Rant of the Day v2.

[ExSp33db1rd]

Entry to Heathrow central area is by tunnel. On one occasion, a million years ago, the road surface was under repair causing delay to public traffic, so the Company transport carrying crew to the central area used the "restricted" tunnel from the cargo area on the other side of the airfield, but access was only permitted to staff with company photo I.D.'s

One Captain was taking his wife with him on that particular flight, but the Irish ( racist, me ? ) security Jobsworth wouldn't allow her access through the tunnel as she didn't have a Company I.D., regardless of the fact that she had a ticket and was accompanied by the crew who were to be flying her aircraft ! After much argument and delay, the jobsworth advised that the car was holding up traffic, including the British Rail Bus that carried a variety of mixed passengers on the then Rail/Air link from Woking station, so the wife could get out of the crew car, into the bus, travel through the tunnel, then get off the bus and back into the car.

That happened.

Security ? One could weep.

[Pontius Navigator]

Even better, Cottesmore, when a V-bomber base had no entry control. Command Medical Officer pitched up unannounced and rather than pay a courtesy call on the stains went to SSQ and announced he wished to look around a Vulcan. Now the most accessible one was down the taxyway, first aircraft on the right. The RAF Cpl stymied that plan and the CMO stormed back and eventually saw the staish. The RAFP Cpl was duly summoned to the presence for a 'bollocking'. He was asked for his said the the story, then with the CMO present, awarded the Cpl with a week's leave, tore a strip off the CMO for not requesting the visit, being a bloody fool, and to get off his station .

[Hydromet]

Back in about 1970, I was on guard at Easter in the wee small hours when a car with two young ladies pulled up in the car park the gate and approached me. One of them asked if she could see her boyfriend, whom I knew. While I couldn't let her in, I told her that if she waited a few minutes I'd get the roving picquet to bring him to the gate.
Roving picquet did as asked and while the girl and her boyfriend adjourned to the car, the other girl and I shared Easter eggs. Certainly wouldn't happen today, shouldn't have happened then, but hey.

[Fox3WheresMyBanana]

"So granddad, what did you do before there were smartphones?"
"We had roving picquets! And people talked to each other face-to-face."
"And what did you do about privacy?"
"Well, now the Government promises to keep everything you do private, and doesn't. Back then we had to tell the Government everything, and didn't"

[boing]

V-base. Routine exercise. Go to prep aircraft and find it has a real nuke on-board. Wander over to guard who is armed with a Sterling SMG, "Do you have live ammunition in that weapon?" "No Sir, this is only an exercise they wouldn't give us real ammunition would they?".

Turns out that they ran out of Shapes for some reason so they loaded the real thing temporarily for absolutely minimum time.

.

[Hydromet]

Sums it up nicely, thanks, Fox3.

In this particular case, the government was represented by the Orderly Sgt. and Orderly Officer, neither of whom were likely to be a danger.

[Ex-Ascot]

Morning folks, blazing sunshine, mammoth watering. 30 bats. I think that they are slaughtering the dying cows in front of us today.

When at BZN I had a Morgan. I would just drive straight under the barrier without stopping. The guards found it very amusing. I stopped doing it when they live armed the guards. Didn't want bullet holes in the bodywork.

[Slasher]

Morning folks, blazing sunshine, mammoth watering. 30 bats. I think that they are slaughtering the dying cows in front of us today.

The bats are slaughtering the cows? No wonder the pelicans are nowhere around!

[Ex-Ascot]

Morning folks, blazing sunshine, mammoth watering. 30 bats. I think that they are slaughtering the dying cows in front of us today.

The bats are slaughtering the cows? No wonder the pelicans are nowhere around!

No the bats do nothing but ***** and pee all over the veranda. It is a big mess. Bad wording. They are not endangered but have a very restricted area. THe bats not the cows. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peters%27 ... _fruit_bat

Actually have two pelicans outside at the moment and for some odd reason a kingfisher (Woodland) who keeps diving into the pool.
.

[PHXPhlyer]

Ex-A:

Do you not realize that you are sitting on a potential gold mine?
Ex-Ascot's Genuine Bots Natural Organic Bat Guano Fertilizer

PP

[Fox3WheresMyBanana]

Boing - and everyone in authority swears blind that kind of thing never happened!

[boing]

Fox, I'm sure they took the batteries out or something and they were ready to remove it by the time I got back to ops. and I asked what was going on.

