TFR
 

When the TFR pod was not fitted, there was a blanking plate fitted over the hole in the radome. This was the same contour as the radome, and about 1/4 inch thick, but was not TFR pod 'nipple' radome in shape.

The TFR pod fitted to XM598 at Cosford however, is an empty TFR pod. This was fitted at Cosford by myself after the aircraft had been stripped out at Waddington and then flown to Cosford. The 'pod' was fitted to give 598 the appearance it had in '82 during the Falklands escapade.

The H2S and the NBC may have been steam driven and fitted to Noah's Ark, but it managed to get a 1000lb Iron bomb on the airfield at Port Stanley, and if this had been a Blue Danube or similar weapon, the debate as to if the Vulcan actually hit the runway would not be needed as the runway would not exist.

Blacksheep. I have to agree with ZH on this. The TFR Radome was an intrinsic part of the equipment. If a ‘radome’ was fitted then TFR was fitted.

Fairies and Queens and stuff....
 

I stand corrected then...
...but I do remember occasions on starter crew, having to sit it out in an old wooden crew hut during one those inevitable aircraft switches, while the radar fairies dashed around fitting TFR equipment from another kite before ours could do its trip. I don't mean simple 'crew-in' snags either, I'm referring to equipment shortages and the kites I was waiting to see off definitely had a pimple on their noses.

I also remember an occasion where an Air Radio Fitter was called out to a defective VHF. He was fiddling about in the racks below the pilot seats making test calls when he heard a reply from someone else saying that they couldn't raise the station either but they were receiving him OK. The snag was cleared and...

...well we've all heard of side-tone haven't we? (The incident made into Air Clues as a piece of fairy folk lore. I worked with that chap again later at Northolt, by which time he had somehow made it to Chief Magician).

Sending one off and then having it abort before reaching the runway like that was a bloody nuisance - especially when it was from one of the rear pans and you had to turn the b*gger round to face the right way again. Usually in freezing rain. Ex-Vulcan ground crew will never forget that tow-bar contraption. I reckon it was designed by the same chap who designed the Forth Railway Bridge. My hands still bear the scars of Vulcan towing duty.

On the subject of towing, we had a crew chief who acquired the nickname Chiefy 'Magoo'. It was a freezing cold and misty evening at Waddington and a B1A was due into the shed for a spot of seciond line servicing. The MPBW were ditch digging with a JCB along the eastern taxiway just opposite the bomb dump and in typical MPBW disregard for safety, left it parked with the arm in the up position. Through the mist comes 'Magoo' and his gallant towing crew, huddled down tight against the cold in the equipment well on back of the tug as usual, secure in the knowledge that the crew chief and driver were watching ahead. Except that Magoo was as blind as a bat and both his and the driver's specs were steamed up. The Vulcan lost about four feet of wing in the collision, the JCB ended up on its side and the flat spots on the tyres saved Ian the brake man's bacon at the Board of Inquiry. The aircraft became the queen of all hangar queens - a major source of spare parts for a couple of years. The Hawker Siddeley work party in Two Shed got it back out on the line just in time for 44(R) to convert to B2s and I believe that the aircraft ended up on the burning area for the firemen to play with.

**************************
Through difficulties to the cinema

Gainsey:

Ferranti airborne radars were developed and produced in Edinburgh and they certainly didn't licence build the Vulcan TFR there. It's possible, but very unlikely that it was licence-built in Manchester. I spent many years with Ferranti and never heard of it as being one of theirs.

Hi Wub,
Thanks, I was just guessing.

These fun filled, high spirited times extended beyond the Cold War days. I was posted to 57 Sqn at Marham during the mid 80's as a radio/radar teccy.

I don't think I'd ever enjoyed myself so much, through wind, rain and sweeping BL***Y snow off the wings, we still managed a laugh.

Never really experienced such a great gang of blokes again.

Just a thought, but was TFR fitted to anything else prior to the Vulcan, and was that made by Ferranti? Could it be a sort of Hoover situation where the company name became the word for all vacuum cleaners?

Yellow Sun,
I don't recall the Kinloss incident. I was there 75-80. What hapened? Whick sqn?

BEAgle,
In Cyprus I usually left the door ladder behind if we were bombing and landing back. Other times we always stowed it in the prone position.


I lost a couple of good friends at Luqa. Stan Lambert and Dave Beeden.

