Misuse of English as she should be spoken.

[belfrybat]

Hanger/hangar. Unless you keep your airplane in the closet.

[ian16th]

Hanger/hangar. Unless you keep your airplane in the closet.

Cue for old jokes about the ever so useful Conversion Voucher.

[Pontius Navigator]

Form 21. You beat me to it.

[TheGreenGoblin]

Form 21. You beat me to it.

A requisition order for a box of pencils? An order allowing you to swap your over sized boots for a parka or even a Bergen and a full change of winter underpants? Authority from the base doctor to draw two full courses of Azithromycin for some unmentionable infection picked up while on leave in Bangkok... (the mind boggles)... Go on, you have to tell the non-cognoscenti what a Form 21 is?

[Pontius Navigator]

It was probably the width of a length of foolscap and a the height of half the width, ie wide and narrow.

It was in two near identical sections. It was used to regularise an inventory. At its simplest, on the left hand side it might list the original inventory item as first issued, say 21b/.... Chair, padded, office. Over time things got moved or swapped. On the right hand side you might have 21c/... Chair, classroom.

b=wood c=metal and you essentially regulated the inventory. Or it might be the same item on each side to swap it between inventories.

Stores were also categorized Class A, B or C. Class C were typically unaccountable consumables, say toilet rolls. By careful process, and a series of F21 Conversion forms you could convert something from high value to low and get it written off, or better Class B, accountable to Class C unaccountable.

Once it became Class C, game on.

For some strange reason they reclassified all navigation kit, bags, dividers, rules, protractors etc to Class C.

When I retired I had a Rude Star Identifier, last used 40 years previously and useful in aircraft with astro domes. I had never used it and had no idea when last seen. For some reason it was not Class C and I had to convince the storeman that this item, now obsolete and no longer in the vocabulary was Class C.

[TheGreenGoblin]

When I retired I had a Rude Star Identifier, last used 40 years previously and useful in aircraft with astro domes. I had never used it and had no idea when last seen. For some reason it was not Class C and I had to convince the storeman that this item, now obsolete and no longer in the vocabulary was Class C.

Thanks for that fulsome explanation PN. Is it therefore true that on the basis of some diligent paper juggling, not to say chicanery, you managed to have an operational Vulcan Bomber shuffled to Class C and from there to your private collection!

Good to see that military admins the world over operate in the same Byzantine manner when it comes to supplies, stores and inventory!

[ian16th]

Thermionic valves were class A!

Dud ones were handed back to stores for exchange.
The storeman promptly threw the dud into a large box of smashed valves, thereby confirming that it was u/s!

[Pontius Navigator]

Not quite, but I believe the inventory write off after "5 out over Valley" could have been entered for Booker prize for creative writing.

If modern aircraft crashed as often as Vulcans civil aviation would have been abandoned years ago. I think IX Sqn lost 5 aircraft in succession.

[probes]

When did eight year old children become students and not pupils?

When teachers became educators or facilitators.

I'm thinking of replacing my Probes with Hiphan .

P.S. career, carreer or carer, which wan was it, again?

[ricardian]

Stores were also categorized Class A, B or C. Class C were typically unaccountable consumables, say toilet rolls. By careful process, and a series of F21

I was in the RAF but worked with the Army (Royal Corps of Signals) both in the UK and abroad. Both the RAF & the Army used large quantities (literally miles!) of Don 10 - stiff, two strand telephone wire, the sort used in WW1 to connect field telephones and still in use in the 1960s. The Army categorised it as a Class B store and insisted that it was recovered and handed in before a new roll was issued. The RAF categorised it as a Class C store and just wrote it off thus allowing the army to recover it and hand in to their stores in exchange for new rolls.

[Pontius Navigator]

And the Bondu at Akritiri in the 70s.

[ricardian]

Akrotiri 1966 had a big rain storm and everywhere was flooded. The telephone system worked well, very few cable joints failed. However, the telephone exchange "died" after a couple of hours. The Royal Corps of Signals Corporal in charge of the telephone exchange was court-martialled and reduced to the ranks plus several months in detention because he was supposed to check the condition of the battery (cell voltages, specific gravity of the acid, etc) every day but had not been doing so for several months.

[ricardian]

Akrotiri 1966 had a big rain storm and everywhere was flooded. The telephone system worked well, very few cable joints failed. However, the power failed and the telephone exchange "died" after a couple of hours. The Royal Corps of Signals Corporal in charge of the telephone exchange was court-martialled and reduced to the ranks plus several months in detention because he was supposed to check the condition of the battery (cell voltages, specific gravity of the acid, etc) every day but had not been doing so for several months.

[ExSp33db1rd]

That is tough on rough kids not brought up proper. I went to a posh school that had wrought iron railings before the war.
Top

Yes, the list is endless, but any advance on Ruff, Tuff, Off, Ort, Oh, sounds for "ough" ?

It wasn’t till I joined SQ ...........

but some of the Anglicised versions of the Chinese names weren't easy, either, like Ng. or including an X, or working out which was the surname ?

Once spent a lot of the flight getting my head, and tongue, around Firenze in preparation for Rome Control, then proudly announced that we were over Fi Rent Say , only for the ATC guy to confirm that he checked us over Florence. I guess he was technically correct, and I once wished a Siberian ATC guy Do Svedanya as we signed off, only to be replied to in a flood of Russian, as the poor sod stuck in the middle of nowhere for the night thought he had someone to talk to.

[Sisemen]

I have five pristine pairs of cape leather flying gloves (I like them and, well, you never know..) as well as a trusty well-worn pair. They all stem from a pair I had issued in the late 60s where one was “lost” and the remaining glove exchanged for a new pair (repeat as necessary ).

[llondel]

Yes, the list is endless, but any advance on Ruff, Tuff, Off, Ort, Oh, sounds for "ough" ?

Cough - off
Tough - uff
Bough - ow
Thorough - uh
Through - oo
Thought - aw
Hiccough - up
lough - och (or ok)

That makes nine variants, I think.

[Slasher]

but some of the Anglicised versions of the Chinese names weren't easy, either, like Ng. or including an X, or working out which was the surname ?

Once spent a lot of the flight getting my head, and tongue, around Firenze in preparation for Rome Control, then proudly announced that we were over Fi Rent Say

The Asian way is simple once you know it’s surname then the two sequential given names e.g.

Slasher Rod Kelvin
Ex-Ascot Timothy Bartholomew
Ex-Ascot Squirrels Twin (the female habit of retaining the nee)
Ho Lee Fuk

Going BRU-FCO one night with SQ I mispronounced Pisa as Pizza.
Roma ATC came back “Say again?”
I accidentally did it again! “Er...Singapore xxx over..Pizza...um FL 310 squawk 1234”
“No no no no! It is Pee-za not Pizza! You must be very hungry. Please go have dinner!”

[Pontius Navigator]

Skool - Skedule
Schedule - Shed
Shugar - took ages to learn that at school.

When computers came out we let our airmen loose on them. Unfortunately the spell checker on WordPerfect wasn't very good so they would correct the words that WP got wrong

Took me ages trawling through the dictionary as if course the discs were locked away to limit the number of illegal copies.

[ExSp33db1rd]

Was always chastised by New York ATC for passing Norrich, instead of Nore Witch

[Pontius Navigator]

OTOH it took ATC some time to work out where High Why Comby was.

Des Moines and Saint Louise were good for a laugh too.