Chapter 25

1981 - 1983

TWCU, RAF Honington

I was posted to Honington on 11^th Jan 1982 and went to work as the Chief Technician in charge of the Electrical Section on the Tornado Weapons Conversion Unit (TWCU)  This was a training establishment for aircrew to acquire the skills needed to drop weapons, both conventional and nuclear and was a busy place to work.  In addition to that, the aircraft was a totally different concept to the Vulcan in terms of technical aspects so it took a little while to get to grips with the work.

I lived in the Sergeant’s Mess from Monday to Friday and needed to find something to do with my time off, other than drinking, so played as much sport as I could.  I played golf for the Station, who had an arrangement with Lark Valley Golf Club in Bury St. Edmunds (Now ‘The Suffolk Golf & Country Club’).  It was whilst at Honington that I played my one and only match at Sheringham on the Norfolk coast.  It was a day on which the wind blew and, as a matter of interest to those who know the game of golf, the competition was won with a score of 26 Stableford points and the winner had a hole in one.  A very tricky day indeed.  Playing a friendly one evening with a friend, I had the best round I had ever played up until that point when we played at Thetford.  I had a round of 73 against a par of 70, although I cannot be quite sure of that par figure.

One of my old hockey playing buddies persuaded me to come out of retirement and so during the winters, I played for the Station team; at least it helped keep me fit .  I also joined the Station Squash league even though I was never very good at the game.  Once again it kept me away from the bar during the evening.  

The other thing that I achieved was to sort out my 15 year collection of 35mm slides.  I had about 800 at the time and I managed to date and number them all; this was the pre-computer age so was an interesting task using an old typewriter.

Lest anyone imagine that I did no real work for the 20 months that I was at Honington, I can assure the reader that we were extremely busy.  Spares for the Tornado were in very short supply for a number of reasons and out of a fleet of 21(?) aircraft, we always had two that were virtual shells.  It seemed to us that someone had decided that every item of equipment could be repaired in very short order and so there were only the same number of pieces of main equipment as there were aircraft.  The idea being that a piece of equipment, if unserviceable, was taken off the aircraft, sent to the appropriate maintenance section, repaired and refitted.  How naive!!

The conventional weapons system was particularly tricky for electricians.  One day an aircraft was ready for take off at the end of the runway but when the pilot selected the after burners and released his brakes, one of the external wing fuel tanks was jettisoned causing a major incident and subsequent enquiry.  The aircraft and all of its paperwork was impounded and the investigation was started.  When we were allowed on to the aircraft to check out the electrical system, we took all of the separate components off and sent them to the electrical section for checking but they were all found serviceable.  Everything was fitted back and we checked and rechecked the system looking for possible causes but couldn’t find where a possible problem might be.  I think that it was frustration one day that caused me, whilst walking past the aircraft, still with the test equipment fitted, to hit the pylon from which the fuel tank had jettisoned and, as luck would have it I was watching the test set when a light flashed that shouldn’t have.  Further investigation of the Pylon Release Unit found a faulty electrical connection which, when tapped, gave a jettison signal.  Thank goodness we had found the problem.  It probably led to a change in technique for checking that particular piece of equipment in the Electrical Section.

I have one other memory of Honington and that was of a mistake I made.  There is a comprehensive report in a 1983 issue of Air Clues that I wrote as a form of punishment.  It is a highly technical piece which most readers would do well to ignore.  I was fortunate that this incident did not interfere with my promotion prospects. Entitled ‘I learned about Engineering from That’, this is what I wrote:

Monday - the morning had been quiet, very little to do except reflect on a fortnight’s leave and catch up on some paperwork.  There was nothing unusual and no pressure.

After lunch, the situation had changed somewhat.  All the tradesmen were involved in rectification and I was trying to decide which job had the next highest priority.  “SMS (Stores Management System) snag on debrief”, shouts a voice in the background.  On my way to the debrief room, I met one of my NCOs who had just completed a task; “come with me” I said “and listen to this debrief”.  The navigator reported a problem with his Weapons Control Panel No 1 (WCP 1).  He had lost his weapons package display whilst selected in Channel A; in Channel B, all was well.  At that moment one of the J/Ts also became available and I despatched both he and the NCO to “see what the problem was”.  Some time later a sheepish voice announced over my shoulder that two Ejector Release Unit (ERU) Cartridges had fired and the Senior Engineering Officer (S.Eng.O) required two written reports of the actions taken.

My mind immediately went into overdrive trying to work out the implications of inadvertent releases - fleet grounded - where to start the investigation etc.

Some explanation of the Tornado SMS is perhaps relevant at this point, since the uninitiated might imagine that no work should ever be done on a system containing live cartridges.  When a CBLS (Carrier Bomb Light Store) is being used, as in this case, the correct programme to set on the WPU (Weapons Programming Unit) is either 71 or 74, depending on whether 28lb or 3kg practice bombs are being used.  With either of these programmes set, the SMS will not ‘start-up’ unless live cartridges are fitted.  If no bombs are fitted then at least one of the Bomb on Station (BOS) switches also has to be held in the made position manually until the weapon package appears on WCP 1.  With these requirements satisfied the SMS will do a ‘start-up’ Built in Test (BITE) and the package will be displayed.  A self test can now be initiated on the WPU using both Channel A and B in turn.  This hopefully will show up any defective component by means of 12 fault annunciators.  Thus far the two tradesmen had done everything quite correctly but, unfortunately, no problem had shown itself.  The next step, normally, would be to drop the make believe bomb by pressing the Attack Release Button (ARB).  When this is done a release pulse is sent to the CBLS, which does nothing; however, after this pulse the WPU ‘looks’ to see whether there is another bomb left.  It will find none in this case and the weapon package will disappear from the WCP 1.  Unfortunately this was not done for some obscure reason.  The NCO, who had tasked himself with the cockpit drill, selected the shoulder pylon for jettison and pressed the selective jettison button.  The system worked perfectly, ignored any stores on the CBLS and tried to jettison the carrier itself by firing the ERU cartridges.  Fortunately the ground safety pin was fitted correctly to the relevant ERU and the CBLS remained on the aircraft.

The good thing to come out of this episode was that the NCO had the guts to admit that he had made a mistake, thus preventing a futile in depth engineering investigation and not casting doubt on the integrity of the SMS.

The bad thing from my point of view was that I had sent an inexperienced NCO to work on a system upon which he was not qualified to work.  Why I did this is anyone’s guess but it was not done consciously.  The bad thing from the NCO’s point of view was that he did not mention that he was not qualified.  He had worked on the system under supervision and had done the same, or similar, checks on previous occasions so he wasn’t totally without experience, but even he cannot say why he got it wrong on this occasion.

The Tornado is only now coming into squadron service in large numbers and it is similar in many ways to any other fast jet except that many of its systems do have comprehensive self test facilities which only work if the system is complete (ie cartridges fitted in ERUs) and electrical and hydraulic power are available as necessary.  Furthermore, many of the systems are inextricably interconnected.  The dangers are obvious.  In this case we did no damage (except to my pride) and luckily nobody was injured.  The S.Eng.O ensured that every trade manager was made aware of the incident and highlighted the problems of allocating work to inexperienced tradesmen.  The message is simple; ‘the Tornado bites’.  Beware.