Where is your spiritual RAF home?

[PraiseBacon]

Swinderby - Sept '83. Service no started B8219

Then Shawbury for some drinking training, and out to the wilds of North Wales.....

 

[Oldstacker]

So many Sprogs & Smaly's on here...DT_Xtremez_26:
Swinderby 11 Flt, Mar - May '76...... Service No Starts 8125....

(and no it wasn't still .303s.......)

 

[Aaron O'Dickydido]

RAF Hereford as a Boy Entrant aged 15 years and 8 months, April 1964-July 1965 for me. We did not have letters in front of our name then. My no. 1950***. My first bollocking was from a Corporal Technician (Yes - a Corporal Terchnician) in the cookhouse - for asking for more chips! I've been out for as long as it took me to earn my pension.

God I feel old after reading this.

 

[Aaron O'Dickydido]

The only people posting on this are the ones old enough to be my Dad, I'm gonna make you all feel really old cause i was born in Feb 1987. I wasn't even talking when you all joined up.DT_Xtremez_31:

You were not talking when I left to draw my pension!!

 

[Dode]

Spiritual Base

Spiritual Base

Gotta be Brawdy! 75-79. Close on 50 sorties /day! Avtur fumes hanging in the air. Average 7 shouts a day! Great/****ty camp!

 

[Dode]

You were not talking when I left to draw my pension!!

You STILL aint talking!!

 

[Dode]

6 Flt, July 1996, RAF Halton for me

Yeah yeah, bring on the 'Smally' jibes

DT_Xtremez_32:

Smally!! ( Promised I wouldnt do it ....But!)

 

[sumps]

Swinderby

Cant remember Flight number as it was so long ago

Nov 86

Lewis Block

It was 1 Sqn A or B Flight, you sure it was Lewis block?

However...Followed by APM 101 at Halton - those were the days DT_Xtremez_06:

 

[Ercle]

Basic was at Hereford in March 85. We were the first aircraft trade YTS to join the R.A.F. because they didn't know, if after spending 8 months doing basic and trade training, whether we'd stay in after our year was up.

Then AEM 93 at Halton.

I think my fitters course was AEF 102 (my memory is not what it used to be)

I remember arriving at my first posting, ASF at Colt and after a couple of days of not being allowed to do anything, i asked my Chief why i wasn't allowed to play with the Jags. His reply was "In the real air force you have to go through basic and then trade training before you can work on aircraft". I explained i'd done that. That's when i found out he thought i'd walked into a job centre and they'd said "Here's a uniform, go and be an aircraft electrician" DT_Xtremez_26:

 

[Lancs_TG3]

Swinderby 6 Flt, 13 Dec 1978.

 

[phantom]

This will make you laugh, Feb 2010 RAUXAF Basic recruit training flight!DT_Xtremez_30:

 

[AlfM]

Old and ----old

Old and ----old

I guess this makes me really old. I was at Swinderby when it was a FTS flying Vampires. Closed it down as a flying station after Manby had used it whilst their runway was being refurbished. While we were removing the equipment from the tower the camp was refurbished as a recruit training station. The accomadation was classed as not fit for recruits.

 

[fatalbert]

I started at Halton in March 1973 as an aircraft engineering technician apprentice. I consider my spiritual home as Brueggen, because I spent so long there (9 out of 23 years in the RAF).

BTW, I find the public poll, rather uninformed. "Where did you cut your teeth?"

• "Halton, I'm a smally". Training at RAF Halton either as No 1 S of TT until 1993, and then as Initial Recruit Training, has been performed for 91 years, since Trenchard started it in 1919.

• "Swinderby, I'm old and bold". Swinderby started existence as an initial recruit training camp in 1964 until its complete closure in 1995.

Swinderby started the "spiritual home" stakes 45 years later that Halton.


I haven't read back all the way through the thread, so if I'm repeating a previous attempt at correcting the pollsters lack of knowledge, I apologise.



public poll: other users can see the choice(s) you selected. Poll Options Where did you cut your teeth?
Halton, I'm a smally
Swinderby, I'm old and bold
Cranwell, I'm a Zob
None of the above

 

[squipper01]

Halton 5 Flt 19 Sep 1995

 

[shadowwolf]

Halton , passed out march 1998 on 10th Flight, but started on 8th with the always enigmatic and freeking huge , Rockape Cpl Barlow ( sprained wrist so went back a week)

Yes I was a smalley

 

[xivjags]

15 April 1971, passing out 27 May 1971 with a VC10 flypast. Then weeks leave before No4 School of Technical Training on AMP141 Course.

 

[veryretiredscribbly]

Hereford, Sep-Oct 90. Young Thick Stupid.
GDT in the wooden huts, get a wrong answer (or every 5 mins) was followed with "Figure of 8..........GO!"

Were you one of the annoying ones we kept having to shout at to keep your front door locked when we were on guard? Dozens of times every day, you think they'd have learned after the first 50 odd bollockings on day 1.

By the way, if you kept getting confusing drill commands being issued from nowhere? That was us behind those massive trees, screwing about on the Sgts Mess gate ;-)

And no, I'm not sorry. It was bloody hilarious.

 

[veryretiredscribbly]

yh i was sent Hereford short notice in 1990 instead of going to swinderbutlins, i heard 2 people died of meningitus :/

You heard wrong then, This is rumour control, here are the facts:-

A few ppl got it and were isolated in the Med Centre. Everyone got the jab for it & a few got sick from that. I can say hand on heart no-one died. I only know because I went to visit one of the lads from our flight who was unlucky enough to have caught it before the jabs were issued.

They were miserable in isolation but no-one was dead.

 

[shish, chop.. halloumi.]

The Depot, RAF Catterick. 83.

Spiritual home - Akrotiri 84 - 88.

 

[Dixie68]

Swinderby, July '91, where one of our intake was sectioned and sent to a room with rubber walls for something he'd done before joining up. Made us wonder about the RAF vetting process I can tell you!