TFR was never, in the 60s or 70s refered to a Ferranti. It was GD but then again we only ever called it TFR. Similarly we never used EMI always NBC.

The TFR was spectacular and in many respects useless. It was designed for use in an F111, and possibly a spin off of that cancelled programme. Given that the F111 would travel at 420-540 K drift angles would have been low. In the Vulcan, in training, the drift angles for a given wind would have been double.

Designed for the F111 the TFR had a +/- 3.5 deg beam. The Vulcan at low level often experienced drifts of 5 deg or more. It followed that we TFRd terrain that we were not flying over!

Paul Wilson
As far as I can remember, we got the TFR pod PDQ even before the Americans. It was 'essential' for our survivability and credibility. The F111 was the second user. Good bit of kit. It was J-band. Give it a quick squirt of J-band noise and it would 'fail-safe' and give a fly-up command.

Just the thing if you were visiting downtown Hanoi. The Vietnamese cottoned on rather quicker than the USAF. The fix was simple; drop the fly-up logic.

Pontius Nav

Check your PMs

Rgds
YS

Paul W:

The first, and only, TFR designed and made by Ferranti was for the TSR-2 and was known as FLR (Forward Looking Radar). Ferranti bid for the MRCA TFR but lost out to Texas Instruments' GM/TF system - but ended up as UK design authority for the kit.

I don't think Ferranti had any kit on the Vulcan, avionics-wise, but may have supplied instruments; not sure.

Single-engined Vulcan
 

I wonder if anyone can remember the episode at Waddo in (probably) around 1968 when a Mk 2 Vulcan lost three engines consecutively on climb-out?

I believe it happened late one afternoon or in the early evening to a 44 or 101 Sqn crew. I was catching up with some kip in my quarter, as I remember it, when the phone rang. It was OC Ops speaking from the tower saying that an aircraft climbing out with a full fuel load had experienced three engines spooling down in succession, without any indications of mechanical distress. The captain had levelled at about FL 200 and had succeeded in relighting one of them. He was holding in the local area to attempt further relights and to “consider his position”. OC Ops was a Navigator and so was the DCF (Duty Commander Flying), and OC Ops wanted a senior Pilot in the tower pronto. Me.

I asked who was the captain of the aircraft, and was given the name of an experienced and competent operator. I asked who was the Duty Captain in the tower: ditto. I asked what more OC Ops thought I could contribute and was told unceremoniously to get my backside down to the tower. Fast.

I phoned MT for a car and was told that none was available. Of the “pool” of three Minis, Senior Officers for the use of, OC Admin had one, OC Ops another, and SATCO the third. Oh well, ‘twas ever thus! My wife was out in my car so I set off plodding thoughtfully to the tower.

Arrived there, I found that the aircraft was now a three-engined bomber and that the “brains trust” thought I should order the Captain to land overweight forthwith. This I declined to do. Neither I nor the Duty Captain nor OC Eng could figure out what could have gone wrong. There was no way of mishandling the fuel system so early in the flight to starve three engines. I questioned the possibility of contaminated fuel, but no other aircraft had had any problems. The fuel in the bowser which had refuelled the aircraft was being tested. The Captain’s intention was to burn off to max landing weight at a reasonable altitude for rear crew escape if necessary and then recover to Waddo. Captain’s decision, let him get on with it. He did.

After landing I seem to remember that the engineers discovered that the A Tank had burst due to over-pressurisation. The investigators concluded that a bleed-air pressure reducing valve had failed and that when bomb bay tank pressurisation was selected the tank received air at the full pressure at which it left the engines (2500 psi?). This aerated the fuel entering the engines causing the flame-outs until the tank burst, by when it was almost empty (thank God!).

My confidence in my memory was dented recently when Father Christmas brought me a copy of Tim Laming’s excellent book. On Page 171 of the Aircrew Manual under Tank Pressurisation and Venting it says “…The bomb bay tanks are not pressurised”. But further on, under Fuel Control Panels, Retractable Console, it concludes with “…The bomb bay system diagram has two Bomb Bay/Main switches, two ON/OFF pump switches for each tank and a pressurisation switch (inoperative)”.

Perhaps it was rendered inoperative after the incident at Waddo. Has anyone any ideas?
:confused:

According to Alan Clark Diaries, Norman Tebbit wanted to use the V Force to bomb the Rhodesian Railway system....
Any stories behind this?

