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

ISSUE No.16 - AUGUST 2008
81st ENTRY NEWSLETTER
Editor: Mike Stanley

The Further Adventures of Alan Lowther (Armourer)
by Alan Lowther

We left Alan selling up his car and motorbikes at RAF Coningsby before his posting to the Far East

Hong Kong (July 1960 to January 1963)
July 1960. Arrived at Gatwick on a bright, sunny July morning in plenty of time for the flight. Had plenty of time for a coffee and a look around then found myself standing next to Paul McCartney and Jane Asher in the bookstall!! Eventually the flight was called and we boarded the British United Airways Britannia for the long flight to Hong Kong. The aircraft seemed very comfortable (at this stage!) and the first leg was to Ankara in Turkey where we disembarked while they refuelled etc. The second leg was to Colombo in (then) Ceylon but we were diverted to Karachi because of bad weather. On disembarking I thought it was rather warm and then noticed that with the aircraft parked nose into a strong breeze we were walking through the hot gas off the engines. On clearing the aircraft it was just as hot and turned out to be 130F in the shade! The airport terminal left something to be desired, I went to the toilet and was confronted by a hole in the floor and two strategically placed footmarks! Of interest was a line of Indian Air Force (Navy?) Attackers/Sea Hawks parked in front of the terminal building. The next leg was to Bangkok and we arrived just as dawn was breaking and disembarked into a very warm and humid atmosphere. By now I had lost track of time so it was a case of eating when you felt hungry and sleeping when you could. We were soon airborne again on the final leg to Hong Kong where we arrived late afternoon in brilliant sunshine and a temperature in the mid-90's F. The approach and landing were interesting, downwind between HK island and Kowloon and the final approach over Kowloon old walled city and onto the runway which had been built out into the bay using a lot of the mountain they had cut down on what was now the final approach. Total time from Gatwick was 29 hours including stops and overall the flight was very smooth. I don't know what altitudes we were flying at but I do remember, on the Karachi - Bangkok leg, the crew flying around the huge cumulus clouds along the route.

The first couple of days are a blur - after sleepy Lincolnshire this place is packed with cars, buses, taxis and people and keeps going 24 hours a day. We had the weekend to recover from the flight and reported to SHQ on the Monday morning to pick up our arrival chits. Into the SWO's office and told to report immediately to the Station Armoury to pick up a rifle and then to report back outside SHQ for Guard of Honour drill. There were four of us new arrivals and we were on the Guard of Honour party (which did all ceremonial occasions, including funerals) for the duration of our tour. Incidentally, this was the first time I had been on parade since I left Halton. Once the drill was over we completed our arrival and reported to our respective sections.

The armament section was run by a WO and a Sgt and the rest were distributed between 28 Sqdn (which comprised 6 Venom FB 4's and 2 Vampire T 11's) and 2nd Line servicing. The Sqdn armament side was run by a Sgt and a Cpl (John 'Taff' Davis, ex-81st). The rest of the troops looked after Aircraft 2nd Line servicing, bomb dump and the various bays in the armoury for ejection seats (2F and 3B), 20 mm guns, Mk 5 belt feed mechanisms and small arms. I was allocated to 2nd line aircraft servicing (single occupancy post) that included squadron technical support. We didn't have many 'troops' and as the squadron carried out air to ground firing every Friday it was a case of all hands to the pumps with the exception of the WO and Sgt in the Armoury and the Bomb Dump crew (2) who kept us supplied with 3 inch rockets and ammunition. That gave us 7 personnel on the line to handle the turnarounds and the re-arms, one of these being the man on the end of the runway for plugging/unplugging. Additionally, one person had to do range duty with a couple of Chinese to set up targets, radio contact with the aircraft and range safety launch etc.

