smudge,
what on earth was I doing sending 'quick Don' to Andros ! Obviously my drink was spiked your honour !

It was meant to be a quick trip to Oslo.
http://i47.photobucket.com/albums/f191/mjg66/Wing-1.jpghttp://i47.photobucket.com/albums/f191/mjg66/Wing3.jpg

Buddy buddy in the Congo
http://i47.photobucket.com/albums/f1...Travail076.jpg

Mr Ripley ... You can't leave us 'hanging' like that ... let's hear the story :ok:

Chaps ...

Just helping Dougie out with posting a few pics he'd like to entertain us with ;)

http://i1004.photobucket.com/albums/...ps349fc104.jpg

http://i1004.photobucket.com/albums/...psc2cf2b5e.jpg

http://i1004.photobucket.com/albums/...psb40b1cd2.jpg

I'm sure Dougie will be along shortly ...

Best.

Coff.

Pond Crossing to Bermuda
 

Thanks Coff.
In reply to AA's boat trip I thought I'd put on some pics from a while back when a few ascoteers took a racing yacht across the pond to Bermuda. Some of these faces you may know but the voyage was enhanced in many ways by the inclusion of an Air Trafficker from Coningsby. She was ship's cook and could dish up a 3 course meal in a force 5. As you can see from the "survival at sea" physique of the mate, P*** F**** she fed us well. The posed sextant shot of self was taken on land so it was steady.
We arrived in Bermuda just after the QEll and poet radio asked us to let the steamer through first. We tied up at St Georges and reported to BA at the airport as a herc crew awaiting recovery by VC10 and they put us in the Palmetto Bay on full contract for a week or so.
I bet the view of C******'s bikini beats AA's akimbo shorts shot.
Great trip

More nice shots Mr Ripley, keep them coming.

AA62 #2001

Quick Don and all of us had a very exciting flight the day after that photograph was taken. You will probably remember that the detachment at that time operated out of Cape Canaveral AFB (or was it an NAS ?) and we usually used the "skid strip" as the prime runway. I always thought Albert could have gotten airborne across that huge runway. Anyway, the other nice thing with the Andros Det was that it was usual for the GE to take turn about in accompanying the aircraft out to Andros, the second GE being at the airfield on return to help put the aircraft to bed, and fix any defects. So, it was my turn to go to Andros, and, with I believe a rather large Mk48 Torpedo aboard we taxied out. On take off, I noticed the smell of burning, then saw smoke and some sparks emanating from under the Flt Deck floor. I was not on intercom, but being sat next to Don, I brought it to his attention. I asked him to inform the Captain, and would it be OK if I took the steps out to identify the source of it all. He OK'd that and I grabbed the extinguisher off its mounting on Stn 245 as I got under there. I immediately found the seat of the problem, No2 TRU was going in to meltdown mode. Through Don I asked that he inform the crew what the fault was, and in seconds the Air Eng had disconnected the No2 Generator. The TRU stopped erupting, and the smoke started to dissipate. The Captain by this time had called the emergency and requested a landing.

Intent on keeping an eye on the TRU, I wedged myself in and prepared for the landing, at which point Don, probably correctly told me to get strapped in down the back again. I asked if I could remain where I was as a flare up could be dealt with quickly by my extinguisher. He was not happy, so asked the Captain, who suggested that as long as I was in a secure position, he was happy. Don then connected me to his spare long lead to enable me to let the crew know if anything else occurred. We landed safely, and returned to the parking bay, where the aircraft was shut down with no power on at all. Murray and I spent the rest of the day removing the Generator and replacing the drive, as we had no spare TRU with us, we disconnected and removed the U/S unit, sending an Eng Rep asking for a replacement to be dropped off when possible. It was an interesting few minutes to say the least, being down the back Don and I saw more of it than the rest, and enjoyed a couple of beer later that evening whilst discussing it. He might have spiked your drink to get the trip, I doubt after that incident he was glad he did. Happy days.

