Indeed. Despite Unit Orders concerning NBC readiness states, during the prelude to GW1 on the day Saddam fired 3 Scuds across Iraq, some of those who'd been at Muharraq for months could be seen frantically trying to open double-sealed NBC kit - which we'd been ordered to have broken out and kept close to hand....:rolleyes:

But that was the attitude amongst the "It'll never happen" brigade.

Back to apocryphal tales:

The true bit: A Chinook, on ops, lands to emplane the troops. Ramp goes down, platoon (of Paras) run aboard. One individual trips and, as he falls forward, looses off a burst into the Chinook floor (luckily, not much under the floor).

The apocryphal bit: The soldier was said to be berated by his RSM for poor grouping!

Brit Chinook in some desert area comes under fire from some of Uncle Spam's trigger happy grunts...

Whereupon the helicopter lands, a crewman gets out, storms over and asks "How many f*****g Iraqi helicopters have you seen with two rotors?". Then thumps the idiot behind the gun, gets back on board and they depart on their way.

Later some VSO states "Probably true - those chaps don't suffer fools gladly!".

NI troops emplaning the mighty Wessex, Pongo carrying a compressed Bull worker in his backpack jumps in or out and boing, his compressed Bull worker shoots up into the rotors, scratch one Bull worker and it didn't do the rotors a whole lot of good either.

ORAC
The 'Twinkle Roll' is a formation manoeuvre, so needs at least two aircraft.
The Reds have done it with nine jets, which is really impressive. I have also seen 'Simon's Circus' perform it wth five Sea Vixens - no less impressive, as the Sea Vixen is quite a large ship.

We had a WO known as Black Mac at Melksham, and he also had a daughter. I would love to relate that I had my wicked way with her, but alas it would certainly be an apocryphal tale:sad:

That one's true; I recall reading the incident report, but ISTR it was a Booty not a Pongo.

Wessex v Bullworker certainly true (believe also written up in Airclues).

Elsewhere new CO at Sennybridge thinks good idea to warn troops about the dangers of the HLS there, so has big wooden sign saying 'Beware Helicopter Downwash' or something similar produced and posted just outside the circle. First Wessex in proves him right - lifted straight up, over and through the blades. Scratch three more blades!

The Wessex/Bullworker incident took place at Bessbrook and it was, as stated, a booty not a pongo.

I remember at Eastern Radar shortly after the Phantom/Jag shoot down, a controller with an Irish sounding name (ex Nav) calls a Jag entering at MC6 with avoiding action and sets him off in a new direction. On the jag pilot making enquiries as the the whereabouts of the traffic, controller replies that there's an F4 following and he thought the Jag might want to get out of the way.

Same guy told a particularly unresponsive Alcobury F-4 to assume the callsign "Stupid One".

Those familiar with Eastern will remember the Alconbury/Wyton CAC being controlled by console 5B with the upper air console 3A being up a level, behind and slightly right of 5B. Our erstwhile controller is on 3A blythely driving traffic through the active Wyton fix. 5B controller stands, turns, shouts "Get out of my fu***ng fix P***y, co-ordination agreed", turns and sits back down again.

DN

apocryphal tales...
 

There were a series of really spooky reports of UFO activity on the Nullabor Plain.

(for the geographically challenged the Nullabor is on the south side of the middle of Australia)

Truck drivers doing a lonely run across the Nullabor at night seemed to see the greatest number of UFO's.
Their reports were all similar. They'd be driving along with not a single other piece of traffic for miles when there would be an almighty roaring sound and a really bright light would flood the area. then the roaring would stop and blackness would descend around them again.
Naturally the truckie would be scared out of his wits but often they would stop and hop out to have a look around.
Nothing.
Absolutely nothing around to give an indication of what the UFO looked like.
occasionally they would see a meteorite streaking across the sky.

Tales of the UFO encounters seemed to stop when the F111 was taken off active training.

