, none less well qualified than a 2:1 in a fully relevant subject, many with a First, and some Masters and Ph Ds. It is fair to say that as I taught, so did I learn. I also made friends with tomorrows’ leaders, which paid dividends in networking in the years to come. These folk went rapidly to PSO and 50% went beyond and disappeared in HQ.

Stream Twos were also on the SO, HSO, SSO, PSO greasy pole, but occupied most of the public-facing roles. LB was a Two, needless to say.

The summer of ’76 is famous for its drought, its longevity and its sustained heat. One of my perks was to nominate, host, wine and dine the guest speaker at the end of the Stream One course. By this time J S Sawyer was the top scientist in the Office, title Director of Research, and also the Director-General’s deputy. As his one-time gopher and fixer I dared to invite him, and he came and delivered. It was a marvellous summary of the progress made in producing better and better numerical models and predictions during the last twenty years.

He was asked “never mind that, when will it rain?”

“It will, but I cannot see it happening within the next week or so”. Two days later the heavens opened.

Weather keeps you humble.
RAFG next stop.

[Chugalug2]

The Long Hot Summer.
The summer of ’76 is famous for its drought, its longevity and its sustained heat. One of my perks was to nominate, host, wine and dine the guest speaker at the end of the Stream One course. By this time J S Sawyer was the top scientist in the Office, title Director of Research, and also the Director-General’s deputy. As his one-time gopher and fixer I dared to invite him, and he came and delivered. It was a marvellous summary of the progress made in producing better and better numerical models and predictions during the last twenty years.
He was asked “never mind that, when will it rain?”
“It will, but I cannot see it happening within the next week or so”. Two days later the heavens opened.
Weather keeps you humble.
RAFG next stop.
The miracle of that longed for rain was ascribed at the time to the appointment by Prime Minister Callaghan of Dennis Howell as Minister of Drought in August. Severe thunderstorms resulted and the Government rightly bathed in the gratitude of the nation. Render unto Caesar that which is Caesar's! As you say, LB, humble works best.

Regarding progress in Meteorology, it is remarkable from a consumer's viewpoint. Met lectures at 242 OCU Thorney Island revolved around local phenomena, for instance prevailing winds. For instance, the Bora, we were told, once caused the Royal Navy to drag its anchors in Valetta Harbour. Any ideas of global air circulation was clearly beyond the imagination of aircrew in the 1960s, so we were spared such concepts. Presumably it was a concept shared amongst the cognoscenti though?

[meleagertoo]

. Any ideas of global air circulation was clearly beyond the imagination of aircrew in the 1960s, so we were spared such concepts. Presumably it was a concept shared amongst the cognoscenti though?
Since it had been widely known about for many decades before that date it might appear that the 'cognoscenti', ie the Met establishment were somewhat slow on the uptake.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jet_stream

[Hydromet]

As neither an aviator nor a meteorologist, but a terrestrial client, I have to agree about the huge strides made in both technology and knowledge from the late '60s to now, that have led to the current accuracy in forecasting.
While the BoM were responsible for rainfall forecasts, both the BoM and the organisations I worked for had responsibility for forecasting flood flows in rivers. During major floods, there were always bets made on the magnitude and timing of the flood peak. We always worked well together, though, and there was quite a bit of cross-flow with staff.

[langleybaston]

Since it had been widely known about for many decades before that date it might appear that the 'cognoscenti', ie the Met establishment were somewhat slow on the uptake.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jet_stream

Not quite fair: certainly as far as Met Office teaching RAF was concerned, the syllabi were agreed with the customer. I know, because my secondary duty 1981 to 1983 was the lead Met. Liaison and enforcer, working with a Wg Cdr educator at Brampton [I think].

[B Fraser]

Initials BF?

I was at Brackers with an occasional spell at 03772 and Shinditz in the 80's. If you were at Dunstable at an earlier point then you may have met the redoubtable Mrs D Rand. A lovely lady and a force of nature who I had the immense pleasure of working with. I was a mere youngster in those days however without the usual shift pay and allowances to boost the bank balance, I noted the influx of high tech industries along with rising house prices and quickly figured out that "he who hingeth aboot getteth hee haw". Met 19 wanted me to become a programmer so I pointed out how much 3M were paying for that sort of skill. It was a very brief conversation. I was sad to leave as the work was usually interesting.

[langleybaston]

I was at Brackers with an occasional spell at 03772 and Shinditz in the 80's. If you were at Dunstable at an earlier point then you may have met the redoubtable Mrs D Rand. A lovely lady and a force of nature who I had the immense pleasure of working with. I was a mere youngster in those days however without the usual shift pay and allowances to boost the bank balance, I noted the influx of high tech industries along with rising house prices and quickly figured out that "he who hingeth aboot getteth hee haw". Met 19 wanted me to become a programmer so I pointed out how much 3M were paying for that sort of skill. It was a very brief conversation. I was sad to leave as the work was usually interesting.

Thank you for your service, good decision and sorry about the confusion!
My BF reference was to Bert Ford .......... as I have only nice things to say about him I dare to name him, as I am fairly sure he was indeed S Met O at the relevant date. In the Seventies he was one of a younger, better educated and better trained staff coming through, replacing the old war-time drongoes.

[Jetset 88]

LB.
Enjoying all this reminiscing, all thanks to you starting this thread.

Question for you.... I presume that in 1976 your posting was at 'The College of Knowledge' ?
Although I was not blue-blooded enough to have gone through there myself in training days, I did attend the College in April that year for the first CFS course after it'd moved from Rissie. Just my luck as I lived at Brize and was then at Sleaford Tech as an enforced retiree from Britannias thanks to the Govt Defence cuts.
After the College CFS ground school, we left after a couple of months for Leeming, where the transition to the Bulldog took place. That summer of no rain and heat was spent inside the greenhouse canopy of a Bulldog or my tatty Mini flogging up and down the A1 back to West Oxon, where I'd just bought the first two layers of bricks in a house before the defence cuts changed my life somewhat. Grrh.

We must have bumped into each other that summer somewhere I'm sure.
Looking at a course photo recently I see that Flight Magazine's David Learmount was also named at the end of my row, so he must have gone on to the JP and remained in Lincs for the whole course.
Not so happy days I'm afraid. How had I ever flown before with knowing about Reynold's Number ?

[langleybaston]

LB.
Enjoying all this reminiscing, all thanks to you starting this thread.

Question for you.... I presume that in 1976 your posting was at 'The College of Knowledge' ?
Although I was not blue-blooded enough to have gone through there myself in training days, I did attend the College in April that year for the first CFS course after it'd moved from Rissie. Just my luck as I lived at Brize and was then at Sleaford Tech as an enforced retiree from Britannias thanks to the Govt Defence cuts.
After the College CFS ground school, we left after a couple of months for Leeming, where the transition to the Bulldog took place. That summer of no rain and heat was spent inside the greenhouse canopy of a Bulldog or my tatty Mini flogging up and down the A1 back to West Oxon, where I'd just bought the first two layers of bricks in a house before the defence cuts changed my life somewhat. Grrh.

We must have bumped into each other that summer somewhere I'm sure.
Looking at a course photo recently I see that Flight Magazine's David Learmount was also named at the end of my row, so he must have gone on to the JP and remained in Lincs for the whole course.
Not so happy days I'm afraid. How had I ever flown before with knowing about Reynold's Number ?

Yes, The College 75 to 78.
My tertiary duty was culling squirrels ......... several foreign students were bitten when offering them food, so Stan C. the Principal gave me and my son Licence to Kill; we both had air rifles. The sighter nominated the target, we fired after 3,2,1, and always got a clean kill, they were dead before they hit the ground. This was on Saturdays when my daughter was Patsy Pony Rider at Arborfield garrison Saddle Club ......... I delivered her, we blasted away, picked her up smelling of dung [her, not us] and drove back to Yately.
Surely its your Bernoullies that matter When Mr B gives up, Sir Isaac takes over?
David

[langleybaston]

RAFG next stop.

One of the rewards for folk serving as Staff at the College was either a good choice of posting after about three years, or a promotion. The latter was out of the question [not enough miles under the bonnet] but I asked for and got on to the senior roster at Main Met. O. JHQ Rheindahlen in summer 1978. Awaiting a quarter the family was welcomed into Cassels House near the NAAFI, with our shiny silver Vauxhall VX 2300 Estate moored outside the front door. The car park was a few yards away. So also was a car planted by the IRA, said to have contained 500 lbs of explosive. The detonator or timer failed and we continued in blissful ignorance for a day or two. Late one afternoon we were all turned out and sent to Salmond House. In the ensuing confusion my unattended car was side-swiped. Welcome to Rheindahlen.

We were ‘attached RAF’, shouted “Gas Gas Gas!” once a year, sported Sqn Ldr Dormant Commissions, paid appropriate Mess subs and served all British interests in BFG, thus including 1 Br Corps.

In TTW we were supposed to decamp to the caves at Maastricht, but if there was a realistic plan, I knew nothing of it. Rheindahlen would have been a very early target and was totally soft, to the extent that the public [including terrorists] could under some circumstances drive through it.

We were now a family of six and moved into Portadown Way, quite the nicest little Close of about 24 houses with some trees and shrubs in the middle for seasonal frolics: May-Pole, summer BBQs wheeling mighty Webers out, and Father Christmas on a Fire Engine. A brake parachute served as the awning.

The duty forecaster was responsible for producing at HH = Zero the Significant Weather [SigWx] chart every six hours, to cover 24 hours starting at HH + 6.

The area was all UK , all NATO down to N. Italy, and well into the Warsaw Pact. We were totally independent, and now had use of Bracknell numerical predictions of rainfall on a grid of about 100 km** square all over our area and beyond. Rain amounts were as shown as numerals 1 to 9 and heavier rain used A to Z. Heavy rain we called “raining alphabets”. We received polar-orbit satellite cover in real time.

There was also responsibility for hour to hour supervision of the outputs from our people in the Clutch, Gutersloh and AAC Detmold.

There were two different main building passes; RAF blueish, Army reddish. There were two entrances of course, one for each tribe. Like everyone else, one of my assistants hung his ID on the mirror off shift, and on the bench when at work. His wife was employed by the army. One morning at work Colin was due to go walkabout in the building. “Sh1t!”. The Army pass had successfully entered past the RAF police on the door.. He rang his wife, who also said “Sh1t!” as she looked at the blue pass, having successfully …………. There was a hasty meeting and exchange in Leystrasse. Security was not impressive, so to speak.

I was nominated the TACEVAL man: this involved some higher clearances than PV and some indoctrination, although that seemed to overdo my role. The team evaluated anybody except Brits, and my detachments to the team were short-notice, drive yourself in an RAF car [F658?] and find the airfield at the zero dark 30. Dutch, Belgian and German at least.

TACEVAL is worth a chapter on its own.

** not sure ……. Small enough to be useful, too big for showers.

[BEagle]

My tertiary duty was culling squirrels ......... several foreign students were bitten when offering them food.

Rather than wildlife being murdered, couldn't the foreign students simply have been re-educated?

[B Fraser]

I had forgotten about the stream 1 and stream 2 segregation. You could always tell an extrovert stream 1 as they would look at your shoes when talking to you. Half of them wore slip on shoes which obviated the manual task of mastering shoe laces. The joke was that HQ was the ideal place to have a coronary given you were never more than ten feet from the nearest doctor.

[B Fraser]

Rather than wildlife being murdered, couldn't the foreign students simply have been re-educated?

Some students were "interesting" to put it mildly. A special loo had to be installed after the "bog standard" bog was found to be too much of a challenge. This elicited the memorable instruction to "sit like a princess and not like a frog". Alas the proverbial hit everything but the pan.

I was present at the "College of Knowledge" when one chap from the former empire was being tasked with entering data into a computer. It was like trying to push string uphill. The instructor helpfully advised that it was just like a typewriter. The inevitable response came......."what's a typewriter ?". No doubt he was sent home with an "Outstanding" rating to avoid awkward questions.

[langleybaston]

Some students were "interesting" to put it mildly. A special loo had to be installed after the "bog standard" bog was found to be too much of a challenge. This elicited the memorable instruction to "sit like a princess and not like a frog". Alas the proverbial hit everything but the pan.

I was present at the "College of Knowledge" when one chap from the former empire was being tasked with entering data into a computer. It was like trying to push string uphill. The instructor helpfully advised that it was just like a typewriter. The inevitable response came......."what's a typewriter ?". No doubt he was sent home with an "Outstanding" rating to avoid awkward questions.

These special facilies for the paying Princes from dusty countries were installed in a renovated block, and were a blessing in disguise. For many years there had been intermittent sewage problems, sort of sorted, but in reality bodged. When the major works were undertaken, the main sewer was found to contain scaffold pipes, lengthways. Remembering that Shinfield had been an RAF HQ, the Principal caused records to be dusted off. It transpired that German PoWs had been used to construct the outbuildings c. 1943.

[langleybaston]

TACEVAL.

My first was to learn the ropes with John D., the previous incumbent. We went to Liege, clutching the TACEVAL Olivetti portable and the relevant passes. Hotels were pre-booked for the team, which was led by an RAF Wg Cdr. The billet was near the railway station, in the middle of the red light area. John and I went walkabout after dinner and ‘shop’ after ‘shop’ along the road had a skimpily dressed tart in the window, enough to rival Amsterdam or Hamburg. Our circular walk took a loop through the back streets, with a duty harlot on most corners. Spoiled for choice, early night and ready to pounce at 0400 next morning.

Every phase had to be written up and reported on immediately it finished. It was pointed out that harsh criticism, however deserved, would be watered down by the leader. Being the only civilians on the team there was constant strife with the home unit, and a fair bit of weapon waving. Entry to briefings was doubly fraught. In retrospect the Met. officer would have been much better off in some sort of uniform. An intractable problem on every evaluation that I did.

One Dutch office had some interesting vegetation growing on the window sills. “Yes, it is a little cannabis but that’s OK”. Really?

Whereas the British airfields had an Alternate everything, including Met., only the Germans had an impressive one. It was a really good, well-equipped office on a hard-standing surrounded by earth walls. But what were the wheels for? “This is the Altermet for all north Germany, we tow it to wherever there is a TACEVAL”.

I included US bases but the only memory is the impression that there was much reliance on central products, one size fits all, and the forecasters seemed to have secondary jobs such as ATC or hydrology.

By the time I left the role I was resigned to ‘tempering the wind to a shorn lamb’, we just could not apply the demanding RAF standards to most inspections.



Wildenrath denied.

[langleybaston]

Wildenrath denied.

One major omission on the CV was being a S Met O. Apart from running courses at the college, my managerial experience was limited to running a shift of four people. When the usual three years were ending I applied for the Wildenrath job. Apart from anything else, it was possible to retain the quarter because there would always be officers from Wildenrath posted to JHQ wanting to commute.

My C Met O put a spoke in the wheel by reporting that, whereas I was ‘a very good weather forecaster’ I had shown ‘no inclination to integrate with the customers’ and therefore should stick to forecasting. Thank you boss. So playing cricket for the office, RAF sidesman at church, Rheindahlen 40km Marches and Portadown Way BBQs were inadequate.

Events then took a genuinely startling turn. Out of the blue the promotions board invited LB to a Principal Scientific Officer interview, quite unheard of with only six years’ seniority. Colleagues suggested that I should attend, try not to disgrace myself, and have another go in three more years’ time. With plenty of annual leave allowance some preparation was needed: the Chairman was always the Director General, whose expertises were the mechanisms of thunderstorms and the theory and practice of satellite Met. Two other members were unknowable, plus one Treasury mandarin.

Seen by a fly on the wall, the interview [Inquisition] must have been entertaining. After 30 minutes I developed agonising calf cramp from the tension. The DG noticed and suggested that I walk it off. So I imitated Groucho Marx or John Cleese for a cabaret turn. Recovered, we were deeply into satellites, all was sweetness and light, but the next question prompted an idiotic exchange.

“Sir, I will answer the question, but then I would like to answer the question that I think you meant to ask”. Long silence, then stunned nodding.

That done, it fell to my old mentor, Fred Bushby, to give me an easy ride on thunderstorms, and the inevitable “Any questions” and “No thank you”. There was always another chance in a few years’ time.

Chaos Theory.

[teeonefixer]

Keep it up LB (and other contributors), this is a real expose to service life - not everyone was at the sharp end.
(I'm also following the "Did you fly the Vulcan" thread which is terrific!)

[langleybaston]

Close encounters of the wing commander ops kind.

1. Gutersloh. Weather vile, stacked exceot for battle flight c. 1968. All jobs jobbed. Office cricket time, played with a miniature bat, waste paper bin wicket, and a practice golf ball. Pitch was either carpet [which took spin] or floor boards aiding pace. LB batting for Sussex. One run for contact, four for ball hitting far wall, six if wall above floor level.
A very inviting [underarm] full toss outside off-stump was square cut immaculately a foot above floor level and shot like a bullet into wg cdr ops hands as he entered right. Followed by station commander, who congratulated the catcher, and gave me out caught.
What bloody marvellous good blokes we were working for.

[langleybaston]

Chaos Theory.



