‘That Bloody Corporal’ (1)
I am an ex Trenchard Brat. When I first went to RAF Halton f
or the final selection board I told them I wanted to be an Armament Fitter. I was most emphatic about that. So it was that I found myself on 3 Apprentice Wing RAF Halton on 9th September 1952 at the tender age of 15 years and 9 months with a lot of other young lads who were to be collectively known as the 72nd Entry. Three years later I passed out at Halton as a Junior Technician, and was posted to the Aircraft Servicing Flight (ASF), RAF Nicosia, Cyprus in September 1955. Early in January 1956 No 26 Armament Practice Camp (26 APC) Unit (operating Meteor Mk 8 target towing aircraft together with a couple of T7 Vampires) were posted en bloc to RAF Takali, Malta. They required an armament fitter, so I was posted onto 26 APC, later to be renamed APC (Middle East), and found myself at Takali, which was to be our base while we travelled around the Middle East airfields towing glider and banner targets for the Fighter Squadrons to carry out their annual air to air firing exercises. Towards the end of 1956 APC(ME) was disbanded and I was cross-
On a Monday morning, in late 1956, dressed in my best uniform, I reported to the 208 Squadron Headquarters building and was shown into the Squadron Commander’s office where I was duly welcomed and briefed on the role of the Squadron, what was expected of me etc. (The usual stuff). On leaving the Boss’s office I walked down the corridor of the HQ and on a table in an alcove were all the Aircraft F700s (the servicing history of each individual aircraft). I picked up a F700 at random and proceeded to examine the records especially those relating to the armament systems. I soon noticed that the Ejection Seat Cartridges (ESCs) were out of date. In those days the Martin Baker Mk 2 Ejection Seat Cartridges were given a finite life of two years from the date of manufacture or six months from the date of first fitment to an aircraft seat. They became unserviceable (U/S) at that time, whichever was the earlier of the two dates. Borrowing a red pen from the Line Chief, I made a red ink entry on the appropriate page of the F700, effectively grounding that aircraft until such time as the ESCs were replaced. Having checked that F700, and remembering that I had chosen it at random, I then decided that I should check all the others. To cut a long story short, within half an hour of first joining the Squadron, I effectively grounded ten (maybe it was twelve) of the Squadron’s aircraft leaving just two or three Mk 9s serviceable to fly seat wise and one T7 Meteor (not fitted with ejection seats). After frantic enquiries to the Station Armoury and the Fort (the main Explosive Storage Unit of Malta), I ascertained that there were no replacement seat cartridges on the island. As it turned out, it took almost a month before the replacement ESCs arrived. Meantime, pilots were fighting each other to fly the remaining aircraft, I was the most unpopular man on the Squadron, and even the other ground crew members were referring to me as “that bloody Corporal”. My life on the Squadron during that first month was not the most pleasant, to say the least.
