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

ISSUE No.20 - AUGUST 2009
81st ENTRY NEWSLETTER
Editor: Mike Stanley

"Three Little Tales from Gib are we…..!”
by Brian Spurway

Over the three decades of my interesting, but unremarkable flying career, the ‘60s, ‘70s and ‘80s, holding six separate ranks and in five different RAF aircraft types, I staged through Gibraltar (the “Rock”) many times. Three such trips remain clear in my memory, as clearly as the passage of time allows anyway.

The Third Tale

Fast forward a few more years to the night of 12th October 1977, I’m back at Lyneham as the Engineer Leader on 24 Sqn and at home in our MQ tucked up in my pit.

The phone rang with someone from Ops asking if I would I nominate one of my lads to immediately get in and prep a Hercules for an urgent Medivac; I chose not to be vindictive and agreed to do it myself. Not too long after the phone call a crew-bus turned up and the five of us, all from MQs of course, presented ourselves at Ops to get the gen. A very seriously ill infant, the newly and very prematurely born first child of a young Service couple stationed in Gibraltar, required urgent life-saving treatment in the UK. I was always amazed at the Service’s ability to mount Medivac (Casevac) and Priority 1 flights; everything always seemed to just slot in with everyone concerned pulling out all the stops. I experienced the Priority 1 bit back in 1966 when my Father, stationed at RAF Tengah, had a major heart attack and my brother and I were flown out in a VIP Comet CMk4 almost before we had time to take a breath. I was under canvas taking part in an exercise at Leconfield and without having to think for myself was police escorted to York station provided with rail warrants and 10 bob for a taxi across London. Met at Bath by a RAF car and taken to my MQ at Colerne to collect my “togs” then whipped across to Lyneham, straight onto the pan and into the Comet with its engines running to find my brother sitting in one of the VIP seats waiting for me; we were the only two passengers. Goodness knows how much that lot cost, in planning let alone money, even as long ago as 1965. I digress, back to Lyneham and our flight down to Gib. The Loadie (for what was once AQM now read ALM) and I bussed out to the relevant Line Servicing Sqn to pick up the F700 and then on out to the chosen airframe. Already in the Hercules hold was a baby’s incubator with a couple of WRAF nurses, probably from Wroughton, and up on the flight deck, sitting on the bunk, was a very attractive, if somewhat bleary eyed, young female paediatrician who had also been called out of her bed.

It appeared that the baby was unlikely to survive long enough for us to get to Gib but we were to go anyway even though the dratted Spanish had refused any transit over their airspace. It was still in the very small hours when we climbed out of Lyneham to make our way down over the Bay of Biscay towards the South Western corner of Spain. The big orange bun made its scheduled appearance just so that, as we hung a left in towards the Straits of Gibraltar, it shone straight into our sleep-lacking eyes. This time there was no choice; we needed to get on the deck as quickly as possible so it was the dirty-darty-fighter-pilot-type approach over the harbour (much easier in a Hercules than a Hastings or a Varsity) and onto the Easterly runway. When parked outside VASF we shut down but left the GTC (same as APU but American military speak) running ready for a quick departure.

An ambulance immediately rolled up beside us and what must have been the youngest looking married couple I’d ever seen, and certainly the most distressed, climbed out and got into the Hercules. Behind them was a nurse carrying a tiny little bundle that was instantly put into the incubator and into the care of the experts we had on board. We were given clearance to start engines and expedite our departure; our route details would follow when negotiations with the Spanish had been sorted. Before I’d even opened the source of bleed-air to start the first engine ATC asked us to continue the start but hold our position. Hurtling towards us was another ambulance, it too stopped beside us and out jumped a lady, with her clothing covered in blood, cradling yet another child; a toddler who, waving goodbye to her father from a first floor balcony as he was off to his work place, had fallen over the railings and plunged head first to the ground. She had suffered major life threatening injuries.

As we were taxiing to the runway a nurse came up to brief us on the two children and the requirements for the transit back to the UK. Heartbreakingly we learnt that the odds were heavily against either of them making it back to the UK, speed was an absolute necessity and, for me personally as the Flt Engineer, the cabin altitude had to remain as near as possible to what it was there on the ground at Gib for the whole flight as neither child would be able to survive any atmospheric pressure change. This requirement meant that our maximum transit altitude had to remain below 10000 feet for above that level the Hercules pressurisation system couldn’t maintain sea level and the cabin altitude would increase resulting in a corresponding fall in atmospheric pressure; it also meant that my left hand index finger would spend the entire flight on the switch used to manually adjust cabin pressure, the automatic system being more likely to cause fluctuations.

To this day I don’t know, and we certainly didn’t care on the day, whether the Spanish had given us permission to enter their airspace. On the radio, after leaving Gib, we emphasised our new “Medivac” call sign, as opposed to the RAF “Ascot” (Air Support Command Operational Transport) one used on the flight down, turned sharply and headed straight up through Spain.

We managed to stay below 10000 feet and miraculously both children made it to RAF Odiham where a helicopter met us, rotors turning and ready to take one of the children to specialist care, plus an ambulance, engine running, ready to do the same for the other little mite. All in a RAF transport crew’s day at work, but a lot more poignant than most, even more so than the unpleasant, but essential, task of returning the mortal remains of Servicemen killed overseas back to the UK; as was in those days with the Northern Ireland problem, and still is with Iraq and Afghanistan, a task all too often called on for the “Truckie” fleet.

We made our way back to Lyneham pretty chuffed that, so far, everything had gone well, but would the two children survive their ordeals? The Sqn received a message a few days later to let us know that the small premature baby suffering from numerous medical complications, the least of which was double pneumonia, had responded to treatment and was going to be okay; but of the second child we heard nothing.

About 10 years later my wife was a MOD Civil Servant working as PA to a senior “nebbie” with the MOD/Navy at a place called Ensleigh, near Bath. Another senior “nebbie”, one rung down from my wife’s boss, invited us to a BBQ at his large house just outside Bath. After the food, circulating as one does at these functions, I got into a group including the host’s wife. She told me that she knew I was stationed at Lyneham flying Hercules and that she had once had the dubious pleasure of a ride back to the UK from Gibraltar where her husband was stationed as an MOD CS…and Yes, you’re ahead of me….when her small daughter had suffered a major head injury falling off a balcony. I was, to use a modern expression, gob-smacked at the coincidence but told her that I had actually been part of that aircraft’s crew. I really didn’t want to hear of a sad outcome, but half expecting it, my relief was indescribable when she pointed across the lawn to a small paddock where a young and obviously very fit teenage girl was energetically jumping hurdles astride her pony.

Our crew’s long day of work all those years back was now complete, we’d been part of a team that had saved two lives and it doesn’t come much better than that.