Reference the overweight landing. Of course, the Vulcan had no fuel-dumping system. After getting airborne with a gear retraction problem we had to burn down to landing weight. We had the gear down of course. The airbrakes were put out and the bomb-bay doors opened. It still took several climbs and descents to 20,000 or thereabouts to burn off enough fuel. Goodness knows what the fuel burn was in the climb.

Yes, the lack of a fuel dump system was often a problem. We once spent hours burning off for what the AEO thought was a loose panel (it wasn't - just a bit of u/c door seal....).

But once the gear was down, the burn rate went up a fair bit. Can't remember the limit - around 210KIAS? But it nearly caught out at least one crew once. A bunch of old gits from the 27th Boat Spotters were out shadowing ships somewhere way north of civilisation once, when the captain noticed a possible hydraulic failure. "How long to get back to Scampton, Plotter?", he asked. A bit of mumbling and computer work from the back later, he was given the answer. "Multiply that by the burn rate, subtract it from the current total - yup, we'll still have Plan 2 fuel. OK, speed below (whatever it was), u/c down please, Co" Rumble, rumble, thump, "Down, 3 greens", came the response and off home they duly set. Then up piped the Nav Plotter "Why are we going so slowly, First?"........ It seems that his estimate was based upon the normal 0.84 cruise, not the actual speed they would be using with the gear down. They just made it to somewhere in northern Jockistan, it seems! The Nav Plotter claimed that no-one had ever told him that there was such a thing as a limiting speed with the gear down!

"According to Alan Clark Diaries, Norman Tebbit wanted to use the V Force to bomb the Rhodesian Railway system....
Any stories behind this?"

I can think of a few occassions where this could have usefully employed on Virgin Trains.

Harsh but fair, in my opinion.

Mark.

Flatus Veteranus

I have a part copy of the bomb-bay tanks AP amended to Feb 68.

This is the console. Item 9 is the BB tank pressurisation switch.

http://www.avrovulcan.org.uk/switches.jpg

The 'A' tank mod 527 included the fitting of pressurisation pipes. A removable pressurisation panel was located in the port bomb-bay. Unfortunately I do not have the section with more detailed descriptions.

Certainly the bomb-bay pressurisation switch was inoperative in my experience [70s] that backs up your conclusion on the incident you describe [1968ish].

The incident couldn't have been any earlier because 'A' tanks were fitted in the 301-engined aircraft of the Cottesmore Wing that were transferred to Waddo in the Spring of 68.

I understand the 'A' tank was the only bomb-bay tank compatible with Yellow Sun and Red Beard. Scampton Blue Steel a/c had 'As and Es' though the 'A' was fitted somewhat further back. Can you confirm that?

The only bomb bay tank configurations for the (non-tanker) Vulcan B2 which we used in the mid-70s (whether ex-Blue Tool or free-fall ac, 200 or 300 series engines) were:

'A' Tank Fwd
'A'&'E' Tanks
Drum Tank Fwd
Double Drums (One fwd, one aft)
'A' Fwd, Drum Aft

I'm pretty sure that the tank suspension points were the same for all ac. Wasn't it 5.5K in an 'A' or 'E' tank and 8K in a Drum? Can't recall and I no longer have any books to tell me.

......and Sod's Law always gave you a 98%+16K ac with 88K total fuel only when the low level Wx was pants and you then had to go and do some high-level bore-ex for the navigation team to involve themselves in some weird astrology!

Beags, you've certainly got some memory! Configs spot on. The A & E tanks were specifically designed for the Blue Steel aircraft, where the missile was recessed into the bombay.

Missile also had a folding fin for t/o, landing and on the ground. It was hydraulically operated for raising and lowering, with an emergency nitrogen raising system for hydraulic failure.

Great fun was Blue Steel, especially if you got to fly the one just taken off QRA for the maintenance cycle. The warhead was removed and a lump of concrete ballast fitted. However, the propellants were left in. Heavy aircraft, and crew monitored HTP temps at about 10 times the required rate!

I've found a reference:

At one stage, 5 stainless steel tanks were proposed, 'A' through to 'E' and various combinations were to be employed for Blue Steel, Yellow Sun and Red Beard/6000lb (US Mk-5).

Costs reduced the tanks from 5 to 4 to 3 and eventually 2: the 'A' and the 'E'.

The 'A' tank as produced was a compromise with features of the original 'A' tank (cut away at the rear for YS) and the 'B' tank (recessed underneath for BS). The 'A' tank could be mounted fully forward (YS, RB, WE177, conventional) or slightly further back (BS).

