Taceval, Maxival and Minival
 

When did they become part and parcel of RAF life? I left Halton in Dec 72 and was posted to Kinloss. I seem to remember halcyon days of work, sport and leisure time but I don't remember exercises. I can't recall when it all changed.

I left Halton in March '73 to go to 8SQN at Lossie.
We had several minival type inconveniences until I went to Laarbruch in March '76. Then all hell let loose. We seemed to get the full set every 3 months. In '79 I was imported to heaven at Finningley.................. Nothing. :D

In Oct 79 I arrived at Finningly on a Sunday evening, and had an exercise on the Monday!:(

CG

I arrived at Kinloss on 2 Jan 73 having recently graduated from Topcliffe as an AEOp. I remember lying in my Sergeants Mess bed, not long after arrival, at an ungodly hour and being woken by the klaxon going loud and proud. Had to be told by my next door neighbour that I needed to get my A into G and get to my place of work. Thats when I found out about this type of exercise. And discovered the joys of a compo sausage. So I would say they started very early 70's.

When stationed at Portreath in 88-90 I was billeted at St Mawgan. We had no wailing tannoy systems or vehicles driving around outside with somebody shouting through megaphone, as was the case at Leuchars in 1973, instead when Portreath went to play war St Mawgan didn't, thus I used to get a knock on my door from the Orderly airman or corporal who when I responded said you've got to report to your section, at silly o'clock. When I was at the Static War Headquarters at Boerfink near Ramstein, we had bliss. No Tacevals, Minivals or the Max kind. Just fell into a different routine; from 24 hour shifts to 12 on 12 off, or, and I'm sure of this during Crested Eagle 1980, 12 on and 24 off! And it didn't matter whether you were working real world or taking part in whatever exercise; Crested Eagle, Able Archer or Wintex.:ok:

But as for when they started, I'd say sometime in the early 1960s in Germany, or even before, Leuchars had its first one in October 1966 as related in my last book Northern Q;

'originally planned for the 18th but postponed to the 19th due to the weather. This first evaluation was considered a practice run as such, that is to say there was a degree of notice and a sense of walking the station through the proceedings to get the idea of what would be expected in the future. However, when that time came, there would be no notice.' sentence taken from my original draft.

FB:)

PS, the best was lying in bed at silly o'clock at St Mawgan hearing the local people stumbling around when just they were having a Taceval or Sand grouse or whatever!

Taceval also existed in RAFG in early 60's for sure.Did one at Bruggen on 213.

At the other end of the calendar, who remembers when they stopped (or morphed into whatever they called "desert training days"). I left in 2003 and based my dining out speech around a piss take of old style tacevals etc and it went down rather well.

They had already started when I arrived Kinloss in 76 and I guess they had mostly stopped after the Cold War ended circa 90.

Seriously though, they were one of the more absurd aspects of service life for a decade or so - endless opportunities for playing the system and having some fun - but also a major ball ache for anyone with a life.

****ing hated them personally, not just because of the buggeration factor, but mainly because they were so childishly pathetic and clearly just an appraisal exercise for the staish. But hey, you gotta take the rough with the smooth.

I arrived at Gutersloh in early 1970 and they were already part of the scenery although at the time it was either a Minival or a Taceval; Maxivals came along sometime later. Enjoyed some them, others not so much. One lingering memory is that of a Sqn Ldr stacker from HQSTC during a Leuchars Taceval getting his nuts rattled by a pick axe handle held Jimmy E*****d, who told him in a broad Glaswegian accent to "Spread yer f****** legs! Now can I see your 1250 please, Sir".

The V-Force, in both UK and Cyprus had two one-day and one 3-4 day exercise each year in the 60s. We had 6 NBC suits issued in Cyprus, but no training.

The first UK traceback I experienced was at St Mawgan in 74 with a part 1. As a stude I was 'detached' to Gibraltar, ie sent home. The next day I had to be dragged out of my quarter at St Eval as no one said it was Endex. That same year I was at Wittering as it worked up to its first; rather pointless as its role was to deploy.

At Kinloss I asked the Regt Officer about annual range practice. I got a blank look. I think Taceval only hit them in 76. Minivals came later as the importance of tacevals as stn cdr promotion exams was realised.

We had a taceval at Waddo around 92 or 93, and the first time I recall civilian life intruding. We had lots of no-shows as husbands or wives were at home child minding while husbands and partners were working nights etc. Civilian employers would no longer accept the military imperative.

At Coningsby we had Priory, the next best thing, with mass raids, etc as late as 96-97, by then the war plan documents were hopelessly out of date, units had gone, aircraft and sqns, radar sites etc, all changing but no one prepared to destroy the books, just in case . . .

Arrived at Lossie Jan 79 and we seemed to be having one of the three every other month, even a move across the airfield to the Jaguar OCU didn't save me, I moved just as someone deemed the OCU would continue normal flying but play at war at the same time. I never did get why they they were so certain the visitors would arrive when we were all in bed, and why we had to keep practicing getting out of bed to meet them.

Leuchars also liked to party on down when it came to practising getting out of bed, so it was a relief to reach Kinloss where you still did Tacevals but in the main got a lie in.

