Tales from the RAF

[Canberra Man]

One of our Canberra's is sent to an MU in Wales to have some new radar gear fitted and the pilot that flew it back reported the G4 compass as faulty, an air pocket or a turn would send it crazy. It was removed and taken to the instrument section and was found in perfect order. Warning bells rang, the port wing tip was the home of the flux detector for the G4 compass. The cover plate was removed and rolling around, sharing the same cavity as the flux detector, was a 6" x 1" stainless steel bolt. Evidently, while the tank was being refitted, a mounting bolt was dropped into the cavity and rather than take panels off to look for it, a new one was drawn from stores. The MU was Llandow and has now closed, I will relate another one of their boobs another time.

Ken

[Saracenman]

oops!

[Xplumberlives]

Sat outside the FRADU pan at Yeovilton one afternoon some years back and watched a techie go into a Canberra and remove a black box, he returned several times. Each time he left the aircraft carrying a black box. Eventually the amount of weight removed from the nose of the airframe was sufficient to let her sit on her tail when said techie jumped out with the last box.

Canberra's have a tail rest that can be placed between ground and tail to prevent this embarrassing situation!

But you have to fit it first!

[Canberra Man]

Before joining the RAF I did NS as a brown job in the Royal Artillery and I did a couple of practice camps where we played bang sticks with big guns (3.7 HAA) One day we had a misfire and I was given the job of carting the dud shell to the safety range,the shell was nearly a metre long and about thirty kilos, I tried to get it over with quickly and started to trot and a bellow from the range officer changed my mind. I dumped the shell, then I ran! We had a funny one day, the shell expoded a hundred metres in front of the Miles Master doing the towing and we could hear the tannoy talk back, the pilot roared. "I'm pulling this B.....d, not pushing it!". To avoid losing too many pilots, we used to do what was called "180 degree shoot off". A lens picked up the aircraft flying behind the guns and the a/c image was projected onto a calibrated table. At the same time another lens picked up our shell bursts which were projected onto the same table and this showed how far out our shooting. Incidentaly, the pilots only received the equivilant of 40p per run "Danger money"!!!!

Ken