The 1 Gp Dining In Night at Waddington
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I heard a tale , that at 42 Sqn disbandment DI, a certain Air Eng launched a solid silver pepper pot at the lads former eng leader,who saw said item inbound ,and ducked, allowing the AOC to take the missile like a man, squarely on the forehead!! 
[This message has been edited by Helical Spline (edited 13 June 2000).]
[This message has been edited by Helical Spline (edited 13 June 2000).]
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A few years ago at a flg trg establishment in Yorkshire, we were
visited by the local university netball team, who thrashed us at
netball and then joined us in the bar (in full webbing).
It was whilst they had split up into 2 teams and were playing tug o'
war aginst each other that a few of us rounded up all the fire
extinguishers in the mess, to "give them a bit of encouragement".
The best bit is that the next morning, having taken the empties to the
fire section with a couple of slabs, we were caught red-handed by the
PMC going through the front door to the mess with the extinguishers.
Expecting a roasting, we were pleasantly surprised to be told
"excellent sport lads, it's what the Air Force needs more of".
And truly, it was.
visited by the local university netball team, who thrashed us at
netball and then joined us in the bar (in full webbing).
It was whilst they had split up into 2 teams and were playing tug o'
war aginst each other that a few of us rounded up all the fire
extinguishers in the mess, to "give them a bit of encouragement".
The best bit is that the next morning, having taken the empties to the
fire section with a couple of slabs, we were caught red-handed by the
PMC going through the front door to the mess with the extinguishers.
Expecting a roasting, we were pleasantly surprised to be told
"excellent sport lads, it's what the Air Force needs more of".
And truly, it was.
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Wholigan,
I can confirm that Dai *******-***** is still to this day lobbing pyros under tables when a guest at DIs.
We're talking about the same guy who flour-bombed a range tower in his Hunter, opened-up in the mess bar with his service pistol and 'accidentally' shot an Arab guard in the leg when he found the guy asleep on stag in Aden! Stout fellow!
[This message has been edited by Speed Twelve (edited 14 June 2000).]
I can confirm that Dai *******-***** is still to this day lobbing pyros under tables when a guest at DIs.
We're talking about the same guy who flour-bombed a range tower in his Hunter, opened-up in the mess bar with his service pistol and 'accidentally' shot an Arab guard in the leg when he found the guy asleep on stag in Aden! Stout fellow!
[This message has been edited by Speed Twelve (edited 14 June 2000).]
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As you suggested there are veterans of the famed 1 Gp Guest Night still around, and this kos (who was a plt off at the time) read your account gleaned from bar stories. Just for the record, the occasion was to commemorate 25 years of 1 Gp, rather than to celebrate the V Force. I think even the hierarchy had realised that the rest of us would draw the line at that!
I was actually based at Waddington (on 44 Sqn) at the time, so saw all the preparations as the marquees went up. I don’t recall anybody ever anticipating the bearfight that it was to become, but anybody with an ounce of commonsense should have realised that putting 750 highly p***ed off officers in the same place at the same time was likely to be asking for trouble. Why were we so p****ed off? Well, the V Force had been sold as the maiden’s prayer for aviators, with all kinds of privileges and advantages, but nobody had pointed out that the high level strategic bombing role, in peacetime, meant endless QRA, extremely boring flying (what little there was of it), lots of target study and not much else; I remember the highlight of the year being a Lone Ranger to El Adem (Libya, for those too young to remember). So this set the scene.
We had all been in the bar at Waddo, which – as I recall – had been open since lunchtime. An early memory of the evening was walking into the tented ante-room down a long tented passageway, behind a weaving navigator of some drinking fame. At the entrance to the ante-room was a very large floral version of the 1 Group crest. Said navigator dived straight into the crest, and produced a small explosion of leaves, petals, earth, and broken flower pots; this went down very well. After standing in the ante-room for some little time, I noticed that the lining of the marquee kept moving (the entire set-up must have cost a fortune because the décor, style etc was very up-market, and everything was lined with what looked like silk). It kept moving because there were dozens of people wandering around between the canvas and the lining.
