CHAPTER 9

KEEPING THE ‘FIN’ AIRBORNE

It’s no exaggeration to say that an RAF squadron stands or falls by its engineering. The number of technical personnel on a fighter-bomber squadron vastly exceeds that of the aircrew, but few of the aircrew got to know (in my time at least) many of the techies well. Yes, there was daily interface while crewing in and out; yes, there were beer calls and Christmas social events; and yes, the aircrew usually saw plenty of the two or three engineering officers. But to a great extent the two tribes lived separate lives.

I never worked with Les Hendry but I meet him socially nowadays, enough to say with certainty that I would have enjoyed working with him. Navigators might not have agreed, though, as he was always stealing their flying – Les must be one of very few engineers who can boast thirty flying hours on the Tornado.

On the other hand I had a working relationship with Peter Gipson which surprised me somewhat. By the time I arrived at the helm of my Tornado squadron I had been in the RAF for many years. But, perhaps for the ‘two tribes’ reasons I’ve alluded to, I was unprepared for the relationship between a squadron commander and the unit’s senior non-commissioned man. I quickly came to enjoy and value our times sitting and sorting out the world in his little office in the line hut, and I can still clearly hear the sounds of the place and smell its distinct atmosphere. Peter used to ply me with tea so thick you could stand your spoon in it – and I retain to this day my taste for strong tea. Either that or my taste buds were so cauterised by his brew that I need to drink it strong now to taste it! So pour yourselves a cup and enjoy some Tornado engineering stories from the distinctive viewpoints of a SEngO and a ‘wobbly’ – a squadron warrant officer.

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SQUADRON LEADER LES HENDRY (RETD) AND WARRANT OFFICER PETER GIPSON (RETD)

SEngO at home base

My squadron resided in the north-west corner of Brüggen airfield on a HAS site. We were a nuclear response unit with all that that entailed, and in those days we had an establishment of thirteen Tornados. Although I actually had fifteen, as additional ‘in-use reserves’ were allocated to each front-line squadron.

HAS operations had their ups and downs, sucking up huge numbers of men during exercise (war) and always being a tricky scenario to manage. During one particular Mineval (an exercise organised and run internally by the station) it happened that I had forty-odd ground crew away for a couple of weeks manning a Tornado turnround facility in Scotland. In a real war situation they would have been recovered; that wasn’t going to happen in this case, so I therefore declared before the exercise to all the relevant people that, when we got to the phase where we would enact a mass launch, I would only be able to dispatch six aircraft rather than the ten I had on site. For exercise purposes they could plan and man the ten but, because of my peacetime constraint, they could not all be launched.

But when the time came the order from the operations centre was to launch ten, and I went about my business up to the point where I could get no agreement on which four were staying on the ground. On the contrary, it emerged that I was indeed physically to launch all ten. Various low-flying teddies were dispatched out of the cot to no avail; my boss, Jerry Witts, was airborne and unable to help me. So in the finest tradition I mustered everybody I had, including myself, and we got the aircraft away, but not in as safe a fashion as I would have wished.

After the exercise had finished I sat down and wrote my letter of resignation as SEngO 31 Squadron. Fundamentally it said that if ‘they’, my superior officers, were not going to listen to me, they could do without me. Jerry had only been in charge of the squadron for a matter of weeks when this letter hit his desk. We sat down and had a chat about the price of fish, and life at the end of the universe – and decided we would continue as is. I would do my best, but if ever I considered we were in overstretch mode I would be listened to. As it happened, Jerry and I developed a very close working relationship which worked well right through the Gulf Conflict and to the end of my tour on the squadron.

Today I am still known as the SEngO who kept resigning, even though it was only one incident. But I had a system of telling my superiors twice if I thought something wasn’t going to work and that we should be doing it a different way. I never told them a third time, merely waiting to pick up the pieces when things fell apart. Jerry cottoned onto this and would occasionally ask “Is it the first or second time you have told me this?” A copy of my letter of resignation found its way into the squadron diary and is still there to this day at Marham.

Wobbly at home base

If you look up the synonyms for the simple word ‘busy’, every one of the explanations offered sums up our squadron’s operating period at Brüggen. It was towards the end of the Cold War. We worked hard and, when we could, we played hard. We were there to do a job and it was done well.

