"Army" veteran photo - Daily Telegraph
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Northern Ireland, all helicopters were ARMY.
Sep 1971, Wessex called out to transfer a badly injured soldier from hospital in Londonderry to Belfast. Aircraft captain was a Royal Marine and the co-pilot was RAF. At Londonderry, they shut down on the helipad and waited the call in a crew room. Amused to hear on the midnight news that an Army helicopter was waiting for the casualty to be cleared for transfer. Eventually cleared to RTB without the casualty.
Later discovered that the mis-identification Army/RAF was a deliberate ploy.
Sep 1971, Wessex called out to transfer a badly injured soldier from hospital in Londonderry to Belfast. Aircraft captain was a Royal Marine and the co-pilot was RAF. At Londonderry, they shut down on the helipad and waited the call in a crew room. Amused to hear on the midnight news that an Army helicopter was waiting for the casualty to be cleared for transfer. Eventually cleared to RTB without the casualty.
Later discovered that the mis-identification Army/RAF was a deliberate ploy.
While the telegraph error is typical of todays media what some of you uniform guys and girls do not seem to realise is that the same level of accuracy and research applies to everything they write about especially anything vaguely technical.
Basic bottom line is don't believe anything in the papers , its either deliberate editorial bias, a la Murdoch world , Ignorance or laziness either way its wrong or inaccurate.
Basic bottom line is don't believe anything in the papers , its either deliberate editorial bias, a la Murdoch world , Ignorance or laziness either way its wrong or inaccurate.
Below the Glidepath - not correcting
Today's Daily Telegraph has a photo on page 2 captioned "An Army veteran attends a Justice for Northern Ireland protest . . .". Fair enough, except that the "Army" veteran is wearing an RAF beret, a Royal Air Force blazer badge, an RAF tie (?RAFA) and carrying an RAF flag.
I despair of the depths of ignorance to which even a "quality" paper has sunk in respect to defence matters.
I despair of the depths of ignorance to which even a "quality" paper has sunk in respect to defence matters.
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Ecce Homo! Loquitur...
Later discovered that the mis-identification Army/RAF was a deliberate ploy.
The CRP reported to CRC Boulder where I was serving at the time. We went one morning and couldn't get an answer on any of the landlines or by BT, so reported it to HQ11Gp who said they'd investigate. They called back shortly after to say it had closed the previous night. Speaking to those who where there at the time the closure was kept secret to ensure the safety of those leaving. Numbers were gradually reduced and equipment moved out and, at the end of the last shift, they padlocked the doors and gates and just drove away without telling anyone else in the AD system.
SACEUR and his staff were reportedly less than impressed. As part of the NATO AD chain the U.K. was required to monitor the approaches to the perimeter and initially claimed that that the civil radar feeds now being fed in provided a replacement - until it was pointed out those in NI/Eire were SSR only. At which point the U.K. was pointedly told to fulfill its responsibility - at which stage 144 SU stood up at Ty Croes in Anglesey in 91 as a replacement with a mobile radar until the politics were sorted out.
Re ORACs post above on Bishops Court/Ulster Radar, here is a bit of history regarding the IRA attacks on RAF personnel at the base.
http://globehoppersanonymous.*******...n-ireland.html
There were plenty of stories regarding the supposed "leniency" the IRA showed towards the base, the main one being that one of the civilian controllers had "influence" and they didn't want to **** in their own nest. This was at odds with the fact that one of civvy assistants was a corporal in the UDR, something we only discovered when she was manning a road block we were stopped at one night.
The authors line about the brightly coloured bus being discarded after the attack is a bit misleading. What I think he means is that the buses were painted in Ulsterbus livery, which fooled no-one. The bus was still in service during my time there (1974-1976) with the bullet holes in the ceiling covered over with duct tape!
(To read the story, replace the asterisks in the URL with b.l.o.g.s.p.o.t. omitting the dots.)
http://globehoppersanonymous.*******...n-ireland.html
There were plenty of stories regarding the supposed "leniency" the IRA showed towards the base, the main one being that one of the civilian controllers had "influence" and they didn't want to **** in their own nest. This was at odds with the fact that one of civvy assistants was a corporal in the UDR, something we only discovered when she was manning a road block we were stopped at one night.
The authors line about the brightly coloured bus being discarded after the attack is a bit misleading. What I think he means is that the buses were painted in Ulsterbus livery, which fooled no-one. The bus was still in service during my time there (1974-1976) with the bullet holes in the ceiling covered over with duct tape!
(To read the story, replace the asterisks in the URL with b.l.o.g.s.p.o.t. omitting the dots.)
Join Date: Mar 2010
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Sadly my old buddy Graham H****s, who was Stn Cdr BC at one point, is no longer with us and thus unable to cast additional light on the subject. He did describe his tour as 'interesting'!
Ecce Homo! Loquitur...
Sitgelfel,
Couldn't get your link to open so did a bit of searching, seems pprune truncates the string. Instead of just replacing the asterisk with bl*gspot, also replace the "...n-ireland.html" with:
********.co.uk/2013/12/an-explosive-welcome-to-northern-ireland.html
Couldn't get your link to open so did a bit of searching, seems pprune truncates the string. Instead of just replacing the asterisk with bl*gspot, also replace the "...n-ireland.html" with:
********.co.uk/2013/12/an-explosive-welcome-to-northern-ireland.html
