Memories Page 2
Memories on this page from;
Mick Stead / John Errol / Phil Bright / Jo Turner
Mick 'Stix' Stead - 1978
MY POSTING TO AND TIME IN MALTA
It all started with a phone call whilst I was on the line at RAF Leeming one rainy October day 1977. One of the lads came out to take over my see-off telling me I had a phone call. I went in and the SNCO behind the desk said Innsworth is on the phone for you.
Being a SAC rigger with a good sense of humour, I went on my guard and picked up the phone. “Do you want to go to Malta” the man on the other end said. What to do I asked. He said “you’ll be on the last Herc out” Yes said I. Do you want time to think about it? I just did. O.K he said your on the first aircraft after the Christmas break. Still suspecting a wind-up I just said they want me to go to Malta, two days later my posting order arrived.
Don’t think it went down too well with the girlfriend, she was awful quiet at the railway station seeing me off. We later went our separate ways and she got to keep the ring.
I arrived in Malta January 1978 on the first VC10 after Christmas along with the advance party for 29 squadron (Phantoms). All I knew was that I was to be employed at RAF Luqa. In the arrivals terminal after everyone else had been met and left I went over to a desk and told them no one had come to meet me. Where are you going to work the movements staff asked, Luqa I said.
Then a light came on try T.A.S.F I said, so they gave me a number and phone and I phoned them. I said “This is Mick Stead, am I coming to work for you?” What are you doing here, you’re not expected till next week came the reply. Wait there and I’ll get transport down to you.
Transport (the section mini van) arrived and took me to T.A.S.F. I was shown in to the W.O’s office and introduced to W.O Sam O’Neil, a friendly warrant officer who told me about the section and how it worked and the shift system. He then introduced me to my shift boss C/T ‘Tug’ Wilson, and gave me a long weekend pass with the parting words “see you Monday morning 0900 with a haircut”. Tug arranged for one of the lads to drive me around to do my arrival paperwork and get settled into a block, and introduce me to the N.A.A.F.I shop and bar.
For those who don’t know RAF Luqa, it was split in two. The accommodation on one site and the rest of the camp was on the other site. I was accommodated in the first block of three in a crescent on the bottom floor in the first room. It was a four man room, adequate for me anyway.
I got settled in pretty quick (I had done Cyprus 73-76 so I was an old sweat) and then waited for tea time in the mess.
The one thing about the RAF is that unless you’re a squadron, you don’t move en-mass, so you stand out being new and pink. It wasn’t long before the regulars arrived home and seeing a new face immediately put a bottle of ‘Cisk’ in my hand as a welcome gesture, and started introducing me to the occupants of the other rooms on our landing.
Over the weekend I was given a quick tour of Valletta and introduced to the ‘Cross-Keys’ or ‘Easy-Shop’ as it was also known. This was a little café on a street corner in Luqa village run by (and I hope I spell his name right)) Guido, his wife and two daughters. As I remember it Guido’s wife was like a mother to all of us single lads frequented the place, and we did tend to call her ‘mama’. The two daughters were like chalk and cheese. One was married with one or two small children and cheerful, and the other younger one always looked angry or was it serious. We were so much like family to them we used to go on day trips to the Island of Gozo to visit their relatives who lived there.
On the Monday morning I was picked up by one of the lads and taken to T.A.S.F in time for my 0900 start. The reason was so that the handovers etc. were done and out of the way. As with all first days I was confined to the crew room with all the order books and the card to sign saying I had read and understood them. It was this day also that I met the F.S Ernie Eagles an ex Victor crew chief I cannot say hand on heart that I took to the man, in fact I don’t recall any of the lads liking him.
I soon got into the swing of things and noted that on Fridays we could expect lots of aircraft arriving for the weekend, mainly from that airbase in Italy. After all Malta was a popular weekend destination.
As well as working on the usual RAF aircraft we used to get Star-fighters in, they were like cigar tubes with a bloody big engine shoved up them and a couple of sheets of 16 gauge aluminium for wings. We worked alongside locally employed Maltese RAF personnel who didn’t seem to work the same hours as us eight till five if I remember right. It was not unusual to see a couple of them leaving in a cloud of smoke and dust whilst you were doing your own flight servicing only to find that they’d stitched you up with theirs as well. One did it to me on a Friday afternoon and he felt my wrath the next time our paths crossed, he didn’t try that trick again. I did meet up with a couple of them who had transferred over to the real RAF, in 79 whilst on my fitter’s course at Halton.
