Taceval, Maxival and Minival
Apologies to the Tornado crews at LBH from 1998-1990. I was initially the Strike Controller, then after I discovered what a boring & "read from the card" job it was became the daylight Attack Controller.
I controlled (?) the tasking of 48 jets during conventional ops, reliant on ATOC Maastricht sending tasking in a timely manner to LBH via secure telecoms. More often than not those telecoms refused to work. That meant that tasking had to be passed by voice over the American supplied "Stu II" secure telephone (Crap -& I hope the current system works, wherever in the world it is now!). The audio qualities of Stu II left a lot to be desired..... I was spending over 10 minutes writing down the each ATO whilst 2 or 3 squadrons were desperately waiting to arm & plan. In the meantime, previous sorties had returned & had idle armourers. This led to numerous Sqn bosses deciding to, quite rightly, order their teams to load LGBs instead of dumb 1000 pounders rather than sit there doing nothing.
The lack of information flow & late ATO's from the ATOC was as palpable as the TOTAL lack of training that I received from either SOPSO or OCOPS. I received not a single visit to any of the 4 squadrons to meet or speak to the auths/Warlords in my 2 years at LBH. The Stn Cdr G McR was a total waste of space on the "Bridge".
Has anything changed 26 years later?
I controlled (?) the tasking of 48 jets during conventional ops, reliant on ATOC Maastricht sending tasking in a timely manner to LBH via secure telecoms. More often than not those telecoms refused to work. That meant that tasking had to be passed by voice over the American supplied "Stu II" secure telephone (Crap -& I hope the current system works, wherever in the world it is now!). The audio qualities of Stu II left a lot to be desired..... I was spending over 10 minutes writing down the each ATO whilst 2 or 3 squadrons were desperately waiting to arm & plan. In the meantime, previous sorties had returned & had idle armourers. This led to numerous Sqn bosses deciding to, quite rightly, order their teams to load LGBs instead of dumb 1000 pounders rather than sit there doing nothing.
The lack of information flow & late ATO's from the ATOC was as palpable as the TOTAL lack of training that I received from either SOPSO or OCOPS. I received not a single visit to any of the 4 squadrons to meet or speak to the auths/Warlords in my 2 years at LBH. The Stn Cdr G McR was a total waste of space on the "Bridge".
Has anything changed 26 years later?
Last edited by SAMXXV; 24th Oct 2015 at 18:04.
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Originally Posted by FantomZorbin
Whilst trotting around a station on Distaff duties, I noted how many scrappy bits of A4 with 'Sandbags' written on them were adorning all the windows. Translating the areas to be covered into numbers of bags required was revealing!
I was doing a staff visit at a certain West Country TWU, when I encountered a similar scenario in their War Book. A couple of sheets of A4 and a smoking calculator later, I was able to suggest to OC Ops that the station's sandbag plan as described would actually take over 2 years to complete, working h-24/365
He was not amused.
Just had a fascinated re-read: it all seems long long ago, and I fear we are less ready now than in those days of the hooter and the pressure.
However, a side-note not, I think, covered by the above.
Met. Brief.
In RAFG our offices were all fully manned [no women] 24/7 and the call-out was a bit silly and indeed potentially disastrous, all eggs in one basket. Thus it rarely happened, I think SMetOs negotiated that with WingCO Ops.
We kept two parallel sets of documents ready on the old Banda duplicators: one was the usual local and NW Europe forecast and TAF lists, and one was Warsaw Pact pre-defined area and charts etc.
Thus we always knew very early in the tumult that peace had been declared: to brief WP weather to sleepy and startled customers due to fly in a NATO LFA would not have been a good idea.
I claim [boast] that I caused/invented the prep. of a WP set of Docs as routine by every shift [thus 3 times in 24 hours] rather than wait for Armaggedon. Thus Met. was a comparative oasis of calm once we had donned NBC gear. Always ate my snack before donning.
I think we were right to be frightened, and we still should be.
However, a side-note not, I think, covered by the above.
Met. Brief.
In RAFG our offices were all fully manned [no women] 24/7 and the call-out was a bit silly and indeed potentially disastrous, all eggs in one basket. Thus it rarely happened, I think SMetOs negotiated that with WingCO Ops.
We kept two parallel sets of documents ready on the old Banda duplicators: one was the usual local and NW Europe forecast and TAF lists, and one was Warsaw Pact pre-defined area and charts etc.
Thus we always knew very early in the tumult that peace had been declared: to brief WP weather to sleepy and startled customers due to fly in a NATO LFA would not have been a good idea.
I claim [boast] that I caused/invented the prep. of a WP set of Docs as routine by every shift [thus 3 times in 24 hours] rather than wait for Armaggedon. Thus Met. was a comparative oasis of calm once we had donned NBC gear. Always ate my snack before donning.
I think we were right to be frightened, and we still should be.