You know that a lot of stuff went on under the covers in the service.

In one of my cases, as a green FO, I took over an inventory without physically checking (crafty old departing admin. officer couldn't find the time). It turned out that we were vastly short of small carpets for the Officer's bedrooms in the Mess. Theoretically this could have cost me a LOT of money since I was now responsible.

Sympathetic stores sergeant with me as we find the discrepancy. "Sir, those carpets are about 5 foot long and we are short of N of them which would be Nx5 feet of carpet. I noticed a long roll of old corridor carpet in one of the storerooms which must be about Nx5 feet long. If we were to cut this roll of carpet into 5 foot lengths, call the short length individual carpets, and then scrap them the problem would be solved because the carpets would be off inventory. In fact, it's too much trouble to cut the carpet roll into pieces so why don't I just haul it away and call the inventory correct?"

Wise NCO's are green junior officer's best instructors.

.

[Pontius Navigator]

Fox, I could find out how many WE177B we had, I think it was 54 against a requirement 56. We lost one due to a lightning strike, don't know about the other. I can't remember how many training rounds we had but it was about 1-1, I held the keys.

With YS2 we certainly didn't have enough. It was normal on a Mickey Finn to load a live one, declare ready, download and whop it on the next one.

[Fox3WheresMyBanana]

Indeed,
my first aircrew watch, genuinely lost, apparently went down on the Atlantic Conveyor *
I'll never hear a word said against Suppliers!

*The exocet was a cover story. Best I can tell, it sank because is was massively overloaded.

[Pontius Navigator]

Worst thing you can do is get officers involved. Nav had his flying suit nicked off his quarter's clothes line. OC Admin made him pay £££ including the 20% admin charge.

Had we but known it, damaged, lost, or stolen protective clothing must be replaced FOC.

[Fox3WheresMyBanana]

The exception is junior officers who have been made honorary squadron members. First in line to be invited to join and attend all the parties are OC Accounts, OC Catering and OC Police. A quiet word, "asking for a friend", has saved many embarrassments and yielded many freebies. My eyes were opened to the 'had we but known it' stuff when we had an ex-truckie nav and an ex-SH pilot join the squadron. Between them they knew every write-off and allowance going!

[4mastacker]

Indeed,
my first aircrew watch, genuinely lost, apparently went down on the Atlantic Conveyor *
I'll never hear a word said against Suppliers!

*The exocet was a cover story. Best I can tell, it sank because is was massively overloaded.

That useful "inventory reconciliation facility"* came to an end when the NAO declared that after a certain time (IIRC 31 Mar 1984) "Lost due to enemy action whilst on-board Atlantic Conveyor" would no longer be accepted for write-off/strike-off purposes.

* Other methods of squaring away inventory discrepancies were still available.

[Pontius Navigator]

The Mk 1 Vulcan at Valley crashed because it was grossly overloaded with office furniture and other essential items.

On the 'had we but known it:' I learnt from the shiney fleet. One of our crews to Iceland and spent pennies on sundries. I was impress holder the following week. Now the weather conditions for bad individuals walking around, taxis were required. At $4 a shot it could soon exhaust personal drinking tickets until I could reimburse each individual, that in itself would be a bugger.

Instead I gave the chief $100 with instructions to return the money or receipts. Now had the chief trousered to money I am sure the troops would have had words.

Impress reconciled, returned paperwork with $$$ or receipts; not even a blink of the eye.

We did a day trip to a GAF base. Skipper was quite happy to go without an impressed. Bollocks. I got a letter if authority and blagged DMmmmm from their accountant when we stayed over night. Sodding RAF took their time repaying him but I had no comeback.

[Rwy in Sight]

A non commissioned officer used to say that the materiel for which you were responsible should have been very visible like a sofa for instance.

What is an impress holder?

[Fox3WheresMyBanana]

Imprest holder - usually the holder of the funds for incidental expenses that cannot be paid directly from base; taxi fares and the like, aka petty cash. I heard the term most commonly used by aircrew on detachment.
Having said that, our Squadron tea bar, for which I was responsible for a year, had a petty cash turnover of up to £4,000 a month. Don't ask, and you shall be told no lies.
Whilst the amount is nominally small, in practice one might need a separate wallet to hold it all, or indeed several wallets with one for each different currency.
In one particular case, I had a whole kit bag full of dollars.