Back to life and back to reality.
I was sixteen years old in 1976 and by the time I did pass out of those gates of that Ipswich establishment, called HMS Ganges, I had learned how to shave and behave like a reasonable above average sailor.
1976 was the hottest summer on record and I found myself in the Cornish Establishment called HMS Seahawk or Royal Naval Air Station Culdrose. Then for 25 straight days the temperature hit at least 26.7C (80F). For 15 days during the spell, between June 22 and July 16, the mercury soared beyond 32.2C (90F) somewhere in England and I found myself in a Cornish Naval establishment, called HMS Seahawk or Royal Naval Air Station Culdrose.
The year also saw the first commercial Concorde flights take off during the January of the month I joined up. Rocky” was released in the United States during that December starring Sylvester Stallone winning Best Picture, Best Directing, and Best Film Editing at the Academy Awards in 1977. By then, I was on my third and fourth part of training as an Air Mechanic. I was 'specially selected' for a potential fast track to promotion, that's if I were to take all the opportunities offered to me. Then at seventeen and eighteen I found myself on my first front line squadron which was 814 Naval Air Squadron. The Squadron detached from the Cornish base camp to HMS Hermes in mid 1977.
By 1976, with the Soviet submarine threat becoming apparent and through NATO pressure, a further mild conversion was performed for Hermes to become an Anti-submarine warfare carrier to patrol the North Atlantic. Hermes underwent one more conversion and new capabilities were added. This was actually, after I left the deployment which was when she was refitted at Portsmouth from 1980 to June 1981, during which a 12-degree ski-jump and facilities for operating Sea Harriers were incorporated.
I was trained on Sea King Helicopters and there were nine of them on board, the aircraft carrier alongside other squadrons and aircraft and of which, I was one of nine “Plane Captains” on this front-line draft experience. I remember we went to Mayport and Jacksonville in Florida and during the three deployment which lasted around six months we did lose one aircraft. I am glad to say it wasn't mine; but I had to go with my CHIEF to remove the blades so that it could be craned back on board. The Sea King having a boat shaped hull could land and take off from the water but when things went wrong a 'controlled ditching' was the only thing the pilots could do.
All Plane Captains were responsible for the state of their aircraft, so when something like the above happened your heart was in your mouth, thinking - 'what did I do the night before this cab went flying'. We called the aircraft ‘cabs’, and we carried out regular operations - as you would do on your car, like changing engine oil filters to rigging the rotors or actually removing the gearbox which weighed ten or eleven tons.
On top of the work to investigate why it wasn’t working properly or doing regular operations; these were called "flex ops" - which were to keep the cab serviceable. Every day saw the plane captain daily cleaning his cab. Everything on the ship was a grueling exercise - cleaning up the showers and heads (toilets), using wire wool to scrub away the muck of the tiles that went on the flooring of the ships inner decks was also a regular morning duty.
Making a ‘cab wipe’, was to wipe down the aircraft aluminium skin with a liquid called PX24. This was like WD40 but was dispensed from juniper rig or spray pump, like those you might use to spray Cuprinol on your fence for protection. One would spray it all over the cab or dip a rag in filled up buckets or ‘drip trays’. The aim being to cover the entire airframe skin and to polish up the aluminium skin to a bright shine. This was a regular practice and wasn’t quite in today’s Health & Safety risk assessment portfolio. Doing this everyday did cause some to have health problems later in some sailors' lives and sadly some old shipmates have passed away, from the stuff which got into their lungs - with little or no compensation from the MoD. All of which seems to be a regular occurrence in this day and age but we all had to work with trichloroethylene, swarfega and PX24 all now deemed to be cancerous substances.
All Plane Captains were Mechanics or “Grubbers” as we were called. We wore coloured flight deck shirts to differentiate between tradesmen; Grubbers wore brown football type shirts with a white square on the front, where your name would be e.g. NAM TAYLOR - Green were for electricians called “Greenies” and that trade also applied to them that handled torpedo or depth charges which were strapped onto the helicopter carriages and as these were bombs, they were also called “bomb-heads”. Radio Mechanics who worked on the communications systems, wore green flight deck jerseys with blue sleeves for some reason and were called colloquially – “pinkies”.
These were the tradesmen of my Royal Navy youth – they were tradesmen at sea - women didn’t go to sea at the point in my tenure, but there was of course the Women’s Royal Naval Service or WRNS, pronounced WRENS. WRNS included cooks, clerks, wireless telegraphists, radar plotters, weapons analysts, range assessors, electricians, and air mechanics.
I must have always had a thing for making up silly songs and poems as I remember one from my youth when serving on HMS Hermes. I suppose, I knew and liked films then too and particularly the actor Clint Eastwood – again that name “Clint”.
In 1969, Paint Your Wagon had a song called – "There’s a coach coming in", it wasn't a very popular film to me but, I had watched it with my mum, back in the day and so it resonated in my memory I guess. My interpretation, singing this song on the flight deck is captured below in the usual poem end to the weekly blog.
I guess in summary, It was an exciting experience for a youngster of 18 and the Hermes 'flight deck' was the most dangerous place to go at the best of times!
Singing songs against the noise and sometimes extreme of fearful weather conditions, probably eased my conscious fears of the dangerous environment I was working in.
When I had to sit on the brakes of my cab after it landed, when it would be “struck” to the side or after lifts by the handling crew who wore tallow mustard coloured flight deck jersey’s and they fought the fires, if any happened, (and they did of course). Handlers were trained as firemen at Culdrose - before serving on ships and could move the aircraft around on a sixpence. No mean feat, moving a fifteen ton aircraft around a flight deck. They seemingly had no fear and had the ability and balls to stand in front of an aircraft whilst its rotors spun round and then marshal (wave), them on and off the deck. They certainly got my admiration.
Handlers also dealt with any emergency landing episodes which could turn into a ditching in the sea or a crash on deck.
I loved Florida and spent some days at Jacksonville beach. I was not table to drink though, ashore, because of my age. Although when I did get to eighteen, I could have three beers a day on the ship. Sometimes we even got that tot of rum too.
It was an experience, I will never forget and then later, at nineteen, I met and married a WREN called Jenny.
POEM
There’s a cab coming in
There's a cab comin' in!
There's a cab comin' in!
Comin in!
Comin in!
Comin in!
Comin in!
Comin in!
There’s a cab coming in
If you listen, you can hear it
Get the refuel hose on the line...
And the sound of the blades
with the engines that fades
Brings the deck noise to silence, one more time
There's a cab comin' in
I think it’s mine, I can see it
I can feel it gettin' near to the ship
All at once, I see the crew
My cab looks polished too
Please land and never take a dip!