Chapter 20

1975 - 1977

 No. 3(F) Sqn, RAF Gutersloh

The squadron moving to Gutersloh was a bit of a blow because Gutersloh was away from the rest of the RAF Germany Stations and we had to work from a Hardened Aircraft Shelter (HAS) environment.  Each HAS was supposedly bomb-proof and could hold a maximum of three Harriers, although two was the ideal number.  It was supposedly a self sufficient maintenance area, thus, if we were to be at war, we would be able to maintain the aircraft safely.  It was much more complicated than that but I don’t need to go any further.  It was certainly a different concept to the one that we were used to, which was to fly from a standard Flight Line, where all the aircraft were lined up together.

Day to day work was much the same as it always had been except that we had further to walk between aircraft.  We worked a two shift pattern with the evening shift coming in at 17.00 and finishing nominally at 02.00.  Finishing time would depend on having the correct number of aircraft serviceable in order to fulfil the following day’s flying programme.

Jet Provost formation

In July 1977, it was the Queen’s 25th Anniversary of her accession to the throne and the RAF was to celebrate that with a huge display at RAF Finningley.  We, on 3 Squadron, were asked to provide a display team for that event and so the groundcrew drove all of the required equipment to Rotterdam and took the ferry to Hull and then on to Finningley.  The day itself was fortunate to have beautiful weather and I took many photographs at the time but only kept one because loads of photos of aircraft just didn’t seem worth keeping.  I have included the one photograph that I do have, which is of Jet Provost training aircraft in formation.

1977 would be the year when 3 Squadron had been equipped with Harriers for 6 years and therefore the situation of massive manpower turnover would happen again towards the end of the year.  A decision was made by the Squadron to try to alleviate this situation by extending the tours of some key personnel.  I was one of those fortunate enough to be given a six month extension and so I served on the Squadron until May 1978.

The deployments continued and the annual detachment to Decimomannu came and went without anything of great interest happening.  Thus I came to the end of my time on a Harrier squadron and set off back to Lincolnshire to my old friend the Avro Vulcan.