The next event of note (for me) was the arrival of my crew; the captain was sober, but this did not prevent him from handing out a very large number of bangers to the rest of the crew – ironic really, since he was himself destined to become a two star. After more staggering and assorted fireworks, we finally funnelled into eat, which was about the last occasion when anything approaching good behaviour was observed. The evening also contained two very major errors; the first was a seating plan arranged by squadron; the second I’ll mention later. Once we had dispensed with the preliminaries we sat down not to eat but to cause mayhem; after the passage of all the time since, I am still vaguely embarrassed to admit that a WAAF waitress was engaged in activities under our table which would be just as unbelievable today. A navigator sitting opposite me inserted bangers into the three arms of a candelabra, with the idea that they would shoot upwards; in fact, we ended up with a candelabra looking like three eaten bananas. Most squadrons had instruments concealed somewhere, so the whole of this period was a fairly deafening experience; somebody even struck up on the bagpipes. Food was being thrown everywhere; chaos reigned.
As you suggested, a certain deeply unpopular very senior officer, of Heathrow fame, was one of the guests – and when he arrived at the top table, 750 officers hissed; not a nice sound, but the strength of feeling was understandably very high. He was not, however, the guest of honour; that was CAS – ACM (now MRAF the Lord) Elworthy. The second big mistake of the evening was when he stood up to speak; it was the first time that silence fell (after the usual “up up up” until CAS was standing on the table); the first words delivered into that unique silence were “If you think this is bad, you should have seen it in my day.” Well, whatever little constraint remained disappeared at that point; a riot ensued.
I could rabbit on for hours, but that will do for now. Any other first-hand accounts around?
I was actually based at Waddington (on 44 Sqn) at the time, so saw all the preparations as the marquees went up. I don’t recall anybody ever anticipating the bearfight that it was to become, but anybody with an ounce of commonsense should have realised that putting 750 highly p***ed off officers in the same place at the same time was likely to be asking for trouble. Why were we so p****ed off? Well, the V Force had been sold as the maiden’s prayer for aviators, with all kinds of privileges and advantages, but nobody had pointed out that the high level strategic bombing role, in peacetime, meant endless QRA, extremely boring flying (what little there was of it), lots of target study and not much else; I remember the highlight of the year being a Lone Ranger to El Adem (Libya, for those too young to remember). So this set the scene.
We had all been in the bar at Waddo, which – as I recall – had been open since lunchtime. An early memory of the evening was walking into the tented ante-room down a long tented passageway, behind a weaving navigator of some drinking fame. At the entrance to the ante-room was a very large floral version of the 1 Group crest. Said navigator dived straight into the crest, and produced a small explosion of leaves, petals, earth, and broken flower pots; this went down very well. After standing in the ante-room for some little time, I noticed that the lining of the marquee kept moving (the entire set-up must have cost a fortune because the décor, style etc was very up-market, and everything was lined with what looked like silk). It kept moving because there were dozens of people wandering around between the canvas and the lining.
The next event of note (for me) was the arrival of my crew; the captain was sober, but this did not prevent him from handing out a very large number of bangers to the rest of the crew – ironic really, since he was himself destined to become a two star. After more staggering and assorted fireworks, we finally funnelled into eat, which was about the last occasion when anything approaching good behaviour was observed. The evening also contained two very major errors; the first was a seating plan arranged by squadron; the second I’ll mention later. Once we had dispensed with the preliminaries we sat down not to eat but to cause mayhem; after the passage of all the time since, I am still vaguely embarrassed to admit that a WAAF waitress was engaged in activities under our table which would be just as unbelievable today. A navigator sitting opposite me inserted bangers into the three arms of a candelabra, with the idea that they would shoot upwards; in fact, we ended up with a candelabra looking like three eaten bananas. Most squadrons had instruments concealed somewhere, so the whole of this period was a fairly deafening experience; somebody even struck up on the bagpipes. Food was being thrown everywhere; chaos reigned.