My time on 31 Squadron was busy and exciting. I came to the Tornado from 92 (Phantom) Squadron at Wildenrath, halfway through my overseas tour. My trade was engines, and my recent background was on Lightnings and Phantoms. With a spell in the Tornado RB199 engine bay at RAF Laarbruch behind me I knew about the new jet’s powerful modular engine, but the rest of this complex machine was a hidden secret – and one I had to unwrap.

It was a steep learning curve and I spent as much time as I could in the HASs, learning as I went. This was only the second time in my RAF career I’d worked with an aircraft that carried bombs, so there was much to learn, and nowhere more so than in the field of ‘special weapons’. Shortly after my arrival I was dispatched back to the UK to learn about this aspect of the role. And I soon learned what a very serious business it was.

That was the only course I had ever attended where the students were not given notes of any sort. It had to be learned there and then in the classroom. You arrived with nothing and left with nothing, except what you had managed to pack into those grey cells. And you discussed that knowledge with nobody. When asked on return to Brüggen by a trusting wife what exactly I had learned on the course, she had to believe the story spun!

I was in a supervisory position as the squadron continued to practise loading and unloading these weapons, with myself and others ensuring that procedures were followed to the letter. This was demanding work. Even writing today, I recall the concentration and the constant tension to get it right; the pressure of that responsibility is still palpable.

SEngO and the bomb

When I arrived at Brüggen we were very much a nuclear strike squadron, and as part of the Wing we took our turn as the duty squadron to ‘stand Q’, with two Tornados sitting fully loaded with nuclear weapons, at X minutes readiness on the QRA site at the western end of the runway. To go with this was a considerable amount of training for our aircrews and ground crews, which was repeated on an extremely demanding basis. The loading of a nuclear weapon also required an officer, commissioned or warrant, to be present to supervise the load and to ensure that all processes and procedures are adhered to.

Early in my tour I had a call from an SNCO in the armament training cell asking me when I would like to book my weapon load supervising officer training. My response to the call was to say, “No thanks”. There was some surprise at the other end of the line and I was told that “all the SEngOs have to do it sir, it’s part of your role”. I repeated my “no thanks”. The next day I had a call from the flight lieutenant commanding the training cell and we repeated the conversation I had had with his SNCO the day before.

On the third day I had a call from the squadron leader running the armament squadron and we again repeated the conversation I had had with his flight lieutenant the day before.

The next day I had a call from my boss, Wing Commander Pete Dunlop, saying he wanted to have a chat. I popped over to his office and was greeted with, “OC engineering just called to say you are refusing to do your WLSO training; would you like to tell me why?”

“I have two JEngOs and a warrant who are trained WLSOs, so the question is whether you would like to have your senior engineer stand next to one aircraft for up to two hours watching four fully-trained men load one weapon onto one jet? Or would you prefer me to be managing the ground effort to get all twelve of our jets serviceable for operations?” Pete Dunlop just smiled. The next day I had no calls.

Wobbly on exercise

I had arrived at Brüggen during a ‘bolthole’. The word is defined as a place where a person can escape and hide – but in this case there was no escape and nowhere to hide. With the tarmac of the squadron’s dispersal being resurfaced, we were operating from a remote site with very limited accommodation for air and ground crews alike. My personal ‘bolthole’ was a small, cupboard-sized office shared with the JEngO, hidden deep inside a HAS. A place that never saw the light of day, a hidey-hole that saw us sharing the engineering and administration tasks. A couple of hours spent in such a lightless and airless environment was quite enough for any one shift, so I would get out and about, borrowing a Land Rover to do an inspection of progress of work at our home dispersal. I was never satisfied, but in fact the time spent operating in that environment did us no harm and sharpened our deployment skills.

Of course we had to practise. The whole function of the squadron was under constant scrutiny. We never knew when we might be called upon to carry out whatever task was allotted to us. That’s what we did, and we strove to get it right. There could be no back sliding. When the Taceval team arrived, usually in the middle of the night, we knew it had to be right. Those intensely deep tests of the many functions of the squadron would be observed by external teams and reported upwards. If we got it wrong we would hear about it in no uncertain manner. The professional pride of the squadron ground crew was then, and still is, so very important on such occasions.