Two weeks later the Head of Personnel phoned “You will be pleased to know ………….” And offered me two managerial Principal posts and no forecasting ones. [There were about 20 Stream 2 forecasting posts: CFO, Strike, Heathrow and Intervention. There were some 10 managerial posts: RAF Groups and Weather Centres].

Actually no Arnold, I am not pleased. My wife is very not pleased. My teenage children [one reading Maths at Leeds, three at Queen’s School JHQ] are not pleased. But turning down a promotion meant automatic blacklisting for three years, so with a heavy heart we packed for HQ 1 Group at Bawtry. If you can't take a joke, don't join.

Whereas I could not be trusted to run one outfit, total 15 staff, I could apparently cope with a Main Met. Office and eleven RAF outstations each with 15, ranging from Leeming to Marham.

It was 1981, a time of great change for us and for our RAF customers. My handover took less than an hour, my predecessor had nothing worthwhile to tell me except the safe combination. The task of Regional Met Officer Bawtry resembled a horse designed by a committee: a camel. First the on-site Main Office had morphed into two teams, one fed by Strike providing guidance and operational supervision to all eleven RAF outstations, the other one under CFO for Civil Aviation and Public Service. Unbelievably, the “story” running that day might be rather different between teams. The first reform was to order an 0900 internal briefing to ensure coherence. The air staff brief each morning was also badly done, and a senior forecaster needed removing from that task asap. I took over the briefing every Friday.

Secondly, primitive computers, glorified word-processors, had been issued to all stations but there were no central protocols or formats for output. That needed addressing.

Thirdly the mix of roles of the eleven stations was absurd. Nearby fighter stations Wittering and Coningsby were not my responsibility but Binbrook was. The V force and its support at Waddington, Scampton and Marham was included, but so also were the Training locations of the Vale of York, Finningley and Cranwell. Wyton needed special attention and more clearance and indoctrination. Cottesmore was the Tornado trials station and that too was up to me. Added to which every Eastern civil airport and little airfield had to be inspected annually.

My great good fortune was to inherit a very good deputy in Bob Ward and an excellent admin team. Had it been otherwise, the foolishness of my posting would have been fully exposed. If I had heard about stress and mentalelf I would have thrown a sickie. [The entire Met. ethos excluded sickies, they just meant some other poor sod had to do one's work. This contrasted sharply with other parts of MoD where sick leave was habitually added to annual leave].

The Office was becoming commercial, such that work for civil customers, hitherto regarded as paid for by taxation, was to be charged. Hence the need for a commercial manager, and hence some very unhappy erstwhile customers. Doncaster Royal Infirmary refused to pay for weather warnings [affecting ambulances and patients with fog, frost, ice and snow]. They had received these buckshee since Bawtry opened. Commercialism sat heavily on us all .......... viewed as vulgar trade.

The light note of the week was happy hour, when AVM Mike Knight would sometimes demand that the Bawtry song book be dished out and the piano played by an unblushing female officer.



The Falklands, the miners and the closure.

[MPN11]

I remember losing out on an acting rank promotion, as in accordance with the rules I did not meet the job spec for the appointment. A year or so later, I got substantive promotion, and ... guess which job I was posted to? :cool:

[OwnNav]

When I was a sprog pilot flying out of Doncaster in 1981, we could ring Bawtry Met and get a personal route briefing! Happy days.

[langleybaston]

When I was a sprog pilot flying out of Doncaster in 1981, we could ring Bawtry Met and get a personal route briefing! Happy days.

Fair to say that Thatcherism was driving matters towards charging the customers. Neither I nor my lads and lasses were at all happy. At about the same time Station Commanders were being asked "is your Met. Office really necessary?" Somewhere up in the clouds way above Group Captains and R Met Os there was some hard talking. Fortunately I never had to be aware of budgets.

[langleybaston]

The Falklands, the miners and the closure.

Arriving at work 0830 I was greeted with “C Met O Strike [my Lord and Master for most military matters] has been ringing for you every ten minutes!”

I rang to be greeted by “the bastards have invaded!” Of course we were aware of the threat but the islands were a long long way away. My question was “what is the plan?” Plan there was none. The boss said that the current assumption was that there was little that the RAF could do. How wrong they were, although like a lot of people my personal contribution was less than I wished. Beyond ensuring that Waddington, Marham and Wyton were fully supported [if necessary to the detriment of the training stations] and increasing the briefings to the air staff I was a frustrated witness.

Air Commodore Carver was SASO, and was about the only member of the staff to wear glasses. This led on more than one occasion for Mike Knight to ask to borrow ‘the air staff glasses’. Meanwhile I had the good luck to have a senior forecaster who was a very frequent attachee to Falklands Met., such that he spent six months down south, six months back at Bawtry. His knowledge was better than any text book for me. The six months periodicity meant he went from winter north to winter south for several years.

My home was behind the church in Beckingham near Gainsborough. Senior daughter was teaching maths in Gainsborough, son became a trainee Sainsbury manager and Rock Ape reservist [Scampton], middle daughter became a Metropolitan Police cadet at Hendon, and junior was at school, suffering badly from change of syllabus and the conversion from Grammar School to Comprehensive. She did well enough to study nursing at Nottingham and later passed several degree courses, so the damage was not permanent.

B. G. of the Met. team providing qualified forecaster / presenters for BBC TV and Radio came talent spotting. He reminisced that, as a 19 year old, he was attached to Bawtry, justly famous for its young ladies. “They used to take me down to the pond at the bottom of the grounds. When I left after a few months I was 29!”.

Far too soon came the news of 1 Group moving from Bawtry Hall in 1984, and the founding of a Regional Weather Centre [Leeds WC!] at Leeds. This turmoil coincided with the miners’ strike. The RAF left a little before we moved, so for a short time I was squire of Bawtry Hall.

Because Leeds had nothing to do with the RAF, and subsequently neither did Cardiff WC., I will not cover the dull years until 1989, when the good fairy asked me if I had a valid passport and would I please run Germany as C Met O, traditionally a Stream One post.

Would I?

[B Fraser]

Fascinating stuff. My chums and I became quite pally with our lecturer at the "College of Knowledge". He bemoaned the fact that no longer getting shift allowance, downsizing from East Anglian bliss to a Thames Valley shoe-box and the severe disruption to his family life were having some quite serious effects on his domestic happiness. Being slightly skilled in predicting the future, we read our tea-leaves and developed an unnatural interest in the job pages of the broadsheets.

I was often under the impression that Met O.10 (HR in civvy speak) hated everyone else. An SO colleague with absolutely no HR qualifications nor interest in his charges, was moved there to look after all ASO staff. A more ill-suited individual would be impossible to imagine.

[Mogwi]

LB’s jolly recollections have stirred my grey matter. Like the standard Aldergrove met forecast: “If you can see the Sperrins, it is about to rain - if you can’t, it already is”.

Or the morning I phoned the duty Ops man at Bessbrook to check the weather before I launched, to be told that the weather was fine. I asked him what the visibility was and he repeated “fine”. I then asked him how far he could actually see, to which he answered “I can see the guardroom”.

Or the RN Met Man (schoolie) who used to issue warnings of thunder, despite the fact that we told him, repeatedly, that we fighter pilots and
not scared of loud noises.

Mog

[Trumpet trousers]

Interesting recollections LB, keep them coming.
I'm a little surprised that nobody has yet mentioned how a Weather-Guesser could be replaced with a simple stone placed on an outside window ledge.... allegedly just as accurate!

[Ninthace]

I did Environmental Science in my first year at University, which included Meteorology. It was enough to convince me not to want to continue with that particular topic I still shudder at the phrase "adiabatic lapse rate" and I wasted a whole afternoon waiting for some supercooled raindrops to freeze.

[B Fraser]

Those lapse rates are very useful for estimating cloudbase. Get the temp and dewpoint from your nearest station and work it out in your head. You can then place bets at the local airfield with the nearest guess getting a free beer for later when the plane has been put to bed. ;)

[Expatrick]

Interesting recollections LB, keep them coming.
I'm a little surprised that nobody has yet mentioned how a Weather-Guesser could be replaced with a simple stone placed on an outside window ledge.... allegedly just as accurate!

Or these!

"A weather house is a folk art device in the shape of a small German or Alpine chalet that indicates the weather. A typical weather house has two doors side by side. The left side has a girl or woman, the right side a boy or man. The female figure comes out of the house when the weather is sunny and dry, while the male (often carrying an umbrella) comes out to indicate rain."

[langleybaston]

Fascinating stuff. My chums and I became quite pally with our lecturer at the "College of Knowledge". He bemoaned the fact that no longer getting shift allowance, downsizing from East Anglian bliss to a Thames Valley shoe-box and the severe disruption to his family life were having some quite serious effects on his domestic happiness. Being slightly skilled in predicting the future, we read our tea-leaves and developed an unnatural interest in the job pages of the broadsheets.

I was often under the impression that Met O.10 (HR in civvy speak) hated everyone else. An SO colleague with absolutely no HR qualifications nor interest in his charges, was moved there to look after all ASO staff. A more ill-suited individual would be impossible to imagine.

Those in Met O 6 = Defence had a very decent buffer between them and the posters: Eric W., thus very often the individual and Defence got the better of idiot HR attempts.

[langleybaston]

Interesting recollections LB, keep them coming.
I'm a little surprised that nobody has yet mentioned how a Weather-Guesser could be replaced with a simple stone placed on an outside window ledge.... allegedly just as accurate!

One of my pleasant duties when I was doing penance in Civil was to run the Met. Office marquee and presentations at the Yorkshire Show and the Welsh Show and at big events such as RAF Open Days. Our rescue mongrel Katie was a great character, loved people and was very intelligent. We made a collar attachment. It read
I AM WEATHERDOG KATIE. IF I GO BACK WET = RAIN; WHITE = SNOW; DUSTY = SANDSTORM; RUFFLED = GALE; LOST = FOG.

[Xercules]

WIDN62 mentioned the Lyneham station magazine - Lyhneham Globe - which featured an article entitled "The 10 most useless things to have on a flightdeck".Nos 2 and 3 derided met forecasts. Many, however, will remember the "Rompers Green" saga which featured in the Globe. It eventually ran to 52 parts over almost 5 years in which Chas Finn-Kelcey
managed to be rude about every section on the Station, Group and Command HQ and almost every destination we ever flew to around the World. Its relevance to this blog can be found in the very first episode attached which, I am sure, will strike a chord with many contributors here.

[RubiC Cube]

Met Men (or should I now say people?) - as I can't think of any alliterative term for both sexes to please the 'woke inspectors'.
Most enjoyable read of all these reminiscences from LB and other contribtors.

They say that there is no other job in the world where you can be wrong so often and yet still keep your job, as that of a Met Man. Be that as it may it was always a pleasure visiting the Met Offices down route and getting the verbal person-to-person wx briefings eastwards to Kai Tak and south to Gib too.

Just one 21st century question now........ The USA is probably the only country in the world still using Fahrenheit and even they went over to Celsius for aviation, a long while back...... (was it in the nineties?)
My question is, why oh why, do certain tv and radio Beeb weather presenters still persist in giving out fahrenheit temperatures in their broadcasts? Don't tell me it's for oldies who never converted when we went metric in the UK in about 1972. Even I learnt celsius/centigrade when educated back in the sixties. Presumably that classifies me as an 'oldy'? And .....
adding another Victor Meldrew whinge, why do they waste valuable seconds in their broadcasts telling us what the weather has been like earlier that day when, if we are still alive and breathing , we know already? It's like knowing how much fuel you've used, rather than concentrating on how much you've got left.

went skiing in New Hampshire once, checked forecast before we flew, I thought minus 10 wouldn’t be too bad, failed to remember that was Fahrenheit and we were very cold!

[RubiC Cube]

In the late ‘70s, we had a very good Meto at Güt who had two lovely daughters - and went on to gain stardom on the TV. On one Friday afternoon, he rang the Squadron and advised an immediate stack to the bar. This we duly did and 30mins later there was a half-inch of ice over everything and the tops breaking off tall trees. No one could get into their cars, which were then covered in a foot of snow, so we had to remain in the bar for hours! First time I had seen rain ice - and it didn’t melt for a week. The roads were absolute carnage until the gritters managed to get out.

On another occasion, I asked said Meto what he would consider to be a good forecast. He thought for a second and said “about 40% correct”. It was pointed out that we might be better to invert the complete forecast - something he readily acknowledged!

Mog

Forecasting is definitely getting better. They used to get it wrong 50% now they get it right 50% of the time

[pulse1]

The best forecast I ever received directly from a forecaster was when I was learning to glide at Dunstable. I was sent to phone the local Met Office to ask them if the rain was going to stop. "It always has up to now" he said.

[Innominate]

Continuing the stone theme... When I flew with the RAE Gliding Club in the mid-80s, the duty pilot had to get a forecast by ringing a number on the (presumably military network) Stonehenge exchange. I was disappointed that it was never answered by the duty druid.

[langleybaston]

Rheindahlen Two

The Berlin Wall fell on 9th November 1989, causing us great anxiety because I had not yet received my posting from Cardiff and it was easy to imagine the job being downgraded rapidly. As it happened, my unstated task was to orchestrate the retreat from Germany whilst keeping the customer and the staff as contented as possible. Duly posted, we drove out with no offspring; it was like a second honeymoon, doubly good because the ex-officio MQ was in Portadown Way. This was opposite our Rheindahlen One home of all those years ago. My line manager was SASO, Tiger Tim, an extraordinary charismatic character much given to personal risk-taking and falling off or out of all manner of objects. RAF Wildenrath was soon nominated for the chop, to leave Laarbruch, Bruggen, Gutersloh and AAC Detmold. The Main Met. Office at JHQ had long been closed and Bruggen had taken over some of its role with a little built-in generous staffing. This meant that exigencies could be covered rapidly without recourse to pleading with Bracknell for help.

C Met. O had George P. as ‘Met. One’. I knew George from the long ago Gatwick days and he had made good contacts with everyone in JHQ and the support units who mattered. These included the MT WO, the Mess Manager and the Petrol Coupons Officer. George was the ultimate fixer. He agree with my way of dealing with bumpf. We got rid of pending trays, just had IN and OUT. It took a couple of months’ hard work to reach that state of grace, thereafter it served us well.

HQ Strike had taken over the SigWx task, and the numerical products were very useful, provided new staff listened to the collective wisdoms.

There was an annual AFCENT Met. Conference, hosted in turn by UK, USA, Canada, France [yes] and Germany. The recurring theme was interoperability and standardisation, a lost cause. I am told the Ladies’ Programmes were more productive.

The Gulf War was soon upon us, and we produced climate briefs. From what I subsequently learned the emphasis on how cold the nights could be, and how destructive of equipment the sandy wind would be, were not taken on board. Bruggen and Detmold were very busy and deserved a lot of praise.

German reunification October 1990 was ‘celebrated’ at a big mess event, but the German guests were already counting the cost and the celebrations were muted. The autobahnen were suddenly populated by tatty old car transporters carrying tatty old Trabbies westwards as curios, and returning east with second-hand Mercs and BMWs

We attended St Boniface Church, one of three on the station. There was a standing joke about persecution of the Christians, in that there were often Mess events the night before, and many cycled to church next morning. The German Police, Tweedledum and Tweedledee, had jurisdiction and were enthusiastically aided by the redcaps in breathalysing cyclists. It was said that cyclists over the limit could lose their driving licence.

‘Sir Wilson’ [sic] arrives.

[Geriaviator]

Congratulations, LB, on doing the impossible -- ie following in the footsteps of our immortal Danny42C with your fascinating tales interspersed by many anecdotes and those of your contemporaries. My father (RAF 1936-1962) was responsible for having the 202 Sqn Hastings ready for the 0800 Bismuth ex Aldergrove, for its eight-hour flight on one of four different routes depending on your Met requirements. We sometimes wondered what you did with all the info so painstakingly gathered -- now we know!

Thank you, and keep it coming.

[ICM]

LB: I've been waiting for you to reach the 'Sir Wilson' era ... for I was there too, to the end of RAFG and into HQ 2 Group, and will be interested to hear what you have to say.

[langleybaston]

Congratulations, LB, on doing the impossible -- ie following in the footsteps of our immortal Danny42C with your fascinating tales interspersed by many anecdotes and those of your contemporaries. My father (RAF 1936-1962) was responsible for having the 202 Sqn Hastings ready for the 0800 Bismuth ex Aldergrove, for its eight-hour flight on one of four different routes depending on your Met requirements. We sometimes wondered what you did with all the info so painstakingly gathered -- now we know!

Thank you, and keep it coming.

Thank you but my contribution was and is trivial compared with proper warriors like Danny. Let's leave it as a peripheral view of interesting times please.

Here follow some asides on marches in and out.

Marching In/ Out.

My first march out [no wives allowed to be present] was from Comet Crescent Nicosia soon after Bloody Christmas 1963/4. The little family had already been flown out to Lyneham, so the fine detail stuff was not performed by me……. I was either working, sleeping or eating. Fortunately the Board was overworked, so no dental mirror and no white gloves. I was charged for a broken light fitting but they missed the broken bog seat mended with Araldite. I feel a little guilty: could the seat take the strain? Has some poor blighter been damaged down below?

