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Memories of Marine Branch
Following on from the Stabbed at Sea thread, I’ve been searching my memory banks and the more you think about it the more comes back, we all have memories of the good times and memories of the not so good, the latter don’t get forgotten but I think generally the unhappy memories get stowed in a separate locker.
The Marine Branch of the RAF carried out a support role to the RAF right up until the disbandment on the 31st March 1986, duties included, target towing for maritime aircraft, both RAF & Navy, wet winching exercises for RAF, RN & Coastguard Helicopters. Granada Patrols off N Ireland, plus many other tasks on a world wide basis, not least the UK commitment to the Chicago Convention of 1944.
2.1 The UK organisation for civil maritime and civil aviation search and rescue is derived from the UK Government’s adherence to the Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), the Convention on Safety of Life at Sea (SOLAS) (1974), the Maritime Search and Rescue Convention (1979) and the Convention on International Civil Aviation (Chicago 1944) (Annex 12). 2.2 The UK responsibility for SAR measures for ships, aircraft and persons, whether civilian or military, covers the UK SAR Region (UKSRR). (See Annex A).
That’s the gist of the SAR bit of it, if you want to read the whole treaty be my guest, there’s about 1000 pages of it.
Because of the commitment to that convention the rules applied to all British Overseas Territories, that is one of the reasons why the Marine Branch was world wide those who served in the 50’s and 60’s in the RAF or Army would very likely have a Marine Craft base not too far away. The Marine Branch of the RAF was in effect the largest lifeboat service in the world. That all changed with in the 1970’s with the drawback of forces and the increasing independence of the overseas territories, who had to take on the Convention commitment to S.A.R. themselves, The demise of Marine Branch SAR Operations was also speeded up by the increasing efficiency of the helicopter.
As I stated before not all not all the memories are happy ones, my last operational trip on a RAF Launch was in summer of 1985, it was a 75ft MK111 RESCUE AND TARGET TOWING LAUNCH we were detailed for target towing duties on the Roseharty Range near Fraserburgh, the aircraft we were to work with were Buccaneers from Lossiemouth. It was a bright sunny summers day, a dead calm glass sea no wind and a slight haze.
At the appointed time three Bucks did a low fast flypast disappeared over the horizon to do a return run and attack the target.
The first two aircraft made their run and attacked the target and we waited for the third. After 5 minutes we received a call from Lossiemouth, telling us they had lost RADAR contact with the third aircraft. Losing RADAR contact for a short while was not unusual when the planes were flying low over the sea, but this was too long.
We recovered the target and attached a sea anchor and cast it adrift, sailed to the last known aircraft position and started a square search with the two other Buccaneers looking farther afield. Within half an hour we saw some sea bird activity on the surface and went to investigate. As we neared the bird activity we noticed an oily bloom on the surface with small pieces of debris floating to the surface. One of the pieces recovered was a small piece of flying overall with a name on it. Lossiemouth confirmed the name was one of the crew.
We dropped a Dan Buoy at the scene recovered our target and sailed back to Invergordon.
The following day a Hunt Class minesweeper arrived at the scene and confirmed the crash scene. Fortunately our Dan Buoy was right over the wreckage.
Shortly after this event I was posted to Plymouth and did not sail operationally again.
I wish that last trip could have been a happier one, but it did serve as a reminder of why we there and the procedures laid down over many years worked, and that we were still very effective at what we did, and did it well.
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I had happy days working with the unit at Falmouth in late 1959 and 1960. Went out off the Lizard and the Channel Islands a couple of times. I was stationed as a junior air mechanic at Culdrose and was a runner/slave/come odd sod and bod for the Crabs. Good bunch of blokes.
Consult the veteran, not the incompetent Politicians.
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A friend of mine who was in the RAF but before my time was stationed at Changi, he was a ground electrician, he was one of these people who did not exactly conform to service life, so as punishment for his misdeeds he was sent to the Marine Craft Unit at Seleta. He loved it, said it was his best time in t’ RAF.
What did you do to warrant being sent to a marine craft unit as punishment Arthur!
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Not sent as a punishment. I was surplus to requirements at the time and pretty useless as I had only just left training. So I ended up with all sort of odd jobs. Even worked the pig farm for a month. Now that was fun. Still trying to get the smell out of my hands 53 years later
Consult the veteran, not the incompetent Politicians.
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What Mast?
There are time that I have been for want of a better word "criticized " for my style of incident reporting, one such incident happened in the summer of 1982.
Again I was on HMAFV SEAL, we were returning from a wet winching excercise at Blyth, we were heading North passing Aberdeen with the intention of doing a left at Rattery Head and heading to the Morray Firth.
I was on the 04-00 to 08-00 watch: the sea state was rough and we were running in a beam sea with a north easterly wind and we were rolling quite uncomfortably, not worried been there before. There a an almighty crash on the on the deckhead in the engine room, a sound not conducive to boat hitting water.
I wasn’t going out onto the deck to have a look, but I gave the wheelhouse a buzz on the intercom,
"Wheelhouse"
What on earth was that crash "Ginge" "
"what crash?"
I explained.
"Didnt hear anything up here"
Typical, if they didn’t hear it didn’t happen.
Best I go and have a look myself. I went up the aft escape ladder in the engine room and opened the escape hatch.
"Hello radar scanner what are you doing here, oh! and the top two thirds of the mast".
Intercom time again. (this is where the critisism of my incident reporting started)
" Wheelhouse now what??"
"Whats the picture like on the radar ginge."
"Not good too much clutter, because of the weather"
"You’ve got a sweep then?"
"of course I have"
"Thats strange because the scanner and mast are asleep by the funnel"
Silence.
I made my way back to the escape hatch and surprise!, the bridge lookout was there.
"’ere Col’ the masts’ fallen off"
"well B****r me so it has, I wonder when that happened"
I let them get on with it after that.
08:30, breakfast over; "Col, skipper wants to see you on the bridge"
"Corporal Davies, what happened last night!"
"When Sir!" (I can ask damn stupid questions as well)
"When the mast fell down"
"err, the mast fell down sir!"
"don’t be factitious, I know the mast fell down, Why did it fall down"
( the maybe it was tired answer I suppressed )
"the senior engineer is looking at it now sir, its probably corrosion"
(stupid statement time)
"Corrosion, aluminium doesn’t rust!"
"no sir but it does corrode"
"ok Corporal get back to your duties and next time make a proper report to the bridge just like the one you are going to write about this incident."
I left the bridge with the impression that the skipper thought that in some way the the demise of the mast was my fault.
However I do put the daft questions and remarks down to the fact that he (the skipper) like Nelson suffered with sea sickness, but Nelson wasn’t spaced out on Stugeron.
