What Did You Do In The Cold War, Daddy?
 

I've already posted this on another thread (about the Queen's message!) but on reflection that wasn't my best idea ever - I reckon it needs a thread of its own. This is for you younger fellas . . .

Take a look at this petition -
We should honour the service personnel who protected the UK during the Cold War - e-petitions


I didn't start this petition, but I'm glad someone else has. When the Berlin wall came down, CAS Dick Johns came to HQ Strike and told us 'The Cold War is over, and we've won it'. I asked him - tongue in cheek, of course - when to expect a campaign medal. He said not to hold my breath, and we all laughed.

I didn't hold my breath then, and I haven't been for the last 20 years. I really don't mind not having a medal; it wouldn't change my own knowledge that we all did something worthwhile with our lives. But I have been getting more and more disillusioned about the lack of knowledge, never mind appreciation, in the population at large. It's almost as if the Warsaw Pact and its potential threat had never existed. Whether this petition succeeds or not, it will surely do no harm to generate a bit of a discussion. It's easy to remind people of obvious 'hot' victories like the Falklands, Sierra Leone or the first Gulf War. I'm as proud as could be to have been a member of the team responsible. But the Cold War - which demanded total and sustained commitment and professionalism, and which certainly warmed up from time to time, arguably claiming some victims - did more to keep us safe and well than any of those short campaigns. Forty years without a major war in Europe is an achievement that shouldn't be overlooked, surely? Yet most people under 35 know nothing about it.

Please sign the petition. Even if you don't, please pass it on to anyone you think will support it. Here it is again . . .

We should honour the service personnel who protected the UK during the Cold War - e-petitions

Like Yellow Son, I have a personal pride in what we did and the dedication with which we did it. The longest and most inclusive war the RAF ever fought (and won).
I haven't signed the petition as I suspect it may prove to be a tool for derision. It wasn't long ago I heard that a certain 4* had referred to "The perma-frost warriors" and our supposed resistance to change (the very same changes he promoted and which have now emasculated our Service).
Rant over!

Standby for the septics to tell us we were just bit part players!

S-D

"fought"

really??????

reading other posts it sounds like a lot of folk sitting round drinking tea all day at dispersal - not exactly the Battle of El Alamein or the Somme............

HH

I guess you were not aircrew on QRA during the Cold War then!

ACW

Tea? Good God, one of the main ingredients of that stuff is water, and fish have sex in that..
Nasty stuff..

Ahhhh QRA, the one place no one could bother you... :ok:


..

Went to W Germany and "played" at Armageddon.

Quite the contrary, you folks soaking up the first belt of SAMs was a much appreciated planning factor.

But as a former ICBM missileer, I always considered any airbreathing delivery system as too late, and for clean up anyway.

Still, seeing the pK calculations for those folks taking the long way to deliver instant sunshine was pretty sobering. Me? I'd have just been dug out of the ground in North Dakota, so what was the real difference there?

(Fairly) happy days. Apart from being at Marham. I quite miss the Cold War. At least you knew who the enemy was back then.

That takes me back to the days of that cringingly awful Combat Crew thing which SAC pushed out...

Complete with picture of some weedy youth in a flying suit complete with shiny cravat (Spams call them 'ascots', for some weird reason)...:8

Mind you, perhaps there's some Spam medal for simply having had to live in North Dakota?

I think the cold war will go down as one of the best ever "wars" to have fought in. I'm proud to have played my small part, but I don't think I deserve a campaign medal for having an absolute blast playing with almost unlimited pointy kit with the minimal risk of getting maimed/killed.

Let's leave medals to those who deserve them.

Why would cold war era troops be honoured? And what do you mean honoured, a medal? Utterly ridiculous! It was part of the job, nobody got hurt. It was an interesting time and without it many wouldn't have had nearly as good careers as they have, for me it's a big no.

Most of us were but 'sandalled spear carriers' in the great charade known as the cold war. At least then we had a sense of purpose and a recognisable enemy. We also had careers that gave us overseas postings and we had a comradeship that civilians will never know. There was a price to pay, not just financial. How many lost their lives in all of our armed services during this extended period? No, I don't want a medal either.

How many crews were lost in recce, refueling, and training?

Hardly "nobody."

Too often that wound being a NoDak wife...(not there's anything wrong with that)



Ah, Beags, don't be jealous. Wearing my 'crew blues', blue-dyed fatigues with my 'dickie' was quite the chick magnet (not). We won't discuss changing into pajamas, sweats, and the like, complete with warm, fuzzy slippers once actually on alert and submerged 70-90 feet under the surface.

Dive, dive, dive....oooga...oooga...