The departure from Gutersloh was leisurely and our German batter helped a great deal……….. Joyce had four children under 10 to contend with. Anyone with an old German coke stove in the cellar will remember the rituals of delivery down the chute, with black dust everywhere. As an aside, I once delivered myself down the hole after a pleasant formal evening thrash. In the small hours I took a dram with my boss and staggered home to discover that I had no keys. Being dressed almost entirely in black, entry through the coke hole seemed the obvious solution, but the white shirt was something else.

Rumours of stressful march-outs involving cellars prompted me to attack the Gutersloh boiler fittings and copper pipes with Brasso. The man who took over the house was told that, when his turn came to leave, the cellar was to be like an operating theatre. All this is pantomime seen in hindsight, but deadly serious at the time.

Leaving Rheindahlen One was a doddle because families were allowed a few nights in Cassels House. Somehow the removers packed the hideous orange lounge seating covers, so we were charged for the loss by the Board and then had the dreadful stuff turn up in Beckingham.

Rheindahlen Two march-in was interesting because the Inventory showed that the early incumbents had been air commodores. C Met O was carefully seated above all the wing commanders and below all the group captains in my time, and air commodores had wallpaper!

Six good years later we left for ever, with rather more impedimenta than the Queen would pay to ship home: white goods and a lot of German and Dutch furniture. The packers would indeed like a few bottles of this and that, and the furniture shrunk to fill the allotted space.

One last thing. Several of my outstation staff behaved disgracefully on march-out, such that “bloody civilians” or “sodding Met. men” left quarters like a pig stye. This despite very clear advice about conforming to service norms in exchange for great good experiences. Beyond apologising, all I could do was ensure that the cards were marked DO NOT POST ABROAD AGAIN.

[langleybaston]

LB: I've been waiting for you to reach the 'Sir Wilson' era ... for I was there too, to the end of RAFG and into HQ 2 Group, and will be interested to hear what you have to say.

It is a difficult section to write: I am well aware that opinions are mixed, and strongly held. All I can say is what I saw and experienced, and ask contributors not to get too excited: this is one man's view. Fair and square, I have good opinions.

Still editing!

[CharlieJuliet]

Just to add a bit for LB. When I was at Lossie Sir W was Staish and I recall once having to to let Sir W in to meet a VIP during a Minival as he'd forgotten the password and the guard has stopped him from entering the dispersal. When I was in MOD there was a saying that if Sir W went to the top floor and jumped out of a window you'd better follow him as he was bound to be onto something good!

[NutLoose]

Rather than wildlife being murdered, couldn't the foreign students simply have been re-educated?

Greys are classed as vermin.

[langleybaston]

“Sir Wilson” and the latter days at JHQ.

Wiki tells us that Sandy Wilson arrived to be A O C in C in 1991, and I need Wiki to tell me who preceded him, because in those two years I never met that earlier man nor indeed heard reference to him. When I arrived I was interviewed by his Deputy, and never saw that officer again.

Wilson was totally different, and it is true that he upset a fair number of people with his management style. It is also true that he had admirers, me included. Within his first week in command he had visited many [if not all] branches and sections in the main building, with a hard-worked ADC and staff in tow. He asked the Heads of Branches [HoBs] what was their main problem of the moment and sought prompt action. He caused the public clocks to be synchronised ……. Hitherto time/space was warped in the building; A to B could take several minutes, or several minus minutes. We were left in no doubt that there was a firm hand on the joystick, perhaps sometimes unfair, sometimes fair. I speak as I find.

Very early on there was big official gathering [in a sports stadium?] of the NATO great and good. It was Wilson’s first big public outing. The German PA announcer stumbled by introducing him as “Sir Wilson” to ill-disguised sniggering by the Brit minions.

HoBs meetings were sometimes fraught, woe betide the ill-prepared Gp Capt summoned to brief. I recall that one such was ordered to send his Wg Cdr in his place next time. Weekly in-house briefings were instituted, my duty man at Bruggen giving Met. over a speaker link. The room became crowded, so Wilson decreed that anyone junior to Sqn Ldr should leave: "it smells like a zoo!"

Sir Andrew [as he became known] was very visible, and RAFG was left in no doubt about standards demanded. I prefer a tight ship, and that is what I observed.

While some recollections may vary, Met. was content.

On the subject of weather and climate, the annual in-house sweepstake continued and it demonstrated [I do not say proved] climate change. The winning ticket was the date when snow [of any amount] fell at any RAFG Met. office. In my youth a ticket with very late October or early November was a likely winner. In 1995 late November was not unusual. Detmold was trialling NVG equipment and the Harrier Force kept us busy with field deployments. At this stage it is necessary to deal with the Mobile Met. Unit [MMU], of which I was not a member but not uninvolved.

Any Port for the MMU

[Union Jack]

Very early on there was big official gathering [in a sports stadium?] of the NATO great and good. It was Wilson’s first big public outing. The German PA announcer stumbled by introducing him as “Sir Wilson” to ill-disguised sniggering by the Brit minions.


Which inevitably reminds me of the very old story about Air Chief Marshal Sir Christopher Foxley-Norris and how our American friends in Germany were always confused by the apparently blatant way in which Air Chief Marshal Sir Christopher Foxley always seemed to travel and be accommodated with Lady Norris .... :confused:

Jack

[ICM]

LB: Roger Palin was Sandy Wilson's predecessor as CinC RAFG. And like you, I had no difficulties with Sandy during his tour as CinC. Now, in the spirit of thread drift already in evidence here, perhaps I could add that I also had dealings with his wife. I was one of the living-in officers in the Mess and, early one year, I was approached by a living-in Scots colleague who said that Sandy wanted a very special Burns Night that year, that he had been appointed to ensure that happened, and that myself and a young lady from the Civil Secretariat (also a living-in Mess member) would be required to do a bit of singing as we were both members of the local Choral Society. Having said we'd be delighted, it emerged next day that Lady Wilson would be our accompanist and that we were summoned to The Residence for rehearsals. Having been warned by others that Lady W was a formidable woman, we duly pitched up as instructed, to find that this was as much an audition as a rehearsal. Suffice it to say that we passed the audition and were then extensively rehearsed in a couple of Burns' songs - I believe Lady Wilson had been a music teacher in her earlier years. Happily all went well on the night! I'd add in passing that Sandy's PSO was Stu Peach, a Nav, later to be come CDS and Chairman of the NATO Military Committee. By contrast, Sandy's progress after RAFG was, of course, blighted by the furore in the press that developed after his return to the UK as AMP.

[langleybaston]

Good digression!
It awoke memories which I offer. Lady W. was indeed musical and was a member of the large and competent St Boniface Church choir. I had been a deputy for some time but was surprised to be asked to stand as "RAF Churchwarden" c. 1993. To explain, St B. was a busy and happy mid-stream C of E garrison church often with both an army padre and a RAF padre, and always with an Army and RAF Churchwarden and two Deputies ............ I think leave and weekends enjoying Europe meant that to have one person responsible for front of house needed at least four technically capable, unlocking the door, organising the sidesmen/women, putting up hymn numbers, preparing the chalice for communions, sorting the font for baptisms and sorting out minor crises like drunks at the Midnight Mass 24/25 December. And counting the offertory, of which more later.
When Air Cdre Thorne's successor [Thomson?] asked me to become the new RAF Warden I could only point out the obvious, that I was not RAF. The armed services being what they are, I expect suitable RAF people had turned it down. As it happens I loved the secondary duty and had a lot of fun provoking my army opposite number. Jim had been the army Warden for years.
Jim had completed all of my up-front job when I turned up for my first Sunday at 0930 for 1000, this despite my being house-trained. For the next duty I arrived earlier at 0925 .......... Jim had matters sorted. No words were exchanged. For my next duty when Jim arrived the recording of bells was playing, the lights were blazing, candles lit and hymn numbers up ............ at 0900. Jim was reduced to mumblings and sheepish grins, and we could all go quietly back to the Ceremony of the Keys at 0930.
Back to the subject: a Churchwarden, however incompetent or inappropriate, cannot sing in the choir, so I was able to enjoy the very good music from the back. The big occasions such as BoB, Remembrance and visiting Bishops were full house, and Sir W. was a good attender. As I recall there was a degree of segregation, in that the army tended to be seated on the right side, and RAF left.
As to counting the collection, someone out there was often 'avin a larf'. The congregation was very mixed nationality, Brits, a lot of USA, some Canada, a few Belgians and Dutch. The collection was mostly Deutschmarks, Sterling, some dollars and often other currencies. And often there was a small coin or a button wrapped in silver foil.

[i]Any Port for the MMU can wait a day or two.

[Chugalug2]

What a bewildering rank structure within the CofE, LB. Were you above or below a Verger (can't think that anyone would be below Mr Yeatman though!)? Churchwardens, Sides-persons, Choristers, Organists within the lay camp. Curates, Chaplains, Padres, Vicars, Deacons, Canons, Deans, Bishops, Archbishops in the ordained one, though none necessarily in the right order, Sunshine! I suspect there are many more, though possibly some I list might be interlopers and not within the CofE anyway. At least the RAF sat on the Bride's side at St Boniface and I'm glad that in that congregation at least you were wholly adopted by the Service as part of it and its lay representative there.

I've always suspected that Sandy Wilson fell foul of RAF VSO politics and if so he wouldn't be the first by any means to do so. Curtains, no matter how ornate and costly, seem curious items to become a Cause Celebre. At one time it was almost a two horse race between him and John Thomson as to which would first make CAS. In the event neither did of course (JT dying tragically and suddenly in the aftermath of the Mull of Kintyre tragedy).

[Fitter2]

Hi Chugalug

Risking thread drift, Churchwardens are the senior lay members of a church, responsible for the Church Buildings, churchyard (although how that applies on a service establishment is an open question) and the Terrier (what non-church people call the inventory). In practice they end up with a lot of extra responsiblities too. They are licenced by the relevant bishop.

[langleybaston]

What a bewildering rank structure within the CofE, LB. Were you above or below a Verger (can't think that anyone would be below Mr Yeatman though!)? Churchwardens, Sides-persons, Choristers, Organists within the lay camp. Curates, Chaplains, Padres, Vicars, Deacons, Canons, Deans, Bishops, Archbishops in the ordained one, though none necessarily in the right order, Sunshine! I suspect there are many more, though possibly some I list might be interlopers and not within the CofE anyway. At least the RAF sat on the Bride's side at St Boniface and I'm glad that in that congregation at least you were wholly adopted by the Service as part of it and its lay representative there.

I've always suspected that Sandy Wilson fell foul of RAF VSO politics and if so he wouldn't be the first by any means to do so. Curtains, no matter how ornate and costly, seem curious items to become a Cause Celebre. At one time it was almost a two horse race between him and John Thomson as to which would first make CAS. In the event neither did of course (JT dying tragically and suddenly in the aftermath of the Mull of Kintyre tragedy).

The CWs at St. B tended to be much longer serving than padres, who came and went rather quickly. One matter was well-known and acted on: sermons were allotted 12 minutes other than in exceptional circumstances. Unusually there was an analogue clock in the view of the pulpit. New padres were briefed tactfully by the CWs, the latter making it clear that the time limit fell within the ambit of Caesar.
That said, we had a super lot of padres to support.

and I still have not sorted the MMU and the Vintage Port.

[ICM]

LB: John Thompson (the younger) was SASO after Tim Thorn - and I think stayed on post-RAFG till the demise of HQ 2 Gp on 31 March 1996.

[langleybaston]

LB: John Thompson (the younger) was SASO after Tim Thorn - and I think stayed on post-RAFG till the demise of HQ 2 Gp on 31 March 1996.

Thank you. Rather more cerebral than his predecessor; asked more difficult questions!

[NickB]

In those days all junior forecasters were passed as observers so the tradition was to allow the observer an hour sack time 0001 to 0100 Zulu when observations from all sources were staggering in. The forecaster did both jobs. We all had RAF airfield passes on lanyards and habitually took them off once inside the office. Even at Nicosia there was sometimes low stratus so the height of cloud base needed to be measured by cloud searchlight. One dark night I made my way to the post holding the sighting alidade, on a little roundabout, disguised by shrubs and with the mandatory white kerbstones. After noting the degrees, I was taken a bit short so decided the bushes were as good as anywhere. The dog’s hot breath interrupted my flow. With button flies agape and no ID, and only a stupid tale to tell I was escorted to the Met. Office, where there was nobody awake to vouch for me. The snowdrop saw the funny side of it, we had a coffee, and the dog a saucer of milk.

The sting was that I had forgotten the angle, so had to repeat the more conventional part of the exercise.



LB - I'm enjoying your memories of life as a Metman! I'm also an ex-metman, but we never met although came close on one occasion when I was detached to RAF Manston from RAF Laarbruch in 1997.

Anyway, your close call with a dog at night, brought back a harrowing memory of my own... I was based at Netheravon at the time, on a nightshift. Popping out just before 2am one night to conduct the hourly 'ob', I too was caught short. The outside toilet was a walk away in pitch dark and I'll be honest, creepy as hell at night, so decided to opt for the easier option. I was just about to 'start' when I was conscious of some movement in the distance (it could be very dark in the middle of Salisbury Plain) so quickly 'retracted my undercarriage'... thank God I did because seconds later a huge German Shepherd came running up to me. I froze. I physically couldn't move. I was later told by the MoD Policeman (who by then had called off the dog, called 'Buckle') that I had done the right thing... had I tried to run, Buckle would have had me as a snack!
We had a bit of a laugh about what happened (me nervously) and that was that. From that episode, I was always very careful on a nightshift at Netheravon and kept my 'buckle' very definitely done up!

Looking forward to reading your further updates...

[langleybaston]

THE MOBILE MET UNIT.
Disclaimer. I was never an insider but had many friends among the unit, and a good number of members reporting to me. It is certain that my recollections contain errors. If so, corrections please!

The Mobile Met Unit was founded when I was in Cyprus c. 1963, figuratively clutching a Dormant Commission as a F O in the RAFVR. Thus or otherwise there was no attempt to recruit me to that unusual body.

I did see recruitment efforts in Met. O. Orders and was briefly tempted. I already had a slack handful of secondary duties such as S Met.O to the UK Warning and Monitoring Organisation ‘down the hole’ at Fiskerton and Horsham. As an aside, there was good specialist training by experts in fall-out and the behaviour of radioactive plumes. There was a major exercise most years lasting a long weekend during which we used canned weather and did not have access to real weather reports. Sometimes emerging into a gale with lashing rain having lived with an antiCyclops for 72 hours felt weird.

The MMU members were commissioned, and I think the most senior in the early days was a Sqn Ldr. There was a need for observers as well as forecasters so the juniors were commissioned as F Os in the first place. The role was to support exercises [‘war’ or ‘operations’ were tacitly included but not dwelt on]. The pay was totally civilian according to Met. grade, and overtime was also paid under civilian rules. The major exercises were ‘Purple’ and sometimes the MMU forecast disagreed with the RN version. On one famous occasion the Exercise Director singled ‘us’ out for differential praise.

There was always [and probably still is] a tension between MMU needs and the day to day running of an RAF Station Met. Office. This tension was caused by short-notice transition of a resident forecaster into an RAF MMU bloke whisked away indefinitely, with no process other than expedients to fill the gap. Contrary to widespread belief, staffing was always lean, if not mean. This situation came to a head in 1982 when exercise commitments became Operations, and the need to man Ascension [and later Stanley] took away a considerable number of staff. P Met Os [I was such at RAF Bawtry] were straight into the task of juggling holes.

Thereafter the uneasy years of peace were punctuated by deployments here there and everywhere, to sandy places and the Balkans.
By this time the MMU had grown to include its own Met. technicians and the boss was a Wg Cdr sporting a number plate MMU 1 on a less than pristine car.

While I was C Met O in Germany the increasing demands on the Unit were such that recruiting was needed and I suggested that a Germany wing be formed ………. There was an element of military training for all my staff [NBC, exercises, Harrier deployments etc] and they tended to be younger, fitter and more adaptable. Thus my deputy became a Wg Cdr and a couple of S Met Os became Sqn Ldrs, and half a dozen other staff were commissioned. I now had a hand in who was to be deployed and when, so moving the holes around became in-house.

Where does Port come into the MMU? Seen from the outside, the MMU were a hard-drinking, hard-living bundle of fun, and Port was their tipple of choice after a few wets of ale or red biddy. They worked outrageously long hours for very long detachments in a variety of very unpleasant places, and richly deserved their fine arrays of campaign medals, the odd MBE and many Air Efficiency awards.

In 2000 the MMU became a Sponsored Reserve Unit and I think were incorporated in Tac Comms Wing. Thereafter I know very little, but wish the lads and lasses of the MMU all the best.

I raise a glass of Port to the lovable rogues of the MMU, wherever they may be.

