THE GUE
ST OF HONOUR - DAVE SOUTHWOOD
I joined 208 in 1980 and the first Association Dinner I went to was that year. The president of the Squadron Association then was still Sir Geoffrey Bromet, and he was the speaker that night. So, there I was, joining the Squadron as a first-tourist, with the President and speaker as the person who had formed the Squadron in 1916. His wife, Jean, was there. Jean, if you don’t know, was Sir Arthur Conan-Doyle’s youngest daughter. So there’s another attachment of history there. And after Geoffrey passed away, Jean came to reunions for a few years until she died. And then the next President of the Squadron Association was Sir Humphrey Edwardes-Jones, who was the first RAF pilot to fly a Spitfire in 1936 from Martlesham Heath. He flew it for an hour and said: “Fine aeroplane, buy some”.
This was the environment in which I entered. Thirty-six years later, I am standing up here as your speaker. It is a great honour. It is very, very humbling to actually follow in the footsteps, and as we look at a hundred years of the Squadron’s existence we can actually have just 2 people to cover the whole of the period here. And I know there’s lots of you here who have met and know Sir Geoffrey and Humphrey as well, but it is a very special evening for me.
So, let’s start off with how I ended up on 208 Squadron.
There’s a couple of people who’ve turned up tonight that I wasn’t expecting to see. I am very, very pleased they are here because, as part of my Flying Training, I went through the Tactical Weapons Unit at Lossiemouth on the Hunter when the Squadron Commander was a certain Douggie Marr, and it’s great to see Douggie here tonight. I finished there and was posted to the Buccaneer, which I was very happy with: I really wanted to fly a low-level aeroplane. It was a couple of weeks or a month or so before I started the Buccaneer OCU, so I arranged to go and hold at the Maintenance Unit at Kemble which, at the time, was the home of the Red Arrows and, at that time, the Leader of the Red Arrows was Brian Hoskins. Brian, I am really, really pleased to see you here tonight because I remember, and you may or may not - probably not, the Dining-In Night, probably at South Cerney, when we were talking in the bar about Buccaneer squadrons and which squadron to go to. I remember saying that what I was after was the squadron that was going to give me the best flying and Brian said: “Go to 208”. And so, I went to the OCU, and they said: “Which squadron do you want to go to?” – “I want to go to 208”. I was the only person to say that and there was just one slot, so off I went. Brian, that was fantastic advice, because that was one of the first things that set me on the road to the rest of my career.
