Originally Posted by Pontius Navigator (Post 10467846)

Finningley Boy. I was on the same sqn as John but he left in Sep 64. I don't know where he went after that.


He was wrong about UE which was 8 per bomber sqn but possibly correct about unit strength as the Coningsby Wing was receiving new aircraft from Avro.

UE is the number of aircraft for which a unit is established and on which its air crew, ground crew, fuel allocation is calculated. It does not always represent actual manning and equipment. An 8 UE Vulcan sqn had 1.25 crews per aircraft, plus 1 for QRA. I think the FJ sqns had 1.5 crews per jet.

RAFEngO above mentions IUR. In-Use Reserve. A cunning device to cut engineering man power, allow a sqn jet to sit in the shed, and the proper number of jets to sit on the flight line. I am not sure how they accounted for it during alert exercises.

In the V-Force, and I guess other forces, extra aircraft were 'scattered' through the Stats. Some were on CWP - contractor's working party - having extensive work done. Others on AWA - never found out what that meant - but while the Mk 2 Blue Steel was being re-roled to free fall the Blue Steel aircraft were swapped one for one.