[langleybaston]

LB: Roger Palin was Sandy Wilson's predecessor as CinC RAFG. And like you, I had no difficulties with Sandy during his tour as CinC. Now, in the spirit of thread drift already in evidence here, perhaps I could add that I also had dealings with his wife. I was one of the living-in officers in the Mess and, early one year, I was approached by a living-in Scots colleague who said that Sandy wanted a very special Burns Night that year, that he had been appointed to ensure that happened, and that myself and a young lady from the Civil Secretariat (also a living-in Mess member) would be required to do a bit of singing as we were both members of the local Choral Society. Having said we'd be delighted, it emerged next day that Lady Wilson would be our accompanist and that we were summoned to The Residence for rehearsals. Having been warned by others that Lady W was a formidable woman, we duly pitched up as instructed, to find that this was as much an audition as a rehearsal. Suffice it to say that we passed the audition and were then extensively rehearsed in a couple of Burns' songs - I believe Lady Wilson had been a music teacher in her earlier years. Happily all went well on the night! I'd add in passing that Sandy's PSO was Stu Peach, a Nav, later to be come CDS and Chairman of the NATO Military Committee. By contrast, Sandy's progress after RAFG was, of course, blighted by the furore in the press that developed after his return to the UK as AMP.

I seem to recall that Peach was / is not tall, neither am I. My first deployment from Gutersloh c 1969 as [S Met O 1 BR Corp's unenthusiastic deputy] caused me to drive to Bielefeld to be kitted out for an Exercise in the Teutoburgerwald, When it came to trousers, the QM had none short enough in the leg [the gut was OK].
"Isn't there anybody in the army my size?"
"Yessir! He came in for that pair this morning"

[langleybaston]

The Night Manager.

Gutersloh Met in the late 60s through to about 1983 was under the guidance and supervision of the Main Met Office at JHQ, manned by elderly cautious and hesitant old gents ...... we believed.
TAFs etc issued by the outstations were subject to scrutiny and sometimes peremptory adjustment. Occasionally JHQ was correct.
As there were about the same number of old boys at JHQ as at Gutersloh, it often happened that one's opposite man remained the same for weeks on end.
One such was Arthur, a pessimist's pessimist. Almost all of my output for the period 0300 to 0830 would be complete in draft form by 0230, at which time Arthur would phone Langley "to discuss the situation and how it would evolve". This was an exercise in picking Langley's brain cells for clues. Whilst agreeing in principle "I think you have grasped it Langley" grave notes of caution and caveats were then forthcoming.
It would now be more like 0330 and Langley was going to have to get his ar$e in gear to convert draft into output.
"Well I don't know about you Langley but I've got work to do".

The official guidance would then usually be at least one colour state worse than the Gutersloh version, where the office typewriter and Banda machine would be running hot to catch up.

Revenge being sweet, at the annual 'JHQ Met. versus the outstations finest' saw LB [brought on to do some off-breaks and off-cutters out of desperation] dismissed a batsman with one that went straight through. In came Arthur, with much ritual guard marking and bat twirling. The off-break that richocheted off his box and took a bail turned more than any of mine before or since. Arthur trudged off, white-faced and counting the family jewels.
Gotcha.

[langleybaston]

More on MMU, Ascension, Falklands ...... even S Georgia ....... in the pipeline.

My correspondent was in the thick of events so I will paste his account probably in instalments.

Meantime, back to BFG mid 1990s.

[langleybaston]

Measuring performance: a little tiresome theory.
Back in my early Bawtry days around 1982 I entered the unpopularity stakes and did very well indeed.

There were eleven stations, some were 24/7, some were open only for flying and/ or teaching There was a total of about 50 weather forecasters.
But were they good at forecasting ....... were some stations uniformly good, some bad, and were some individuals better than others?

I don't think P Met Os anywhere had dared to go beyond forming impressions, there was no useful literature, and yet I was supposed to write annual staff reports, and conduct annual inspections of each office.

The simplest yardstick I could think of was the forecast of the night minimum temperature: this was a most important task, having a bearing on many variables such as ice, frost, snow versus rain, fog formation and half a dozen more. Thus an Order was issued, followed by howls of outrage. For example, Binbrook was said to be more difficult. For another example, how could a new boy compete with someone on station for ten years?

In the words of Butch Harris, "we shall see".

Every office was required to submit an unequivocal forecast for the following night at/by 1400 local time. The Main Met Office collected these and logged them. At this early stage "no names, no pack drill", no animals were harmed during this production. After a few months the patterns emerged. Yes, Binbrook was a b8gger, get the cloud or wind a little wrong and a 2 or 3 degree error was inevitable. Yes Finningley was close to +/- one degree very often. After a settling in period the resuts for each month were published, including means, standard deviations and a few case studies.

Meanwhile a curious process was emerging: S Met Os were paying a lot more attention to their duty forecaster's submissions, people were trying harder, and the station mean errors and deviations were slowly driven down, a little here, a little there. The S Met Os were also forming their own opinions on the skills of their team, and a few surprises emerged ....... new boys sometimes consistently outperformed the old lags. Because S Met O wanted better team results, the old lags had their ears bent.

The scheme ran for about three years and the results stopped improving. My belief was that the Group had probably reached the stage where only better computer guidance could drive better results. One factoid emerged; late October/ early November were the difficult months. This is probably the combination of lingering summer high moisture content, and early winter longer nights and rapid cooling. The way to earn a reputtation as an ace was to take a big chunk of annual leave.

Nearly ten years later a nasty rumour reached me in BFG: the Met. Office was going to introduce a scheme whereby the accuracy of outstation forecasts had to be measured. My assumption was that anything originating in Bracknell would be one size fits all, and was to be resisted. The old Bawtry method was not well-tuned to customer requirements, so we focussed on what the users said was most important. Essentially this was the two components of the Colour State, being cloud base/ amount, and visibility. Just about every squadron in RAFG and Detmold kept a Colour Board, it was the lingua franca of NATO NW Europe decision making and flying. Thus we got our revenge in first, and successfully pleaded to avoid the complexities of wind speed and direction, precipitation and plagues of frogs.

[B Fraser]

Interesting stuff. Was that the grass min or air min temp ?

Just wonderin'

:8

[Chugalug2]

An interesting experiment LB, and my comment as an ex military/civil pilot is, and why not? In the RAF, in addition to being the recipient of an annual report ("This Officer will go through life pushing doors marked pull", etc) as a Transport Pilot I was subject to simulator and route checks as well as day and night handling checks within the circuit. All this fed into your Categorisation standard which could wax or wain accordingly. The annual medical added to the cull. Similar regular assessments continued in civvie street. No complaints! The unsuspecting travellers that entrust their fate to us deserve nothing less. Other professions however seem to have an altogether easier time of it, even those who similarly hold your life in their hands. Doctors, it could be said, can only kill you off one at a time, but some have managed quite a few before being challenged, let alone struck off. Lawyers, both Solicitors and Barristers, can wreck many lives by their incompetence without getting grounded. And so on and so on.

What about meteorologists, then? Is it simply down to such as you, LB, to sort the wheat from the chaff, or is there some formal annual 'check ride' to monitor if one's knowledge is up to date and sound, and you are able to 'get it right'? I dare say PSV and HGV drivers get sound checks too, together with regular medical examinations. I suspect pilots are grouped rather more with them than with the 'true professionals'. More in common with Camel Drivers perhaps than the the Sheiks? Not that I have a chip on my shoulder at all, you understand?

[langleybaston]

Interesting stuff. Was that the grass min or air min temp ?

Just wonderin'

:8
Air min.
Incidentally right now eastern England is clocking up astonishing rainfall stats: "rain days" [just a trace, or more] about 6 days more than the long term 30 year average in Feb, about ten days more than long term in March, and it looks like another very large anomaly this April.
No wonder people are grumpy .................

[langleybaston]

An interesting experiment LB, and my comment as an ex military/civil pilot is, and why not? In the RAF, in addition to being the recipient of an annual report ("This Officer will go through life pushing doors marked pull", etc) as a Transport Pilot I was subject to simulator and route checks as well as day and night handling checks within the circuit. All this fed into your Categorisation standard which could wax or wain accordingly. The annual medical added to the cull. Similar regular assessments continued in civvie street. No complaints! The unsuspecting travellers that entrust their fate to us deserve nothing less. Other professions however seem to have an altogether easier time of it, even those who similarly hold your life in their hands. Doctors, it could be said, can only kill you off one at a time, but some have managed quite a few before being challenged, let alone struck off. Lawyers, both Solicitors and Barristers, can wreck many lives by their incompetence without getting grounded. And so on and so on.

What about meteorologists, then? Is it simply down to such as you, LB, to sort the wheat from the chaff, or is there some formal annual 'check ride' to monitor if one's knowledge is up to date and sound, and you are able to 'get it right'? I dare say PSV and HGV drivers get sound checks too, together with regular medical examinations. I suspect pilots are grouped rather more with them than with the 'true professionals'. More in common with Camel Drivers perhaps than the the Sheiks? Not that I have a chip on my shoulder at all, you understand?

As of 1997 when I handed in the seaweed, there was no systematic check ride, and no systematic knowledge check. A very difficult process to invent and apply ................ some weather is easy, some is difficult. Reputations were built slowly. The terrifying aspect in retrospect is that annual reports were not seen by the victim until halfway through my time.. "This officer has the charisma of a cucumber". "I would not breed from this man". "When we employed Langley we deprived his village of its idiot".
Open reporting using a 1st and 2nd reporting officer, a debrief, and "what you need to do to get a better report" was introduced c. 1980 [???] and, honestly tackled, has to be the way to go.

[lederhosen]

Congratulations Langley on a most interesting thread. Your reflections from a different perspective are turning into a real page turner. The subject of managing performance in your last thread is also one close to my heart. What gets measured gets done is a basic tenet of management. How to do this in a fair but effective way is always the question. Successful organizations are to be found across a range from Elon Musk‘s extreme application of perform or get fired to the more social approach we mostly find in Europe. When the result of individual performance can have an immediate catastrophic effect it is of course all the more important to get it right. I look forward to more interesting installments.

[mahogany bob]

LB

Thanks for the memories

Definitely our favourite met person was the lady in Plovdiv who was drop dead gorgeous - never had our Captain taken such an interest in meteorology !Unfortunately her forecasts were consistently rubbish !

Runner up was the lovely girl at Waddo who had an oversized bust and went bright red when she announced that a large warm front was approaching from the west !

A call to the met office would have been useful when the duty flight commander ,watching Man Utd playing soccer in the ready room, noticed that it was beginning to snow heavily ,and immediately started the process of recalling all the airborne Vulcans - until we pointed out that the match was being played in Poland!

Keep up the good work - can you find us some decent weather please - there’s a b cold Northerly blowing today -think that it must have been the wettest winter here on record?
At least we no longer have smog up here on the ridge since coal fires were banned and the smoke used to rise up from Lincoln.

[langleybaston]

[QUOTE=mahogany bob;11641150]LB

Runner up was the lovely girl at Waddo who had an oversized bust and went bright red when she announced that a large warm front was approaching from the west .

She was one of the very handsome young ladies at Bawtry back in the day. They were all ambitious assistants, studying A Levels and became forecasters. Being boss at Bawtry was rather pleasant.

Keep up the good work - can you find us some decent weather please - there’s a b cold Northerly blowing today -think that it must have been the wettest winter here on record?
I would if I could, we are thoroughly hacked off ....... forecasts of 10% chance rain ALWAYS produce some rain here in S Lincs. Matters have slipped in my absence.

[langleybaston]

For those who want to know how bl**dy awful Jan Feb Mar have been, play with:

https://www.metoffice.gov.uk/research/climate/maps-and-data/uk-actual-and-anomaly-maps

April is going to be as bad.

Oh! to be in England.

[ICM]

LB: Wondering where the thread may go next. Noting you appear to have retired in 1997, did you stay at Rheindahlen after April 1993 when RAFG became HQ 2 Group, or was your Senior Met O post no longer appropriate?

[langleybaston]

LB: Wondering where the thread may go next. Noting you appear to have retired in 1997, did you stay at Rheindahlen after April 1993 when RAFG became HQ 2 Group, or was your Senior Met O post no longer appropriate?

Spoiler alert

I stayed for as long as there was a worthwhile job [managing withdrawal essentially] and then the last couple of years were fascinating.

[langleybaston]

Observations on observations.

In an age when anything and everything can be measured to amazing accuracy, the work of a little cell in our Climatology Branch during the late 1950s must seem primitive if not pointless. I was there with one other assistant, led by the brilliant Hubert Horace Lamb. HH resigned from the Met Office on a matter of principal in 1940 to join the Irish service before returning in 1946 to do important work in the Antarctic. He was the epitome of the Agatha Christie eccentric gentleman; hairy but immaculate three-piece tweed suits, beautiful manners and a loud voice and laugh.

Our task was to construct ancient daily weather maps of Great Britain and Europe. HH invented the techniques for verifying [or otherwise] the accuracy of the observations made from about 1750 by enthusiastic amateurs, often clergy, physicists, alchemists and eccentrics. Their dusty records and diaries which survived were in libraries and collections in many countries, in many languages [including Latin] and using more than a few different measuring systems. [Try Wiki on the subject of Ancient French Feet]. The way to produce a chart of pressure or temperature or rainfall involved working backwards from quality “modern” charts and observations with some contemporary but ‘old-fashioned’ readings embedded. Allowing for units, if the old values fitted the modern pattern, they became ‘trusties’ to go further backwards, until the charts were back beyond the Battle of Waterloo. As confidence grew, we could detect when a trusted observer changed or died, and was replaced by an unenthusiastic successor.

In retrospect, such a project would be unthinkable in these results-driven days; it was pure science with no obvious benefit to man nor beast. But those old wiggly lines culled from neglected tomes, converted to modern measure standards, are a valuable tool for matters of moment, such as climate change. Lamb was the pioneer.

HH went on to a Professorship as a world leading authority. An Obit. can be found at

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/obituary-professor-h-h-lamb-1249739.html

It was an immense privilege to serve such a brilliant and kind gentleman.

If there are no strong objections, at some future date I will offer a few words about two very important aviation variables, wind and air pressure.

[Diff Tail Shim]

Observations on observations.

In an age when anything and everything can be measured to amazing accuracy, the work of a little cell in our Climatology Branch during the late 1950s must seem primitive if not pointless. I was there with one other assistant, led by the brilliant Hubert Horace Lamb. HH resigned from the Met Office on a matter of principal in 1940 to join the Irish service before returning in 1946 to do important work in the Antarctic. He was the epitome of the Agatha Christie eccentric gentleman; hairy but immaculate three-piece tweed suits, beautiful manners and a loud voice and laugh.

Our task was to construct ancient daily weather maps of Great Britain and Europe. HH invented the techniques for verifying [or otherwise] the accuracy of the observations made from about 1750 by enthusiastic amateurs, often clergy, physicists, alchemists and eccentrics. Their dusty records and diaries which survived were in libraries and collections in many countries, in many languages [including Latin] and using more than a few different measuring systems. [Try Wiki on the subject of Ancient French Feet]. The way to produce a chart of pressure or temperature or rainfall involved working backwards from quality “modern” charts and observations with some contemporary but ‘old-fashioned’ readings embedded. Allowing for units, if the old values fitted the modern pattern, they became ‘trusties’ to go further backwards, until the charts were back beyond the Battle of Waterloo. As confidence grew, we could detect when a trusted observer changed or died, and was replaced by an unenthusiastic successor.

In retrospect, such a project would be unthinkable in these results-driven days; it was pure science with no obvious benefit to man nor beast. But those old wiggly lines culled from neglected tomes, converted to modern measure standards, are a valuable tool for matters of moment, such as climate change. Lamb was the pioneer.

HH went on to a Professorship as a world leading authority. An Obit. can be found at

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/obituary-professor-h-h-lamb-1249739.html

It was an immense privilege to serve such a brilliant and kind gentleman.

If there are no strong objections, at some future date I will offer a few words about two very important aviation variables, wind and air pressure.

I am enjoying your posts Langley. Freezing Rain I saw the effects of in that vicious winter of early 1987 at Gutersloh. Minus 27 degrees Centigrade wearing standard RAF working dress. One was not outside for long.

[hunterboy]

Hi Langley, we are here to learn…would love to hear more of the technical aspects…..

[langleybaston]

RAFG becomes 2 Group.

In 1993 there were several ceremonies to mark the end of an era. For me the most memorable was a vast group photo taken with the Big House grand entrance as background. I remember thinking that I had never been allowed on that piece of real estate before. Some time around then the RAF Mess was forcibly joined by the Army Mess and Christened Churchill. Before the dread day there was an auction of Mess silver and property, and there was more than enough to go round. The first joint Oktoberfest was not what we had been accustomed to.. The attitude was that ‘anything goes’, and the first things to go were the beer steins, pre-purchased as usual by members and for guests. They were stolen as soon as any were briefly unattended. That was just a warm up, as the tables were soon converted into little dance floors. On our table [we had guests including the fair sex] we had a major who fell off and briefly dozed. Whereas previously the older teenagers had attended, it was on the understanding that parents would curb excess. This time there was indeed excess; next morning the mess civilian staff were said to have resigned en masse [hearsay] because of the squalor around the place. Enough said.