As you suggested, a certain deeply unpopular very senior officer, of Heathrow fame, was one of the guests – and when he arrived at the top table, 750 officers hissed; not a nice sound, but the strength of feeling was understandably very high. He was not, however, the guest of honour; that was CAS – ACM (now MRAF the Lord) Elworthy. The second big mistake of the evening was when he stood up to speak; it was the first time that silence fell (after the usual “up up up” until CAS was standing on the table); the first words delivered into that unique silence were “If you think this is bad, you should have seen it in my day.” Well, whatever little constraint remained disappeared at that point; a riot ensued.
I could rabbit on for hours, but that will do for now. Any other first-hand accounts around?
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Back in the days when I used to be a techie on the Harrier force in Germany we were on deployment in the field in Denmark. Every night when we were debriefing late into the night the brave harrier pilots would complain in the morning about the noise. Come the weekend when the techies were on guard duty the pilots were making a hell of a noise without any care for anybody else, about an hour later they all dissapeared, this is when our team chief went for a walk with a shovel. We didn't know what he had done until 4.00am when all hell broke lose in the pilots tent. They had climbed into their sleeping bags only to find the contents of the local protected ants nest in it with them and the ants weren't sleeping.
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Wholigan,
One better was the Black Mamba, constructed at various locations around the RAF with continual improvements. Basic design was from Industrial size baked bean cans with triple internal baffles and firing a ball made from a tennis ball wrapped in layers of used maps such that a friction fit was obtained inside the cannon. The outside of the cannon was wound with black tape to provide heat insulation and hence the name of the contraption. Empty test firings in the mess at Valley blew 2 or 3 wooden crests off the wall at 10 yards, and the ball could be fired over the 3-storey mess roof with no problems. Later firings at Wittering resulted in crossing the entire length of the dining room from the band balcony with zero gravity drop and a test firing in the West upper wing sent the ball straight through the fire glass leaving a clean circle in the pane. Further tests of improved models also occurred at Gutersloh and Deci but I forget the details. And then there was the spud gun that could hit the water tower next to the armoury at Deci from the new Pig and Tape. Happy days.
One better was the Black Mamba, constructed at various locations around the RAF with continual improvements. Basic design was from Industrial size baked bean cans with triple internal baffles and firing a ball made from a tennis ball wrapped in layers of used maps such that a friction fit was obtained inside the cannon. The outside of the cannon was wound with black tape to provide heat insulation and hence the name of the contraption. Empty test firings in the mess at Valley blew 2 or 3 wooden crests off the wall at 10 yards, and the ball could be fired over the 3-storey mess roof with no problems. Later firings at Wittering resulted in crossing the entire length of the dining room from the band balcony with zero gravity drop and a test firing in the West upper wing sent the ball straight through the fire glass leaving a clean circle in the pane. Further tests of improved models also occurred at Gutersloh and Deci but I forget the details. And then there was the spud gun that could hit the water tower next to the armoury at Deci from the new Pig and Tape. Happy days.
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What an excellent thread - such as pleasant change.
I love the unrestricted useof the word blunties -ahh the good old days of bluntie bashing in THOM. Of course we were banned from calling them blunties so we called them stills instead.
Samsonyte: I can lay claim to having done the Halton gong ride. Alas the PMC was the one who gave me the push as assorted dignitaries cheered me on so it wasn't exactly very naughty.
Mess cannon story 1999. The Puma force in Kosovo were based an an airfield with loads of other nations. As part of the ground defence malarky they all got given sandbags for building sangers. The RAF used theirs to build a bar - on top of a HAS. Fine till someone assembled and detonated the world's largest mess cannon. The noise was such that all the other nations stood to (apart from the Eyeties who surrendered).
This is gen as my mate were there.
I love the unrestricted useof the word blunties -ahh the good old days of bluntie bashing in THOM. Of course we were banned from calling them blunties so we called them stills instead.
Samsonyte: I can lay claim to having done the Halton gong ride. Alas the PMC was the one who gave me the push as assorted dignitaries cheered me on so it wasn't exactly very naughty.