'A' tanks were ordered for the Con/Cot Wing. 'A' & 'E' tanks were ordered for the Sca BS Wing.

The alloy drum tanks came later. Ultimately, all non-BS aircraft (about 50) received the mod to carry double-drums but the financiers restricted the order and did not replace the existing free-fall 'A' tanks. After the drum tank mod, modded aircraft could carry either an 'A' tank or a drum tank forward.

During conversion to free-fall, BS aircraft retained 'A' & 'E', the 'A' tank repositioned fully forward.

The only exceptions I know of are the K2 - 3 x drum, and XH558 in display mode that had a single drum aft. This was to compensate for the c of g shift when the HDU was removed.

An interesting footnote. Mk1/1As were not fitted with bomb-bay fuel though the aircraft that crashed at Heathrow XA897 after returning from NZ was. The extra tankage had been borrowed from Avros who had used it in the prototype 698 before the wing tanks had been connected. The last leg of the ill-fated flight was from Khormaksar - a seven-hour sortie.

Single-engined Vulcan
 

I have received a private message from someone "who ought to know" that the incident happened on 2 Jan 69 in XM 608. 608 was ex-Coningsby, ex-Cottesmore and transferred to Waddo in Feb 68. My correspondent suggests that the saddle tank did not actually explode but was bent out of shape enough to release the overpressure. I have asked him to write up the incident for this thread.

The decision whether or not to land overweight on this occasion was a nice one; but it could (IMHO) only be taken by the Captain.
I was ready to authorise an overweight landing if asked, but I was not one of those who liked to shout the odds and pull rank.

The captain and crew did a good job. :ok:

I heard they experimented (before my time!) with making rear-crew members aircraft captains in the V-Farce. Did this work? If so, why was it discontinued? Can anyone shed any light?

Captains
 

Certainly in the during the period of the introduction of the V force this was a carrot being dangled in Nav school. In fact it was also stated there was already 1 nav. captain.

Did the Vulcans have a realistic range capabilty to scramble UK, reach target and return UK?

I know everyone always says that if you went for real you knew you weren't coming back but presumably you would have all done the maths to see if it was feasible - feasible being with the usual flightcrew margins being built in.


On a related issue - and one of a personal nature. What were crew members instructions to immediate family in the event of an evident 'this is the real thing' alert?

I can't imagine how horrific and all pervasive such considerations must have been. Yet I suspect the wives and other base personnel "would have known" pretty quickly after scramble that the cellar was needed if it were for real this time.

For every man on the cutting edge of the Cold War deterrent there was usually a woman and some kids. A fact not overplayed.

Did any wives crack or children suffer psychological trauma? Obviously some did and it might be distressing to raise the issue. One hopes though that the various charities recognise and support these problems... yet I cannot recall ever seeing a cold war survivors fund et al....

Cheers

WWW

Try doing some sums, WWW:

Even a max fuel wt Vulcan only carried 88000 lb of fuel. It burned around 10000lb in the first hour, then 7-8000 for the remainder. It did 500-ish KTAS at high level, around 360 at low level. Fairly obviously the route East wouldn't be a straight line, so have a guess at a route to a fairly obvious location in the old Sovietski Soyuz, including a descent to low level to avoid radar. Measure the distance, work out the time and then see how much fuel that leaves you with......

There is quite a lot of old (1950s B.1s) Vulcan footage on the Pathe News site. Complete with corny commentary and cheesey background blare of the time.:)
Free and worth a visit. Just type Vulcan in the search box, there is a bit of a faff to register but its well worth it.
http://www.britishpathe.com/index.html

Well yes - I did vaguely look at a map the other day with some Vulcan fuel burns to hand and thought it didn't look right. Sobering stuff.

Cheers

WWW

Vulcan Ops
 

WWW

The display board under the Vulcan in the hangar at Duxford gives a pretty good indication of the situation in the late 60s early 70s. It's not entirely accurate, but it's not bad.

YS

For a lot of interesting background to Britain's <GW Bush> Noocular Detergent </GW Bush>, I'd recommend a read of The Secret State: Whitehall and the Cold War by Peter Henessey.
(Penguin Books; ISBN: 0141008350)

In it, there's list of assumed UK targets from about 1968 in which each V force base and dispersal would be thoroughly dealt with.

Mark.