Misbehaviour was not an army monopoly. I missed the Dance or Draw where a wing commander took considerable advantage of the tipsy wife of a junior officer on the dance floor. My reliable witnesses said there was soon blood and snot everywhere. Our Met offices were next to the RAF Police HQ folk, but, according to them next morning, nothing untoward had happened. Move along, nothing to see here. Both officers were disappeared within 24 hours. Hearsay again.

I remained C Met O even though the RAF was drawing down; the army responsibilities remained and seemed to increase. Sadly the lovely well-kept grounds of the garrison began to be neglected and facilities reduced or closed. One dim memory of those days is a chance encounter with either Black Robertson or Rocky Goodall in Hannover airport: they had seemingly arrived from somewhere and their MT had not shown. I suppose that I had taken Joyce there to fly out, so was about to drive back to JHQ. Thus my only VSO car passenger, but I wish I could remember which. Perhaps it was two other people, or somewhere else …………

[MPN11]

Ah, memories of close-downs! Back in sunny Tengah, we spent a huge amount of Mess Funds on a Ball ... all entirely free at the point of consumption! The funds had been considered for building an Officers Mess swimming pool, but the intended rundown East of Suez rather scuppered that plan! So, on with Plan B ...

The Aussies flew in from Butterworth by Mirage, with wives travelling in the RAAF Dakotas. The croquet lawn was populated by assorted makan stalls from the City, imported for the occasion. The Dining Room fed the multitude more formally. Bands played in various corners, and the Gurkha Pipe Band demonstrated their skills with the Scottish Noise Device. I don't recall any misbehaviour, but then I might have been to pi**ed to notice!

[ICM]

Another part of the transition was a significant HQ RAFG disbandment parade - a grand event, plus Lunch, for which I was appointed escort to a charming female German politician. I'd not much to do for her attention was immediately taken up by several other German politicos, and I was told by a German officer that she was very highly regarded. That much was clear and, for the life of me, I cannot recall her name. (The Duke of Edinburgh was the Reviewing Officer that day, as I recall, and as there was to be a royal lunch, there had to be a practise version some days beforehand.). And thanks for mentioning that vast group photo as I'd quite forgotten about it, and never got a copy. (The closure of the HQ also meant the end of the CinC post being dual-hatted as Com2ATAF and, as I recall, that position then passed to a German officer.).

You mention the change of name for the RAF Officers' mess - something that had become inevitable with a reducing RAF presence. It was the largest of the Mess buildings at JHQ and to make it a joint Mess, negotiations with the Army were carried out at quite a high level, I believe, with the 'Churchill' name agreed upon as one that would offend neither Service. However, once it was known that was to happen, there was some pressure on the RAF side to find a portrait of the great man in RAF uniform and have it installed in the Mess foyer before the change took place - and that was duly accomplished. A few Army officers moved in, largely by choice, as there was still a second Army Mess that ran on for some time, I think, and I cannot possibly overlook the fact that, from 1 July 1993, the living-in officers of RAF Hospital, Wegberg, also joined us. The advent of lots of young PMRAFNS officers added considerably to Mess life, to put it mildly!

From 1 April 1993 we became HQ 2 Group within Strike Command but never quite forgot that we'd been a Command - and our demise was only ever a matter of time, particularly as we were reducing to just 2 main bases. In due course a LTC Savings Measure was proposed that would see the HQ close, and that was drafted at our end to ensure that a small civilian staff would remain to deal with Host Nation issues. How long that staff existed beyond April 1996, I've no idea.

[langleybaston]

ICM thank you. I know Wildenrath lost its MEDA status and then closed but cannot for the life of me remember the order of closing ....... was Bruggen last one standing?

[Bergerie1]

LB, Please give us some more words about the brilliant HHL.

[langleybaston]

LB, Please give us some more words about the brilliant HHL.

I cannot add much to the Obit that I signposted. At Climat in Harrow he just had a couple of very young [and naughty] men to help him. DB, my oppo, had French and Latin, I had French and German. In later life DB went to a very high grade in the Office for National Statistics. HHL was easy to work for, he kept things interesting and could explain his thought processes very well. In retrospect my early career was greatly influenced by two outstanding men, HHL and JS Sawyer.
I read the grubby evasions and buck passing in the current Post Office scandal and give thanks that, in my formative years, I was surrounded by gentlemen.

[langleybaston]

Inspections and anemometers

There were no “Instructions for Inspecting Officers”; an inspection had to be performed annually and report made to Defence branch. The geography of the Bawtry group of responsibility suggested three areas: north, essentially Flying Training, central, which could be managed by day trips, and south including Wyton and Marham. My first foray in the summer of 1981 was northwards: Church Fenton to arrive for morning briefing and leave late afternoon for Linton for a night stop, repeat, and again to Leeming. I always went with an expert observer, preferably him acting as driver.

Church Fenton was a joy. S Met O was a young woman, very competent and not afraid to give me a hard time where we disagreed. The office was rather like a Scout Hut, wood clad such that if the door slammed the barograph received an involuntary time mark. The staff seemed happy and confident, the various formats for output were completed correctly, and she put up the most junior forecaster to do the morning brief. This was a tight ship, and remained so. When I went to Leeds to open a weather centre in 1984 I was delighted to have the same CF S Met O posted there on promotion.

Linton was a profound disappointment, right from arriving at the Mess to find that S Met O [Mr H] had made no effort to arrange suitable accommodation. The students’ huge cardboard replica of a JP instrument layout was not welcome. The Mess found me an appropriate room. I went straight to morning brief next day, and the young man did well enough. He took me to the office and things went vertically downhill: H. gave me a pair of felt pads [bumpers?] to slide around on the highly polished floor. He proudly explained that “we do our own cleaning!” Told where he could stick the pads the inspection began.

In those days cloud base was measured by a nodding beam and by estimation, but the back-up was by balloon [hydrogen!] with a known rate of climb and a stop watch. My observer expert demanded a demonstration. The key to the H2 shed could not be found for several hours. It mattered not, the H2 bottle was empty.
Our attention wandered to the anemometer mast, near [too near] to the buildings. The standard international height for the instrument is 10 metres above level ground but Linton’s was clearly vertically challenged. “What correction do you apply?” [A mast not-too dwarfish, although not ideal, can have small speed corrections applied]. Corrections were there none. H. offered the incendiary thought that no previous inspection had found fault, so the mast was clearly kosher.

Being only 43 [and a good ten years younger than H.] and being by this stage a tad irate, I made a poor decision and decided to climb the mast [safe enough, but not expected from an inspector]. Clutching one end of a ball of HMSO string, I ascended to the top, my observer pulled the other end tightly to ground and marked it. Safely back on Terra Firma, I invited H. to confirm that he was over a metre deficient.

RAF Linton-on-Ouse had for many years been offered dodgy winds and gusts and dodgy directions from an anemo. which was too short, very badly sited and a disgrace.

Inspectors are bidden to end their report with some-such “ ……… I certify that to the best of my knowledge and belief the arrangements for the supply of Met. information do not present a hazard to aviation”. It was a close-run thing but I took the view that the station had assimilated the unknown shortcomings and made the declaration with a caveat.

Linton was thereafter subjected to 3-monthly visits, with a call on OC Flying in the programme. A replacement full-size mast was located and installed asap. But that is another story involving a Chinook. The story of the mad mast-climber preceded me round the group, but it failed to save Wyton from being unsure where their mast actually was; it was out of sight, out of mind.

One last point about anemos. Whereas the mast might be in a technically ideal position when erected, the creep of extra buildings and the growth of trees can lead to problems. These show themselves with big “gust ratios” where the gusts caused by eddies can be more than double what is taken to be the steady wind. One large civil airport had such a problem that I once refused to sign the no-hazard statement, despite pressure from my hierarchy and the CAA.
To complete the northern perambulation, on to Leeming, my old love. Well-managed by Gwyllym [?], the customers were happy, but S Met O had an itch to scratch. Apparently the studes had taken to urinating in the rain-gauge after a bender. An early example of taking the p1$$ I suppose.

[meleagertoo]

Gwyllym th Met? One such lectured we studes at Leeming in 1983 and very good he was too.
I wonder if this is the same chap?
ps. Not guilty re the rain gauge.

[Chugalug2]

Observations on observations.

I was there with one other assistant, led by the brilliant Hubert Horace Lamb. HH resigned from the Met Office on a matter of principal in 1940 to join the Irish service before returning in 1946 to do important work in the Antarctic. He was the epitome of the Agatha Christie eccentric gentleman; hairy but immaculate three-piece tweed suits, beautiful manners and a loud voice and laugh..

On a matter of principal? You can't just offer us that tantalising morsel without expanding on it further, LB. He quits the UK just as the Phoney War is done only for it to become a real one, decamps to 'neutral' Ireland, and doesn't return until the whole unfortunate misunderstanding is behind us. Or do I have it wrong? We must always remember that not everyone was behind Churchill's pugnacious defiance of German might. Many in high places in the Establishment included. Was he such, or did he have a more personal objection? Was he a Conscientious Objector and saw the inevitable militarisation of his beloved profession as a step too far? Or had he no such scruples and simply favoured Germany rather than we? He obviously had a brilliant mind at a time when too much thinking was at variance with the need to just keep buggering on.

More please...!

[ICM]

LB: To be honest, I can't recall exactly which of the 4 RAFG bases closed first and last. I think Wildenrath was first and imagine that Bruggen was last, but there must be others out there who were involved and could put the record straight. Part of my trouble is that, at the outset, the MOD Working Group on Options for Change presented RAFG with a proposal to close 2 bases, and the HQ Air Staff disagreed strongly with one and had to make a case for another. I was aware of all this but was not directly involved in the associated work. All 30+ years ago now!

[langleybaston]

On a matter of principal? You can't just offer us that tantalising morsel without expanding on it further, LB. He quits the UK just as the Phoney War is done only for it to become a real one, decamps to 'neutral' Ireland, and doesn't return until the whole unfortunate misunderstanding is behind us. Or do I have it wrong? We must always remember that not everyone was behind Churchill's pugnacious defiance of German might. Many in high places in the Establishment included. Was he such, or did he have a more personal objection? Was he a Conscientious Objector and saw the inevitable militarisation of his beloved profession as a step too far? Or had he no such scruples and simply favoured Germany rather than we? He obviously had a brilliant mind at a time when too much thinking was at variance with the need to just keep buggering on.

More please...!
Other than the Obit hyperlink quoted upstream, all I can add is that HH was said to be a Quaker. I rest my case, m'lud.

[langleybaston]

LB: To be honest, I can't recall exactly which of the 4 RAFG bases closed first and last. I think Wildenrath was first and imagine that Bruggen was last, but there must be others out there who were involved and could put the record straight. Part of my trouble is that, at the outset, the MOD Working Group on Options for Change presented RAFG with a proposal to close 2 bases, and the HQ Air Staff disagreed strongly with one and had to make a case for another. I was aware of all this but was not directly involved in the associated work. All 30+ years ago now!

Thank you very much

[langleybaston]

We interrupt this diatribe to bring any readers still awake the first contribution from the ex- Chief Met Officer Strike Command. More promised after his impending holiday.

THE MOBILE MET UNIT Part 1

LB asked me to write a few words about my time in the Mobile Met Unit. After applying to join the MMU, I was interviewed by OC MMU, a Wg Cdr Hastings at RAF Benson and then taken to the mess for lunch. I soon came to realise that the lunch was mostly liquid and that it was my drinking capacity and not any forecasting skills that was the deciding factor in my admission to this enigmatic unit. There were only about twelve to fifteen members at that time and mostly senior in age. I was commissioned in the Royal Air Force Reserve of Officers (Class CC) in the rank of flight lieutenant on 31 January 1975. In distinct contrast to those entering the MMU in recent years, there was no formal training and, more importantly, no medical! I did attend two training exercises at RAF Sculthorpe and at Halfar, a disused airfield in Malta.

LB became my manager in about 1981 and I’m not sure he even knew that I was a member of the MMU. He was a true professional and I admired his firm yet fair management skills. He pushed me for promotion when I was well-settled as S Met O RAF Marham. I was posted to RAF Shawbury as S Met O on 8th March 1982. This role was different in that we were responsible for teaching meteorology to CFS(Helicopters), QHIs, Air traffic controllers and ATC assistants. The courses were comprehensive and time-consuming and I was enjoying this new challenge whilst my wife was trying to sell our house in Norfolk.

Only 25 days after starting this new job, Argentinian forces invaded the Falkland Islands, South Georgia and other British South Atlantic territories. Almost immediately, I was put on 24 hours standby for South Georgia. I can remember driving home for a long weekend after our house sale had fallen through with a few planned tasks. I wanted to apply for a bridging loan from the Bank; to see our solicitor to arrange a Power of Attorney for him so that he and my wife could complete any house sale and purchase, and to check with my life insurance companies whether my insurances were valid going into a war zone. I can remember feeling more concern for my family than any personal dangers.

I was told to report to an army base in southern England (can’t remember where) to pick up cold weather gear for my trip to South Georgia. I had just been issued with the kit when a call from Bracknell informed me that the trip was off. I sometimes wondered how I would have been able to achieve reliable forecasting in such a desolate, wild and mountainous island as the lone MMU member. My only military training had been with the school cadet force! I must point out that, in more recent years, newly-recruited MMU staff have had to pass the stiff RAF Cranwell courses and had medicals. I now know that I would have travelled on the British destroyer HMS Antrim with the SAS and Royal Marines.

Of course, I was still destined for the South Atlantic and, with speedy work from our solicitor, I managed to move Pam and daughter, Marie, to their new Shrewsbury home just six days before leaving them. My son had been left in Norfolk to take his ‘O’ levels. The war had just finished when I left for the South Atlantic, promoted to squadron leader. Marie was in a new school, Pam sorting out her new house and trying to find her way around a strange town.

And so started a long period of detachments as S Met O RAF Stanley and Ascension. From June 1982 to end of March 1986, I spent over half of my time in the South Atlantic - 5 detachments to RAF Stanley of about 3 months each and 3 detachments to Ascension of 2 months each. Despite some recruiting, the MMU had limited numbers (a total of 14 MMU staff in the early months to cover both airfields) and we worked very long hours, never having a day off. It is interesting to note that when RAF Mount Pleasant was opened and staffed by Met Office civilians, there was over double the staff of those MMU who had worked at the then-closed RAF Stanley.

[langleybaston]

Gwyllym th Met? One such lectured we studes at Leeming in 1983 and very good he was too.
I wonder if this is the same chap?
ps. Not guilty re the rain gauge.

Yes, with a neat beard, great bloke.

[Rebus]

Gwyllym th Met? One such lectured we studes at Leeming in 1983 and very good he was too.
I wonder if this is the same chap?
ps. Not guilty re the rain gauge.
Sorry must be a typo but you missed the letters 'is' out of ps.

[Chugalug2]

Other than the Obit hyperlink quoted upstream, all I can add is that HH was said to be a Quaker. I rest my case, m'lud.

And therein of course is the clue. It seems that the issue in 1940 was that he was tasked with working on the met aspects of the spraying of war gas. Given the imminent fear of invasion this was possibly connected with the spraying of nerve gas (?) on the invasion beaches from any expendable aircraft (and pilots!) available, such as Tiger Moths. The desperation of such suicidal measures reminds us that the first line of defence didn't stop at the Novelty Rock Emporium of Walmington-on-Sea. The job of course was anathema to a conscientious objector, but it is a pity that HH couldn't have been kept on in other work. It rather depended on the extent of his beliefs of course, as all Met Office work was clearly now a part of the War Effort, but the UK lost the services of a brilliant brain just when it needed it most.

I'd add that though there were strong feelings pro and con the war in those early years (there was a story in the WWII pilot brevet thread wherein a young man in civvies, awaiting the call to report to Lords prior to basic training and embarking for flying training in the USA, was waiting for a bus in war torn Liverpool. A woman spotted him from the other side of the street, crossed it, approached him, and spat in his face, accusing him of being a malingerer, despite the small button hole badge he had been given to signify his status. It wasn't Danny but it could so easily have happened to him too). There was tolerance too. No less a person than Butch Harris had as Bomber Command Chaplain one Canon Collins, he of CND fame. His sermons bordered on insurrection but he was allowed to continue regaling Harris's Staff at the height of the Bombing Offensive that he was so opposed to. Speaking of Danny, it is ironic in the circumstances that he was put in charge of a unit doing aerial spraying trials in India prior to what was expected to be the very bloody invasion of Japan. Same job as in 1940, though this time we were to be the invaders. Saved by the bell, or rather the Bomb!

Here is the obituary for Professor H H Lamb, a man ahead of his time who so brilliantly forecast global warming by the in depth study of the past. Like Allan Turing, there were giants around in those days :-

Obituary: Professor H. H. Lamb | The Independent | The Independent (https://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/obituary-professor-h-h-lamb-1249739.html)
.