One of the fun jobs was working with the Liquid Oxygen. A good way to keep cool! We had an eighteen hundred litre bulk LOX container on a bomb trolley in a compound by the road leading up to the section. The only problem was that across from it was the end of the civilian runway undershoot /overshoot. Decanting LOX into the smaller LOX trolleys with aircraft flying over your bonce is different to say the least. But the real fun part was watching the marines running past you with respirators on sweating profusely.
When the LOX container was low we had the un-envious task of taking it to the gas plant to be filled and then bringing it back. Now this was done over bondu tracks and not tarmac which meant it was a rather bumpy ride and you couldn’t go quick or else things could go drastically wrong. I was coming in onto the night shift one evening and was met by the chief. What blood group are you he asked. Don’t know replies I. Look on your 1250 he said so I did, and ended up going to the cottage hospital to donate blood for an emergency. As we laid on our beds waiting for the vampire to arrive I think he noticed that I wasn’t too happy about having my blood nicked and realised that it was my first time so he started to put me at my ease.
He had obviously done it before I thought as he knows the guy, it turned out he knew him from the mess. For being a brave young fellow I was given not a cup of tea but a bottle of Cisk (are you listening N.H.S). Tug told the guy I was a donation virgin so he went out and came back with a second bottle. I was also told to take it easy for a couple of hours which I duly did.
We had one or two funny experiences I can recall. Besides being down the runway most of the time for 29 Sqn who seemed to be better at dumping their brake-chutes rather than deploying them for the length of their detachment. We had a victor arrive and on doing the walk round I noticed a crack oh the web of the main undercarriage. It wasn’t hard to miss as you could have put a pack of cards in it. Another was a Jaguar arriving and we found a hydraulic leak on the brake unit. Now Luqa didn’t have any support for Jaguars or anyone who could do independent checks, so they sent a brake pack and a SNCO in a two seater. Yours truly was tasked with doing the work and looking after the SNCO, (Oh the joys of being the one and only single rigger on the shift). After we finished the job I took the SNCO down to the Easy shop for a bite and a drink and to meet the rest of the gang. We left the Easy shop about two in the morning, and at eight I was explaining to the pilot of the two seater to be very careful with his passenger who was a little under the weather.
During one fighter live firing camp we looked after a singular Canberra for a couple of days, I can’t recall why it was alone but it filled the days and it was parked down near Ops wing. On one particular day, we hooked up the banner on the end of the runway using our specially modified Landover, and off it went to do its sortie. We got sent to see it in later on and duly went down to the dispersal. I marshalled it into its slot and one of the lads said the pilot doesn’t look happy, and he did look really pissed off. When he put his hand through the D.V window I went forward and opened his door to give him his seat pins. He didn’t say anything just rushed out of the aircraft and went round the back of it and looked at the fin. That’s when we noticed the ‘little’ hole and then followed him round to the other side and saw a ‘BIG’ hole, now I know that pilots played a game called get the banner or rushton (that is try and get the cable holding it so it falls into the sea), and with their twenty-twenty eye sight that shouldn’t be a problem, but this was a little too close for comfort. With the words I told them I was pulling the bloody thing not pushing it, the pilot went to Ops and we did an after flight. Talking of Canberra’s, one Monday morning a couple of us were tasked with doing a see-off for a German Canberra. We got up to the pan and the crew were ready to strap in. We had a cursory look for flags as one automatically does, and assisted them, then secured the door (only the mighty PR9 had a canopy for the pilot and the whole nose opened and closed for the navigator). We duly saw it off and waited as was normal until it took off, in case of any snags. We watched it take off but its under carriage didn’t retract. It then went into a circuit and landed again. We saw it in and one of the crew got out retrieved the starboard main undercarriage lock and got back on board and off they went again. We just about wet ourselves as it looked like something out of Benny hill. Of course our masters asked us why we didn’t see the lock when we got up there (the pan), our answer was quite simple, the lock didn’t have the day-glow flag on it and the crew had done their walk round. In all fairness, even as big as the lock is, we would have never seen it without getting into the wheel well. One for the Buccaneers now!! A couple of us were tasked to go see a couple of Bucc’s that had been here for the weekend and had done their own servicing (god bless them). We accepted the flight servicing paperwork from them and got them strapped in and started.