Smudge:ok:

Which one, the exploding leading edge or the buddy buddy?
Feb 1993 30 Sqn
Off to Oslo-Bergen then RTB
Charging off down the runway with GE in the cupola who says f**k at the same time as lots of wing over heat lights and a bang and probably some other stuff I can't remember. Find the hot air bleed duct has exploded, it was just before Vr so we could have nearly taken it into the air and were fortuitous as flying control cables next to pipe. Remember GE got some banter for his non-standard abort call.
After a replacement aircraft was sourced we ended up via Norway in Bournemouth.

Second one was a buddy buddy at Bunia, DR Congo off a UN Herk in Aug/Sep 2003.

Happy days!

I remember flying with Quick Don and LE and Bostick Bob.

LE & Bostick Bob ....... You must have been a very naughty boy in a previous life :oh:

I still remember the sign outside Stn Ops at Akronelli showing a stick man wearing breathing apparatus which some wag had altered to read 'LE line-dancing'.

Mr Ripley,

Interesting shot inside the leading edge there, I wonder if the distortion of the rib structure was down to the explosion of the Bleed Air Duct, or general Albert bendiness? I remember hearing this event, recounted by your GE, at a GE Christmas beer call, he, like you, reflected on the ribbing he got for his reaction. I seem to remember how impressed he was with how the crew dealt with the problem. Once again, we see that even Albert could bite.

Smudge:ok:

I seem to remember there were a series of bleed air failures at around that time.

I had a double start valve problem at Gib leading to an abort just before V1 with the concomittant shut down of the Nos 1 and 2. :eek:

Then there was the time we got airborne from LYE rapidly followed by a BANG! - the duct from the GTC bay had exploded (the Eng on that was Flo Jo).

I also seem to recall another leading edge bleed duct failure that peeled back the stbd wing inboard of the No2, but which happened in the cct at LYE.

Mal Drop,

The "stick man" as you call it was in fact a breathing apparatus sign. I removed it one bright sunny morning after flying there all night. The Captain, Co and Nav had gone into Ops, and with my trusty Leatherman the dirty deed was done. I was his leader on his retirement, and I had it mounted by Station Workshops as a leaving gift. He was very pleased with it and said it would take pride of place on his mantle-piece. It was replaced at Akronelli fairly swiftly.

Ex Ascoteer,

Absolutely correct in your recollections of the K's bleed air ducting failures. And associated hot air plumbing. I remember a three day trip which involved moving an army detachment from Gutersloh to Benbecula, ISTR two trips a day were planned. We pre positioned at Gut, and an enjoyable night stop was enjoyed by all. A sparrows fart start to the day next morning saw us having a de ice, very cold, and we all looked forward to getting airborne to feel warmer. As we started our take off run, brakes of, accelerating, and being down the back next to the ALM, a loud bang was followed by the cargo bay filling with smoke, smelling of burnt oil. An abort was called, and we taxied back to the bay. On removing the access panel to the cargo bay pack I, and the crew were treated to the warming sight of the Cargo pack Cold Air Unit still glowing cherry red. Well, no spare in my "go bag", so we looked for options. Our first load included a large agricultural looking, tracked army thingy, bloody big so not something easily transferred. The plan evolved, Gut Benbecula direct, with all the diff the flight deck pack could give us, and obviously non airways. After offload return to Gut via Lyneham, a frame change and there would be no serious affect on the planned tasking. The trip to Benbecula was bloody freezing down the back, but we expected that, on the return leg, the four hour delay at Lyneham while they sorted out a replacement aircraft was simply daft considering they had at least 8 hours head start before our arrival. Had they given me a new CAU it would have been quicker to change that whilst re loading at Gut. Needless to say the task was done, on schedule, despite delays. But Albert and the hot air distribution was always worthy of respect from a Ground Engineering aspect.

Smudge:ok:

Oh Christ, Lima Echo, Quick Don and Bostick Bob?

