Prince Vultan Ruler of the Hawkmen Doncaster, Sheffield, Rotherham and Mexborough Intergalactic Spaceport
Prince Vultan Ruler of the Hawkmen Doncaster, Sheffield, Rotherham and Mexborough Intergalactic Spaceport
AKA RAF Finningley
The road signs taking you to Doncaster Sheffield Airport still often say Robin Hood Airport. Why Robin Hood? This is a fair old way from Sherwood Forest. Couldn’t they find anyone local? I’d have gone for local boy Brian Blessed and had huge pictures of him dressed as Prince Vultan from Flash Gordon with his massive wings, short shorts and chunky thighs.
Back in the late eighties, when I knew the airport well, it was simply called RAF Finningley. I was posted there, after finishing basic recruit training, in February 1988 to start on number 144 Airman Aircrew Initial Training Course. The first seven weeks of this course, which was to take me, if I was very lucky, from Aircrew Cadet to Acting Sergeant (Unpaid). This saw a group of us living in an interwar barrack block, fourteen to a room, all farting and snoring.
Not that there was much time for snoring, we were kept very busy. There were inspections every morning where your bedspace and locker had to be perfect. A bedpack made out of sheets and blankets sat at the head of the bed. The room had to be spotless, the floors polished and the copper pipework shining. There was a rumour that it had at one time been painted over, like all the other pipes on the station, but that one course had been given the task of stripping the paint off so that every subsequent course had to polish the pipes.
I’m a Shiny, Shiny Fire Engine
Everything had to be dust free and buffed up, even the fire extinguishers. I remember one day when the fire extinguishers were not up to scratch. The person responsible spent twenty minutes running round the parade square holding said extinguisher above his head and shouting loudly: “I’m a shiny, shiny fire engine.”
Running and carrying stuff seemed to be an important part of becoming a technical specialist as part of a crew on a modern fighting aircraft. We ran all over the place, often carrying what were known as “pine poles”. These were long pieces of telegraph pole, probably about twelve feet long. We carried these while running both locally and up in the Yorkshire Dales. Sometimes we’d leave them behind and run with a weighted backpack. Sometimes we’d take both. You can see how this might help operate a radar on a sophisticated, late twentieth century, maritime patrol aircraft.
When we ran, we generally ran in boots but we had a pair of white plimsolls which appeared to have no other use than the entertainment of the physical training instructors. We would have to whiten them every night and then, before doing PT in boots, we would run on the spot whilst holding our white plimsolls out for inspection. They would always be deemed substandard, it didn’t actually matter what the standard was, and flung across the grass. Occasionally, to add to the fun, people would be sent off for the huge grass roller to roll over the plimsolls.
We would then be shouted at whilst collecting them up to take back to the barrack block and start the fun again, ready for tomorrow. You can see how this might help a flight engineer responsible for all of the systems on a modern air-to-air refuelling aircraft.
Mandy and Blockhead
Sometimes we didn’t run, we marched, but we still often carried things, like Mandy and Blockhead. Mandy was a medicine ball who was handed out to those who were seen to be lazy. If you had Mandy for the day, you carried it everywhere with you. If you were stopped on the station and asked why you were carrying a medicine ball while marching, you had to explain that this medicine ball was called Mandy and that you were carrying it because you were lazy.
Blockhead was a huge, blue painted, block of wood, about the same size as Mandy. You were awarded Blockhead for the day if seen to be intellectually challenged and had similar explanations to provide every time you were stopped. Surprisingly, we were stopped and asked quite often, generally by people who, in just a few weeks’ time, we would hopefully outrank.
All day was taken up with inspections, PT, marching, running whilst carrying things and lectures. The lectures were most often after lunch so that, sleep deprived from being up half the night ironing and polishing, you’d spend the morning running places and then you’d have lunch before sitting in a warm classroom and trying to stay awake. Falling asleep would often result in more running, usually carrying your chair above your head. You can see how this might help the winchman on a search and rescue helicopter locate and attend to a casualty.
Our flight commander was Flight Lieutenant Mal Aston, a smallish man with a largish voice. His sumptuous and sonorous tones were quite astounding, actually. He extended every vowel for seemingly impossible lengths of time. One of my coursemates, who would go on to win an Air Force Cross for saving lives as a search and rescue winchman, revelled in the surname Labouchadiere. Mal Aston dived into this name and wallowed in it for minutes at a time. I am convinced that he found reasons to reprimand young Labouchadiere just so that he could spend a little time playing with the name. His voice would ring out down the corridors: “LAAABOOOOOOOOSHAAAAAAAAAAAAARDEEEAAAAY”, there was often very little that he had to say afterwards. Mal Aston’s main role, though, was to be the straight man to our flight sergeant.
Flight Sergeant Jake McQueen was quite possibly a lovely bloke, he just didn’t like to show it. He had a little spaniel called Scamp that followed him everywhere and he’d be marching us round the camp shouting in his very Scottish burr: “Left, left, left, right, left. Left, get out of the flowerbed you little black and white bastard, right, left.” He punctuated almost every sentence with the phrase: “For a better word” as in: “I want that floor shining like a new penny, for a better word.” It was his version of a full stop. He would shout and scream and tell us how useless we were but I think we all knew that if we had a problem, we’d go to Jake.