Mess cannon story 1999. The Puma force in Kosovo were based an an airfield with loads of other nations. As part of the ground defence malarky they all got given sandbags for building sangers. The RAF used theirs to build a bar - on top of a HAS. Fine till someone assembled and detonated the world's largest mess cannon. The noise was such that all the other nations stood to (apart from the Eyeties who surrendered).
This is gen as my mate were there.
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Ex Truck
Thanks for an excellent 1st hand account of the actual event - some lovely anecdotes which had me in stitches, particularly the story of the Nav diving headfirst into the 1 Gp crest - he obviously failed to appreciate the dignity of this particular coat of arms.
In my opening thread I simply related a variety of stories as they were told to me by numerous drunks in various bars many years ago and so it's interesting to hear that the events they described appear to be essentially correct. Perhaps you can elaborate on what date the dinner was held, what you saw happen when the 3* stood up to speak, events outside after the dinner was over and the aftermath. I am sure many Pprune readers would appreciate it if you would rabbit on for hours with further humorous stories of the events, both witnessed and related to you by other contemporaries of yours that attended. If you are still in touch with other V Force aircrew who attended, perhaps you could encourage them to recount their memories of the event on this forum. Keep up the good work!
Thanks for an excellent 1st hand account of the actual event - some lovely anecdotes which had me in stitches, particularly the story of the Nav diving headfirst into the 1 Gp crest - he obviously failed to appreciate the dignity of this particular coat of arms.
In my opening thread I simply related a variety of stories as they were told to me by numerous drunks in various bars many years ago and so it's interesting to hear that the events they described appear to be essentially correct. Perhaps you can elaborate on what date the dinner was held, what you saw happen when the 3* stood up to speak, events outside after the dinner was over and the aftermath. I am sure many Pprune readers would appreciate it if you would rabbit on for hours with further humorous stories of the events, both witnessed and related to you by other contemporaries of yours that attended. If you are still in touch with other V Force aircrew who attended, perhaps you could encourage them to recount their memories of the event on this forum. Keep up the good work!
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Schadenfreude,
Well done, you seem to have re-invented the crew-room. This thread will hopefully run and run.
Now, how to get Wednesday afternoons back for sports?
Sad thing is, if everything else gets done on the word processing thingy, our armed forces will eventually be relegated to sending the enemies of the nation merely a nasty letter.
Well done, you seem to have re-invented the crew-room. This thread will hopefully run and run.
Now, how to get Wednesday afternoons back for sports?
Sad thing is, if everything else gets done on the word processing thingy, our armed forces will eventually be relegated to sending the enemies of the nation merely a nasty letter.
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Proletarian - Pre-dinner you fill napkins with flour, tie cutlery together with invisible thread, lose at least one chair on blunties leg (causing arguments about seating), rearrange seating plan if on magnetic tag system in any event (lose a couple of names), change water in ladies loo bowl and cistern for fire extinguisher chemicals which foam up when mixed, put coloured die in water based fire extinguishers (have you ever watched the grim realisation on some drunkard's face when he realises that he's not hosing down people with water?), prep bicycles, cars, motorcycles or whatever will be needed later on, bribe mess staff - this is essential if you want co-operation and understanding at clear up time(harder now they're not servicemen), make sure that anything that is to be seriously damaged is replaced with cheaper variant (see earlier table-sawing story). Remember, nothing is sacrosanct except the Squadron Standards!