Was 270 really the normal max speed with the gear down? Or was that an 'emergency' speed with a lower for routine operation, Mike?

Yes, 10 000 lbs was the normal min landing fuel for a B2 or SR2. You could often squeeze a bit longer out of the ac by putting the sequence timers to manual and running the 3s and 4s to 'White MIs' - preferably with the at least some of the cross-feeds closed!

Well, at least I got the 5.5K right! And I haven't seen a Vulcan Aircrew Manual since 1980! I guess that's the legacy of the excellent training we enjoyed back then; training which the RAF can no longer afford...

190 KIAS with the gear down seems to ring a bell - or was that something else I've flown?

V is for Video
 

Just had a surf through the DD Video web site. There's a lot of video material on the V-Force now available.

http://www.ddvideo.co.uk/

Mark.

Vulcan fuel consumption
 

Having just caught up on the last 7 pages a couple of items struck a chord. BEags I think you were being optimistic on the fuel burn/range issue. i remember guzzling more, particularly at high weights. At 325/350 kts on the Oil Burner routes the tanks were certainly emptying at 12-14000lbs per hour. My memory of carrying double drums versus A and E is that the extra 5000lbs only gave about another 20 minutes on the sortie because of the extra burn involved lifting it all up to height.
I echo the frustrations of many that the B2 could not dump fuel. Burning off bored everyone.
Converting from Co to Captain meant learning to fly with the head cocked off to the right instead of to the left. The top handle was never usable due to lack of space between head and canopy, and the only time I flew in the soft inner hat I kept bruising my bonce on the hard bits. Taller people than me managed, but I am not sure how.
Keep going fellahs. As my ex Nav Rad said - the ten west rule still applies even if the official secrets act doesn't seem to any more.:ok:

Just found this thread!
 

Gents
(Assuming that no female ever flew a Vulc)

I have Vulc airframes XH563 and XH537 (Skybolt test bed) Both ended there days at 27 Sqdn at Scampton. I would be interested in any stories about 27 Sdqn and the North Sea, Midway Is etc.
Would be most pleased if any of you flew 537 or 563! My web site needs your stories www.famousvulcans.co.uk

If I am inundated then I will consider producing a book if anyone wants to contribute????

Jim Griff,

It were Jeremy Thorpe of the Liberals who wanted to bomb Salisbury.

There followed a delightful sketch in Punch that I remember to this day.

PM to CAS "Please bomb Salisbury"

CAS to PM "Salisbury bombed, please find attached list of recommendations for DFCs"

PM to CAS "Please bomb Salisbury RHODESIA"

There then follwed a long series from CAS as to why we could not bomb Rhodesia.

Wee Wiley Welshman,

Beagle is hedging his bets. Who said we would recover to UK?

Aircraft assigned to Latvia, Estonia, and Lithuanian could make the mission without bombbay tanks and recover to UK. Those destined for Murmansk would recover to northern Norway. Those going further east might recover to southern Norway. My favourite was Kiev. Our recovery was Yesilkoy. Where the hell is that we thought? Out came the maps and there was Turkey!

Families? No time I'm afraid. There were plans to bring those in quarters into the nuclear bomb sheds but that might not have been a particularly good option. Wales was often muted as a good refuge although our use of Brawdy, Llanbedr, Valley, St Athan, Rhoose, Pershore etc rather cocked that one up.

Beagle,

Min landing fuel varied. On the OCU in 64 it was, as you said, 10,000lbs. For operational crews it was 8,000lbs spread across 14 tanks and being burnt by 4 donks.

Operationally the min fuel was 4,000 lb Overhead!

Undercarriage Limiting Speeds

<<--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The undercarriage retracts in 9 to 10 seconds & no difficulty is experienced in achieving a clean aircraft before the undercarriage limiting speed of 270 kts is reached. Whenever possible, the undercarriage should be completely retracted before exceeding 200 kts.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>

I remember on incident at Llanbedr. As the aircraft scrambled the captain rolled off the runway, pulled across the hangars and departed asap in case of 'simulated' in bound missiles. His departure was so spirited that the nose wheel remained stuck down and the duty pilot in the tower reported him for dangerous flying. I don't recall what happened to the DP but Dick went on to become a Victor sqn cdr, 100 I think.

