TTN
 

In the transport world, 'Green Shield' referred to young chaps with university degrees who after South Cerney/Church Fenton spent 6 months as Plt Off, 9 months as Fg Off and then became Flt Lts without having to take the B exam' - the latter promotion coming while they were still in the training machine.

A source of great contention and irritation to those of us, particularly Fg Off captains, who although second tour were junior to brand new first tourers. Why the RAF gave seniority to someone who had never worked before joining and perhaps had a degree in 'underwater basket weaving' or some other useless subject, was a mystery to many of us.

Re VC10 commands the phrase used by us was, 'Are you a real Sqn Ldr or a VC10 captain?'.

A story was told in the mid 70's of a chap walking into Gieves, putting a Sqn.Ldr's jacket on the counter and saying " I want that re-braided"
Uriah Heep type behind counter says "May I be the first to congratulate you, sir."
"F*** O** - they've just posted me off VC10s"
Went down well with Captains of non-VC10 four jets.

some of the most amazing rags-to-riches-to rags occurred in the US Civil War and its aftermath

George Custer went to Major General in the War and back to Captain afterwards......

Brian - yes I remember the term well. We had one on our nav course who was a chopped pilot and had already reached the dizzy rank of flight lieutenant. 2ANS insisted that student navs called all staff "sir", and so we had the crazy situation of this guy calling our maths instructor, a flying officer Education Officer "sir" - much to his amusement. At least this guy had a maths degree, which was a bit more relevant to the job than underwater basket weaving. Mind you he still got miffed when I regularly beat him in our frequent mental arithmetic tests. As he never failed to remind me arithmetic isn't maths, but I thought that was just sour grapes!

Brian - yes I remember the term well. We had one on our nav course, who was a chopped pilot and had already reached the dizzy rank of flight lieutenant. 2ANS insisted that student navs called all staff "sir", and so we had the crazy situation of this guy calling our maths instructor, a flying officer education officer "sir" - much to his amusement. At least this guy had a maths degree, which was a bit more relevant to the job than underwater basket weaving. Mind you he still got miffed when I regularly beat him in our frequent mental arithmetic tests. As he never failed to remind me arithmetic isn't maths, but I thought that was just sour grapes!

Is there an echo in the room?:p

Oxenos, of course the other sign was the wide spacing between the two rings.

Brian, I believe the Army had the equivalent of green shield. The story went something like this:

Newly posted officer, straight from Sandhurst, arriving at his regiment.

CO in loud voice "You there", or words to that effect, "what's that on your shoulder?"

NPO looks at shoulder expecting to see bird poo but only sees 3 shiney pips, " my rank, Sir."

"Get them off, you're a subaltern until I tell you otherwise."

True or not, probably a sensible thing
A chief would help a fg off JENGO but expect a flt lt to know his stuff.

Re Green Shield Flt Lts, in the early '70s, University Entrants to RAFC received an increment if they'd achieved a First. But had to do 6 months as Plt Off before the promotion kicked in. As there were 4 entries per year, this meant that some arrived on the last entry of the years to start IOT as Flt Lts without having done previous time pre-university as Flt Cdts.

One chap on 17 GE actually outranked his ex-supplementary list blanket-stacker flight commander, who was only an acting Flt Lt..... Fortunately they both saw the funny side of such a system.

Another, with increments for having been an ex-App and having also been a Flt Cdt, never served any time as a Fg Off - due to the 6 month thing, he went straight from Plt Off to Flt Lt.....:\

The army certainly had similar anomalies in the Great War.
Robert Graves was embarrassed and amused by his elevation.

As a Special Reserve officer of the RWF he was promoted on the regimental SR list. There was a lot of dying going on.

By the time he reached the Front he was a captain, very young, with zero experience, now serving alongside subalterns holding temporary war-time commissions with months of trench exposure.

The compounding anomaly was that regulars of any rank were senior to those of the SR of the same rank, who were in turn senior to TF. This was later addressed.

My first posting after Flying Training was to Benson on the Argosy in 1962.

There was a Corporal in the General Office who sported wings and a DFC etc. He had been field-promoted during WW II to Wg Cdr in charge of a Mustang Wing and he left in 1946 in his substantive rank of Sgt Pilot.

He hated civvie street so much that he re-joined as an airman.

When a VC-10 arrived at RAF Akrotiri, in '65 it was met by
the new Station Commander, Air Cdre C D North-Lewis. The story went round among the aircrew on my Sqdn
that, after welcoming the Sqn/Ldr captain he ordered him to report to the Station barbers, before entering the OM!

goudie
 

IIRC the story about a VC10 captain being taken to the barber's shop by Akrotiri staish was about 1971 - lots of us in the transport fleet were being invited to have our sideburns and droopy moustaches trimmed by our respective OC stations then!

