We are in Malaya on a six month detachment and the Canberra's are just returning after dropping 1,000 pounders on the terrs. I signalled mine to turn onto the pan, shut down engines and open bomb doors with an armourer standing bu in case of hang ups. No hang ups, oh no, something worse. As the bomb doors opened a thousand pounder slid through the gap and crunched onto the tarmac. It sat there glaring at us, the ground crew didn't know which way to run or how fast and then we realised, it hadn't fallen far enough to arm. The air crew must have wondered why the ground crew were standing in little groups, counting their worry beads! Fun over for the day.
Ken.
I've quite a few of these true to life anecdotes, - interested?
Deep clean, use kerosene! One of our Canberra's developes a strange fault. Both engines lose 20% power after twenty minutes flying. After two day's of testing, the fitters are still none the wiser. Rolls Royce are contacted and duly, a 'Boffin' arrives, one of those types with a constant sneer on their face. The engines are run up by grumble guts and afterwards is pushed back into the hangar. The next day our Sgt' told me someone at the dispersal thought one of the fuel pumps sounded noisy and if faulty, could be changed while the a/c was grounded, I went over to the a/c and couldn't see anyone around, so went to the cockpit, switched on the power and turned the suspect pump on, There was a shout that sounded like 'YAROOH ROTTER' followed by a few expletives! Then, this 'apparition' appeared at the cockpit door, it was the 'boffin' covered from head to feet with kerosene! He gurgled something that souinded like 'Bubble belch gurgle Flt Sergeant ! and squelched away. He came back and in between belches and gurgles, he managed to tell me the Fl Sergeant wanted me and I was 'for it'. I went to the office and when a rather stern voice bade me enter, squelchy left. I went in and after I shut the door, a broad smile split his face, he said. "Good show, he's been a b....y nuisance, when he gets on the starboard engine, do it again! I've just told the CO and he's strill laughing.
There's a brand new electrician at the dispersal and I have the job of showing him round the Lincoln. Its a cold day and the NAAFI wagon had just called, so we took our coffee and wads into the nose of the Lincoln and I carried on telling him pro's and cons of the plane. We had finished break and before I could stop him, the new lad threw his dregs down what looked like a drain in the floor. There was a bang and a thud and a twelve man dinghy popped out of the wing root. The look alike drain was the flotation switch for the dinghy in case of a ditching at sea!!! I had to put him on a technical charge. He got seven days confined to camp and had to pay £5 towards the cost of putting the dinghy back. Well it did look like a drain!!!
A faintly amusing true story from my early working life in the Met. Office.
The time: 1949, plus or minus a year or so.
The place: the Met. Office at RAF Lyneham.
Enter the station CO, to speak to the senior Met Officer about the forecast for an impending York flight to Gibraltar. In the course of conversation, the CO asks, "What time does it get dark in Gibraltar? "Hm, not sure, sir" says the Met officer. "Just a moment, I'll ask Maurice". Presses switch on Tannoy 'squawk box', communicating with Air Traffic Control on the floor above. "Maurice, what time does it get dark in Gibraltar?" Maurice, a somewhat irreverent F/Lt., replies, "Haw, dunno; when the bloody sun goes down, I suppose".
A true story of a simple case of misidentifying the blow down bottle and the canopy seal bottle in the 80s.
A newly arrived engine mechanic on the Tornado weapons OCU is sent to top up the emergency U/C blow down bottle (this should be at 200 Bar) the young airman opens the wrong panel and see the canopy seal inflation bottle (this should be about 10 - 12 Psi) Our illustrious LAC now attemps to put 200 bar in the canopy seal bottle at about 100bar the bottle fails with an almighty bang that can be heard in the line office 200 yrds away. A stunned LAC now stans around as all and sundry come to inspect the damage-fortunatly very little although the a/c still has a 4" dent in the equipmnet shelf (still flying today as a GR4A)
I was told this was true, but doubt it. Either way, I like it…
A commercial airliner makes a pretty ropey landing, shaking the fillings of all the passengers. The pilot follows company rules and stands by the door saying goodbye to the passengers and thanking them for flying with that airline. He thinks he’s got away with it as most of the passengers are off the plane, when a little old lady hobbles past with her walking stick.
“Goodbye and thank you for flying with us today.” He says.
“Goodbye Dear.” She says, but turns round on the top step. “Tell me one thing though before I go.” she says, “Did we crash, or were we shot down?”
This IS true. I know; I was there…
I used to work at BAe on the F1-11s (for the USAF). When you were given a job, you were “clocked onto it” and you clocked in and out each morning and evening using that card until the job was finished or you were "clocked onto" your next job.
One Monday, a chap with whom I worked, (the laziest man in the world, I reckon) was told to watch a fuelled-up plane for leaks (the tanks had been desealed, resealed and were checked with a fuel load which was pressurised to a few psi). The foreman then went off on a few days leave.
Any leaks were marked, then investigated and fixed when the fuel was pumped off again. He was given his new clock card by the clocking office and, happy as anything, sat down to watch for dripping jet fuel, basically paraffin, which will find the tiniest of leaks. The guy sat there until the end of his working day, clocked out and went home, returned the next morning, clocked back in and sat down again.