Somewhere in Yorkshire
Our first weekend was spent in a village hall somewhere in Yorkshire, that was our base while we were out building a footpath over some hill. Building a footpath comprised of running to where we were to start work, obviously, and then carrying a lot of stones from the bottom of a hill towards the top, laying them to create a path as we climbed. I think that the same path has recently featured in a Channel 4 ident before the programme starts, the one they show in case you’ve forgotten that you’re watching Channel 4.
It’s odd that I don’t know what the hill was or where the village hall was. I was very young, still eighteen, I obviously didn’t take as much notice of the places I visited then as I do now. At eighteen we are often more focussed on ourselves than the world and the people around us.
Part way through the training we were treated to a midweek break in the Yorkshire Dales, running up and down Buckden Pike (I had to ask someone what that hill was called). We carried pine poles and backpacks and big ammo boxes full of concrete. It was so cold that one night everything froze, water in canteens, water in pipes and taps, the food we had, our socks, everything.
Shivering So Hard I Nearly Fell Over
I remember shivering so hard that I had to hold onto the tailgate of a four-ton truck to stop myself falling over. The staff very kindly thought up activities to keep us active and nicely warm all day long, which was kind of them. At one point I put my foot down a rabbit hole and damaged my ankle and my knee, I spent the rest of the day driving round in the four-tonner with Jake McQueen. Sitting on a comfortable seat in a heated cab seemed as close to heaven as I could imagine.
I don’t know if I passed the Yorkshire Dales leadership exercises on a sympathy vote or whether they just thought they’d break me entirely if they made me do it again. Recently, I visited again those cloud shrouded hills, wreathed as much in memory as in mist. I saw a beauty that I didn’t have time to see first time around, proving once again that it is not the world which dictates what we see but our own focus.
After our time in the Dales it was back to Finningley for more of the same. PT in the morning and lectures in the afternoon. At one point the PT involved running to a local canal, whilst wearing boots, jumping in the canal, wading across, coming back the other way over a bridge and queuing up to jump in again until it was time to run home for lunch.
Stopping Breathing
The PTI led the way and, to his credit, barely flinched when he found that the canal was frozen over. He made several of us jump up and down on the ice until it cracked and then he carried on with his initial plan. Every time I jumped in, I stopped breathing; it wasn’t a choice, my body could not physically pull any air in until I scrambled out at the other side. Spring 1988 could not come soon enough.
After seven weeks, those of us who survived, and that was by no means everybody. Moved on to the main school. Several people had dropped out during the course, more had been sent home, and, at the end of it, others were told that they hadn’t passed but would have to be “re-coursed”, to do the seven weeks over again in the hope of passing.
One Four Four, We Are So Poor
Main school had been our dream for the last couple of months, when we were running or marching we would see the students of main school strolling up the “main drag” through camp (the name given to the main throughfare on any station) and aspire to one day be like them. We’d had a course song, written by Richie Williams, which encapsulated this. It was sung to the tune of The Clapping Song, the one that starts: “Three six nine, the goose drank wine.” We sang it while running, though.
One four four, we are so poor,
We can’t bull the block and we can’t bull the floor,
PT’s a wheeze, we are the bee’s knees,
And we’re all coming back as re-coursees.
Course leader told me,
If I was well cool,
That I would end up,
Down at the main school.
Thirty-six years later and Richie’s words to the song are still with me. I can’t remember what I did last Tuesday but I can remember the words to Richie’s song.
Those of us who had passed the course, moved out of the barrack block and into Gatehouse. Gatehouse was made up of small terraces of houses arranged in a t-shape which had formerly been airman’s married quarters. They now housed all of the single airmen training to be aircrew, three of us to each house. I shared with Dave Allen and Richie Williams, he of the song. We were all roughly the same age but from quite different backgrounds.
Richie had, like me, been an air cadet but he came from the opposite end of the country to me, from Bristol. He was the most fun and interesting person I have ever met. I could never be miserable around Richie and I never met anyone who didn’t like him. Deep down, he was really serious and committed and dedicated and thoughtful but on the surface he was never ending fun and insouciance. He listened to jazz and knew poetry and writers and artists I’d never heard of. His favourite writer and artist, though, were John Wagner and Carlos Ezquerra who created the Judge Dredd comics.
Dave Allen came from Devon, so not that far from Richie, but he had a different upbringing, having gone to public school. Dave would go on to be commissioned as an officer and become an aircraft captain on Nimrods and run Basra airfield during the war in Iraq. He left the RAF as a Wing Commander after more than thirty-three years’ service. I never told Dave how much I admired who he was, how unlike him I was and how like him I wanted to be. He may have doubted himself in more private moments but I knew he would go far. I knew that he would do things I never would and never could.
I was in awe of Dave, he seemed to be everything I wasn’t. He was handsome and fit and sporty and had the kind of outward confidence you only probably only really get from a public school education. He even owned a dinner jacket. I had never even met anyone who owned a dinner jacket. The only people that I had even been aware of as having a dinner jacket were James Bond and Frank Sinatra.
For my paid subscribers, I’ll be talking more about Dave and Richie next week. For everybody else, see you down in Bristol in a fortnight’s time.