On Mondays after air firing I doubled up in the armoury servicing all the guns and BFM's for the next Friday's firing. This was after I'd removed all the guns from the aircraft and fitted the ballast sets so Mondays and Tuesdays were busy days. We had quite a lot of stoppages and mainly these were caused by worn out aircraft mountings and old worn out guns. Eventually we ordered new guns and refurbished all the aircraft mountings which improved things to the extent that we were only experiencing stoppages due to link pile-ups on the gun bay doors. One of the pre-air firing briefing items was the procedure to follow when the aircraft returned from a sortie, this being that the responsible armourer would roll underneath the aircraft and inspect the link chutes prior to dropping the gun bay doors. If you didn't and there was a link pile-up, when the doors were dropped you would fire one or more rounds (dependent on the number of link pile-ups). We only managed to do it once, courtesy of an ex-HAA J/T who shall be nameless, and luckily no one was hurt. The 3-inch rocket side of the firing was a problem for the aircrew as we were plagued by slow burners, which meant that the rockets were launched from the rails after the aircraft had pulled up from the attack. The squadron CO wasn't too happy and signals were flying back and forth between RAFHK and FEAF HQ in Singapore. Eventually FEAF agreed to come down and witness some ground live firings from a rig on the range. I designed and built a test rig and set it up on the range. We took a total of 12 rocket motors complete with concrete heads to represent the various lot numbers. Needless to say we proved our point, the shortest delay after firing being 3 secs and the longest being 5 secs. Quite interesting after pressing the firing button to watch the motor sat there smoking before finally disappearing out over the ocean with an almighty roar. Every motor failed the test so all the lots were blacklisted and we eventually received new ones. We also used to take the 20 mm guns to the range for butt testing when required. The range was patrolled by one of the Marine Craft range safety launches (RSL) while firing was in progress and when we were finished the Chinese used to appear like magic and start diving to recover the brass cartridge cases.

The Venoms and Vampires lasted until August 1961 when the Venoms were scrapped (bar one, WR497 'F') which was put on display outside the Airport Fire Station. The T.11's were fitted with long-range tanks and flown to Singapore and I have no knowledge of their fate after that. In the meantime there were one or two incidents and events of note. WR497 'F' was being flown by Fl/Lt 'Dink' Lemon on an air test when the engine top cowling detached and removed all of the tail plane from between the booms. Despite being told to abandon the aircraft he landed safely and was awarded the AFC. In the meantime the aircraft was impounded and there was much talk of Courts Martial by the JEngO and we weren't allowed near the aircraft. I had fitted the top cowling and it was over signed by the Cpl Eng Fitter so it was he that was to be Court Martialled. Eventually we managed to get at the aircraft and, lo and behold, all four over-centre latches from the top cowling were still attached to the hooks on the airframe, so it must have been a metallic failure of the top cowling rather than a servicing error.

The SEngO was informed and all talk of Courts Martial ceased. We repaired the aircraft and it flew again until August 1961. We had a new Squadron CO arrive and after a couple of rides in the T.11 off he went in one of the FB.4s. About 50 minutes later we have an alert, the aircraft can't get the wheels down. The civil airport didn't like it when there was a possibility that the runway would be blocked by the RAF when they had scheduled flights to land/take off (diversions were some hours flying time away). Anyway, the Venom appeared in the circuit, minus the tip tanks, and made a wheels-up landing. We lift it with the crane, operate the gear down selection, gear comes down OK and we clear the area. Question: where are the tip tanks? I don't know says CO, I didn't jettison them. To cut a long story short, the gear up/down lever was the same colour and very close to the tank jettison lever - need I say more. We eventually recovered the tanks from a village some miles out on the final approach.

We shared the (only) hangar with the RHKAAF who flew Austers and a couple of Dragonfly helicopters. They also had a (non-flying) Spitfire stored in the hangar, Mk 24 I think, a relic of headier days. Several of their staff were seconded RAF personnel, one of whom was Cpl Moss who was I recall ex-77th engines. He used to maintain the Chief Medical Officer's Austin Healey 100 and spent a lot of his time hurtling up and down the tarmac after tuning. We met up again at St Mawgan. The Army Air Corps were based at a little airfield called Sek Kong, which was up country and quite close to the Chinese border. They flew Auster AOP 9s and occasionally the Venoms would be detached up there for exercises. Our main contact however was social as we used to go up there for games evenings. My first visit was quite early on in my tour and we were drinking bottled San Miguel, after a few I remarked that I felt a little drunk but that I had only had five bottles and was told that they were litre bottles, not pints. Normally, at Kai Tak, I used to drink Tiger and it came in pint glasses. The local social life was pretty good and you could go downtown at any time seven days a week to eat and drink. We used to go across to HK Island on Friday nights to Wanchai Road, which had about 80 bars. The idea was to have half a pint in as many bars as possible and, needless to say, I got legless every Friday night and we never did complete all 80 bars. We did vary the starting point from week to week, top end, middle, bottom end but the end result was always the same and the best we ever did was about 28 bars. After the drinking we would usually finish up at some Chinese street food stall just to finish off the evening (morning?).