It was only when my aircraft (there was a team of two per aircraft but I was the marshaller for both) tried to roll his bomb bay and couldn’t did the pilot realise that he had left his bomb-bay safety key in. thank god he hadn’t started his port engine. The other lad took the key, climbed the steps and gave the flagless key to a rather embarrassed crew. Looking over to the other aircraft we could see that crews heads shaking so we know they were killing themselves laughing (I wonder how many beers that cost when they got home.
We had a Vulcan do an emergency landing and he had to use the civilian runway. When we got to him, he had streamed his chute and just stood there with engines running. We attached the towing arm so he could shut down and as he did all this hydraulic oil rained down onto the tarmac. That’s when the fun started. T.A.S.F used to hold the caustic soda that was used to stop the oil damaging the runway surface, but it had recently been given to the fire section to look after and they couldn’t find it. We towed away the broken aircraft and left them to it. Another emergency landing was a Buccaneer who reported only 12% thrust from his port engine. We followed him down the runway after he landed made the aircraft safe and got the crew out then gave one of the sooties a lift up to the jet pipe of the port engine. He leaned in and scooped up what was left of the turbine blades and showed the crew.
We did have a serious side and whilst I was there we ‘cassi-vact’ three people back to the U.K. One of the 203 ground crew was told he was posted to the N.M.S.U at Kinloss, so he swan dived off the balcony of the gladiator club and broke both wrists. We sent him home where they apparently fixed him and still sent him to Kinloss. Another was a young lad on holiday with his family, who’d had a fall and injured his brain. They diverted a V.C10 from Cyprus to us to take him and his family home. And finally one of the M.T lads had a car crash and went home early, on a stretcher in the back of a Hercules. Although he was M.T, like me he was on the committee of the Gladiator club, so whilst he was in hospital we (the committee) looked after his family, and we all went onto the pan to see him off.
What about the social side I hear you ask. Well where to start. I got onto the Gladiator club committee (wasn’t hard). The police club was down stairs as I remember, and we had all upstairs. On I think it was Wednesdays we did bingo for the local population. Believe it or not it was really well attended and the locals didn’t want us (the RAF) to leave the island. Oh! And we did the obligatory disco at weekends which was also well attended especially when we had visiting squadrons. I remember going up to the signals unit one evening for a Bar-B-Q and disco and having a great time. Some weekends during the summer, we arranged trips to St Paul’s bay for the day. A couple of trips to Gozo and plenty of days down the Kalafrana (hope I spelt it correctly) beach club, swimming and drinking and enjoying life in general. But most evenings were enjoyed down with Guido and the family at the easy shop having a quiet beer, a game of pool, something to eat and meeting the girls. A trip to the Farsons brewery was arranged on one occasion, we were like kids in a candy shop. It was hilarious to see one of the lads dancing to the rhythm of the bottle top stamping machine. The female operatives were in hysterics watching him move. I never got on with ‘HOP-LEAF’ and preferred Cisk or the local wine, which I remember was about four pence a bottle.
I have to say a big thank you to the medical staff of the time. They were under the leadership of one Doc. Jones, who was to become a close family friend back in the U.K. They patched me up on more than one occasion. From infected in-growing big toe nails to when I dislocated my shoulder at the beach club. The funniest was when he was removing my toe nails the M.T guy who was the ambulance driver asked if he could watch. Doc said it was up to me and I said I wasn’t bothered who watched (ever the showman), he only watched the first one being removed and nearly fainted. The dentist who was also pretty good at his job removed my two impacted wisdom teeth in the chair with a local anaesthetic jab or two rather than send me back to the U.K. The med centre gave me some rather strong painkillers to take that night, and strangely I didn’t feel like going down the village.
I had to come back to England on RAF business, and that cretin of a F.S said I wasn’t required back as he had enough manpower. He actually smiled when he told me I wouldn’t be coming back. I told him to have sex and travel and stay out of my way because he didn’t scare me and I didn’t like him. The lads gave me a really good send off at the gladiator club with lots of beer and a buffet and the customary ‘gizzit’ (leaving present). It was during this that the F.S who obviously thought he was gods gift, gate crashed the function. It took three guys to hold me back and at least four or five took pleasure in asking him to go before throwing him out. I had some good friends out there.
I haven’t been back to Malta since 1978 but I have it in my mind to go at least once and show my wife why it was such a good place to do a tour of duty. I know it won’t be the same but it will still be enjoyable.