When the foreman returned from his sojourn on the Friday, this guy was sat in a chair by the plane and, when asked what he was doing, told the foreman about being clocked on to ‘drip-watch’.
“But the plane was de-fuelled by Monday’s nightshift!”
“No-one told me…!” says our hero.
But he did know. He knew all week that he was watching an empty plane; he just didn’t want to do any work!
Just sitting there all week like that would have driven a lesser man bonkers.
Also whilst at BAe, I heard about another workmate that was asked, in his interview for the job, about previous experience – well, you don’t want just anyone fiddling with fighter-bombers. He explained that he’d had loads of experience, he’d worked for years on the 125s…
He was given an ‘A rate’ position (skilled man), but it was later discovered that he was indeed great on the 125s, sadly not BAe125s, but Intercity 125 "High-speed" trains!
It may have been him that was given the job of removing the wheels from a F1-11, my memory doesn’t recall who it was, exactly. The plane was up on jacks and he was left to get on with the job, so, selecting a socket wrench, he started to remove the row of nuts round the rim of one wheel. Luckily someone with more knowledge that him spotted him working and took a closer look…
“Whoa!” came the shout, “STOP!”
He was actually removing the nuts that held the two-part wheels together, not the one huge nut, hidden behind a hub cap, that actually held the wheel onto its splined hub. Had he carried on, he’d have got to the point where the remaining studs would have sheared off due to the force exerted by the massive pressure to which F1-11 tyres were inflated! If that had happened, he’d have been not much more than a red smear across the hangar floor that would have extended up to, and through, the wheel-shaped hole in the wall!
The moral? - Read the T.O.s!!! (Technical Orders – basically a Haynes manual for the plane.)
Is it me? Or do computers hate you too? I write a longish "funny" but when I come to post it, the computer says "No! Too many characters. Try to keep it below 3899 characters." Well I did; I typed it in MS Word, which told me I had typed 3526 including spaces, but this site wasn't having any of it .
Yes I did thanks Airhead - reminds me of a quote I once heard from someone who'd heard the Duke of Edinburgh remark to a pilot after a very hard landing something along the lines of ...." if you want to know where your plane is you'll find it stuffed up my.........." and you can fill in the blank........
Only VERY tenuously related to aviation tales, but -
Patrick and Sean went into their local petshop, and began looking in all the cages.
"Here we go, Pat, They's the ones!" Sean was pointing at a cage of budgerigars.
"You sure, Sean, they don't look very big!"
They duly bought four, and left with them bouncing about in a cardboard box.
A little while later, they were up on top of the local cliff, looking dubiously over the edge at the jagged rocks a long way below. Pat looked at Sean, and asked if he was sure it was a good idea.
"Sure." Says Sean, "It's in all the papers!" Sean picked up the box, and captured two of the birds, brought them out, and held one in each hand, grinned at Pat, then ran at the cliff edge, full tilt, and over he went. Part way down, the two budgies escaped, and flew off, leaving Pat watching Sean plummet to his death.
While he was looking down, Mick, his mate from the pub, turned up with a parrot and a twelve-bore. Mick looked over the cliff at the crimson splodge at the bottom, and asked what went wrong.
"I think Sean let go too soon." Pat replied.
As he said it, Mick leaped over the cliff, clutching his parrot and gun. Halfway down, he let go of the parrot, then aimed the twelve-bore and fired off a charge. The parrot splattered, and joined Mick and Sean at the bottom of the cliff.
As Pat was looking down at the mess at the bottom, and a few stray feathers floating down, Seamus arrived with a hen under his arm, and joined Pat at the cliff edge. "What happened?" He asked.
"Well, Seamus. Sean tried budgie-jumping, and Mick tried parrot-shooting. What are you trying?"
"I've got a hen-glider!" Seamus said, then leaped over the cliff edge, only to plummet to the bottom as well, clutching his squawking hen.
"Well, bejasus!" Pat sighed, "These sports are great fun, but they don't last long! I'm going to the pub, to sell these damn budgies!"
Not exactly a funny but it was a memorable moment!
Back in '77 when I was on 43 sqdn at Leuchars we (the ground crew) had just finished dragging all the toys out to the flight-line and finishing off the BF's for the first flights of the day. All the power sets were off and I was the only one left outside and could hear a large piston engine in the distance. Looking out over a misty airfield I watched in awe as a Spitfire at full bore (black smoke from the exhaust, so he must have had the over-boost lever pulled on the supercharger) and about 10' off the deck, came haring over the airfield and pulled into a barrel roll over the hanger.!
Don't know where he came from or where he was going but it made my day! (And convinced me to learn how to fly)
I was on 41 sqdn at Wattisham. We had Grovellins. The other squadrons had Lightnings. One afternoon there was this very distinctive sound of Merlins. All the hangars emptied as the sound brought eveyrone out to watch as one of the Mosquitos that had been filming 633 Squadron landed.
Interestingly, two of the dummy machineguns on the nose had fallen off. They were just stuck on.
Can trump that !many years ago flying at RAF Honington when Atc asked us to stop because of some "traffic was going to do some overshoots 5 min later 4 B17s fly over and one does rollers for 10 mins (A/C were being used for Menphis Bell Filming) also had them flying over the house whilst being attacked by "BF" 109s during the following week>
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