Ah Yes, 50+Ray. Converting from Co to Capt. I remember a certain doofus who was so nervous on his first left seat ride he hit the wrong start button. Number 4 instead of number 1 or whatever it used to be. Since the crew-chief was standing under the starter exhaust for the engine that was not supposed to be started things got a bit tense. We tested the limits of what an NCO can say to an Officer without getting court-martialed. The extremely humble and embarressed new-hire in the left seat had to make suitable aologies and amends at the end of the sortie. I never did that again.

12000 lb/hr sounds about right - reducing to 10000 at light weights.

Talking of consumption, I can recall when a captain on his last sqn sortie went for an endurance record. He was stooging around off Ireland on 2 engines [I think] when the Sqn Cdr found out and had him recalled. It didn't do much for the authorisation officer's career prospects.

Interesting rule of thumb used by Norman Howard, Bomber Command Ops 1, who wrote all the routes.

He told me after I had submitted some fuel planning figures calculated by an incompetent or uncaring copilot. Thereafter I checked every flight plan for arithmetic errors and fuel pigs, one typical one was to 'use' the 7,000lb weight of YS2 as fuel. Yes, true.

The ROT was to take the leg length from departure to Top of Drop, typically 800 miles. Then three times the distance from Top of drop to bottom of climb, say 300 x 3. Then use the distance from BOC to overhead the recovery airfield, say 800. This gave a total distance of, in this case 2,500 miles. Then look at the fuel used for a level flight of 2,500 miles at range cruise which would give a fuel burn of about 55,000lbs therefore fuel o/h recovery would be 17,000lbs.

For my favourite target the figures were 700, 900, 600 which gave a total of 4,000 miles. The putative flight time would be 8 hr 20 min thus we needed the full double drum fit of 88k and would have just 5k left at the end.

While on flight planning for war missions, another thing occurs. The primary mission crew would draw up a flight plan for the start of the war plan on 1 July. The QRA targets however needed four flight plans. We were provided with sets of statistical met so a new flight plan was available for each quarter. If time permitted, the Met Office would provide updated met data but they were never permitted to know the route or area for the forecast! They had to provide met for the whole of western Russia.

Another met curiosity was the Climatological Data Sheet. This was a confidential document provided by JARIC with the climatological data for 100 different regions and each season. By refering to the CDS, the well prepared crew knew whether to pack shorts or mukluks.

Alamo,

One time Vulcan driver and latter Ottawa taxi driver, Harvey Moore got the 0800 slot at Waddo. He did not need the sortie for any stats but the aircraft was serviceable so fly he had to.

He announced that they would be flying for endurance and expected to return about 1500. Oh yeah was the general response. Off Harvey went and air plans assigned the aircraft to the 1500 slot for the next sortie. Come 1300 ops were still taking ops normals when air plans came in "Where was Harvey". Don't know was the reply but according to his flight plan, not far from Bodo. Every few minutes an increasingly anxious planner kept coming in and the prospects for the 1500 launch looked increasingly unlikely. At 1500, true to his word, Harvey checked in, joined the instrument pattern for an approach then into visuals to burn off down to 8,000. 7 hr 15 min. He got roaster by the air planner when he landed which might explain why he became a taxi driver.

For clarification the 10 West Rule was:

After 10 West, "Anything goes"; coming back, "We just had a good time!"

10 west rule but there were backfires.

In 1964 someone at Coningsby let on to the Canadian nurses on the Goose when the summer ball was being held and gave the immortal words "If you're ever over pop in"

"Cooeee" and an awful lot of aircrew suddenly got food posioning in the sea food bar.

Same happened at Cottesmore in 65 or 66. A couple of nurses pitched up and were given the right cold shoulder. Then a wonderful copilot, Ernie by name, and as innocent as the day is long (in Norway in the summer) said come round to my house you can stay in my caravan. They did but Ernie's wife was VERY suspicious.

Then in 64, at Butterworth, the boss, Bob Tanner, assembled all the crews and told us what we had been doing the previous week. So what we thought, we all know that. Then the bombshell. His WIFE had told him in a letter from home.

It wasn't me guv, honest!

Something similar allegedly happened at Waddo in the late '70s/early '80s. Apparently someone had said to the Bellevue Marriott/Crown Plaza bar flies "If ever you're in England...." Supposedly, they then turned up at the Mess during Happy Hour and there were folk bailing out of the windows to escape...!

I hasten to add that this was a story I was told (I'd left the V-force by then) - so it may rank alongside the 'Shackleton making carrier approach' fable!