Mick Stead (STIX)
John Errol - Frequent visitor to Malta from Cyprus (contact from the mx-5.com website)
I joined the RAF as an App. in 57 & was demobbed in Mar 71. I was at 103 MU in Cyprus & did many tech support calls to the airfield radar at Luqa, a job we all wanted. I have happy memories of my visits to Malta. A few years ago we were with some friends a who had been there on holiday & were full of it. My wife piped up & said that she & I had flown in to Malta for tea in the summer of 1970, a time when holidays in Malta weren't so popular. Our friends couldn't fathom how we'd "flown in for tea" so we had to own up that we were on a Brit. from Cyprus on our way to the UK which, for some reason, made a short stop at Luqa and we were given tea & cakes.
Phil Bright - Christmas in Malta 1972
As Christmas approaches I particularly recall '72 in Malta.
We lived in a hiring at Qawra with a mixture of all squadrons / branches
An invitation to "Christmas morning drinks" at the home of an X squadron exec in Marsascala. No problem, turkeys in respective ovens and off go a group of us to the sunny south end. What could be better, a convivial few scoops and back to well- cooked turkey and trimmings. what could go wrong.............?
WELL.... the conviviality became "extended", as it did with finest gin at 50p a bottle ( proper duty free! ) , morning became late afternoon, jolly chaps ignored frosty wives, turkeys turned to charred remains upon return to base. wives now extremely frosty, But the sun still shone and who wanted xmas dinner anyway?
All clubbed together to make sandwhiches by the pool and toast a good day as the sun set over St Pauls Bay!!
Next year, sitting in the office, Sgt Ruskin puts his head around the door and says "Sir, do you want a Xmas tree?". Sgt R was a well-known prankster, and since Malta was somewhat lacking in trees of any kind, the response was predictably connected with sex and travel ! However......the fine chaps in Movs at Lyneham had worked the system and Santa had indeed filled a Herc with Wiltshire's finest Xmas trees. Duly arrived at Qawra with one of them tied on top of the car......to the surprise of Mrs B, and a unique excuse for having "overstayed" Happy Hour !!
Best Wishes to All
Phil
We lived in a hiring at Qawra with a mixture of all squadrons / branches
An invitation to "Christmas morning drinks" at the home of an X squadron exec in Marsascala. No problem, turkeys in respective ovens and off go a group of us to the sunny south end. What could be better, a convivial few scoops and back to well- cooked turkey and trimmings. what could go wrong.............?
WELL.... the conviviality became "extended", as it did with finest gin at 50p a bottle ( proper duty free! ) , morning became late afternoon, jolly chaps ignored frosty wives, turkeys turned to charred remains upon return to base. wives now extremely frosty, But the sun still shone and who wanted xmas dinner anyway?
All clubbed together to make sandwhiches by the pool and toast a good day as the sun set over St Pauls Bay!!
Next year, sitting in the office, Sgt Ruskin puts his head around the door and says "Sir, do you want a Xmas tree?". Sgt R was a well-known prankster, and since Malta was somewhat lacking in trees of any kind, the response was predictably connected with sex and travel ! However......the fine chaps in Movs at Lyneham had worked the system and Santa had indeed filled a Herc with Wiltshire's finest Xmas trees. Duly arrived at Qawra with one of them tied on top of the car......to the surprise of Mrs B, and a unique excuse for having "overstayed" Happy Hour !!
Best Wishes to All
Phil
From Jo Morris-Turner - formerly Flt Lt Jo Turner - Air Traffic Controller
(Photograph is for ATC 'Library photo' image purposes and shows FltSgt, later W.O., James Douglas Joyner, father of Jim Joyner who has contributed to this website).
In 1978 I was one of two Air Traffic Controllers detached to RAF Luqa at short notice, in order to help train Maltese controllers. Up until that point the RAF had the task of training the Maltese controllers under terms agreed with MOD.
However, part way through all of this, Mr Mintoff, having realised that, as
civilians, Maltese controllers would be able to go on strike in the future if
they so desired, decided to make all of the controllers part of the Malta Armed Forces. Now, this did not go down well with the Maltese controllers and trainees because it meant a significant drop in salary - so they refused and those who had qualified often wouldn't work while the situation was at
stalemate.. This created a difficult situation for the then SATCO and officers
above him. Eventually, an arrangement was made whereby the RAF would train new
controllers if Malta could find some, but, because the numbers of RAF
controllers had been thinned down, owing to the validation of the Maltese ones,
they would only do the training provided two more RAF controllers were sent out
from the UK from 33GP. I was one of those two controllers and I arrived, I have
to confess extremely reluctantly from my fast-pace tour at Coltishall, on the
flight which took out the final, large bulk of people and families, leaving
pretty much a skeleton staff at Luqa. Training the Maltese and a few other
nationality controllers was in 'interesting' experience as their concept of what
might happen outside the specific zone needed rather a lot of work - but we got
there int he end! Just because the sky was big enough for aircraft to miss each
other was no plausible reason to instruct two aircraft, albeit hundreds of miles
apart but approaching the Gozo beacon from opposite directions, to do so at the
same height! As I say - we got there in the end!
