Flew out in a civil Britannia if memory is correct. Vividly recall flying back in a BUA VC-10.

UKMAMS have re-affirmed my belief there is a reason why some mothers eat their young at birth:D

The only problem with that is they don't eat the placenta as well............which is the reason you end up with UKMAMS :p

all spelling mistakes are "df" alcohol induced

ABIW......................
http://images.amazon.com/images/P/B0...115817939_.jpg


:= :}


Ah well half term finishes soon......

Hobie,
It was mainly RAF Beverlys and Britannias, with the odd Hastings thrown in for good measure. :)

I believe the Comet may also have been on the route as they continued through Gan to Singapore.

The route would have been UK, possibly Malta, Libya, Sudan and into the Red Sea before following the coast to Aden. Not sure where they would have flagged, certainbly the Hastings went through El Adem and then possibly Khartoum.

In the 60s was it normal for the aircraft to slip crews and stream the aircraft down the route?

I have an idea that slipping only really started with the Britannia and the Comet. One time at Gan I do not recall the Comet crews slipping as the hop Aden-Gan-Changi could be done in one duty period. Not so the Brit whose crews used to bitch when the Bomber Command aircon accommodation at Gan was being used by used by Bomber Command.:}

Certainly the slipping practice serves to separate crew and pax.

I remember seeing Argosys (Argosies?) at El Adem '67 -ish.

Many thanks Guys for the Aden info ..... :ok:

The "Boss" did 12 months down there towards the end of the UK's interest in that part of the world ..... I rem he used to send 10 duty free cigs to my mother a couple of times a week with his letters home ...... one day a letter arrived with lots of tape and a demand from the Postie for a couple of quid's Duty (HMG's Customs and Excise, $$$ bless them) ...... she simply wrote "Return to Sender" !!! ..... and off the letter went back to Aden ...:p

In all likelihood they would have been 70 Sqn from Akrotiri although there was a Bomber/Transport variant in Aden and they probably did their fair share of root shifting too.

Wonderful machine, looked the part; pity about the armoured freight deck.

According to the Times today the MP has received an apology. Under the headline 'RAF apologises for poor service' it reports that he has received a letter from Adam Ingram 'admitting that "the level of service you received fell far short of what you could rightfully expect."

Wader,
True enough, the "Whistling Wheelbarrow" wonderous beast. I did a couple of years looking after non - transport, non - bomber ones. Good times.

Have just seen this also, thought others may wish to see article in full here:Clicky

Srennaps, you are making all techies and especially yourself look like a complete bunch of arses. Please speak for yourself and do not tar us all with your rule bending!.

It is good to see Akt movs getting the kicking it needs. Maybe they might raise their game a little.

Although on the movers website they have resorted to blaming the army.

A direct quote "Guys Some very good comments from all above. One other problem we have is as usual a lack of manpower. For example in BSR there are 4 ATLO staff and 1 RAF SAC/CPL on pax. This is because there just isn't the manpower to go round, so we have to farm it out to the Army.":ouch:

Sounds like the usual excuse. It was the other shift.

mova - I don't think that was what was implied by the post you quote. I think the fact that there are 4 to 1 Army Movers to RAF Movers at that location is the point. I didn't get a sniff of 'blame the Army' on that quote at all.

My apologies L1011GE. I must have got it wrong.

Well spotted. I have to say if this thread of yours (not you Mr C Hinecap) is supposed to reflect inter service / inter trade / groundcrew/aircrew banter then it's not very funny. I intend to take a print of the entire thread and present it to CAS Support when he meets with us next week. Internet anonymity may be leading to a few ridiculous comments such as the officer who stated that 'had he had his bayonet close to hand, he would have gladly stabbed the mover in front of him!' Some of the puerile rubbish being spouted on here is truly unbelievable. I think we'll be a bit less 'can do', start embracing a few more H & S rules and practically work to rule. We'll see how smoothly the AT fleet runs then shall we? Those of you that genuinely know anything about what movers do, particularly in the more difficult places we operate, ought to pipe up and write something positive for once.

What a surprise - one of the movers posts a message about some of the difficulties they are under and because it doesn't fit into peoples views of the movers it immediatly gets slated.

And someone was asking why they don't post here with thier side of the story. :ugh: :ugh: :ugh:

Give it a try, in the SH world we have been doing it for a while now. It really works and people don't give you as much grief as some are reporting on here!!
:ok:

Taught them all they know

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QJxzDYJ4C3Y

Hello hellomoto
 

What a remarkably snooty and stupid post. In the case of the RAF AT and Movements organisation, the perception is the reality. All this defensive stuff telling us we don't undertand your problems just comes across as excuse making. The time for excuses is over. Accept that the system needs to improve and get on with improving it.
And by the way, if you are going to criticise others for being puerile, you should avoid writing things like:
'I think we'll be a bit less 'can do', start embracing a few more H & S rules and practically work to rule. We'll see how smoothly the AT fleet runs then shall we?'
Pot calling the kettle black, or what? :mad: :mad: :mad:
BM

Hobie, I know it's a bit late but in answer to your Aden question most of the trooping UK - Khormaksar was done using BUA (British United Airways) VC10 and Britannias on charter. This was in addition to RAF Britannias, Comets and the odd new VC10.
This type of airlift is known as Strategic - The movement of pax, freight and mail between theatres.
Movement from Khormaksar to Kenya, Socotra, Riyadh, Midway, Salalah, Masirah, Muharraq etc used AT aircraft based in Aden which included Beverleys, Argosies, Twin Pinoeers and even a couple of Dakotas.
This type of airlift is known as Tactical - The movement of pax, freight and mail within a theatre.
Obviously use was made also of the new Hercules and Belfast but not on schedules to Aden itself. More info on El Adem too if you want it, I had the misfortune to serve in both locations!