[langleybaston]

LB: To be honest, I can't recall exactly which of the 4 RAFG bases closed first and last. I think Wildenrath was first and imagine that Bruggen was last, but there must be others out there who were involved and could put the record straight. Part of my trouble is that, at the outset, the MOD Working Group on Options for Change presented RAFG with a proposal to close 2 bases, and the HQ Air Staff disagreed strongly with one and had to make a case for another. I was aware of all this but was not directly involved in the associated work. All 30+ years ago now!
Trigger warning. Rude anecdote.
The end of Wildenrath MEDA task was well celebrated there: I have the massive stein, surely 1 litre. [Yes, I have, but not recently].
Met RAFG wangled a coach to transport us. There was a disgraceful episode [my wife's version] or huge hilarity [all the blokes'] when, without a warning GAS GAS GAS! a very well-known and popular forecaster passed enough flatus to clear the back half of the bus.
The surviving men still wonder at the shock and awe when we meet to tell the same old tales.
As you do.

[ancientaviator62]

LB,
perhaps the greatest and certainly the most important met forecast in history is that provided by Group Captain Stagg for the Normandy landings. The pressure on him must have been immense and the consequences of getting it wrong would have been of strategic importance. Great skill and moral courage indeed.

[Hydromet]

LB, I'm enjoying these tales immensely. Your mention of the rain gauge reminded me of one place where I worked, where we were the official weather reporting station for the BoM. Twice a year (Cricket country week and local show day) the insurance company paid us to supply the rainfall total between particular hours on weekends. They could have paid our employer, who could bank it and pay one of us overtime, minus tax etc. Instead, our employer, very sensibly, simply endorsed the cheque to one of us, and the full amount (quite substantial for those days) went into our Christmas drinks fund. All we had to do was make sure the old Dines pluvi was working, read the chart on Monday and check the stored rain.

[deeceethree]

Your mention of the rain gauge reminded me of one place where I worked, where we were the official weather reporting station for the BoM.
All we had to do was make sure the old Dines pluvi was working, read the chart on Monday and check the stored rain.
Can Hydromet, or anyone else, educate me on the meanings of "BoM" and "Dines pluvi", please? I think the latter has something to do with rain, but other than that I am in the dark. Thanks.

[langleybaston]

Can Hydromet, or anyone else, educate me on the meanings of "BoM" and "Dines pluvi", please? I think the latter has something to do with rain, but other than that I am in the dark. Thanks.

Hydromet will be the expert, but my pennorth:

Jupiter pluvius the God of Rain [washing the car has the same effect]..
Pluvius Insurance can be purchased for an outdoor event .......... the insurers know the odds and price the product. Claims are assessed against official Met. readings.
I never used a Dines but, unlike a simple gauge, it measures rainfall rate rather than amount.
Standing by for education.

[Hydromet]

Spot on LB.

BoM = Bureau of Meteorology. Flying back from a conference in 2002 where the BoM had announced a significant amount of funding to other authorities, we were warned not to mention the "BoM money" at the airport or on the plane.

Dines pluvi = Dines brand pluviograph. When rain falls it goes into the catch and a small tank that has a float in it. As the tank fills, the float rises, driving a pen that writes a trace on a clock-driven chart. When the tank is almost full at a particular depth of rain, it tips and the contents syphon out. The tank then tips back, ready to fill up again. As LB said, they allow you to extract the rainfall rate (intensity) as well as the total amount.
I doubt that there would be many in use now. most rain gauges now are 'tipping bucket' type. Every 0.2 or 0.5 mm of rain, a little bucket shaped like two half-leaves tips and sends an impulse to a data logger. The water tipped from the buckets goes to a storage tank so the depth of rain can be checked.

[langleybaston]

LB,
perhaps the greatest and certainly the most important met forecast in history is that provided by Group Captain Stagg for the Normandy landings. The pressure on him must have been immense and the consequences of getting it wrong would have been of strategic importance. Great skill and moral courage indeed.

Yes, absolutely, what some might call balls of brass these days.

Interestingly the names spoken in reverent whispers were of CKM Douglas and Sverre Peterssen. Douglas retired just before I joined and was regarded as the best weather forecaster, day to day, in the business. Stagg was, I think, more of a diplomat, with British and USA opinions to reconcile.
I will attach part of an account centred on Douglas, OBE and AFC ....... ex fighter pilot!https://www.douglashistory.co.uk/history/Documents/Charles%20Kenneth%20Mackinnon%20Douglas.pdf

Meteorological events preceding and during the D-Day landings in France in June 1944 have been documented in Group Captain J. M. Stagg‟s book, Forecast for Overlord, and an account by Douglas himself was published in the Meteorological Magazine (1952). In 1943, Stagg was appointed Chief Meteorological Adviser to the Supreme Allied Expeditionary Force, and as such he became responsible for the forecast for the D-Day landings. Stagg‟s job was to give a comprehensive meteorological briefing as far ahead as possible, and he had to fuse together into a compatible report the frequently diverging perceptions of the leading British and American forecasters of the day (Ratcliffe 1994a). Also in 1943, Sverre Petterssen, the talented Norwegian meteorologist, was placed in charge of the upper-air unit at Dunstable, where Douglas himself became the senior forecaster in 1944. Vital information was regularly disseminated throughout the meteorological services of the British and American military formations, and Douglas‟s observations were rated highly over the years when Bomber Command‟s operations called for telephone conferences among responsible forecasting centres. Sverre Petterssen was to forecast five days ahead in general terms, using mainly information from the upper-air unit. Douglas, however, held the view that trying to forecast more than 3648 hours ahead, using the methods then available, constituted conjecture except in rare circumstances. The Americans, on the other hand, were already endeavouring to forecast six days ahead, largely by recourse to historical analogues. Stagg was faced with the unenviable task of presenting agreed meteorological forecasts between the American and British teams without bias, yet nevertheless from his own experience believing Douglas‟s views to be the most sound. The intense moment came with the forecasts leading up to the military landings on the Continent, which Ratcliffe (1994b) so aptly describes as “a meteorologic epic”. Stagg exercised tact and meteorological expertise of a high level, and he carried out his task in a highly commendable manner. But it was Douglas who was the key figure - the mastermind - behind the D-Day forecasts; ably supported by Petterssen, Douglas led the British team, and it was for this that he was awarded the OBE. The forecasters had displayed an international and inter-service approach which led to the success of the forecasts, and which was then considered the most important in the history of the world. Douglas‟s very demanding responsibilities during World War I1 caused him to behave sometimes in an odd manner, for Berson (1991) records that he would suddenly run twice around a double row of desks whilst on duty. B

[ancientaviator62]

LB,
yes I assumed that there would be a talented team in the background for the D Day and other essential forecasts. If it is not too great a thread drift, blown off course by these pesky cold winds how did they collect and collate all the required information ?

[eko4me]

Recalling above a tale of a move to the neutral Irish Free State, I believe it was a phone call to a western Irish lighthouse/meteorological station in the hours leading up to the landings that added the final and useful bit of data.

[langleybaston]

Recalling above a tale of a move to the neutral Irish Free State, I believe it was a phone call to a western Irish lighthouse/meteorological station in the hours leading up to the landings that added the final and useful bit of data.

Maybe, may well be, but I will quote K, my hard taskmaster and brilliant forecaster from Topcliffe days:

"The one thing guaranteed to bugger a carefully thought-through, logical and scientific forecast for Eastern England is one last check on Valentia's weather just to make sure".

To be sure, to be sure

[langleybaston]

LB,
yes I assumed that there would be a talented team in the background for the D Day and other essential forecasts. If it is not too great a thread drift, blown off course by these pesky cold winds how did they collect and collate all the required information ?

Apart from the obvious, we had a cell embedded in Bletchley Park with secure comms to Dunstable . I learned this only recently, very second hand. The leader was the brilliant but irascible Ernest Knighting, who had later an office in the same Dunstable block as my boss J S Sawyer. I was just round the corner.
I regret that EK and I were not on good terms, because I regarded him as a silly old fool, too fond of himself; he correctly had me down as a cocky young upstart.

If only I had known ........... the Met Office's own mini-Turing having lunch in the same canteen as LB. I once kippered his table.

EXTRACT FROM SOMEONE'S MEMOIRS if more info needed PM me to limit drift please.

When the IDA Unit had settled into a working routine, Philip Howse returned to Station X and his place was taken by E Knighting, a mathematics lecturer. Knighting spent some time during the summer of 1940 at Station X, learning the mysteries, and RW Gloyne, an aviation forecaster, took charge. When Knighting returned, Gloyne resumed forecasting and later left Dunstable. Knighting remained in charge until sometime in 1943, when he went onto other duties and was replaced by a WAAF officer. Both Knighting and Gloyne remained in the Met Office for the rest of their careers. The IDA Unit took over all the routine decoding, whilst the staff at Station X, under Dr McVittie, continued to provide the keys to decoding and keep them up to date. As the work increased, so did the staff. Three original members went to Station X and very gradually most of the male staff were replaced by civilian females and WAAFs. Three women university graduates, Maud Collard, Molly Jarman and Hilary Ratcliffe, joined Tom Hart to be the Unit’s supervisors. Each supervisor had one experienced assistant, who took over to cover the absence of the supervisor on leave or sick

[langleybaston]

Back to Met. soon: barometers and altimeters and goings-on.

[Union Jack]

Recalling above a tale of a move to the neutral Irish Free State, I believe it was a phone call to a western Irish lighthouse/meteorological station in the hours leading up to the landings that added the final and useful bit of data.

Following which the lady concerned enjoyed an impressively long life, as recorded by the BBC (https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/czkjr34r2zzo) :ok:

Jack

[ancientaviator62]

LB,
many thanks. I look forward to your next personal post. I have an amateur interest in met as for the time we have lived in this house (20 years) we have recorded the daily pressure and temperature.

[Warmtoast]

LB
Slightly off key, but to do with weather forecasting.
In 1958 I was at RAF Gan and we had a couple of weather assistants. One of their daily tasks was to inflate a weather balloon, launch it as shown below, take the readings (angles) with a theodolite and pass the details back to RAF Negombo (Katunayake) for their forecaster to include the wind directions and speed at different heights in their forecasts.
Passed on FWIW

https://cimg3.ibsrv.net/gimg/pprune.org-vbulletin/442x640/met_baloon_b6301f3bbf9b00ad720727e156fd54e6f524dd20.jpg


https://cimg8.ibsrv.net/gimg/pprune.org-vbulletin/439x641/met_baloon_tracking_bbed83a543c69c46b4f5cf26888a7105f27ef409 .jpg

[langleybaston]

Balloons were either red, blue or white according to a judgement on cloud amount, cirrus especially. Flights at night tracked a suspended candle lantern under the hydrogen balloon. Elfansafety had not been invented ............. singed eyebrows and moustatches did occur.

The second photo illustrates a high skill, much valued. The observer has a special slide rule dangling on string round his neck and he computes wind speed and direction in real time as he tracks the balloon. Thus the complete message is ready for oven as soon as the balloon is lost or bursts.

Like most of my generation I prided myself to be able to do every job of all the grades below, but not what that lad is doing. Top Marks.

[Chugalug2]

If only I had known ........... the Met Office's own mini-Turing having lunch in the same canteen as LB. I once kippered his table.

In the absence of AT, could we have it decoded please? Something to do with enveloping the table in question with cigarette smoke perhaps?

[1859sqn]

I envisaged a kipper nailed underneath to produce a ripe smell.....

[langleybaston]

I envisaged a kipper nailed underneath to produce a ripe smell.....
Correct.
The procedure followed [gang of 4 young blokes, girl friend accomplices]

Purchase copy of the Times newspaper [to dignify proceedings]
Purchase pair kippers, retain one for reserve,
Obtain supply office drawing pins, robust style.
Dry run without kipper D minus 1, pinning a couple of pages under the table
Comit deed on D Day, using a few female friends in skirts to mill around the table, and the heel of a shoe to bang in the pins.
Check security with compact mirror D plus 1
Use the other canteen thereafter.

and I commend it to the House.
PS also works with orange peel.

[deeceethree]

Thanks to langleybaston and Hydromet for answering my questions! 👍🏻

[Hydromet]

Thanks to langleybaston and Hydromet for answering my questions! 👍🏻
Sorry for lapsing into jargon.

[Warmtoast]

Camping in Holland
LanglyBastion was at JHQ Rheindahlen about the same time as me (1972 – 1975) I think, and as a weather man may well have been the weather man whose advice I sought when I took the family on our first camping trip into Holland whilst stationed in Germany.
Having bought a family sized tent and erected it in the garden of our Married Quarter to see how it worked etc. we planned to go on our first camping trip into Holland for a long weekend and I sought telephone advice from JHQ’s weather centre as to what the weather would be like for that weekend. Advice (possibly from LB?) was that it would be hot with a possibility of thunder storms later. Nothing daunted we went off to a camping site over the boarder in Holland. Having got there, erected the tent and enjoying the warm and sunny weather we enjoyed our first evening meal we put the kids to bed whilst wife and I had a drink or two and retired only to be woken at about 1 o’clock in the morning by the fiercest and scariest thunder storm I’ve ever been in – it was frightening with lightning flashing and thunder cracking just overhead whilst it absolutely pelted down with rain. Eventually in the small hours of the morning it all abated and we went outside to see what damage if any it had caused – apart from a flooded floor and a some strained guy-ropes we were all OK. Nearly everyone else camping at the site was doing the same and we got chatting to out neighbours who were checking their tents too. With the storm gone the next couple of days were lovely and we enjoyed the site’s facilities and socialised with out newly found friends who’d endured the terrors of the storm.
I don’t remember the name of the camping site, but did take some photos of what it was like and remember it as being very well ordered with plenty of facilities – so happy memories of a memorable week-end – after that we were hooked and caught the camping bug and from then onwards we joined the Rheindahlen Camping and Caravan Club and regularly went camping at the weekends, not only in Holland but in Germany too whilst for the longer holidays we headed south to Italy near Venice – wonderful memories.
A couple of photos recording our fist camping trip in Holland, sadly I cannot recall the name of the place.

LB if you think this is too much to add to your memories let me know and I’ll delete.
WT

http://i145.photobucket.com/albums/r231/thawes/BFG%20Volvo/Efterling%202_800x532_zpsntysocdy.jpg


http://i145.photobucket.com/albums/r231/thawes/BFG%20Volvo/Efterling%203_800x532_zps95ihwjri.jpg


http://i145.photobucket.com/albums/r231/thawes/BFG%20Volvo/Efterling%205_800x532_zpsxi3ecwvm.jpg


http://i145.photobucket.com/albums/r231/thawes/BFG%20Volvo/Efterling%206_800x532_zpsejpzfddy.jpg


http://i145.photobucket.com/albums/r231/thawes/BFG%20Volvo/Efterling%201_800x532_zpsnsaemhab.jpg

[langleybaston]

Part of life's rich tapestry!

[langleybaston]

Barometers and other mysteries.

For the first half of my career we used the beautiful and dangerous mercury barometers to measure atmospheric pressure. This coincided with a period of increasing use of radar altimeters by the military............ but I don't want to converge on airmanship so will let that rest.
Essentially, mercury was used because it is liquid and dense: much simpler and less prone to error than a column of water about 30 feet high. Thus the elegant [and poisonous] standard column of mercury which balanced atmospheric pressure and was attached to the Met. office wall near the observer. In old money [my currency] only about 30 inches of mercury are needed in the standard bore, and the calibration was in millibars [themselves now defunct], whereby the international standard for sea level was 1013.25 mb. So far, so good, but mercury expands with rising temperature and Met. offices are not often exactly at sea level. Corrections were needed.

Picture now the U Boat commander at the periscope ...... up periscope, push cap peak to rear, and crouch. Thus also the rookie observer at his new office, about to read the attached thermometer [see above] and then carefully read the height of mercury, allowing, as taught, for the meniscus. At which stage he is in the ideal posture to be goosed, and usually was. At Gutersloh, such was the hazard, that the standard tactic was to read with back to wall, and upside down.

Joking apart, pressure reading was emphasised as a very serious business: from a very early stage in training all observers were brainwashed to understand that one millibar error in reading or transmitting was about 26 feet of error on an altimeter AND COULD CAUSE A CRASH.
As a result of some serious errors [a little before my time] the Office instituted a very sensible running check board ........... before any mucking about with QFE QFF or QNH the observer was required to log his temperature-corrected hourly pressure reading in a time sequence on the observation desk. Errors of one mb or ten mb were commonest, and they stuck out like the scrotum on a Boxer dog. One mb in an hour was indeed possible, but only in rapidly changing weather, of which the observer was well aware ............ observations are not conducted in an information vacuum. So important was the matter regarded that the duty forecaster was required to check the check if flying was in progress.

Next: aneroid barometers and the barograph.

[hoodie]

... Group Captain Stagg for the Normandy landings. The pressure on him must have been immense ...
There's an excellent play from a few years ago, appropriately titled "Pressure", that deals with many of the elements* mentioned in this thread:

The professional disagreements between US and UK forecasters, the slip from 5th to 6th June, Stagg's moral strength- and even the little old lady in Ireland.

Its author is David Haig, better known as an actor, and is well worth looking out for if it's ever revived (or filmed).

I've come back to edit this post since I see the play is on in St Albans (Abbey Theatre) from 7-15 June (https://www.abbeytheatre.org.uk/whats-on/pressure/).

Thanks, LB, for an excellent thread.