You'd only need to add a Libby and you'd have a Full House!:E

Ex Ascoteer,

I too "enjoyed" routes with the three famous aircrew personalities. I never had the pleasure of sharing a trip with Mr Libby, but always enjoyed the pleasure of his company whenever our paths crossed. Mind you, the full set gets you wondering!!!

Smudge:ok:

The names bring back many happy memories Mick Libby was a legend long before he became a GE, I had the dubious pleasure of being on shift with him before he became a GE and he was a laugh a minute then.

There was an inboard LE blowout on an Oman Herc when I was there fortunately it was on a ground run but very messy.

IIRC it was P** D**** who had a number of these bleed air failures.

Hiya Fergineer, hope you are well. Your reference to Omani Hercs suffering similar Bleed Air Duct failures perhaps indicates that it was not limited to the K. As I ended my time as a team manager on second line Minor servicing I know that the ducting was only inspected visually, with no NDT of welds etc carried out. Perhaps more serious stuff was done by Marshalls on Major Service. As a trade based Airframe man, my GE career seemed swamped by Loran F and C comp failure. Now, I'm no expert but I believe that Loran was a descendent of the Gee system, used at the latter end of WW2 by Bomber command. So why in the 1990s we still had problems with it is a mystery to me. Perhaps an expert like DougieM could enlighten us. Beware though, I once asked a Nav to explain Loran, and fell asleep on the bottom bunk as he opened up his Loran chart, with all those diamonds on it. PFM, but capable of failure.

Smudge:ok:

Didn't have any LE failures with P** D**** but always managed to find ourselves deep in the dwang whenever crewed together, did lose the bearings on the FDCU an hour and a half out of KL in the middle of a tropical storm, full Smoke & Fumes. Landed to find the RAFLO was at an embassy cocktail party, not often the mild mannered and jovial P** lost it but this def and justifiably lit the blue touch paper.

smudge,
your TRU fire sounds similar to the one we had when carrying the 500 Lox container to Belize. It does concentrate the mind.

http://i100.photobucket.com/albums/m...ps566da01f.jpg
Pic is of aa acting as the am (ancient mariner). Not as long as DM's trip but a week around Cowes etc on one of the RAF boats. Skippered by the same chap who had blown the whistle on the culprit as told in a previous post. He had only just got his full ticket but he was very good. Highlight was tacking up the river under sail (just the jib) to the pub at Buckler's Hard. He steered and I did the sail trimming. Of course all the powered craft had to give us right of way.
As we tied up we burst out laughing, job well done and went for our 'debrief' beer.

Never had a TRUnfailure but remember way back as ground crew in Washington, my first trip we had a bleeder resister catch fire during refuelling.....never seen a bowser move so fast.....changing one of them was no fun whatsoever!!!!as the Leckies on the trip I had to do it!!!!

It occurs to me that some of the readership may be puzzled as to why we went to Andros. Modern weapons tend to travel so far that there are not adequate test ranges in the UK so we are forced to turn to the US and use their test ranges. However these ranges are very busy so it usually means booking years in advance. Most of this test range time is for the RN to test torpedoes. Sometimes we would fly torpedoes from Seattle to Florida which is a long way in a Herc.
The usual detachment, for two weeks, was to one of the Mil airfields in Florida from which the boffins would be flown out to Andros as and when they desired.
As the accommodation was in hotels on rates it was viewed by the 'K' crews as a VERY good trip.
During the hectic GW1 buildup one of these bookings of the test range was scheduled. If the RN cancelled it they would have to go to the back of a long queue so it was due to go ahead as normal.
On 30 I had two loadmasters I could not use on Granby tasks as they had chits excusing them from wearing aircrew NBC kit (no I am not going there ).
One time after landing from another very long Granby day I went to our squadron ops to check on things as I always did.
On the board the Andros det had appeared and the duty Flt Cdr had put one of the non Granby chaps on the trip. Made sense you may think but not to teddy throwing me. The morale of the troops would not be improved when they saw this. So I went and 'spoke' to the Flt Cdr. The result was that the non Granby chap came off the trip. I phoned round the loadmasters who I knew were back in the UK and the first one who answered the phone got the trip.
I made sure that there would be no repeat of this nonsense by getting my unuseables detached to Cyprus to reinforce the AT Ops Det. This was the closest to the'action' I was allowed to send them.