Defending our squadron site against exercise intruders was, surprisingly, entirely our responsibility. It is a long haul for the average RAF tradesman, normally engaged in maintaining a complex aircraft, to act as an armed perimeter guard. The two duties are widely separate, but both need to be carried out with the same degree of fortitude. The strength of the squadron relies on its manpower, all of its manpower, the multi-role engineering ground crew being no exception.

There are natural leaders in this world, and the squadron had no shortage of them. The SNCOs and JNCOs took on vital management tasks as required. I recall with pleasure the speed after the ‘alert’ at which the entire site would be secured, even denying the testing team access until identities were proven.

SEngO on detachment

Red Flag is a war simulation exercise held at Nellis air base, next to Las Vegas, to where we deployed from time to time. At Nellis the Americans had a system whereby there was a ‘red line’ around the ramp, and moving aircraft and equipment over this line was seriously controlled. To get permission to take an aircraft off the ramp into a hangar could take hours, and my squadron didn’t relate well to that. One aircraft needed to be raised on jacks for a quick undercarriage retraction test. I made the decision to jack it outside and not bother with trying to ‘cross the red line’. So the aircraft was turned into wind (it was breezy) and we commenced jacking.

The engineering chain of command at Red Flag was interesting, to say the least. The aircraft were loaned by the European Tornado squadrons to the RAF unit at Goose Bay, Canada, for the summer exercise season – and then flown onwards to Nellis. For Red Flag I was the operational SEngO as usual, but there was also a Goose Bay squadron leader who was responsible for engineering standards of the aircraft at Goose Bay and on Red Flag. For the sake of this story we will call him ‘X’. At Nellis there was also a USAF maintenance colonel in overall charge of base engineering standards. So for three weeks in 1990 I was operating my twelve Tornados at ‘war’ (a scenario which would be repeated for real in the Gulf the following January).

Now, X saw me jacking the aircraft on the line and suggested we should place the aircraft in a hangar because of the wind speed. Based on my response he left the line! A little while later the USAF colonel came onto the line and asked how things were going; he pointed out to me that X was unhappy with the wind speed. I told him that if X could provide the colonel the wind speed limits for jacking I would defer to his judgement. Neither of them came back to me and the job was completed without incident, in far less time than it would have taken to obtain permission to move the aircraft over the red line. The exercise ‘war’ continued.

Similar improvisation occurred during the real war. We were the lead squadron for the mud-movers based in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia. We had arrived in theatre late to open this third base station and only had a couple of weeks before hostilities commenced. We were a runway denial squadron and, as such, used the JP233. This required the crews to fly straight and level over an airfield at low level to dispense the weapons. It soon became clear that the Iraqi air force was not as much of a threat as expected, and so we only used JP233 on the first day of operations, after which the aircraft were each loaded with eight 1,000 lb dumb (unguided) bombs. This caused issues for the engineers, as twin-store carriers, originally designed for use by Harriers, had to be used. These were not really up to the strain, to the extent that during a very rapid turnround one of the carriers could not be removed from its pylon. Time was tight and I made the decision to make the aircraft armament system live on the ground and explosively eject the carrier from the aircraft. Horse-hair matting and anything else that would break the fall was placed under the aircraft. The aircraft survived the incident; the carrier did not.

Jerry Witts and I had devised a system for having spare aircraft available for each wave. We had hard rules regarding which unserviceabilities would leave the aircraft as ‘war goers’ and which would not. In particular, the ECM system and IFF had to be fully functional before taxi. On one particularly tricky night we had used up all four spare aircraft when I was informed there was to be another crew-out due to a BOZ pod (infra-red decoy and chaff dispenser) failure. There were no more spares, so I quickly decided to ask the crew to sit tight while we replaced the pod. Normally, engineering procedures permit armament electrical systems only to be worked on when a ‘no volts’ test has been carried out. Clearly, with engines already running and electrical power fully on, this couldn’t happen in this situation, and the face of the SNCO armourer who was tasked with changing the pod was a picture! I stood right by the armourers as they replaced the pod, providing ‘top cover’. But I was fully aware that, had anything gone wrong, I would probably have been on a Herc straight back to Germany. But this was war; in the event nothing did go wrong and the eight-ship departed on time.