I have to say that, my full overseas tour of duty having been at Gibraltar,
I much preferred Malta although it wasn't without its downsides. The salty
drinking water was utterly disgusting and I spent a fortune on bottled water for
the few months that I was there, washing out the kettle in the tower each time I
wanted a cuppa! The standard of driving on the island was 'white knuckle' to
say the least but, having been brought up in Cyprus with bombs going off around
me, and having spent just over 2 years at Gib when the border was closed, I
found Malta very easy to tolerate. The Med is now part of my soul and I have a
courtyard dedicated to this with it's fig and olive trees, other Mediterranean
shrubs too and huge pots which I brought home from Cyprus in 1969 plus bamboo
chair and tables, and two huge dolphin lamps, all made to order from that
industrial estate near the end of the runway at Luqa. When at Luqa I took
advantage of buying some of the RAF furniture and other items which were
available, including a mahogany bureau - they of 'gold dust' fame! Even now I
have some bits and pieces around me, and of course, in those days, we were able
to find friends in R&D who would ship things back to the UK for us for the
price of a beer! I remember the maous round table which was in the Officers'
Mess. It suddenly disappeared but was conveniently transferred onto someone's
inventory and purchased for a song. I remember seeing it lurking at the back of
R&D, being made ready to ship back to wherever in the UK! Ah - life in the
good old days!
Life in te Officers' Mess was fun, with a lot of home-grown entertainment
in the form of cabaret evenings. I still have the silver, engraved "Bailey's
Holder" which was presented to me before I left, just before Christmas 1978.
Baileys was very popular in those days and I dread to think. now, of the calorie
intake from my favourite tipple! At weekends, the handful of livers-in, from
SATCO (the late Graham Hodge), to the Army lads and WREN officers plus, of
course, me and other RAF livers-in, would have water-bomb fights, with great
hilarity, around the pergolas outside the Mess. It was during my time there
that the SATCO and Fg Off Dave Raine came to my room and asked me to design a
zap for ATC. Zaps were all the rage in those days and I very quickly set about
doing a simple but effective design which I wish I had copyrighted, for it is
now known the world over - 'Get 'Em Down Safely with Air Traffic Control'! The
design was by no means vulgar although the first version, done largely as a
silhouette, seemed to show the woman, tastefully sown from the rear, to be bald
- she wasn't, but her pony-tail didn't come out in the printed pictures! The
second version showed her to have hair and was still decidedly not vulgar
although some months later, someone did write to The Guardian newspaper,
complaining that it was sexist! I was sorely tempted to reply that I, a woman,
had actually designed the zap and that they might like to 'chill out' , but I
couldn't be bothered! I and another controller, Nigel Williams, marketed those
zaps and sold them globally for quite a long time. I also sold the design on
tee-shirts and sweatershirts for quite some time afterwards. I was, however,
horrified when someone bought out a nasty, much cruder version of the zap - and
when I rang a Birmingham controllwer about it, he told me that I was wrong, his
friend had told him that HE had designed the original zap and that he believed
him, not me!!! I must tell you that, when you KNOW you designed something,
it's beyond outrage to be told someone else did it! I have the original
artwork to this day and I know that that was MY invention., absolutely my own -
I remember sitting at my desk in my room in the Mess at Luqa and there are, to
this day, people who will remember thus.