The perception is the reality......the REALITY is that the SMR stated that we had 25% less manpower than what we need to do our job.

I do accept that the system needs to improve but simply blaming it all on movers when we clearly haven't got anywhere near enough aircraft or manpower to do what's being asked of us is a bit simplistic.

As for 'rules', we just keep working, literally 'til we drop, there's no "don't wake us up, we're in crew rest" for us........ We've never moaned about it before but with so many people blaming us for everything, including crashing our ACHE into aircraft, I'm moaning about it now. :ok:

er that's because we (that's the Royal "we" as I am out now) as a trde do crash ACHE into aircraft.

The issue of manpower is one of the biggest factors. When the SMR said there was a requirement for 1200 movers from the exisiting 865. However there was no money to pay for them so the Aux could provide the extra manpower. It was never envisaged that they would have to provide manpower so often and for such a sustained period of time that the trade would run into the problem that once an Aux has been called up so many time in a period of times (don't remember the figures now) that the Aux couldn't be called up again. So now the trade is in the area of needing more manpower but the Aux cannot provide. Hence the techies being trained to stack bags and build pallets, albeit under supervision, at BZZ.

Perhaps we crash our ACHE because we're undermanned, overworked and to some extent, because we're there.
We have to operate massive items of machinery within cm's of multi million pound aircraft, there's plenty of trades in the Air Force that arn't required to work with those risks. I do of course accept that we make mistakes, I think everyone does.

The call up terms for the 4624 sqn (oggie movers) is 12 months in 3 yrs that is if a oggie done 12 months that person could not be called up for 2 yrs although they thought it was better to call them up for 6 months at a time which meant some people for 6 months then 12 months latter called up again.
This has been going on since 1999 when we were first called up for Kosavo.But since then there was a compulsory call up for Afghan 2002 then a full sqn call up for GW2.There have been continuous call ups since.
after the SMR came up with the figure of 1200 movers that was when the oggies strength was 300 but i think you will find it to be a lot less now then you have the ones that cannot be called upon.

No, perhaps you drive your ACHE into previously serviceable a/c because your lackadaisical "we know best" approach to operating around a/c breeds a certain amount of contempt.

There are many trades that operate around a/c with ACHE, MHE and many other forms of large vehicle without managing to drive into the things.:ok:

So, all these other 'super trades' never have accidents then :confused:

GAR170,

Quite right that there has been almost continous mobilisation activity at 4624 since 1999, but that wasn't the first mobilisation for the Sqn.

Approx 120 of us served in 1991 for GW1, although I grant that was too long previous to make any difference in terms of mobilisation "limits". Many of the same people have however now done perhaps 4 or 5 mobilisations - if you have any sort of life or career outside the RAuxAF, there is a good chance it will have been severely impacted or ceased to exist under those conditions.

Who ever thought that we would get to the stage where a Regular Trade simply cannot do the job without it's Reservist Unit - for sure that is the the case now.

On that note, good luck to my mates off to somewhere sandy in the near future :ok:

Travel
 

Don't you know there's a war on!

Wycombe
Apologise for leaving out GW1 that was the first time that the SQN on a whole was mobilised GW2 was the second Kosavo and Afghan have been low rolling numbers.

bigflyingrob
Yes we are all aware there is a war on and if you look you will see that the people that have committed to the reserves are doing what is expected not only the movers but regt force protection units as well.Which i think is commendable you must remember that when you volunteered to join up you made it your life these people have volunteered to make it a part of theirs.

There are far too many people on this forum that are oblivious to what the job of a mover actually is. Far from being just baggage monkeys, we are also responsible for the check-in of passengers/loading of aircraft/raising all relevent paperwork/trimming the aircraft(to make sure you can even take off!) and this is just scratching the surface! Trying do all these jobs on a stretched manning and on an ageing AT fleet (and when they break guess who's on the front line to take every1's ****?) is a difficult job and I dare any mover basher to step up and try and fill our boots for 1 a/c and see how far you get!

This would be from the same GLANZASILVIA that PM'd me having a big problem with rank. Yet another mover citing his/her problems and failing to keep site of the overall big picture; the guys coming back from ops don't want excuses, just good service. It's the least you could provide given their efforts elsewhere.

I have dealt with a number of excellent movers and others who I wouldn't piss on if they were on fire. I don't want to tar all movers with the same brush but, overall, my experiences have been less than positive. The aircrew (I can't believe I'm about to support the 2-wing master race!) have ususally made up for it in humour, communication and professionalism. The problem lies not with the rank and file movers but usually with the SNCO/DAMO cadre who can never be found, rarely brief the pax and should be on hand to motivate their troops when the going gets tough. All too often, the only sight of the DAMO is when they strut their stuff during pax loading, after all the problems have been solved.

By the way, does anyone know what the required rank is for the PRO? I've tried to look at JSP 800 Vol 2 for several days but it does not appear to be available.

As an ex-armourer, I frequently drove large vehicles (usually with big bits of kit on it) within cms of Nimrods. I think you'll find that yours and my situation is not unique and that a number of other trades operate in close proximity to expensive airframes. As alluded to already, familiarity breeds contempt; I suggest that when you are tired and over-worked, you do what the rest of the RAF does and take more care. Mistakes do happen but, unfortunately, yours are all too prominent and usually inconvenience hundereds of people. Try to think about their situation before spouting your thin and risible excuses.