Arrest that man!
Join Date: May 2004
Location: Nottingham...
Posts: 46
Likes: 0
Received 0 Likes
on
0 Posts
I have the address. phone number and name of the man on the top of page two of this thread....
I know someone who has had dealings with him in the past.
If anyone wants to pm me with who needs the details or who is dealing with it, (ie old bil, snowdrops, P&SS etc) I will make contact with them...
I know someone who has had dealings with him in the past.
If anyone wants to pm me with who needs the details or who is dealing with it, (ie old bil, snowdrops, P&SS etc) I will make contact with them...
Join Date: Nov 2000
Location: Glorious Devon
Posts: 721
Likes: 0
Received 0 Likes
on
0 Posts
Its very easy to take a censorious line on this great crime. The young man involved deserves a smart kick up the bum. But to get too heavy on minor transgressions encourages the equippers to become even more obsessive and neurotic in their war against minor depredations of HM stores. When the RAF brought out their first computerised stores management system in the 1960's they showed it off with great pride to some industrial magnates. The wheel from ICI expressed his admiration but said that if his company were to spend so much on accounting for so little it would go belly-up.
Our salad days on squadrons were marred by the contortions we put ourselves through to square the inventories which we were made to hold - many of which had nothing to do with our primary duty. At Middleton in the '50s I exercised my officer-like function by being i/c a barrack block, which involved holding the inventory for all the stores therein - including bedding. In the general turbulence during National Service , it was impossible to keep track of it all. Blokes used to arrive and leave at all times of the day and night when I was otherwise engaged teaching chaps to fly Meatboxes. On posting I found I was a few mattresses up and quite a few more pillows down and the equipper was most unsympathetic and proposed to charge me a tidy sum. So a lady friend in quarters kindly cut up the surplus mattresses and salvaged the ticking to make up the required number of pillows. There was a deficiency of stuffing so we got some chicken feathers from a local farm. I hope the erks did not scratch too much!
On 208 I volunteered to hold the aircraft inventory - a soft number because even I could check 18 airframes and 36 engines when I walked into the hangar every morning. But at some stage the sytem was changed and no one told me. Replacement aircraft were ferried into Abu Sueir from UK with all the safety equiment, radios and some instruments on a transit inventory. All this ancilliary gear was supposed to be moved on to other inventories - but it was not. Consequently on posting when my inventory was made up I was supposed to have all sorts of V&A items like Clocks 8 Day Fluorescent Mk 4. A quick tour of the aircraft revealed gaping holes in the appropriate positions on several instrument panels. Luckily the First Aid kits were intact because they contained morphine. It took me weeks (and much help gratefully received from RNAS Hal Far who did not wear such a hair shirt about stores) to put together some sufficently convincing wreckage of a few clocks to have them written off without a Unit Inquiry. A Cat 5 was the best way of squaring off inventories. The Wg Cdr Admin at Abu Sueir borrowed a Meatbox for a week end and ran it out of gas in a Kamseen near Tunis. He found a road to put it down on but at some point there were high embankments on both sides, which whipped his outer wings off. The B o I were told that, amongst other items, there were six typewriters in the radio compartment!
I retired from MOD not having been in an aircraft for nearly ten years. I took my Flying Clothing Card (Vols 1-3) together with my aircrew wristwatch, sunglasses and personal first aid kit to the equippers and asked them to write off the rest. "Oh No!" they said. "You will have to do better that that!"
"Do you really want me to scratch around looking for smelly old socks and flying suits, and long johns that have not been worn for 10 years? What are you going to do with them - reissue them?"
"No, but we need enough returns to satisfy our bosses that blokes are not flogging their kit off"
So, I poked around in my attic and found a kit-bag full of grots which I solemnly lugged up to London and handed in. Of course it was all trashed immediately. The other services do not wear that sort of hair shirt.
PS. At least in the Canal Zone (for which I have just eceived another clasp for my GSM!) I had the sense not to sign out a .38 on my flying clothing card. Loss of a firearm was an instant Court Martial, and rightly so. So I bought a serviceable Luger 9mm in the souks at Amman. Damn sight more accurate than the Enfield, and took Sten ammo. You had to keep the action and the magasine transports spotless and well oiled in the desert environment.
Our salad days on squadrons were marred by the contortions we put ourselves through to square the inventories which we were made to hold - many of which had nothing to do with our primary duty. At Middleton in the '50s I exercised my officer-like function by being i/c a barrack block, which involved holding the inventory for all the stores therein - including bedding. In the general turbulence during National Service , it was impossible to keep track of it all. Blokes used to arrive and leave at all times of the day and night when I was otherwise engaged teaching chaps to fly Meatboxes. On posting I found I was a few mattresses up and quite a few more pillows down and the equipper was most unsympathetic and proposed to charge me a tidy sum. So a lady friend in quarters kindly cut up the surplus mattresses and salvaged the ticking to make up the required number of pillows. There was a deficiency of stuffing so we got some chicken feathers from a local farm. I hope the erks did not scratch too much!