The unsubstantiated rumour was that F111 crews doing low level night navigation exercises would sneak up at high speed on a solitary truck on the highway and pull up in a 'dump and burn' with full afterburner, peeling off at 70,000 ft and, killing the afterburner, would streak off to complete the nav exercise.
all unsubstantiated of course....

certainly put the wind up a lot of truckies. ...or so I'm told. :E

I heard it was a pair who, on check in, confessed to having forgotten to get a callsign. They were told to adopt the callsign Stupid One and Stupid Two.

Not sure the type, could have been F111 :)

Tasked for a bit of troop training, a mate and I took a Lynx to Sennybridge for a couple of days. We were tasked from the camp in Sennybridge itself to start lifts on the area after first-light, but day one dawned a little claggy. We got airborne and called-up our customer on the radio, and asked him about the vis on the area. "Four feet" came the reply, with a hint of Nepalese. "Are you sure?" we enquired, as we could see a good deal more than that "I can only see four feet" he assured us. By this time we'd found the troops, so we landed, shut down, and went to have a chat with the Toms, whose Radio Operator was sat inside a 9x9, four feet away from the tent wall.

I was at Muharraq during GW1. The drill was to mask up first, run to the nearest shelter and put on the suit/gloves/overboots. We got very blase because the scuds were always aimed at Saudi and we used to put the suit etc on very slowly in the hope the all clear sounded before we got the kit on. One day a scud landed a couple of miles away (but felt like it was just outside). You never seen blokes get their suit/gloves/boots on so quickly :eek:

>I heard it was a pair who, on check in, confessed to having forgotten to get a callsign. They were told to adopt the callsign Stupid One and Stupid Two.<

Not wholly apocryphal -- I heard the leader of an A10 pair on handover to London Mil in about 1989 confess to forgetting his callsign. The aircraft were told to adopt the callsigns 'Dummy One' and 'Dummy Two' which they duly did. I had the distinct impression that the penny didn't drop.

I think that you may find the train stealing story was in UK, an RAF helicopter pilot I seem to remember.........No name, no pack drill :E

Heads down, look out for the flak.

ACW, that is probably the true story as with a pair of F4/F111/F15D there would need to be 4 stupid ones not two.

However 1989 seems a little late so maybe he used DUMMY not to confuse with an earlier use of STUPID :)

It was not an impossible trick though. The original chinagraph was waterproof wax. The later version was water soluble. Also quite a few aircrew adopted the finer felt tip which was also water soluble. Use one of those on you knee pad on a wet day :)

I am sure many of us have been there with vital notes/frequencies smudged out.

Stealing a train......
 

.....is true. The chap concerned was my flt cdr at South Cerney in 1963. OC Germany sent him to the Deutche Bahn train drivers school. His pass certificate was beside his commissioning cert on the wall in his quarter.

The Ancient Mariner

As I remember CC's own account:


The full and unredacted account said that when the AOC heard of the incident he telephoned the Fassberg Station Commander and said an investigation (possibly a Summary of Evidence) be undertaken with a view to a court martial. He was less than happy when the Station Commander replied that he had already taken action and given summary punishment, so that the matter had been dealt with. AOC asked what punishment had been given and was even less happy at the response "Well Sir, I told CC that I wouldn't have any of my officers doing a job for which they were not qualified and sent him to the Station shunting yard for a week".

CC's first court martial came later following the loss of an aircraft in the four-ship he was leading and he was given the traditional punishment posting to tow targets at Sylt, so the AOC may have got his revenge after all.

CC is much more respectable these days and lives in New Zealand.

There seem to have been a number of Wessex "dits" here, so I'll chuck in another.

A Wessex from Odiham (dates the story!) was doing Stage 1 and USL training just up the road with Sandhurst cadets.

Part of the essential USL kit was the "earthing probe", robust electric string with a prod at one end and a spike at the other, to disperse the (sometimes enormous) static charge which Walter had generated.

Aircraft runs in to see smartly dressed cadet handler, with probe in right hand and (highly polished brass) earthing spike .......... in his left hand.

Aircraft and load successfully earthed .... but not entirely as per SOP.:E