The first RAF VC10 flew late '65 and the squadron didn't form until well into '66.

Brian, that stains would have been Air Cdre Stacey, a larger than life character one of whose claims to fame was reserving the Ladies Room for a personal function suite and mess guests for the bar. He had another suite down at movements again with a mess guests tab.

Late on parade ... sorry, been on holiday. :cool:

1. The 2 "Letters from Betty" on the wall behind me have "Acting Pilot Officer" as our commissioned rank. Having been involved in later years with re-selecting APOs who did not make the grade in professional training, the first consideration was that they had already been commissioned .. and thus had to be found a suitable place for their 'officer-ness' in a different Branch. Eviction was a last resort.

2. During our stormy trip on the good ship SS Uganda to FI, one of the pax was the RN lt who was going to be "OC Troops" on the SS Rangatira, moored for accommodation purposes in the Inner Harbour at Port Stanley. He was christened 'Senior Naval Officer, The Rangatira", or SNOTRAG. He was not very amused.

Brian 48 nav

You're probably right. I may have heard it when I was on Brits, but these days I'm not a reliable source!:confused:

Two phrases I haven't heard these last thirty years. I remember being in Gan one night, as part of a Hercules crew, when I was woken by one of the mess staff. "Sorry Sir, you'll have to move to the non-air-conditioned rooms. We have a VC10 crew coming in". No amount of arguing would change it, and the entire crew, including the captain, had to shift.

I've told this one before, about the unwise VC10 LM who called out "there go the tankertrash" from the door of his air conditioned room at Akrotiri as a hot and sweaty Victor crew plodded to their (non air conditioned) rooms. Unfortunately for him the crew contained a very fiery sqn Ldr nav who promptly had said SNCO evicted and a couple of the guys on his crew moved in. The VC10's tame squadron leader took umbrage and complained to the Station Commander, who to his eternal credit backed the tanker nav to the hilt.

South Cerney grads who remember a very bristly red headed nav on the DS will know who I am talking about. You could have done with him on Hercs, Herod!

Can this old man ask for help? One that did spend a year in Transport Command.

What was so special with the VC10 that needed a Sqd Ldr to drive one?

Herod/TTN
 

I think I've told this one before too - I was a member of a Herc' crew night-stopping Gan. In the afternoon we were having a few bevvies in the Blue Lagoon, dressed in shorts, short-sleeved shirts and flip flops etc. About 6.30 in walks a VC10 captain in slacks, long sleeved shirt and tie ( why we were expected to dress like that in the tropics G*d knows! ) etc and stands at the bar nursing his beer.

As 7pm approached he kept looking at us and pointing at his watch - we indicated that we were just finishing our beers and then would head off to change. Finally at 7pm he came across and said ' Right you lot, you are improperly dressed, go and get changed now!'

Just as we got up the swing doors opened and in walked a Victor tanker crew, dressed in sweaty flying suits with dangly bits of tubing hanging from them, at their head was a Wg Cdr pilot who rubbed his hands together and shouted,'My round lads what you'll be having?'. At this point VC10 captain sloped off to the dining room and we of course got another round in!

Who came up with the idea of making 10 Sqn Capts acting Sqn Ldr? A 10 Sqn Capt? Such an odd idea. Four gold bars :ok: but 2 and a half blue ones :confused:

What was so special with the VC10 that needed a Sqd Ldr to drive one?

I've heard it said that the idea was to prevent Flt Lt VC 10 captains defecting to the airlines who were operating the type.

Just because it was but still an odd decision.

It was nothing to do with flying the aircraft. I was always told that it was so the Captain had more "clout" for sorting out issues on the ground while down the route, help avoid the aircraft being delayed etc - don't forget there was still quite a few remnants of Empire left in the late 60s.

Even 35 years after the Air Force Board decision of 1968 was reversed, it seems it's still necessary to explain that it was brought about in an attempt to rectify a persistent undermanning situation. (If you have Jeff Jefford's "Observers and Navigators," you'll find it explained at length on p 219.) It was originally aimed at both VC10 and Comet fleets - but with so few Comets in service, and that service terminated in 1976 as the Transport Force was reduced by 50%, it became effectively something that was seen by the world at large as something exclusive to 10 Squadron. (It's a mystery to me still that the decision was never applied to the V-Force.)

As a retention measure, it was almost certainly a failure and, regardless of its intentions, 10 Sqn captains took their share of the post-75 compulsory redundancy scheme aimed primarily at 'reduced forces.' The impression that was abroad amongst most of the Service as a result of the decision was by no means lost on successive Sqn COs but, as it had started as an AFB decision, all attempts in the 70s to have it reviewed were rebuffed accordingly. Circumstances must have changed by 1980 when the scheme was rescinded.

And as it happens, the Specialist Aircrew scheme grew out of the same undermanning concerns of the later-60s. History may record that idea as having attracted wider popularity.