On 208 I volunteered to hold the aircraft inventory - a soft number because even I could check 18 airframes and 36 engines when I walked into the hangar every morning. But at some stage the sytem was changed and no one told me. Replacement aircraft were ferried into Abu Sueir from UK with all the safety equiment, radios and some instruments on a transit inventory. All this ancilliary gear was supposed to be moved on to other inventories - but it was not. Consequently on posting when my inventory was made up I was supposed to have all sorts of V&A items like Clocks 8 Day Fluorescent Mk 4. A quick tour of the aircraft revealed gaping holes in the appropriate positions on several instrument panels. Luckily the First Aid kits were intact because they contained morphine. It took me weeks (and much help gratefully received from RNAS Hal Far who did not wear such a hair shirt about stores) to put together some sufficently convincing wreckage of a few clocks to have them written off without a Unit Inquiry. A Cat 5 was the best way of squaring off inventories. The Wg Cdr Admin at Abu Sueir borrowed a Meatbox for a week end and ran it out of gas in a Kamseen near Tunis. He found a road to put it down on but at some point there were high embankments on both sides, which whipped his outer wings off. The B o I were told that, amongst other items, there were six typewriters in the radio compartment!
I retired from MOD not having been in an aircraft for nearly ten years. I took my Flying Clothing Card (Vols 1-3) together with my aircrew wristwatch, sunglasses and personal first aid kit to the equippers and asked them to write off the rest. "Oh No!" they said. "You will have to do better that that!"
"Do you really want me to scratch around looking for smelly old socks and flying suits, and long johns that have not been worn for 10 years? What are you going to do with them - reissue them?"
"No, but we need enough returns to satisfy our bosses that blokes are not flogging their kit off"
So, I poked around in my attic and found a kit-bag full of grots which I solemnly lugged up to London and handed in. Of course it was all trashed immediately. The other services do not wear that sort of hair shirt.
PS. At least in the Canal Zone (for which I have just eceived another clasp for my GSM!) I had the sense not to sign out a .38 on my flying clothing card. Loss of a firearm was an instant Court Martial, and rightly so. So I bought a serviceable Luger 9mm in the souks at Amman. Damn sight more accurate than the Enfield, and took Sten ammo. You had to keep the action and the magasine transports spotless and well oiled in the desert environment.
FV, I had the reverse experience. On completion of my final flying post a few years ago I went to hand in a pile of assorted, fairly dubious looking flying clothing, including well-used long johns, wrist watch etc, only to be asked if I wanted to keep any of it because it would all be written off!
Of course, the thought never crossed my mind to actually take up the kind storeman on his offer....................................
Of course, the thought never crossed my mind to actually take up the kind storeman on his offer....................................
Some 8 years after handing all my Gnat kit at Valley, 'they' told me that I was deficient of Qty 1 x Gnat g-suit and Qty 1 x Gnat oxygen mask. It escaped 'their' brain that HM had no Gnats left in service, hence even if I had such items, they were bugger all use to anyone else as they didn't fit any other RAF aeroplane.
But no, the system had to be satisfied. So a friendly flying clothing Ch Tech produced 2 equipment labels for me, each of which was lovingly enscribed with the long since defunct section ref number of the Gnat AEA which he'd managed to find in some dusty stores tome. He produced a rubber stamp labelled 'scrap', stamped the labels and solemnly handed them to me. I was then able to hand them over to the stores jobsworth in the next room who happily signed off my clothing card........
But funnier still was the tale which Joe l'Estrange once told me of the occasion when he finally decided to get rid of his ancient (even for him) Sidcot suit. The young kid in flying clothing took a fair bit of convincing that it really was flying clothing, not just a long dead and rather smelly teddy bear!
But no, the system had to be satisfied. So a friendly flying clothing Ch Tech produced 2 equipment labels for me, each of which was lovingly enscribed with the long since defunct section ref number of the Gnat AEA which he'd managed to find in some dusty stores tome. He produced a rubber stamp labelled 'scrap', stamped the labels and solemnly handed them to me. I was then able to hand them over to the stores jobsworth in the next room who happily signed off my clothing card........
But funnier still was the tale which Joe l'Estrange once told me of the occasion when he finally decided to get rid of his ancient (even for him) Sidcot suit. The young kid in flying clothing took a fair bit of convincing that it really was flying clothing, not just a long dead and rather smelly teddy bear!
Join Date: Aug 2004
Location: UK
Posts: 12
Likes: 0
Received 0 Likes
on
0 Posts
Just had a scan back through the previous comments and at the e-bay stock. Why is it that I can't get hold of a flying suit from stores to replace my falling apart ones. I know a load got called back as they were defective, and stocks are low, but if some toe-rag can get hold of one to flog for personal gain I think that deserves a little bit of a complaint. Hope the RAFP manage to slam this guy. Failure to do so does seem to present a rather poor example to other such people of moral manoeuvrability!
Never mind, I'll just go on whining until they get some more in stock . . . maybe I'll request a ground tour and crack out the Blues!
RA
Never mind, I'll just go on whining until they get some more in stock . . . maybe I'll request a ground tour and crack out the Blues!
RA