As we all read the remarks about how the Cold War wasn't a shooting war let's just give a thought for the hundreds of aircrew who made the ultimate sacrifice during training losing their lives preparing for the one that never came. I lost 4 friends and I consider myself fortunate. Some lost many more and some families paid the ultimate price.

I still struggle with the negative attitudes about what would simply be a campaign medal. Is the GSM for Northern Ireland a bad thing? I can live without a medal but I got medals for less.

RIP to my former colleagues and friends.

Like many, I was fiercely proud to be part of RAFG, for my part being at RAF Gutersloh. My personal contribution was at the end of the Cold War, being in Germany from 1986 to mid 1990. What part did we play?

We worked hard, but enjoyed it. I don't recollect many people monking or bitching about this and that. We would drink regularly and heavily. We would happily roll out of an all night Sgts & WOs Mess vs. Officers' Mess games night straight into Taceval. We would ensure that each field deployment diverted a 4 tonne truck to Martkauf for 'supplies'.

Equally, we flew hard. The two Harrier squadrons would each launch 16-ship waves, four times a day. 230 and 18 would fly equally hard. Inevitably, some of us died. In one relatively short period we lost half a dozen aircraft and a similar number of aircrew (Ada, Suds, John Carver, Jim Mac, Pete Stone and Phil Brewer spring to mind).

As far as the war was concerned, we were under no illusion that it would be bloody and we would probably be sacrificed but didn't overly worry about it. In hindsight, I think we believed in 'stability' of the status quo. Personally, the only worry I had was the thought of a long and painful death having got my NBC drill wrong. :ouch:

I remember the Staish (Ian Stewart) briefing us all in the Mess shortly after the Wall came down. He clearly described how he didn't know what the short-term would bring but he offered that there would be a decade of global instability; that decade has not yet finished.

Was it a war? Not for many of us although some were doing very brave and important things. Most were ready to do the same. Would I go back? God, yes. It was the most stimulating, enjoyable and worthwhile part of my life. Do we deserve medals? No.

Jayand, rosevidney1, Gehovah and getting bigger too. well said and in total agreement.



..

Very many; during my own twenty eight years, there were 22 very close friends who perished in flying accidents. But a medal - I don't think so.

Having served from 1969 - 1997 I hope I may be regarded as having taken part in "the Cold War". Whilst I'm aware that at certain times during my career, I partook in activities conducive to the debilitating of Soviet threats, I can not say that I ever felt in any way under serious threat or any heightened state of concern. Maybe because as a "child of the 50/60s" I had to remain "cool". I did feel under threat, several times in GW1 and Sarajevo. They gave me a few " decorative" souvenirs for GW1, nary a thing for Sarajevo. Having signed on the dotted line in 1969, I believe I understood the "threat" and the expectancy by my employers that I would do my job. Surely, we just accepted that that was the way it was, and got on with it. With the greatest respect to all who feel there should be some reward for service in that period, and those who gave their lives, I truly believe that our service and our success needs no jewellery to mark the facts of the conflict. As they say in that exemplar of British Journalism, the Daily Fail, "go on then, Red arrow me"!

Smudge:ok:

Thanks but no thanks.



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Thanks but no thanks.

ACW

No thank you.

"6 for carriage 6 for use"

Yellow Sun

Those that tragically lost their lives whilst serving during the "cold war" didn't die because of it but, simply because they were undertaking risky, dangerous training. Thats what we do in the military. How would you decide the qualifying criteria for such a campaign medal? Where was the front line? Etc etc.

Gutersloh and east of. :)

NAAFI bop on a Friday night..

We don't need no stinkin' medals ....:mad:

I was amazed to see one of my son's GCSE history syllabus featured the Cold War. I think my response was "that can't be history - I was in it!"

No medal please.

I know National Servicemen have pressed for a medal, and then many awarded themselves a private gong. Many got real medals in Korea, some got GSM for Suez I think.

Some were stewards in the RAF in comfy billets in a UK posting.

Not all were equal.

The same applied to the Cold War regulars.

Some got GSM in NI, Cyprus, Aden, Malaysia etc and arguably not part of the Cold War, or were they? Do those in RAFG merit a different award from those in UK? Were all supporting personnel, and I only state RAF, in MC, SC, FTC Cold War warriors? Did operational aircrew in BC, FC, CC, merits a a special award different from TC?

Then the cost. Who pays? The cost of several thousand Arctic War medals was not inconsiderable but far less that had they awarded one to Bomber Command. Award one to all Cold War warriors? Unaffordable.

It is politics. Nothing in it for them so, nothing will happen:).

OAP

Botchergate, Carlisle on a Friday night when pubs/clubs turned out.

I should get a medal for that.....

