Latter part of Cold War was hotlocks containing any combination of babies heads (+ gravy, spuds and peas), egg bajos, ham bajos, egg and ham banjos. And of course the endex donuts - you can't eat one without licking the sugar off your lips. No in-flight grub on a Tronado sortie (they weren't very long).

Prior to being forced to eat incarcerated (no, thats's not a sort of Italian dish) in a PBF, the V-force provided a much more gentlemanly eating environment, pre-flight in the aircrew feeder, that is. As BEags said, the co-pilot (a thing of duty and a boy forever) was the box-carrier - sandwiches, hard boiled eggs, choccy bars various, squash, undrinkable brown liquid masquerading as coffee. Very rarely did anyone take the cans of soup airborne (I too remember lockers full of the stuff); the Vulcan soup heater needed activating during pre-flight checks to provide anything like a warm outcome, even on lengthy MRR sorties.

Mister B

But I did like the mini bottles of Tabasco (other hot sauces are available) in MREs.

Still got a couple left in the desk draw - they enliven boring sarnies amazingly! :ok:

HTB


ISTR Joe l'Estrange always took his mulligatawny with him.

BB

Our Plotter (Ken White) occasionally took the soup option, but had to be reminded to pierce the lid before heating (so he got it wrong one time early on, even though he was old enough to know better:E).

I only flew with Joe when he was an OCU instructor (as part of the back end crew u/t), so he probably left the soup on the ground as those sorties were quite short. The rest of us were maxed out had and no time to to eat under the evil eye of the instructors.

Mister B

In the late '60s having completed an exercise helping to defending AKROTIRI, we managed to persuade stores that as we were flying direct back to the UK (with a couple of refuels), and muttering something about V bombers, we were given the said amount of inflight rations. We had "nutty" sandwiches, drinks etc up the ying-yang. We tried, but it beat us in the end. Lack of space and consumption rate in a Sea Vixen just not like the V force.

Ahh the famous single bottle of squash (of the dilutable variety) between 4 Phantoms heading out on detachment Down South.

To be fair, I seem to recall that four individual plastic cups were also provided.:)

Jack

"Ahh the famous single bottle of squash"


Only if flying orange forces surely?

I haven't noticed anyone covered this topic yet.

Out of Offutt we were rationed in much the same way as at home except no pre-flight or post-flight.

Now the SAC butty boxes were far superior to the RAF ones. That is the butty box itself not the contents. The major difference was that each box we stamped with Rationing Stamp and the ominous words "Eat by hh.mm"

I think, without exception, the eat by time was before our scheduled take-off time. Of course that presented no problems to your bomber crew, especially as there was no free pre-flight.

IIRC the sandwich was the standard white cotton wool bread and there was a piece of Kentucky Fried.

However when it came to real boxes nothing could beat the RAAF boxes. The contents too was pretty good with tinned fruit juice.

We did a single aircraft visit to Practica del Mare with our Puma. On the way back cruising at 1,000 ft just off the Italian Riviera we opened the box to find lots of goodies, fruit and a bottle of Chianti.

When in Rome, so my co-pilot and I had a plastice cup each with out crewman demolishing the rest. It was neccessary because we had our full entitlement of duty free on board.

No effect on us at all. It was the fastest trip from Rome to Cognac, ever.

Tinned strawberries and lots of chocolate icecream. I was on my way back from a Gibex and we had a large delivery of the above for our inflight. There must have been a wreck off the coast.

Anyhow, on the way back home to sunny Cornwall the crew got sight of some interesting targets so spent the whole flight 'on task'. The icecream was melting so had to be eaten by the ground crew. We all felt sick:yuk: time we landed after ploughing through that lot along with the hot meals.

PTR... et al..Amazing, in retrospect, the sacrifices we made for Queen and Country!:ok:

Squash and four cups reminds me:

We were out of Aden for Gan and inflight did us proud with nutty box eat packed with 'high altitude' bite size sarnies, just your usual fare of course, salmon, tuna and the like.

After we had all had our fill, the Boss asked for some squash. Again they had done use proud - 7-crew and 7 bottles of squash. I opened a bottle, poured the Boss a cup and passed it up -CONCENTRATED. It came back for dilution but of water not a drop. The Scampton aircraft knew to take water but from Coningsby this was news to us.

