RAF Tanker Navigator by Peter Bodle & Tony

Author:Peter Bodle & Tony [Bodle, Peter]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781844684816
Publisher: Pen and Sword
Published: 2012-11-14T16:00:00+00:00

Tony joined Course 99, 232 OCU Marham and resumed his Nav/Plotter seat in a Victor tanker on 3 February 1972. The pattern of his life was the same as the early JARIC days, spending weekends at home and living in the Mess during the week, with a couple of hours commuting between the two. Of course, this time home was near Huntingdon and work was in Norfolk. Needless to say, this was only temporary and the house soon went on the market, as the recent housing boom put the Golds’ finances in a very comfortable position for the purchase of the next family home. Tony’s economics lecturer at Cambridge had advised him to keep the house during the Tengah posting and rent it out for the year. His view was that house prices would sky-rocket during that time. They did, though even he could not have foreseen quite how much the Golds’ home in Houghton and Wyton would appreciate in such a short time.

February and the first week of March at 232 OCU were incredibly busy for all the aircrew passing through. Tony’s log book recorded a total of fifty-six hours and ten minutes for the month, with twenty-five hours logged at night; all on 232 OCU’s Victor Mk 1s. He then had a couple of weeks’ leave, and on his return in April headed across the Marham apron to 214 Squadron and its fleet of Victor K1s.

The first two months on 214 Squadron involved acclimatisation exercises to mould the new boys back into the swing of Squadron life. The K1s themselves were very similar to the earlier Mk 1s, so that was no real problem, but there was some additional navigational kit to get used to. Fortunately, it had all been added to make the navigator’s life easier. However, by Tuesday 13 June, the training was over and Tony was back on the Squadron strength and fully integrated into the team.

Secondary duties arrived with my Squadron locker key. I was able to take on my favourite duty, that of Station hockey representative. My other secondary duty was not quite so appealing, I was put in charge of No. 3 Hangar. Thus all minor repairs, broken windows, light bulbs that failed and plumbing that went AWOL were all part of my remit. In itself that was not too bad, but of course, as with all military functions such as this, there came the regulation inspections. Being the officer in the firing line, this meant that immediately before the Station CO’s inspection, the Squadron Commander wanted one of his own to make sure it was all in order for the big day. Obviously, there was no way I was going into a Squadron Commander’s inspection blind, so I did my own just prior to this, checking to ensure all reported damage was repaired and the whole of my area was as it should be. You can see from this, that the week before the big day was a pretty busy time and fully dedicated to checks and inspections.

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