Andros det...good memories.

Was sent to Cocoa Beach to offload the pre-positioning kit. Then had a 2 week wait for the sub to arrive to start firing the torpedoes and the daily shuttles to start. Except the sub crew went on 2 weeks R&R so had another 2 quiet(??) weeks. before an epic route home via Ottawa, Anchorage and Thule.

At the same time as this Andros det, another sub was test firing torpedoes under the ice around Alaska so another Hercules det had been set up in Anchorage.

Before setting off for Florida, we had been told not to speak to any of the local about what we were there for, the sub name or any other details as they were all classified. On the way to the hotel, we kept passing other hotels with signs up saying "Welcome to the crew of HMS sub name". That night in a bar, we were asked if we were the MAMS team and would we be loading 4 or 6 torpedoes or whatever they were ....so much for it being supposedly classified.

Oh yes, forgot to mention the middle two weeks was something called Spring Break....

November4,
sounds like a very nice det. Ah the spring break when the place was invaded by students intent on having a good time. 'Just love your accent' !!!!

Certainly was AA

Thule was interesting to visit. Still daylight at 0300 so asked when does it get dark?

About October came the reply.

This was in April

Went to Thule several times. I remember the sales of SERES ? beer in the Class 6. As part of the agreement with Denmark the US had to stock certain Danish goods . The USAF were not keen on this beer but at 49 cents a case the RAF certainly were. I think anything not sold was dumped in the sea.

Recall yacht skipper from Lyneham, not sure if he was GE flying or ground based, but known as "Salty Sam" - once hauled him over the rail after he fell into the Solent through not being hooked on to his lifeline.

The mention of Op Granby in my last post has persuaded me to put up this pic of my copy of the Op Order. It mentions the accommodation as being in the compound. The compound was not ready so we were in hotels. We were in one full of Kuwait refugees whose idea of fun was to run up and down the coridors all day and night screaming at the top of their voices.
http://i100.photobucket.com/albums/m...psff4bc944.jpg

Ah yes, the Riyadh det...

I remember getting into theatre just after New Year to be placed in a compound with the STS 'SkyRats' who were to train up the non-TS qualified crews in the art of desert strips. The situation was utter chaos, we were sharing about three to a room (no problem there) but the arrangements for locally purchasing rations were all over the shop due to (we were told) the admin folk having to drag out SOPs which were years out of date. I remember having to draw pay in Saudi Riyals on my pay book and the utter confusion about what we could and could not 'legitimately' buy. The out-of-date and inaccurate topos showed our operating airfield about thirty miles from where it actually was and the rest of the charts would have been more accurately replaced by large sheets of sandpaper.

The initial ground rates were excellent, we could eat at local purveyors of 'flat chicken' while the catering was being put in place and we made furniture out of slabs of cold drinks. As things began to get sorted a small NAAFI was established where we could buy essential items such as bootlaces and date-expired toothpaste but an extra bit of effort got us into the US commissary where there was a slightly better selection of goods including the latest Bose sound systems, TVs and boom-boxes. I also recall that the US thought we were exceptionally fond of tonic water (we didn't let on that the Dubai supply routes ensured we had enough 'juniper-based cleaning fluid' to dilute it with).

At one stage during Operation Compound Hop we had just stocked our freezers with food (including turkey-bacon from the French supermarket) when we were given another 'bug-out' order and moved to yet another compound which meant leaving all our newly purchased food behind.

Eventually we shifted to the Marriot which was all sorts of comfy but not long after that it was off to Alola 6, the last compound before the whole shebang moved to Bahrain. Our leaving party was the stuff of legend and I heard tell that a senior officer wandered through the following day's wreckage (including but not limited to several members of the nursing community who were resting their eyes) whilst trying to think of suitable ways of getting his revenge.