You need to define dates. I served on tankers 1971 - 77 so was never directly involved in the bombing side. Those on Vulcans at that time no longer did QRA, but there was a nuclear capability and we on tankers had a nuclear war role which we trained for, so were we cold war warriors too?

Either way I dont want a medal!

Cold War flying Risks
 

Jayand “…nobody got hurt” ?

Heathrow Harry “…with almost unlimited pointy kit with the minimal risk of getting maimed/killed.”

Hardly.

If you just look at the Fast Jet accident rate for Cold War peacetime training you will see that very many more RAF aircrew lost their lives in that period than has been the case for all the medium altitude wars since GW1.

The reason is simple. We had a lot of aeroplanes, most of them with inadequate navigation/ weapons kit and we often had to fly in appalling weather and with aircraft unserviceabilities to get the job done.

Jayand and Heathrow Harry - just how well do you think would you have done leading a bounced 4-ship in typical West German 5km vis (i.e. 2.5k to port and 2.5k to stbd).

With the windscreen obscured by insects.

And with no nav aids - just map-and stopwatch at 450kt?

Several of my colleagues were killed in mid-airs in conditions like that.

Have you ever heard of TACEVAL? Have you any idea of how much pressure was put on everyone from the Stn Cdr downwards to get a good result - regardless of equipment deficiencies, poor weather etc. ?

On one Fast Jet OCU I served on during the Cold War we had one third of the staff killed in flying accidents during one 6 month period.

Go and count the gravestones.

The Cold War
 

My grandfather, 3rd Bn Worcs France Aug 1914, would never talk about his experiences to either my father or myself. On being questioned hard, his only comment was, "you don't need to know about that, my boy. If you were there then you know all you need to know, if you were not, then you don't want to"

As he had been a pre WW1, time served regular, I accepted and respected his views, but times change although the sentiment does not.

Subsequent studies of the events of Aug-Nov 1914 show that it was a pivotal and very bloody phase of WW1 and the pundits/politicians had retrospective careers but do we/did we ever learn anything from the Cold War?

why don't we just let people award themselves medals (& titles) for anything they feel they deserve?

Duke Harry of Hounslow, OM, KG, DFC ***

I know someone who was a bit miffed dealing with Sir .... Bt and Mr . . . MBE etc until one day his secretary asked of his new business cards:

Mr . . . CDM

And he said, why not, everyone else has.











For our colonial friends - Cadburys Dairy Milk - a chocolate bar rather tastier than a Hershey

One of my pet peeves is that the Great Unwashed seem to think that the Vulcan force had nothing to do between the advent of Polaris in 1968 and the South Atlantic war in 1982......

Had that idiot McNamara not cancelled Skybolt, the RAF might have maintained a strategic strike role for considerably longer than we did.

While I agree about McNamara's intellectual gifts, you do need to take responsibility for your nation's abilities or lack thereof.

If you wanted to keep the role, you could have had it. You decided not to keep playing. There were alternatives - a new bomber, developing your own not tied to Washington's ALCM, etc.

But it's always easier to blame someone else it would appear. Especially if they provide the bigger umbrella.

Did similar, could never find a parking space at work..

OC ENG
OC SQN
OC A flight
OC B flight
etc etc etc
so made one up with OC NLMC

and after that had no problems as no one used it bar me, told one of the guys when posted he might as well have it, querying who's it was, I pointed out it was OC Nutloose's Motor Cycle.. works a treat, just copy one of those already there :)

Is it true Coff had the Shilling he found at the bottom of his beer mounted so he could wear it? :E

Looking at numbers, in 1964 we had the Victor Mk 1 about to retire - 32 systems, Vulcan Mk 1 - 24 systems, Victor 2 BS - 16, Vulcan 2 BS - 24 and Vulcan 2 free-fall approaching 24. Ignoring OCU assets that was around 122 systems.

Post 1965 that dropped to 90. The replacement of the Vulcan Mk 1/1a with Vulcan 2 FF saw a force level of 16 at Cottesmore, 24 at Waddington and 24 at Scampton, 64 plus 16 Victor or now 80 systems.

The withdrawal of the Victor 2, and the conversion of the Vulcan BS saw a reduction of 16 - 24 - 16 or 56.

Now the RN added 16 Polaris making 72 with a potential of a further 16 or 88 total. Effectively the total National Deterrent has therefore been static at 70-90 systems.

With the Chevaline systems multiple warheads were added and a gradual reduction in V-force sqns.

In other words the RN added a strategic dimension and didn't replace the V-force at all.

OK I've never been in the forces (failed medical for want of trying) but my view is no metals.

But do not forget the men and women who have, or will, serve our country.