Warrior-in-Waiting by Farman Edward George & Farman E.G

Author:Farman, Edward George & Farman, E.G [Farman, Edward George]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Andy Farman
Published: 2019-06-17T16:00:00+00:00

RAF Tangmere

No.115 Squadron

18 May 1960 to 24 May 1962

No. 115 Squadron was a busy unit, charged as it was with calibrating the approach and landing aids for all RAF stations and staging posts from the UK to Cyprus. The general feeling was correspondently brisk and businesslike, and the mix of officer and NCO aircrew blended smoothly, as at Lindholme.

I started flying on 23 May, with the day acceptance check, on the 24th flew a calibration detail which needed no special expertise from me, and then the night acceptance check. Two more days were taken up with on-the-job dual instruction in calibrating the Instrument Landing System (ILS), then I was off and running on my own.

There was a Canberra squadron which shared the airfield, No.245 I think, tasked with calibration of the area navigation systems and air-defence radar, and the long-range approach aids used in recovering fighters to base. At one period they, and specially selected crews from 115, also kept up a special patrol to pick up the rapid bursts of information that were transmitted by a Russian spy cell, active in the London area. They were successful in pinpointing the source closely enough for the spies to be caught, tried and sentenced.

A flight of search-and –rescue Whirlwind helicopters was also based at Tangmere.

Servicing of both squadrons was contracted out to the firm of Short Brothers. The only RAF groundcrew involved with the flying were technicians who formed part of the crew for ILS tasks: about half of these technical specialists were civil servants.

The types of equipment which we calibrated were: Ground Controlled Approach (GCA), with which a ground-based controller talked the pilot down the landing approach path; ILS, which provides the pilot with visual guidance by way of two moving needles, vertical and horizontal; Eureka 7, a British approach and landing system, and its US-developed rival, Tacan, which became the NATO standard for fighter airfields. There were also up-dated versions of the old BABS dot-and-dash beacon system, as well as the airfield control radars that gave air traffic controllers a continuous picture of traffic in the local area and were used for landing guidance, and the cathode-ray direction finders which gave an instantaneous bearing on each transmission from an aircraft. All had to be tested and corrected for errors, periodically and after repairs or major servicing.

The minimum flight crew consisted of pilot, navigator and, in place of the flight engineer who could occupy the right-hand seat at Lindholme, a signaller. For ILS tasks we carried two signallers, the other to operate the sensitive recording equipment at the rear of the cabin, where it was least likely to suffer interference from the engine ignition systems.

We would begin an ILS job by landing to put the navigator, who carried a balloon theodolite, and the technician with his tools and instruments, as close as we could to the ILS hut, near the touch-down end of the runway. While they set up the theodolite we would take off and position for the first run.

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