Next, back at Cottesmore we used to get the tiniest kiora style waxed squash made up in inflight. Ideal if you didn't want a pee in 5 hrs. Anyway someone's wife must have run a tuppaware party and all our inflight stuff was repacked in tuppaware: sandwiches in sealed boxes and large containers for the squash. We then had reuseable plastic tubing rather than disposable straws. Inserted in the lid of the container the whole was air tight. Right. By top of climb the cabin pressure reduced and the squash was then squirted over the plotter's chart.

The tuppaware didn't last long as attrition (theft) was pretty high.

Then on Nimrods, the usual trick was for the SAR jet to deploy to Prestwick if ISK winds were going out of limits. Duly deployed, crew settled in hotel and sitting down to lunch waiting their fillet steaks. Moments later they was scrambled. One HK dashes into the kitchen, grabs the pile of steak and off.

The Navy is left to collect their luggage and pay for room and board :)

Moving one some years to the Shack, airborne with the usually trunk for a 15 hour borex, water boiling as we left the circuit (same as other aircraft reaching top of climb) the galley slave looked for the cups - no cups. The duty rats man hadn't checked the trunk.

CM, using a bit of inspired logic, emptied a couple of tins to serve as cups. Once down to landing weight we departed our task area for, IIRC Leuchars, for a practice diversion and a request for a load of cups :)

Also Shacks, we deployed from ISL to our FOB at St Mawgan. Deployed by train. We set off from Aberdeen on the sleeper for the marathon journey and discovered a few minutes later that the train hadn't been provided with any milk. At an early stop the same CM gets out, legs it to the platform café, grabs a crate of milk and legs it back to the train saying "You're British Rail, sort it".

Never bothered much with the in-flight but the toasted egg sandwiches back in the V-force cafeteria were not to be missed.


.

Cold war snacks
 

A highly reliable ex-aircrew member source (should such a thing be imaginable) spoke of a Lightning squadron challenge to achieve max altitude ere the chocolate marshmallow exploded. Said source - OK, my brother - was unable to recall any record. Can anyone out there comment, please? If you could, it'd amuse my dear brother, now 78 and gripped by Parkinson's Disease - a tragic irony for one who once lived (or died) by his speed and wits, I suspect. PMs welcome.

Thank you,

Ben Potter

It may have been attempted to determine the altitude as per this link - but was not on lightnings in this case.

Exploding Marshmallows

IG

A perfect Vulcan day in the seventies :- Early morning start, planning, briefing then to the feeder for full English. Then a solid delay Wx/ A/C. After 3 hours back to the feeder for delay meal.
Eventually a Good Clean Scrub and off to the bar.

Little wonder we we plump!

Thanks for that one
 

Aforementioned reliable source aka my brother was a co-pilot on the Valiant, but definitely mentioned Lightnings on account of the achievable rate of climb. I've sent him the link, anyway - thanks!

In my early days on 8 Sqn Shacks I was responsible for the rations. Following a very early briefing for a 12 hour sortie we went to the aircraft and loaded the rations. After an uneventful take off the spare radar went to make the first round of drinks. Alas he could find no cups to make the drinks in. Guess where fingers were pointed. Solution unscrew light coverings and use the globes as drinking vessels. There were only 6 so quick turnarounds required. Took a long time to recover from that.

As a young, 16-year old CCF(Navy) cadet, I went on a camp to Ballykelly in about 1966.

We were flown in a Shackleton - Mk2, Phase 3 - important because the Mk2 had a tail wheel, so was still a "proper" Shack - but Phase 3 meant it had an upgraded galley. Hope I have got that right - no doubt some expert out there will correct me if I am wrong!!

My lasting memory, other than being able to sit at the front playing with the gun to shoot down any Messerschmitts that I saw, or having a doze in the "tail-gunner's" position at the back - still looking for Messerschmitts - was being given a steak sandwich very shortly after take-off, and eating for most of the 8 hours we were airborne.

Heaven for a 16-year old!!

This chap reviews and samples military ration packs and meals ready to eat from all over the world.







Lots more at following link.

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC2I...JFiMeHA/videos