They stopped or faded away about 1993?

There were Minvals in the V force in 1962. At Honington there were two Main Force Victor squadrons and my Valiant tanker squadron.
When the hooters used to go and the tannoys in the mess corridors were barking I used to roll over and go back to sleep, only being disturbed by the pounding of feet outside. After a leisurely breakfast I would go to work and with the rest of the squadron watch the panic in the airfield through the crew room windows.

In 1964 or thereabouts I was eventually knocked up by a steward who had a message requesting me to go to the Squadron. Something to do with an Airborne Control Post or suchlike.

We only had one serviceable aircraft and we were required to provide that and a spare. On my suggestion we nominated the u/s aircraft as the primary with the serviceable one as the backup.

Everybody happy; back to the mess for breakfast.

In 1971/72 at Honington, 204 Sqn Shackletons had the National Search and Rescue commitment, which included being excused from Tacevals.

However, there had to be a 'Refuge' for the off-duty 204 crews -it was the Officers' Mess Bar!

Reading these posts just goes to show how inaccurate memories can be. Might it be that I am using my youthful summer recollections by removing the bad bits and remembering only the best bits?

I do remember,a late 70s, Kinloss ,No Notice ,Exercise, Maxival I think, which was primed to start at 1900. The response from the troops was minimal. Those who had the knowledge passed it around. Result:-Empty singlie blocks and messes. Swathes of personnel "elsewhere" at Startex and last exercise not in the early hours.

A civvy view.

I suspect that the nearer the sharp end, the more seriously they were taken. Thus Guetersloh, being as near as you get, took them very seriously in the days of 2,4,19 and 92 squadrons c. 1970.
Serious enough for families to be advised to maintain a grab bag to board the massive fleet of RAF coaches to go to Ostend, although that bit never got played.
When the Soviets invaded Czecho it felt VERY real for a few days as I recall.

They were still big deal when I was on the TACEVAL team at JHQ in the late 1970s, nice not to be on the receiving end. [Met did full NBC training, had the noddy suits and wore them, and dispersed to alternates. Any Met. bugger that did not sign up to this was not posted to RAFG, any awkward bugger was got rid of humanely]

I hated TACEVAL; at Leeming, post grounding, I was working in the WOC and the only good thing that ever came out of it was learning how to smoke a cigarette whilst wearing my respirator.

langleybaston wrote:

My bold.

Oh yes it did... but only the once!! Unfortunately, the local population thought it was for real and joined the convoy causing a bit of a traffic problem for the polizei. After that, whenever it came to the evacuation phase, the convoy, sans families, drove around the countryside in a big circle via Marienfeld, Niehorst and Blankenhagen before returning to Gut.

Depends where you were ...
 

I arrived at Coningsby in 1972 it was all rather new and ‘second division’ compared to RAFG.

If I may say so – we were rather good, it gave us some confidence and had the balloon ever gone up for real we were as ready as we were ever going to be to face the outcome.
However when I got to Kinloss in the late 80’s it was pathetic. The scenarios were so unrealistic and it was little other than a training day based on skills one might need to use elsewhere in the RAF.
As some have commented, they were seen as ‘promotion exercises’.
Front line first? Everyone else just playing the game?

I loathed the 'armour plated black bin liner' mentality and the silly black-out nonsense, but enjoyed the increased pace of flying. Except when scrambled to an AD CAP from Wattisham to find no targets had been arranged - on 3 consecutive flights!

At a certain fighter station in Suphpholk, the Stn Cdr had obviously been watching Dad's Army as he ordained that all windows were to have those tape crosses to prevent blast fragments. Well, that might have worked on old wartime 3 x 3 pane windows using gummed paper tape, but he even made ATC put tape crosses on the big plate glass windows in local.... Of course the Fg Offs' union blacked out everything they could find, including the Stn Cdr's car - cue sense of humour failure.

The TACEVAL umpires took one look and reported that the silly crosses were a flight safety hazard at the ATC tower and useless everywhere else. But the best bit was that it took an expensive professional window cleaning team to clear the sticky adhesive residue from non-WW2 bodge tape....

TACEVALs - always a way for Stn Cdrs to demonstrate the height of their absurdity.

Then there was the Battle of Burford when the less-than-tame auxiliary rock squadron spotted a TACEVAL car being filled up at a local petrol station and gave chase, finally cornering the occupants in the middle of the night in Burford having loosed off a few SLR blanks at them....:hmm:

Yes indeed HAS. It was played pretty well in RAFG with the Maxeval normally being the toughest, since it was your own peers knowing how to put the pressure on. Taceval was then easier and "1's across the board" was a normal annual morale boost for Harrier force in the 70's. The USAF usually used to come down badly on NBC in particular and it was not unknown for a "National Exercise" to suddenly be announced, necessitating their withdrawal from the NATO one.
I came to the conclusion that other NATO members were somewhat baffled by the individualistic approaches of HF components and when deployed in the field we, almost literally, ran rings around the evaluators.

HAS 59
 

Wasn't HAS 59 the wartime/exercise RIC location on Gold?