*Sorry.

[Hydromet]

LB, our instrument shop was using a Hg barometer for calibrating our other instruments right up to my retirement about 20 years ago. All other Hg instruments were gone.
One that we had used was a USGS servo-manometer, in which one arm of a manometer was connected to the back pressure of a gas bubbled to an outlet in the river, while the other arm held a Hg reservoir with a float switch. a change in water level resulted in a rise or fall in the Hg in the other arm. The float switch would activate a servo motor to raise or lower the reservoir to the null position, and also drive a pen across a chart recorder. The constant flow, constant pressure gas regulators had to be adjusted in a particular sequence, and inevitably, there were times when they weren't, resulting in an expensive and dangerous mercury spill.

[morton]

Your saying about Barometers has dredged up some long forgotten memories. I was posted to 390 Maintenance Unit at RAF Seletar in 1969. The beauty of working at the MU was that I saw all the different types of jobs done at all the bases on the Island. As a singly LAC I think I was the original ‘Spare’ that could be sent off at a moments notice to temporarily fill manning shortages.

One time I was detached across to Tengah and worked in the Instrument Bay on Pitot-Static Instruments. The facility allowed deep stripping and calibration of the Instruments. I still remember using a Cassella Barometer and having to correct for London Laboratory conditions - If it’s hot (above London Lab), drop it (subtract the correction)! 74 Squadron Lightnings doing vertical climbs nearby were a bit of a distraction though. Happy days.

[Chugalug2]

There's an excellent play from a few years ago, appropriately titled "Pressure", that deals with many of the elements* mentioned in this thread:

The professional disagreements between US and UK forecasters, the slip from 5th to 6th June, Stagg's moral strength- and even the little old lady in Ireland.

Its author is David Haig, better known as an actor, and is well worth looking out for if it's ever revived (or filmed).

I've come back to edit this post since I see the play is on in St Albans (Abbey Theatre) from 7-15 June (https://www.abbeytheatre.org.uk/whats-on/pressure/).

Thanks, LB, for an excellent thread.


*Sorry.
There are various excerpts showing on YouTube. Here is one of them :-

Pressure (youtube.com)

[1066]

LB Excellent thread. Thanks for all your knowledge and memories. I've praised the MMU;s elsewhere for their service to the early Airbridge crews in the S Atlantic.

If its not too much of a thread drift I'd love to hear your thoughts on when our TV forecasts started referring to the jet stream as the reason for our weather patterns in the UK.
At Oakington in 1968 us multi engine types who were going to fly all over the world were taught that, in the Northern Hemisphere the jet stream was located as a consequence of the surface fronts.
Up the back of the cold front, over the top of the depression and down in front of the warm front. By the 1990s, by now with BA, I was night stopping on US east coast 4 or 5 times a month and the TV forecasts there were always talking about the jet stream indicating that the jet drove the position of the surface fronts. Much the same as TV forecasts do here now. A case of chicken and egg?
Love to hear your thoughts on this.

1066

[NutLoose]

Balloons were either red, blue or white according to a judgement on cloud amount, cirrus especially. Flights at night tracked a suspended candle lantern under the hydrogen balloon. Elfansafety had not been invented ............. singed eyebrows and moustatches did occur.

The second photo illustrates a high skill, much valued. The observer has a special slide rule dangling on string round his neck and he computes wind speed and direction in real time as he tracks the balloon. Thus the complete message is ready for oven as soon as the balloon is lost or bursts.

Like most of my generation I prided myself to be able to do every job of all the grades below, but not what that lad is doing. Top Marks.

When we got the first Chinooks, on engine airtests we required accurate readings for the OAT, this was done initially with a thermometer tied to a long pole, but there were concerns that one, it was mercury and that does not mix with aircraft structures ( we already had one breakage and an aircraft down for a significant time while it was rectified. ) and two, with the down draught it wouldn't be accurate, so we phone ODI met office for the temps at various heights..

All went well until one day we realised what the Met was telling us was wildly different to what we were seeing. Enquiring where he got his figures from he said it depended where they had launched a balloon and the figures he gave us were from Manchester! :ugh:


..

[langleybaston]

When we got the first Chinooks, on engine airtests we required accurate readings for the OAT, this was done initially with a thermometer tied to a long pole, but there were concerns that one, it was mercury and that does not mix with aircraft structures ( we already had one breakage and an aircraft down for a significant time while it was rectified. ) and two, with the down draught it wouldn't be accurate, so we phone ODI met office for the temps at various heights..

All went well until one day we realised what the Met was telling us was wildly different to what we were seeing. Enquiring where he got his figures from he said it depended where they had launched a baloon and the figures he gave us were from Manchester! :ugh:

Sorry that you received bolleaux from ODI ............ I was only S Met O's boss 1996-7 so probably off the hook.
The detailed upper air temperature and wind measurements were highly specialised launches from a network of about ten UK stations, and tracked to great heights with accuracy. A trained operator would spot anomalies without any problems.
I think your request should have been properly tasked officially because interpretation of the patterns was a highly-skilled job. Time of day needed for the forecast mattered a great deal for the levels at which rotary fly, and the interpolation between these "radio-sonde flights" depended also on winds and changing situations: a midnight launch from 100 miles away totally useless for 1100 flying.

I only inspected ODI a couple of times; S Met O was very worried about my possible reaction to his "improvements" to the Met. instrument enclosure. He had imported garden gnome figures, one of which was fishing in the rain gauge, and others doing sundry little jobs. Highly irregular, reprehensible, showing a lack of seriousness and bloody hilarious.
No worries O.B., but if the Director General visits, please get Snow White to take her lads away for the day.

[langleybaston]

LB Excellent thread. Thanks for all your knowledge and memories. I've praised the MMU;s elsewhere for their service to the early Airbridge crews in the S Atlantic.

If its not too much of a thread drift I'd love to hear your thoughts on when our TV forecasts started referring to the jet stream as the reason for our weather patterns in the UK.
At Oakington in 1968 us multi engine types who were going to fly all over the world were taught that, in the Northern Hemisphere the jet stream was located as a consequence of the surface fronts.
Up the back of the cold front, over the top of the depression and down in front of the warm front. By the 1990s, by now with BA, I was night stopping on US east coast 4 or 5 times a month and the TV forecasts there were always talking about the jet stream indicating that the jet drove the position of the surface fronts. Much the same as TV forecasts do here now. A case of chicken and egg?
Love to hear your thoughts on this.

1066

Big question. Both explanations are simplistic, they are "models" to aid understanding. Consider the earth/ oceans/ ice caps and rotation of the earth as a dynamic system. There are usually 4 or 5 massive upper-air wave peaks and troughs girdling the N hemisphere, and they tend to drift eastwards with development happening as well as movement. Sometimes the stately "long waves" get stuck, sometimes they reduce to 3, sometimes the tops or bottoms cut off, sometimes the contrasts driving them weaken, sometimes strengthen.
I don't think that answers the point but the weather we experience is a consequence of dynamic interactions of heating/ cooling from below, friction, turbulence, sea temperature discontinuities ........... I could go on. And then the fiendish consequences of H2O existing in three phases with heat exchanges as it changes state.
I used to be indecisive but now I'm not so sure.

[langleybaston]

Barographs

The barograph sat [sits?] in its handsome glass case, with the pressure vessel gently expanding and contracting, and the drum with chart gently turning. Driven by clockwork, and the ink on the pen a little fiddly to maintain, it is a good indicator of the ups and downs of pressure, and a poor measure of absolute values. One of my pleasant occasional extamural tasks was to visit long-serving amateur observers, ships' captains etc, to present them with such a gift from the Office.
When our operation in BFG was winding down, several VSOs who had shown no interest whatsoever in Met. began to place markers for the barograph that sat on my shelf. No way. I was granted authority to shred the shreddables, bin the binnables, and write off as 'unserviceable, worn out, beyond reasonable repair' any instruments remaining. It was that or it went down with the Atlantic Conveyor.
Last man standing Met 1 left Germany with my blessing and with the barograph. To this day his widow maintains it continuously.

[langleybaston]

Precision aneroid barometer.

These were a joy to behold .......... simple read out, instant result, no interpolation or corrections, portable. The official issue was two.

The snag? Rather like owning two watches ...... if they agree, fine, if not, what to do? Thus a wise S Met O contrived to have three under his roof; if two agreed to 0.1 mb, go for it, and send the third one to the Instruments calibrators at Bracknell, pretending it was the second of two, and thus urgent.

They also obviated the lurking danger of mercury. What follows is hearsay and has lost nothing in the telling, but in essence is true. Our College at Shinfield in the lovely old RAF wartime building also taught technicians, without whom we would have become useless.
On one infamous occasion, very early in the course, and very early in the day after a heavy evening, a trainee must have missed the warning about mercury and its hazards and properties. Nevertheless our hero roused himself to catch up and began the stripping of his allocated barometer.
"All the little ball-bearings have dropped out on the floor!"

[langleybaston]

All good things come to an end.

Retirement date with full pension would be 8th May 1997. In 1994 we were still enjoying the perks of service life in BFG but it seemed wise to jump before I was pushed. I organised an inspection tour for our Director-General with full participation of the AOC and staff which was well received. As a bonus, the official big black car was driven by an armed army corporal [not sure why army, but that is what it was] and sat beside him with the gaffer in the back. The driver was trained in defensive driving and whenever the head man was absent I learned a great deal. My pitch to the boss was that I could look after Germany and a swathe of southern England from the UK, saving an expensive post and demonstrating our willingness to run down in formation with the customers. There were no possible staffing economies at the airfields until they closed, staffing was already very lean. My deputy was now treble-hatted: Deputy, Wg Cdr MMU Germany, and S Met O ARRC, doing several detachments.

Joyce was not enamoured with an early exit but when we did a recce for house buying in Lincolnshire we fell on our feet and bought a dream home in a village with two pubs [the second pub was an insurance in case one burned down, and sure enough it did.

Brize next.

[MightyGem]

Much enjoying your tales, LB. We were definitely spoiled in the Military, with our ability to easily talk to "our" local met men. I left the AAC back in 1997 and got a job flying for the Merseyside Police. Not long after I started, I turned up for the night shift with the weather absolutely nothing like the forecast. OK. I'll phone the duty forecaster at the airport. That turned out to be Manchester, and my request to speak to the forecaster was met with a puzzled "you want to do what?"

I can't remember the exact conversation(it was 25 years ago), but he wasn't particularly helpful and I got the impression that my call wasn't particularly welcome.

[langleybaston]

Much enjoying your tales, LB. We were definitely spoiled in the Military, with our ability to easily talk to "our" local met men. I left the AAC back in 1997 and got a job flying for the Merseyside Police. Not long after I started, I turned up for the night shift with the weather absolutely nothing like the forecast. OK. I'll phone the duty forecaster at the airport. That turned out to be Manchester, and my request to speak to the forecaster was met with a puzzled "you want to do what?"

I can't remember the exact conversation(it was 25 years ago), but he wasn't particularly helpful and I got the impression that my call wasn't particularly welcome.

I only endured the civil side for about five years [seemed like ten]. Once upon a time there were major weather centres in London, Norwich, Southampton, Plymouth, Cardiff, Bristol, Nottingham, Leeds, Newcastle, Manchester and Aberdeen [I think I missed a Scottish one] together with observers and forecasters at the major airports. Much of the service was free and then became squeezed.
The commercialisation drive of the 1980s withdrew all Met Office folk from airports, leaving Obs to ATC staff and forecasts to central provision, for a fee if bespoke. Next the weather centres closed. My stints were Leeds and Cardiff, with a big part of the job inspecting Met. provision at airports. There was huge resentment and opposition wherever I went. Swansea nearly came to blows, as did Humberside. SATCOs did not want the responsibility and resented being told to adhere to the rules. I always took a gopher, the best and fiercist was an ex-RN Petty Officer, a brilliant driver owning a vintage MG.
How glad I was when the boss rang me at Cardiff and offered BFG: "have passport will travel!"

[Krystal n chips]

Barographs

The barograph sat [sits?] in its handsome glass case, with the pressure vessel gently expanding and contracting, and the drum with chart gently turning. Driven by clockwork, and the ink on the pen a little fiddly to maintain, it is a good indicator of the ups and downs of pressure, and a poor measure of absolute values. One of my pleasant occasional extamural tasks was to visit long-serving amateur observers, ships' captains etc, to present them with such a gift from the Office.
When our operation in BFG was winding down, several VSOs who had shown no interest whatsoever in Met. began to place markers for the barograph that sat on my shelf. No way. I was granted authority to shred the shreddables, bin the binnables, and write off as 'unserviceable, worn out, beyond reasonable repair' any instruments remaining. It was that or it went down with the Atlantic Conveyor.
Last man standing Met 1 left Germany with my blessing and with the barograph. To this day his widow maintains it continuously.

About this pristine barograph and the ink.

All you have to do is smoke the foil with whatever source of acrid black smoke you can find, choking optional, and the pointy bit will then scratch out a nice graph for you. If it's really interesting, remove trace and spray with hair lacquer, choking again optional

Seen more than one disappointed face when proudly making a claim after landing only to be advised, usually with an unsympathetic "smile", alas, it wasn't switched on.

[lederhosen]

Those were the days! I remember driving into Bicester town centre having been told by Andy Gough the legendary CFI to buy a can of the stickiest hairspray I could find. These days downloading your flight from your LX or whatever and then comparing it on the internet with what others did is a different world.

There are things in aviation that barely change over decades and things like remote towers or the demise of face to face briefings from Met etc. that are unrecognizable.

[blind pew]

In the 70s the daily telegraph sponsored uk gliding..there was a character who was a member of airways gliding club, an organisation which was under the umbrella of the two corporations, who achieved a world record for gain of height. The telegraph carried the article which included his description of the flight and so called facial burns from the oxygen mask. He told the story of climbing in a thunderstorm then soaring in wave several thousand feet above its top in wave. I had flown up to Glasgow and back in a Trident that day and whilst there were thunderstorms they were nowhere as tall as he described.
Turned out it was a “tall” story as the barograph trace was examined by forensics and discovered he had used a divider to scratch the sooted aluminium graph. IIRC that sounded the death knolls for the sponsorship.

[langleybaston]

My mother said "cheats never prosper!". Some do, some don't.
One loser was an observer at Idris or El Adem or another along the N African coast. He decided the weather was set fair so headed for the fleshpots leaving 24 hours' worth of hourly obs in the hands of his mate the telegraphist. It was a nice logical sequence of all the variables ...... a day in the life of.
His mate sent the lot all together and himself headed to the fleshpots.

The above story was fresh at RAF Nicosia in 1961.

Then there was the forecaster who sh@t on the rest of us at Nicosia. RAF transport flights to Aden and the Gulf were allowed to take and return a forecaster as a Fam flight: familiarisation of a route for which we provided Met. The idea was to buy watches, cameras and the like, with little or no Cypriot Customs interest. On one such return flight the captain was tipped off that Customs would be heavy handed. The pax were thus advised to declare everything, knowing that the import duties were not harsh anyway. My dear colleague Mr G reckoned the whole thing was a bluff. Declared nothing. He had a Bolex cine camera, a genuine Rolex, a camera, perfume, the lot. All confiscated. Customs then applied maximum duties on all the crew goodies.

Group Captain Mickey Martin went apesh1t and forbade Fam. flights thereafter. LB was next in line for the trip. The subsequent horizontal career trajectory of Mr G confirmed that he was an idiot.

[Quietplease]

You were lucky to miss that trip. I did it once, a couple of hours in a Dormobile from Akrotiri then an eternity in the Hastings, Nicosia-El Adem- Khartoum- Aden.
As regular visitors to Aden there was always a long shopping list and pre SBA no customs. After independence a couple of UK Customs appeared at Akrotiri. It was funny how ATC were always quite slow to tell them of our arrival and there would be nothing to see when they made it to our dispersal.
We always had numerous large cans of undeveloped film with TS sortie numbers which had to go urgently to the photo section. Not all of them would contain film.
We would go on from Aden to Eastleigh where the locals looked after us very well. The SATCO asked us if we could get him a camera next time we were there.
Better than that you can get it yourself. By a pure coincidence we might find that film stocks here are running low so a quick day trip to Aden is necessary. Spare jump seat if you want it tomorrow. One very happy customer.

[Bergerie1]

LB,

Thank you so much for a brilliant thread. Here is David Haig the writer and actor talking about writing the play 'Pressure'. Not only is it relevant to this subject but it is also revealing about the craft of writing. I think you will enjoy it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CraZVVVrzJI

[B Fraser]

No worries O.B., but if the Director General visits, please get Snow White to take her lads away for the day.

There was a collection of gnomes over at Heathrow if you knew where to look.

[langleybaston]

Brize, Southern England and BFG.

Be careful what you wish for!

Living in Lincolnshire and stationed at Brize for a couple of years was not ideal but I was granted very good accommodation in the Mess and often worked a four-day week by virtue of taking leave ........... major family holidays were put on hold pro tem, all four offspring had flown the nest.