For weeks before you should siphon small amounts from your bank account and keep secret from wife - saves explaining the £70 entry on bank statement that is not covered by any cheque stub! (Been there)
For weeks before you should siphon small amounts from your bank account and keep secret from wife - saves explaining the £70 entry on bank statement that is not covered by any cheque stub! (Been there)
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Lyneham DIs in early 90s. 47 and LXX had been trying to outdo each other in the mess cannon stakes. Some kind of mutually assured destruction actually. LXX created this thing looking like a lifesize 25 pounder that could fire projectiles the size of volleyballs. Enter the USAF exchange mate on 47, who was actually clinically nuts. Said chap gets to work with calculator and several serious looking text books. After a couple of days he asks around for a "spare" electric screwdriver, which he duly gets. Eventually he presents the sqn with his invention- SCMODS- Self Contained Multiple Ordnance Delivery System. This was, in laymans terms, a 6 barrelled electrically driven rotary mess cannon, complete with master arm switch, and auto loading and charging. The thing was huge and needed 3 people to operate it. It was concealed in a huge cardboard box covered in pretty wrapping paper and a big pink ribbon and sat in the dining room. It looked just like a small sideboard and so raised no suspicions. The projectiles by the way were kids' foam tennis balls. After the Loyal Toast Lxx brought out their cannon and blasted the 47 leg. The mad spam and 2 equally crazy navs then got up walked over to the box and produced a check-list they had made up to go with their creation. SCMODS was unveiled and pointed at LXX sqn, the motor was started to get the barrels going and it was fired. Unfortunately the projectiles went everywhere except where they were intended. Most hit all the sqn standards at the other end of the dining-room which then fell over. Needless to say the sqn was kicked out and banned from the mess tfn.
Anyone know what happened to SCMODS, was it destroyed as part of the SALT programme?
Anyone know what happened to SCMODS, was it destroyed as part of the SALT programme?
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On the subject of legends, and now that it appears to be acceptable to admit to some fine times on V bombers (or V tankers) does anyone out there have the full story regarding the feud between 2 V force outfits over the Tirpitz bulkhead.
I think 9 Sqn was involved and seem to recall a Vulcan diverting into Wittering to pick up said item but I can not remember who was stealing it from whom.
I think 9 Sqn was involved and seem to recall a Vulcan diverting into Wittering to pick up said item but I can not remember who was stealing it from whom.
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Some years ago at Odiham there was a field gun on the grass outside the Mess. It was regularly fired during Happy Hours etc by lobbing a lit "thunderflash" down the barrel, followed by a large tin of NAAFI beans (which were of suitable calibre for large explosions - in or out of the can). After this had gone on for some time, many blackened and battered tins were discovered on the airfield, many hundreds of yards away. If the gun is still there, you will notice that the muzzle now has a plate welded over it! Good job no-one thought of turning the gun round to face the bar....
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The 'bit of the Tirpitz' saga is one of those bits of RAF history about which a whole book could have been written. The 9 Sqn Vulcan which 'diverted' into Wittering (long before the arrival of 'bona jets') was apparently on its way back to Akrotiri and picked up the bit of Tirpitz from a snatch squad which had made its way down the A15/A1 from Waddington hotly pursued by a gang from 617 Sqn!! Of course the first sqn to bomb the Tirpitz was the premier V-bomber sqn - 35 Sqn - although there was extensive fog at the time and they couldn't claim any hits!!
[This message has been edited by BEagle (edited 24 June 2000).]
[This message has been edited by BEagle (edited 24 June 2000).]
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Shy,
Unfortunately said gun is no longer outside the mess (nor has it been for some time). However some of the 7 sqn boys constructed 'Big Bertha' and test fired in the bar following a DI destroying the dado rail and plaster in one corner of the bar, made for a nice mess bill apparently.
Unfortunately said gun is no longer outside the mess (nor has it been for some time). However some of the 7 sqn boys constructed 'Big Bertha' and test fired in the bar following a DI destroying the dado rail and plaster in one corner of the bar, made for a nice mess bill apparently.
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Anybody recall the, probably apocryphal, night at the George at Leadenham when the AOCs daughter joined the strippers on stage and apparently did much better (a former OC 216 told the story).
On a similar subject - Puma crewmen might recall 'Tiny Tim'.
Odiham SNCOs might also like to recount the car race down the runway. One of the cars shot off the end, crossed the road and landed in the field on the other side. The police refused to proceed because the car never touched the road and therefore no offence was committed. The farmer refused to make a complaint because he thought it was good to see the return of high spirits (JG are you out there?)
On a similar subject - Puma crewmen might recall 'Tiny Tim'.
Odiham SNCOs might also like to recount the car race down the runway. One of the cars shot off the end, crossed the road and landed in the field on the other side. The police refused to proceed because the car never touched the road and therefore no offence was committed. The farmer refused to make a complaint because he thought it was good to see the return of high spirits (JG are you out there?)