Wobbly on detachment

During my time we had many demanding and satisfying detachments. Heading for Thumrait, in Oman, I flew from Brüggen on a VC10, with our first re-fuelling stop being at Palermo in Sicily. A beautiful volcanic island at the foot of Italy with the master relief valve, Mount Etna, steaming blissfully and silently away to the east of the airfield. We re-boarded and I was invited to the flight deck; engines were started. On requesting taxi, we were told that Mount Etna was erupting; the airfield was closed and there would be no more take-offs that day. After a short, stunned silence the captain exploded, informing the tower that they had better re-open as we had to be in Thumrait before dark. We taxied out and took off, but I don’t actually recall that we had clearance. I believe we avoided Sicily on the return leg.

Thumrait is an airfield surrounded by desert. The facilities were good, and our daily dose of quinine went down well. The eggs, I recall, had been ‘treated’ to prevent decay before shipping; this made them taste somewhat peculiar. Some of my fondest memories are of trips off camp. Several of us would take a Toyota four-by-four and head into the desert to find remote settlements and do some shopping. We went hunting for crystal amongst the sand – and I still have desert finds cluttering up my house. Salalah, the district capital of the Dhofar province of Oman, also provided shopping opportunities. I came away with two prayer mats sold to me by one of the many market traders very happy to take our money, as well as a marvellous CD; of course I later discovered it to be pirated.

Another detachment was to Goose Bay, Labrador. This time I was on the rear party along with a JEngO and a handful of airmen. At RAF Brize Norton we were herded on to our TriStar; the aircraft was in freight mode with enough seats for us only. After take-off the loadmaster came back and asked us how long we were going to be in Bermuda. Had we got on the wrong flight? If so, perhaps this was a good move, for who wouldn’t swap Goose Bay for Bermuda?

It transpired that the aircraft was first taking spares to Bermuda for a broken VC10 (the truckies were famed for breaking down in the nicest places!). Having disembarked from the aircraft and wandered around the terminal we didn’t really want to get back on board. Anyway, we did and were soon off to Goose, where July temperatures average around twelve degrees Centigrade. And that’s the warm time. I remember shopping in Happy Valley for a pair of gloves and a muskrat hat. Trips out were interesting, although being eaten alive by insects wasn’t any fun at all (the black bugs and mozzies there were said to be twin-engined versions). But the country is magnificent, with lakes and rocky waterfalls abundant.

One lasting memory was of a sergeant who had somehow found something to do all night and arrived back at the mess in time for breakfast. On being quizzed by us all he apparently had no memory of where he had been or what he had done. But he was hungry and ordered a pair of grilled kippers. These he ate by holding the fish by the tails and munching his way from the head upwards, including bones and all. He’d gone native, apparently!

That Goose Bay detachment was a difficult one; the aircraft were troublesome and spares were in short supply. The lads had worked incredibly hard and the boss had resolved to reward them with a clear three days off on return to base. As you would imagine, that announcement was received with huge delight.

In the departure lounge prior to our return flight the boss pulled me aside. He told me that at 6am that morning he’d been awoken by a phone call from the station commander back at Brüggen. This had brought news that tension in the Gulf was mounting and that, on our return, we were to adopt a short-readiness posture for possible deployment. This would, of course, involve a good deal of preparation: gathering kit; administrative work; arranging shifts; and so on. It was absolutely clear that our planned stand-down would go straight out of the window. Choosing the moment to announce this change of plan would not be easy, and we chewed the issue over. “Don’t worry boss,” I reassured him; “the lads will be fine.” Of course they were. In the event the squadron wasn’t required to deploy Gulf-wards for another couple of months.

SEngO at large

I was always a great believer in the fact the SEngO was more than an engineer; he had to understand ‘the whole’. Each year RAF stations celebrate the Battle of Britain with a cocktail party held in the officers’ mess, inviting local dignitaries. For obvious reasons of sensitivity, at the West German stations the event was renamed the ‘annual reception’. The headquarters in Rheindahlen also ran an annual reception. One particular year the flypast there was flown by a squadron from Laarbruch, which for the sake of protecting dented egos will remain anonymous. They missed the mess by a long way, overflying instead some random building, much to the embarrassment of senior RAF officers attending.