I was never sure about the job title and I think settled for P Met O Brize Norton. The geographical fact was substantial. I expect I will forget one, but here goes:
St Mawgan, Boscombe Down, Larkhill, Lyneham, Brize Norton, Middle Wallop AAC, Benson, Odiham, Northolt, Manston, JHQ Rheindahlen, and the remaining RAFG plus Detmold AAC. There were a few additional commitments for such as Porton Down and Aldermarston.
I should have asked for a pay rise.
What I did get was a hire car whenever I was visiting anywhere.

There were three very good offices: Lyneham, Middle Wallop and Odiham, led by energetic S Met Os and with big tasks that they enjoyed achieving. Most weeks I managed at least one visit, some weeks two could be squeezed in. The staff reporting structure was such that every S Met O had to be reported on at length, and all of his/her forecasters needed to be interviewed as part of the second tier. To do the folk justice, at least two visits each year had to be arranged. This was over and above a formal inspection day. Satnav had NOT been introduced.
Germany was no problem, with an excellent deputy on site and a few AFCENT/NATO meetings in Berlin and SHAPE to attend it was manageable. Using the car, Asbach and Sekt stocks were kept up.

Just when I thought that I had seen everything, we had a paedophile discovered among us, which caused a lot of grief.

Mess life was comfortable other than the fact that heating was off on the last day of March, and not back on until November ....... if it was serviceable. Most residents bought an electric heater so the net saving was probably minimal.

Hitherto all Met. staff of officer status had been allowed military Mess facilities at advantageous rates. This benefitted the individual and surely also the service in terms of liaison and mutual understanding. However the rules changed at MOD level, attached civilians' Messing became much more costly, and the sums added up to claiming full subsistence for the first time and taking a room in a pub. Everyone was a loser. After a few weeks of this I attempted to resign, having achieved max pension but with a year to serve before being able to take it.

The law of unintended consequences

[langleybaston]

There was a collection of gnomes over at Heathrow if you knew where to look.

Was Peter Jackson there with you? He had some wonderful Heathrow Met. tales to tell.

[Nugget90]

Met Instruments - Transmissometers

Although several of the met instruments used in forecasting have been mentioned, another that might be recalled is the transmissometer, a device used to assist with the calculation of horizontal visual range. For anyone who hasn't seen this equipment, essentially it consists of two tubes mounted horizontally about two metres above the ground, each facing the other some 10 metres apart. Through one tube a beam of energy, usually a laser, is sent to be received by the opposing tube where the amount of energy that has been lost in transition (eg through mist, fog, precipitation, etc) can be measured and the results used in calculations.

In the mid 1970s I was involved with the Blind Landing Experimental Unit at the Royal Aircraft Establishment at Bedford where we would fly an HS748, specially instrumented, in what was called "Fog Flying" in order to obtain results that could be used to assist with various experiments, one of which was the aim of finding an accurate means of determining slant visual range. This was where the horizontal visual range provided by the transmissometer played an essential part. And obviously our scientists needed accurate readings. Often during the season when fog was likely to form the equipment at Bedford would be left on overnight to obtain a record of visibilities arising on the aerodrome.

However, all too often an otherwise steady reading would precipitously drop to zero, and for no obvious reason. Anyway, one night an enthusiastic and inquisitive met officer stayed up to see if the cause could be determined, and his keen attention paid off. What he observed was the arrival in the middle of the night of a Little Owl that landed on the lower lip of the transmitting tube, inserted himself within it, and snuggled down such that he received a constant supply of warmth from the laser transmitter!

Problem solved!

[blind pew]

My last crowd allowed us to ignore transmissometer readings if we suspected them to be accurate which allowed me to get home one night watching a cat 2 hand flown approach.
In the mid 70s we were the last aircraft to depart Heathrow with a layer of fog which extended from ground level to about a foot above the instrument which we could see; gin clear above and no problem to see the runway lights but we needed a take off alternate as my then employer didn’t allowed us to ignore them.

[Bunker Shot]

Horizontal visual range finding takes me back to theheady 'Tankers Only' days at Marham in the mid-70s and the arrival of the 4 B-52s and accompanying staff for EXERCISE GIANT VOICE (B-52s vs Vulcans Bombing Competition). The accompanying staff included a small (uniformed?) met contingent who were shoe-horned into the met office and allocated a desk and a window. As I remember it, horizontal visual range was determined by looking out of the window and then consulting a panoramic photograph that ran the length of the windows where various local landmarks - church spires, masts, Wissington sugar beet factory etc, were annotated with the range from the met office. The keen USAF met team began setting up shop and one of the first things they decided to do was to clean their duty window inside and out until it gleamed, unlike the the rest of the met office windows. On arriving the following morning the USAF team were somewhat surprised to find their allocated window had been annotated in chinagraph top and bottom "FOR OFFICIAL USAF USE ONLY'!

As an aside, the tanker squadrons each hosted one of the B-52 crews - I assume the OCU may have hosted the fourth crew - and after landing 'our crew' were escorted to the crew room to meet 'the chaps'.

"How do you take your coffee?" Asked our co-pilot of the BUFF captain.

"Without cream." He replied.

Co-pilot opens fridge, peers inside and replies, "We haven't got any cream, will you take it without milk?"

It may have been the strange accent, but the question somehow went right over their heads, while the Brits politely kept a straight face.

[biscuit74]

In the 70s the daily telegraph sponsored uk gliding..there was a character who was a member of airways gliding club, an organisation which was under the umbrella of the two corporations, who achieved a world record for gain of height. The telegraph carried the article which included his description of the flight and so called facial burns from the oxygen mask. He told the story of climbing in a thunderstorm then soaring in wave several thousand feet above its top in wave. I had flown up to Glasgow and back in a Trident that day and whilst there were thunderstorms they were nowhere as tall as he described.
Turned out it was a “tall” story as the barograph trace was examined by forensics and discovered he had used a divider to scratch the sooted aluminium graph. IIRC that sounded the death knolls for the sponsorship.

I remember that tall story. I seem to recall it was the second dubious height claim by the same character. After that second event, very careful analysis of the earlier claim showed that it could not have happened as traced, without time running backwards. It is believed that trace was produced in a pressure chamber. The height record claim was disallowed.

[langleybaston]

The BLEU films were shown as routine to all courses at Shinfield. Very very impressive ......... gasps from the audience as, at last, the runway was seen.
However I confess to being somewhat of a Luddite regarding transmissometers and Laser Cloud Base Recorders as the way to go. However, that ship has sailed and the future started 30 years ago.

I fear that in my case the perfect is the enemy of the good, and the modern standards for almost everything are "just good enough, and the lowest tender".

Every year the Met Office held a C and P Met O Conference ........ also a fair number at SPSO level and a few of the great and the good with THIS YEAR'S GREAT IDEA.. In my opinion PSO level is what really drives an organisation: young enough to remember what it was like, old enough to be wise, senior enough to push through reform. The Conference dealing with The Last Days of the Observer had the Director of Ops preaching the Gospel of transmissometers and Laser Cloud Base Recorders on every airfield, military and civil. I was senior enough to dare to be outspoken. Big White Chief in Red, as his face grew increasingly red.
"Please sir how many of each instrument would you use?"
"One of each!"
"Where would you put them?
"Probably near the threshold, in consultation"
"Which threshold?"
"Possibly one at each if needs be"
"A lot of airfields have a second runway"
"How about cloud amount in broken low cloud?
"Where would you put transmissometers?
"LB, its a matter of economy ........... a few instruments will pay for themselves many times over if we do not use observers."
[LB senses that his next posting might be Belfast or Stanley].
"Thank you". BOLLOCKS

There is no substitute for the trained, long-serving and diligent observer. He/she knows where fog lurks in the dips, knows where a little uplift will magic 4/8 very low stratus in no time at all, and is willing to nip upstairs to ATC for a better look. ATC in turn will delight in seeing a hazard before the observer.

To summarise, I know when I am beaten. If the service is good enough for the customer, and/or is all the customer is willing to pay for, that is the way to go.
Nostalgia is not what it used to be.

next: LB invents WFH

[1066]

LB
I don't know if your description of the sad demise of the Observers, ( 2 lovely retired observers live just round the corner) and the lack of forecasters on site, above relates to my experience. At BRS flying for easy, around 2007, main cloud base forecast 2500 with some Tempo Inters indicating a lowest cloud of 700, above our NDB or SRA limits on 09. Wind forecast was around 120/10 to 15. We were always wary of SE winds coming over the Mendips but this forecast, even allowing for our local knowledge looked usable.
Two approaches to 09, nothing seen, so divert to Exeter. The TW was 10 or more on 27 so no chance of an Autoland.
I can't remember the exact complaints but there were three strands. Exeter HQ managed to wriggle out of two of them using the Tempos and Inters but did admit that my third complaint was justified and instructions would be issued to forecasters to be aware of the local topography effects with SE winds. In the RAF days, rather than filing a formal complaint, we could have had a quiet phone call direct to the forecaster or visit the office to discuss what went wrong. As I think has been mentioned further back in this thread local offices became aware of the implications to flying operations of small changes in observations.
Colerne was another example of local knowledge being useful. Driving up the hill through the low cloud/fog to find the airfield bathed in sunshine you knew the airfield would fog out as soon as the temperature rose and the low cloud lifted onto the airfield.
Looking forward to your invention of WFH. Maybe something that will be only available for pilots if they are flying drones.

1066

[langleybaston]

Resignation is a serious matter, not to be undertaken until the red mists clear. However, as a succession of dull digs and limited pub menus took toll, the initial thought prevailed. Having spent 40 years climbing the greasy pole, and having spent about a year in the comfortable Brize Mess among like-minded and interesting people, I decided not to tolerate the fall in living standards and told Assistant Director Defence I was off and away in one month's time.
He of course had dozens of LB equivalents, all faced by economics into leaving Messes up and down the country. A very bad deal for the services as well as the individuals.

Such was the usual lack of succession planning in the organisation that nobody could be found willing and able to do my job at short notice and foolish enough to live away from home under the new financial regime. After some running round in small circles and disappearing up the usual orifice, Defence Met. suggested that I should serve to age 60 by working from home, car provided, and all relevant comms wired in. Days on the road to attract full subsistence, and at least one day a fortnight at RAF Waddington Main Met. Office retaining currency, reading Orders and generally being available for ear-bashing from on high. Being a decent bloke, I very reluctantly accepted these harsh terms.

Fortunately the house was big enough for a study and the arrangements were quickly sorted. There were some awkward moments, such as having to take a phone call in the bath at 0930. My boss noted the strange acoustics but did not pursue the matter. When "my man in BFG" phoned, there was a long delay, as I had been cutting the grass at the end of a long garden, Joyce dropped me in it, so Germany suggested that Gardening Leave was in progress.

And then two military fuzz arrived on the door step, in the usual flashers' macs and Trilbys.

[B Fraser]

Was Peter Jackson there with you? He had some wonderful Heathrow Met. tales to tell.


I only ever visited and spent much time on the roof doing obs. Usually 747s :O

The gnomes were some distance away, probably installed by a ground ops chap with a sense of humour. Aircrew always knew where to look as did keen-eyed passengers.

[Jhieminga]

I don’t remember the name of the camping site, but did take some photos of what it was like and remember it as being very well ordered with plenty of facilities...
...
A couple of photos recording our fist camping trip in Holland, sadly I cannot recall the name of the place.
Slight thread drift... you may have visited a camping site at what is now called Speelland Beekse Bergen, in between Tilburg and Hilvarenbeek. Have a look at 51.52385856553691, 5.127980667954138 on Google Maps to find the artificial lake. It was one of the few places to have a cable car/chair lift in operation, which must have been either just open or being installed when you were there as later photos show canopies over the cars/seats.

Right, back to more interesting stuff now ;)

[Warmtoast]

Thanks for the tip, but after all these years (51) I can't be 100% certain. However we had a good time there for our first camping trip outside Germany.
But the best camping site we visited regularly was Union Camping not far from Venice in Italy - absolutely brilliant!
WT

[langleybaston]

Finally.

The plods turned up without prior notification and found me at home and actually working.
They were cagey about the reason so I decamped to the dining room and asked Joyce to take notes.

However, the thrust was regarding the date on which our gear was moved [Joyce keeps an engagement book / diary so life's little events like the dentist cannot be forgotten]. The removal firm [a minor player in the league of movers] were seemingly in the habit of charging M o D for journeys and jobs which owed more to the imagination than the truth. The Feds were offered a swift coffee and departed, never to be seen again.

WFH turned out to be rather hard, and threatened to become harder when I was asked to consider an extension of service to revise the Met Office War Book. The more we looked at it, the more unwise it seemed. There was no safe at home, thus it would have involved a tedious merry-go-round of Wittering for custody, London, Bracknell and Strike for consultations and an increasingly demob-happy family wanting a proper holiday.

Came the day when I became a nobody, having walked into RAF Waddington with a slack handful of passes and all sorts of clearances, and walked out with a list of countries not to visit for several years [countries that I had no desire to visit anyway.]

The DG sent me a nice letter on blue notepaper, and with one leap LB was free.

[MPN11]

All good/bad things have to come to an end! Thanks for taking us on the journey! 👍

I remember my last day (HQ MATO at RAF Uxbridge). Clearance already done by instalments, so just handed in my F1250 and drove home to Bracknell (my wife’s lovely OMQ at the RAF Staff College) and breathed a deep sigh of relief. My 30-year Military journey was over, with its pluses and minuses, and I was FREE!

Well, except for producing the Wives’ Club Newsletter, and going semi-full time as Secretary of the RAF Small Arms Association, and waited for my wife’s Redundancy to come through (which it did a year or so later!). It was a strange time, with RAF uniform largely retired to the back of the wardrobe … and it was many years before I would choose to wear anything blue!

[Ninthace]

I still don't wear black socks!

[langleybaston]

My eccentricities are both below the knee [fortunately].

Garish proper woollen socks [wife is a prodigious sock-knitter] chosen to clash with trousers, and ..................
........................ very shiny shoes, the maintenance of which, on Sunday mornings, is said to be a form of occupational therapy.

PS Bondhu boots are not polished, madness only goes so far.

[ICM]

All good/bad things have to come to an end! Thanks for taking us on the journey! I remember my last day (HQ MATO at RAF Uxbridge). Clearance already done by instalment .....!

I wonder how representative of clearing after an overseas tour my experience was? The closure of HQ 2 Gp in Germany aligned pretty neatly with my Terminal Leave. I'd asked for a holding posting 'to retire' at a major station nearest home and, come my 55th birthday, I drove there, went to the General Office for a clearance card .... and started a trek round sections I'd never used. And after a couple of hours or so, it was done, the card was returned and thus ended my 32 years or so. Happily, there had been a bit more ceremony at Rheindahlen.

[BEagle]

When clearing at one station at which I served, one of the clearance signatures required was from 'Station Bicycle Store'. No-one knew where that was, but some wag had helpfully written an extension number in the squadron phone book...

Ring....ring...."Hello?" "Station bike store? Whereabouts are you on the station?"

"NO, young man, I am OC WRAF and this is NOT the station bicycle store!"

[Ninthace]

My eccentricities are both below the knee [fortunately].

Garish proper woollen socks [wife is a prodigious sock-knitter] chosen to clash with trousers, and ..................
........................ very shiny shoes, the maintenance of which, on Sunday mornings, is said to be a form of occupational therapy.

PS Bondhu boots are not polished, madness only goes so far.

Then madness has struck, for I once turned up to take an old RAF friend fell walking wearing a beautifully bulled set of hiking boots - brown ones at that!

[ancientaviator62]

LB,
thank you for such an entertaining and well written story of your life in the 'Met' My morning reading will never be quite the same. I retired after the HEART job and despite being offered an extension or a job with the Aux Af I had had enough. So after nearly 40 years man and boy I cleared and never looked back. I had a great time but would not wish to be serving now. My stores clearance was hilarious as the young lady behind the counter could not find a lot of items on my record. My wind up watch was especially puzzling to her.

[Chugalug2]

LB, thank you for laying bare the ups and downs of service with the RAF as a 'weather guesser'. The Met Office might only have been your second choice of career given the summary rejection on medical grounds of the first, but it seems to me that both the Met Office and RAF were the net beneficiaries of the fickle finger of fate in your regard. Your story has fascinated because we have all enjoyed the professional output of you and your ilk but with little idea of how it was acquired and honed. Your personal odyssey so closely linked to ours with all the peculiarly oddities common to an RAF life, yet now through civilian eyes, has amused and informed alike. Thank you for sharing it with us. Sergeant Wilson might well have asked, "Do you really think that's a very good idea, Sir?". I feel I can reply on behalf of us all by saying, "Yes, certainly!".
Thanks again
Chug

[MrBernoulli]

LB, thanks for regaling us with your memories, I have enjoyed reading them, and experienced many a giggle. I get a sense that there is a comedian within you, looking for an outlet? 😉

[langleybaston]

LB, thanks for regaling us with your memories, I have enjoyed reading them, and experienced many a giggle. I get a sense that there is a comedian within you, looking for an outlet? 😉

Maybe, but my outlet is writing very specialised military history books and articles. Period 1800 to 1919, British Army, line infantry, no Jocks or Guards or Rifles, just the ordinary heroes.