Re the Green Shield VC10 captains, was it true that the station magazine at one of the transport bases (Brize?) had accepted a QANTAS ad for pilots? Date c1965 - about the time of the Waddington dinner, and the pay award which gave us less than the rise in the rent of a quarter.

Looks like they should have made VC10 captains gp capts, then they would have had the money, and looked like Captains too....hat, coat..........

QANTAS ad for pilots?

Qantas wantus!

TTN wrote
Our course instructors were Bill, Fred & Brian from day one. They called us by our first names except occasionally when they wished to differentiate between Brian J & Brian S. Likewise very rarely were they ever addressed as "Sir". They said that was the way they wanted it and I don't think it lessened our respect of them.

I would like to hear Pontious' memory of this subject as his 2ANS time was between yours (TTN) and mine to put a time line on this change.

Certainly our QFIs at the Towers (including the two FS pilot QFIs) 64/65 and at Valley 1966 were "Sir". My QFI at Bassingbourn was "Robin"

I got substitution pay covering for my flight commander while she was on ops, then took over from her in theatre as Det Co, but with acting unpaid rank.

I got paid more as a Flt Lt at home than I did as a Sqn Ldr on Ops.:hmm:

Back to the original thread - surely the substantive rank of Acting Pilot Officer is Pilot Officer? I seem to remember that prior to being an APO that I was in the London Gazette as an AC.

LJ

I was certainly Gazetted as an APO so I would assume that that is the substantive rank.

Thet Wiki article referenced above is somewhat disengenuous claiming that APO is the lowest Commissioned rank in the British Armed Forces given that (certainly when I was an APO) it was directly equivalent to the Navy's rank of Midshipman and the Army's 'Second Lieutenant On probation'.

The idea that it is somehow equal to Officer Cadet is also not true. At Cranwell (although we were treated with equal contempt and wore the white flashes) we were referred to as 'Student Officer' whereas the direct entrants (even if they had degrees) were referred to as 'Officer Cadet'.

They weren't all demoted either. My father was an MT Fitter in Hamburg just after the war and he was appalled at having highly decorated NCO aircrew fetching tools for him. They were heroes to him (and everyone else I would assume.) He always thought their treatment was disgraceful

Pom Pax, my memory o f that is a bit dim. We had Roger McCrann for 41 Course until 16/18 of us had an administrative recourse. The chop rate was too low and 1ANS could not cope. Roger was a wild batchelor and many was the mess fine for broken glass etc as he led us in hectic sessions late at night. Then we had George Kaye, married and an altogether more stable character.

Though I remember their name, and one of the two at 1ANS I don't recall using their first names. I think it was probably a hang over from school days as most of us were literally just out of school. I think Mac Browse and Harry Sime were older.
Only at BCBS did we call Larry Robinson, Larry, but that because we had 3rd and 4th tourists in the course.

QANTAS:

I remember the big drive by QANTAS to recruit RAF pilots. I think the year was 1964 and morale in Transport Command was not at its highest. I was at Benson on the Argosy at the time. One night, someone went round sticking posters on buildings and lamposts round the station:

"If you don't want us - QANTAS wants us".

The station commander was not too pleased.

One of our captains, accepted an offer to join QANTAS and resigned his commission.

"You can't resign" said they. "You can only apply to PVR".

"Where does is say that?" said he. "Naval and Army officers can resign. Why can't I?"

It all got a bit heated and Joe eventually told them that he and his family would be departing Heathrow on a QANTAS flight on such-and-such a date having resigned his commission and if they wanted to stop him then they would have to attend Terminal 3 where he would be happy to introduce them to the Daily Mirror reporter and photographer.

I believe he had a long career with Queensland and Northern Territories Aerial Services.

I remember the big drive by QANTAS to recruit RAF pilots. - JW411

As a very simple but worthwhile source of "recruits", QANTAS used to lay on superb parties, attended by some of their most attractive girls, whenever a British carrier visited Sydney or Fremantle. :ok:

Jack

A contemporary advert was that you could be a flt lt, V-Force captain at the age of 23. While the responsibility was awesome, 4 individuals, a million pound aircraft, and a megaton weapon, there was not the same down-route responsibility of the transport driver. The latter were presumably much older too. I know a fair number of 10 pilots came from the V-Force.

While the responsibility was awesome, 4 individuals, a million pound aircraft, and a megaton weapon, there was not the same down-route responsibility of the transport driver. - PN

:uhoh:

Jack

Jack. I'm totally bemused too. Must be hell trying to sort out hotac, fuel etc (isn't that what you've got a co-pilot and engineer for?) I wonder how I managed to survive 17,000 hours as an airline captain... such awesome responsibility.

I maybe wrong but I detect a hint of sarcasm in PN's post

Not to mention the cabin staff, to organise the down route parties!