So the following year (I’m being deliberately vague about the date) 31 Squadron was tasked with the flypast for the event, with the brief ending with the message “Don’t miss!” This was in pre-GPS days, when we were equipped with GR1s. The IN was known to drift off from time to time but, that said, it was a great aircraft in the hands of a good nav. We had a reputation for cracking difficult tasks and so we added in some belt-and-braces; this comprised two officers near the target, equipped with an Aldiss lamp and a radio as forward air controllers.

In the early days of the Tornado the aircraft was very reliable. Our twelve or thirteen jets were allocated to us and were not part of a central pool. This concept meant we had pride in our ‘Delta’-badged aircraft and could achieve much higher serviceability levels than any centralised system. This worked well until some staff engineer changed the aircraft identities to a single series of numbers, with aircraft being allocated randomly to squadrons, effectively devaluing esprit de corps amongst the front-line ground crew at the sweep of a pen. Fortunately, that happened long after I had left the service, but it still hugely annoys me.

Anyway, for this high-profile task we easily launched the four-ship and a couple of airborne reserves – which, in the end, were not required. I had time to spare so volunteered to accompany a very young Flying Officer Gav Wells as the second officer on the FAC mission. We arrived at Rheindahlen and our initial recce confirmed that the best place for us would be the roof of the mess. A ladder was found and soon the squadron leader engineer and the flying officer navigator were on top of the roof, much to the amusement of the mess staff, who were very kind in providing Gav and me with nibbles and drinks while we waited for the festivities to start.

Meanwhile the four-ship was airborne with Wing Commander Pete Dunlop and Squadron Leader Stu Peach in the lead aircraft doing racetracks around Mönchengladbach, ready to hit the mess as the national anthem finished. We knew how long it would take the band to play the anthem, and as soon as it started we relayed it to the four-ship.

Everything went into action, the radio call, the Aldiss flashing ‘31’ and Stu Peach beavering away in the back of the lead jet – the formation roared over the centre of the mess, on track on time, at a suitable height and speed. Happy smiles all around from senior officers at the function. Gav and I quietly slid off the roof and headed for our transport back to Brüggen.

There, the squadron officer corps retired to the mess for a late-evening sherbet to be met by Group Captain ‘Rocky’ Goodall, who informed Pete that he had received a bar to his AFC, and so the party continued into the wee small hours. I don’t believe the gong was down to the flypast, more for a very good tour in command – but I’m not really sure what would have happened had he missed Rheindahlen mess that evening.

Wobbly round and about

Despite my busy life on the squadron, I was asked to take on another responsibility – that of chairman of the sergeants’ mess committee. It was a job I couldn’t say no to, and I would have the chance to learn the ropes as deputy to the current man. However, he became sick and I was rapidly parachuted into the chair. I never really found out his problem, although I gathered it might have been some consequence of the British nuclear tests of the 1950s at Christmas Island, to which he had been a witness.

Anyway, I had a good team in the mess and an excellent SNCO who ran the place most professionally. At that time a new mess was being built, which I’d really have liked to have seen opened before I was tourex, but that was not to be. Incidentally, RAF people always regarded ambitious projects such as the building of a new hangar or sergeants’ mess with weary cynicism. Inevitably the work seemed to herald the closure of a station – and so it would prove with Brüggen barely ten years later.

The job was never dull. After receiving one SNCO’s complaining letter about a function I offered him a post on the mess committee. I never heard from him again. A good policy, and one I recommend. And there were plenty of advantages; how else could one enjoy the bonhomie of fellow airmen at seven different Christmas lunches, including a spectacular event in the corporals’ club?

The end of my tour was closing in. Immense beer calls and handing out of squadron pots; poor speeches and many headaches. I knew it would be my last squadron, the last of five going back to 65 Squadron at Duxford. The boss offered me a trip in a Tornado but I chickened out – to my everlasting regret. I felt my swansong should have been to Nellis on Red Flag, but I couldn’t wangle that one so I said my goodbyes in the terminal at Brüggen as the boys boarded their flight. The squadron went one way and I the other. What memories.