The 81st Entry
RAF Halton Aircraft Apprentices
Sept 1955 - July 1958

ISSUE No.13 - NOVEMBER 2007
81st ENTRY NEWSLETTER
Editor: Mike Stanley

The Continuing Adventures of…………… by Alan Lowther
RAF Coningsby Part II (May 1959 to July 1960 )

I bought my first car, a 1938 MG J2, in BRG and with an MG number plate, from one of the armourers who was posted to Singapore. It cost me the princely sum of £10, probably because it didn't run and needed a bit of work. The previous owner had fitted new big end and pistons and bolted it all back together but it wouldn't start. The engine was an 847cc, twin carb, crossflow, with overhead cam driven by an external bevel geared shaft from the crankshaft at the front of the engine. The engine generated 36 bhp at 4400rpm and the car was capable of 80 mph. I got permission from the OC Arm to use one of the side bays in the armoury to rebuild the car and spent many nights in the armoury as 'Duty Armourer'. I had no data on timing etc. so I contacted the MG factory in Abingdon and managed to obtain a manual. At the same time I ordered some Primer, BRG paint and thinners. The floors in the car were ply which was in a pretty bad way so they were removed and new floors made from a couple of Martin-Baker 8-ply seat boxes using the originals as templates. The car was also completely stripped and rubbed down. By this time the manual and paint had arrived so the engine was set up as per the book, battery connected and the car fired up on the third crank and ran very nicely. The reason it would not run previously was the OHC drive was incorrectly set so the valves were open on the firing stroke. Anyway, the car was spray painted by the aircraft painters and finishers, a new hood was purchased from the London Hood Co. for £5.00 and it was all ready to go. Many happy hours were spent driving around the Lincolnshire countryside (illegally - I only had a bike licence) in that car over the next few months.

Exercises were now all nuclear based and usually lasted about 3 days. We were all allocated into teams and each team was allocated a number of aircraft. The Americans were virtually in charge of everything and the security was very tight. They transported the weapons and carriers under armed guard, there were armed guards at the aircraft and if your name wasn't on their list of bombing up personnel for that aircraft then you didn't get near it. The procedure was straightforward and the last item was to lower the pneumatic ram, which assisted the bomb from the bomb bay during the LABS manoeuvre, onto the bomb. This was done from the cockpit and the first time I did it I thought I had dropped the bomb onto the apron because of the noise when the ram contacted the bomb under the influence of 3000 psi air pressure.

Social life was good in '59 and the summer was so hot you couldn't touch the aircraft. I played football for RAF Coningsby, there were frequent visits to the local hostelries on the bikes and the Thursday night dance in the NAAFI was full of nubile young ladies brought in by several coaches from the surrounding area. There was also the village dance on Friday nights. I had my first real longish term girl friend at Coningsby, I asked her for a date and arranged the meeting point and she said that's OK I'll pick you up in my car! Turned out that her father owned 800 acres of farm just south of Tattershall - I never did get her on the back of the bike. Riding a bike and drinking was never a good idea but it is just as well there was no breathalyser in those days! We also used to bike down to Butlins at Skegness, pay the 10/- entrance fee and (hopefully) stay there for the weekend if we could find a willing young lady.

Around this time I signed on to complete an extra 2 years service and put another £60 in the bank. With hindsight I should have signed up to complete 22 years or to age 55, but that's another story.

I managed to drop the Super Rocket in the early hours of a Monday morning, about 5 miles from base, while returning from my parents' home in York. The village was called North Kyme and it was a road that I knew well and had travelled many times. Anyway, the back wheel stepped out and the bike tried to high-side me so, rather than finish up in the canal, as several others had done on this particular bend, I put the bike down. Minimum damage to the bike (broken headlamp) and myself (skinned leg) so I motored slowly back to base and went to bed. It turned out that there had been an accident on that bend earlier in the day and the road was covered in oil. Next priority was to get the bike fixed so Tuesday I took it down to my friendly bike man out towards Boston. He used to look after Dickie Dale's racing machines (were they Gilera or Moto-Guzzi - memory fails me). The Rocket had a nacelle type headlight with integral speedo and ammeter which was damaged when the bike was dropped so I decided to have the separate headlamp, speedo and revcounter fitted, similar to the Gold Star. It was all done, better than new in a few days and we were back on the road. At this time I was also doing mechanic for one of 9 Squadron's pilots who raced motor cycles, F/Lt Pete Evans. He raced a Matchless G50, AJS 7R and a BSA DBD32 350cc and because I did all the maintenance I got to ride them all and to test them on the airfield (with CO's permission). Pete had a Dormobile van to transport the bikes and when we got to the meetings they were unloaded and we slept in the van (unless it was Silverstone when he went home to Towcester). I also used to get away early on Fridays on the weekends when there were race meetings, plus all of a sudden I was getting lots of flying in the B.6 with F/Lt Evans (no altitude chamber at Coningsby) and another guy who was an ex-Rhodesian policeman. On one occasion he (Pete) took off and did a Lightning type stand on your tail take-off. Unfortunately he hadn't got the wheels fully retracted when he rotated the aircraft and somebody was watching so he was reprimanded for overstressing the undercarriage. He went on to do 3 consecutive tours with the Red Arrows (in Hawks).

Late in '59, to my dismay, I got the papers to complete for the PV process. Dismay because I didn't want to stay in Bomber Command for the rest of my career, I wanted to work on fighters. I duly completed the forms and virtually forgot about it and the next thing I know I'm put on PWR for overseas - maybe they found out something I didn't know! April '60 and I'm told I'm posted to RAF Kai Tak, Hong Kong in July.

The next couple of months were spent tidying up my affairs, MG to sell, bikes to sell and to take any kit home that I didn't need in the Far East. The MG was bought by a local garage who dealt in vintage cars and the Vincent was sold to a guy on the base. The Super Rocket went last of all, to a guy on the base (who already had another one) and he managed to crash it through a 5 bar gate within two weeks of having it - so much for all that love and attention lavished on it while I owned it. Sometimes I wish I could have taken them all home and stored them, they would have been worth a fortune now, unfortunately there was no one who could look after them for the three years I was going to be away. More on the MG at a later stage, after I had left the Air Force.

July came and with all my kit I was transported to Gatwick for the journey to Hong Kong. Another phase in my life was about to start and I was really looking forward to it.