Most sports were available at Kai Tak and I carried on playing football, being selected twice to play for RAF HK against teams from FEAF. I also took up sailing, which I carried on until 2000 both in dinghies and big boats. RAF KT had a fleet of Redwing dinghies which were a Cornish designed clinker built 14 ft boat with a 250 lb cast iron centre plate raised and lowered on a pulley system. It was an excellent sea boat and we regularly went on weekend camping expeditions to various places around the colony. Sometimes the swells were so big that you couldn't see the top of the mast of the leading boat when it went into the next swell. Later on (1961) the RAF club bought eight Enterprise kits from UK and these were built by the Chinese boat boys employed by the club. I attained my Class 'A' helm certificate and was allocated my own boat so most weekends were spent on (or in) the water.

The FEAF sailing championships were held in Singapore every year at Changi or Seletar and I travelled to two of these. Conditions were very different to HK and we were sailing different boats (Snipes) so we never did very well but the sailing and the social side were brilliant. All the other HK clubs eventually bought Enterprises (Army, Navy and RHKYC) so there were special events held for them at the various club meetings when about 30 boats mustered. The RAF club inaugurated the Enterprise Trophy, which was a solid silver model Enterprise and was sailed for at the RAF club. The first time it was sailed for I won the 'cash' race in the morning and got a rocket from the Commodore for showing my hand. "They'll all be watching you this afternoon", he said. He was right and I only managed to finish second after a battle with an Army Captain who was more intent on stopping me than catching the leader and eventual winner, a guy from the RN club.

The RHKYC regatta in 1961 coincided with a typhoon due to hit the island. The arrangement was to get all the boats towed over in the morning by one of the marine craft launches and then back again at the end of the day. Due to a heavy night the night before helm and myself arrived late and missed the tow. We decided to sail across, despite the wind which was really blowing hard, so we rigged the boat, put two reefs in the main and off we went. Out of Kai Tak bay to the end of the runway, round the end then down the harbour towards RHKYC. When we got out by the end of the runway it was really blowing hard and turned into a beam reach down the harbour. At that stage of my sailing career I had never gone so fast in a boat as we planed all the way down the harbour. We screamed past the RHKYC in a cloud of spray to cheers from the people assembled on the balcony (there were no other boats on the water) sailed into the moorings and moored up to be greeted by our Commodore (S/Ldr Eaglesham). "Very impressive", says he, " if a little foolhardy, consider this a severe b********g, and by the way the regatta is cancelled because of the wind conditions". Needless to say we were towed back. At this time the Ark Royal was on a visit and her aircraft, Scimitars, Gannets and helicopters were operating from KT. The typhoon was due to make a direct hit so all the aircraft had to be put in the hangar. We managed to squeeze them all in, mainly due to the folding wings on the Scimitars and Gannets. There was a visiting Beverley, which we lashed down outside the end of the hangar and anything that couldn't be put away was lashed down to rings set into the concrete apron. Most of the civilian aircraft left the airport and one of the last to leave, late in the evening, was a USAF DC3. By this time the weather was really atrocious, low cloud, heavy rain and storm force winds. The DC3 departed towards Lyemun Gap and, unfortunately, made his right turn too early and ploughed into the high ground on the west end of the island killing all sixteen on board. The mountain rescue team were called out in the early hours and eventually found the wreckage. Many other people were killed in this typhoon, including several hundred Chinese mainly due to landslips engulfing their homes on the hillsides. Seven RAF personnel also died on Lan Tao island when the building they were sheltering in collapsed. There was also major damage to buildings, cars and vessels. According to reports the maximum-recorded wind speed was 240 mph. All the military aircraft and equipment survived and we were back flying in a couple of days in brilliant sunshine. The funerals of the deceased RAF personnel took place the following week at the military cemetery on HK island, full military with guard of honour and firing party.

The RN Scimitars broke the sound barrier over Kowloon and shattered the windows in a tower block on Waterloo Road which didn't go down too well and a couple of Venoms did a beat up of the Ark Royal's deck while it was in harbour which didn't go down too well either. The Ark was going to sea to recover her aircraft and do some weapons training before coming back into harbour, so the Squadron CO organised for the squadron personnel to go on board for the day to see how the other half lived (and worked). All in all a brilliant day out, the flying was impressive and my lasting impression was that the flight deck was the most unforgiving place to be, with no room for error.

To be continued...