Along with other departments in Illustrious, the Weapons Electrical (WE) Department has been operating in Defence Watches whilst patrolling off the Falklands. This has meant trying to maintain all the ships weapons, radars, computers and communications equipment in the highest state of readiness, 24 hours around the clock, day in, day out. It has not been easy nor glamorous work, but very necessary to ensure that Illustrious is as effective a fighting unit as she possibly can be. There have been some remarkable examples of emergency repairs carried out under the most demanding and exhausting conditions. The skill and endurance of our maintainers has been superb.
As a department, we have been watch-keeping in Radar Offices, on the Sea Dart Missile System, in the Computer Room, to name but a few places. Many of the more specialised maintainers have been on-call to tackle problems swiftly as and when they arise. Most of the time it has been dull, monotonous work interspersed with periods of eating and sleeping with not much time for anything else. The weapons are fired fairly regularly; in fact a Sea Dart firing took place last week.
A few have been lucky enough to get ashore to help out with the Army and RAF, and many have now earned their ‘wings’ by flying between ships in Sea King helicopters to lend a hand when called on.