Ahh the end of war party....

The Movers were asked if they had any high priority freight which need to be sent to Akrotiri. We managed to find a landrover that was due to be returned to the UK at some stage so that would do as the reason to put a Spec flight to AKT.

The Movers there backloaded the aircraft with half a dozen large boxes which were offloaded and spirited back to the compound. The party went ahead with much merriment.

The next day we loaded a UK bound TriStar with several blue rubbish bags for disposal at Brize.

In a similar vein to the above.

Just before the ground war started, a Padre arrived on the nightly TriStar in Riyadh. He was on moving to Al Jubail where he was to give Communion to the troops before they went into action.

Obviously he couldn't give Communion with wine as that was not allowed. Instead he had a couple of boxes of "Heavenly Liquid"

A couple of days later the same Padre was flown back as he had injured himself falling into a slit trench in the dark cracking a couple of ribs or similar. A touch too much of the heavenly liquid suggested me.

November 4,

End of war party, ooo eck, I remember it well. For some of us the party trailed along to the Diplomat in Bahrain, and continued for several more weeks/months. Now, I'm rather hoping that AA62 can offer some advice here. My extended detachment to Bahrain actually crewed me up, for the only time, with a 30 Squadron crew, who were some of the best blokes I ever worked with. Captains first name was John (ISTR) had a West Country accent and was a true gentleman, the Eng was Nutty Bob (You either know or don't) and the Loady a great bloke who was happy for me to run the galley regularly. Our Nav, who I was sharing a room in the Diplomat with (we were the only smokers), was I believe Nigel ? Sported a proper moustache, and had a real sense of humour. Our Co, Andy ? Another great character. All in all, a team who worked together well, and I wish I could remember their names. I still have the battery powered drumming bear that was given to me on our last night before return to UK. Any ideas AA62 ? I wish I had some photographs from that few weeks.

GW1 wasn't all hard work you know!

Smudge:ok:

PS, AA62, Nice to see Bert get a mention in your Op order.

smudge,
captain was probably J W... and I can pm you with his name if you wish. As you rightly say a real gentleman. I put myself on his last trip on the 'K' but that is another story.
I cannot remember the loadmaster but it may come to me.
I was not at the 'end of' party but as you have seen I was in at the AT Det start. Logbook says XV 304 on 30 Oct 1990. We were the first a/c in to start the det and ATC claimed to know nothing about us. So we waited for almost an hour whilst the captain spoke to the Air HQ downtown on the HF ! Eventually we were directed to an unfinished terminal part of which became our base. Whilst the UK had dithered the French had acted and thus had the best part of the place.
There was no secure storage for our mountain of Aircrew NBC kit nor for the nine mil and ammo. We did have two brand new Toyota landcruisers. And BATA supplied us with bondu boots.
Two days later we started our hub and spoke operations.
As you can guess I put the one and only Bert up for the det. No one better for this sort of task.

AA, thanks for that memory jog. My memory is now refreshed, and that is indeed the gentleman who I was our Captain. I still struggle to remember the names of that crew, though why I don't know, we spent around two months eating drinking and flying together. A great bunch of people to work with.

Smudge:ok:

smudge,
glad to help.
http://i100.photobucket.com/albums/m...ps6fa71ca8.jpg

The above pic is self explanatory. Did anyone else attend this lunch ?
Shame Lyneham never made it to the 75th anniversary.

Ah, Nutty Bob! Recall the day he went wibble so well, an interesting time down South , he was an interesting character to say the least!

Yes, buggered my life around as I had to go down early and on a different crew to replace him ::mad:

Ksimboy, TBT,

With Bobs history, imagine his state of nerves on an approach to Kuwait Intl, using a newly installed tactical ILS, through the smoke from the oil fires, with the Comms flooded with US Navy, Army and Air Force helicopters call signs, asking for position reports. I worked with him for a couple of months, and considering the foregoing, reckon he did a bloody good job. Of course, You two may well have known him better than I did.

Smudge:ok: