RAF Vulcan Callsigns 1970's.
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Yes, I think there was a radical change in callsigns in the late 90s. I know the Jag OCU used Tartan as a formation callsign in the 80s. At Coningsby in the 90s we were asked to register sqn and station callsigns. My boss, OC Ops was cheeky and registered Typhoon as we were slated to have the Typhoon OCU. He was surprised when it was approved.
I think one of 29s was Triplex.
I think one of 29s was Triplex.
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There were some oddities though. Suppose a number of aircraft were deployed to Malta for walk Sunspot exercise they would be allocated a block of numbers. While in Malta they would use the appropriate callsign rather than the RAFAIR. In return to UK each aircraft wour revert to its original RAFAIR callsign. The oddity however was if an airframe was replaced.
One case would be a new aircraft coming out using a different RAFAIR callsign group number and the old aircraft using the same number returning to UK. The new aircraft woukd then pick up the original callsign.
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If you meant an aircraft diverted to a foreign airfield it would probably retain its previous UK campaign so France for instance would see ABD01 arrive and when recovering to UK are it depart.
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Yes, I think there was a radical change in callsigns in the late 90s. I know the Jag OCU used Tartan as a formation callsign in the 80s. At Coningsby in the 90s we were asked to register sqn and station callsigns. My boss, OC Ops was cheeky and registered Typhoon as we were slated to have the Typhoon OCU. He was surprised when it was approved.
I think one of 29s was Triplex.
I think one of 29s was Triplex.
29 - Buzzard, Ransack, Triplex
56 - loads including Warlord, Rambo, Horseman, Lucky
OEU - Apollo
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Sqn callsigns were used continuously in support of the No-Fly Zone over the Balkans throughout the 1990s. However, on the morning of the first NATO Air strikes after the fall of Srebrenica, some bright spark in CAOC decided to swap around all of the callsigns to "confuse the enemy". All it succeeded in doing was to confuse the Allies and destroy any situational awareness over the battlefield. No-one had a clue where anyone was and where other friendly assets were - especially when looking for Tankers and other support aircraft with aircrew habitually reverting to their usual callsigns. The situation lasted for a day, and normal service was resumed by next morning. Perhaps the most upset by this was the USAF fighter squadron who discovered in the morning tasking signals that they had been allocated the callsign "Faggot" . There were many reports of raised voices in the corridors of CAOC and other HQs with that one.
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I was WVY170 - so Y170 in the circuit at Woodvale. At Cranwell I started as CWN856, which dropped through 756, 656, 556 then 456 as I progressed through the course. The callsign being N456 at Cranwell/Barkston, but C456 at Coningsby, Waddo etc.
Now was it CWN or CWL? So long ago!
Now was it CWN or CWL? So long ago!
Same applied to other Training bases, e.g. Church Fenton, Chivenor, Shawbury, Valley, Finningley, etc - multiple variations on trigraph until they standardised on CFN, CHV, SYS, VYT and FYY respectively. Then they simplified things even further by closing most of the training bases