I will never forget the day of the fateful crash of the Canberra. I had
just walked down the very tall ATC tower and was standing with SATCO at the
bottom, listening to the take-off run of the Canberra. Somehow, I knew
something was wrong, the run simply didn't sound right. I knew the sound of a
Canberra take-off from my first tour at Wyton and this sounded plain wrong. It
was no surprise when we saw the pilot (Vince Mee, who I'd also known on 39Sqn at
Wyton) and nav eject, but the horror of the jet ploughing off the end of the
runway, through two stone walls and two fields before coming to rest, well, it
was ghastly because we knew the young lad who had been on the rumble seat, we'd
been nattering the night before. They'd come in a few days earlier en route
Cyprus and were bringing some stuff back for ian Cowie's wedding reception in
UK - that was in the days when formal training trips were allowed to coincide
with little extras and nobody got all uppity about it. They'd just come back
into Luqa for a nightstop and the accident was a horrible end. What was
particularly heartwrenching for me was the fact that I was told there was one
thing which emerged pretty much unscathed from around the wreckage - the 'Get
'em down safely' zap which I'd given the crew a few nights earlier. Sad.
In the final days of the Brits being in Malta, the country was divided.
There were those who were desperate for us not to leave, especially thos local
people who had worked in or with the British Forces for most of their lives.
They were at best morose and sad or, at worst, positively tearful. Then there
were the ones who couldn't wait for us to go, who hung sheets over balconies in
downtown Valetta and changed, daily, the painted slogan of how many days it was
before the 'filthy imperialists' went home! Post boxes had the royal crowns
crudely hacked off them, street names were steadily being changed to
Libyan-esque versions. I remember how irritated we were in ATC that the pilot
who flew Mintoff around was a Brit. So, whenever he returned from one of the
many trips to take Mintoff to see his pal Gadaffi, we used to invent reasons to
delay the aircraft on final approach. It was childish and probably very
unprofessional - but we enjoyed it!
We got them to do dog-leg's or even delaying orbits just because we
could!
I remember the
new runway which had a road tunnel going underneath it roughly half way along.
What was interesting about it was that the extended runway had been built by two
different work-forces working from opposite ends. One lot was referred to as
the Red Army, because it comprised a lot of Chinese labourers. Unfortunately.
when the runway met in the middle.... it didn't! It was askew by a few feet,
pretty much where the road tunnel crossed. I used to ensure no aircraft was
rolling over it whenever I drove through that tunnel!
I adored M'dina,
the Silent City. There was something about it which was peaceful and relaxing
and the view from the parapet walk was exquisite. I would love to
return.
My last ever
visit to HMS Ark Royal was when she came into Valetta Harbour. She commanded
attention and dominated the harbour. The savage reductions in our Armed forces
since then, to little more than a struggling Home Guard, make the memories such
as all of these all the more precious, yet sad. But Malta was a wonderful
interlude in my 18-year career and I wouldn't change the experience for
anything.
However, part way through all of this, Mr Mintoff, having realised that, as
civilians, Maltese controllers would be able to go on strike in the future if
they so desired, decided to make all of the controllers part of the Malta Armed Forces. Now, this did not go down well with the Maltese controllers and trainees because it meant a significant drop in salary - so they refused and those who had qualified often wouldn't work while the situation was at
stalemate.. This created a difficult situation for the then SATCO and officers
above him. Eventually, an arrangement was made whereby the RAF would train new
controllers if Malta could find some, but, because the numbers of RAF
controllers had been thinned down, owing to the validation of the Maltese ones,
they would only do the training provided two more RAF controllers were sent out
from the UK from 33GP. I was one of those two controllers and I arrived, I have
to confess extremely reluctantly from my fast-pace tour at Coltishall, on the
flight which took out the final, large bulk of people and families, leaving
pretty much a skeleton staff at Luqa. Training the Maltese and a few other
nationality controllers was in 'interesting' experience as their concept of what
might happen outside the specific zone needed rather a lot of work - but we got
there int he end! Just because the sky was big enough for aircraft to miss each
other was no plausible reason to instruct two aircraft, albeit hundreds of miles
apart but approaching the Gozo beacon from opposite directions, to do so at the
same height! As I say - we got there in the end!
I have to say that, my full overseas tour of duty having been at Gibraltar,
I much preferred Malta although it wasn't without its downsides. The salty
drinking water was utterly disgusting and I spent a fortune on bottled water for
the few months that I was there, washing out the kettle in the tower each time I
wanted a cuppa! The standard of driving on the island was 'white knuckle' to
say the least but, having been brought up in Cyprus with bombs going off around
me, and having spent just over 2 years at Gib when the border was closed, I
found Malta very easy to tolerate. The Med is now part of my soul and I have a
courtyard dedicated to this with it's fig and olive trees, other Mediterranean
shrubs too and huge pots which I brought home from Cyprus in 1969 plus bamboo
chair and tables, and two huge dolphin lamps, all made to order from that
industrial estate near the end of the runway at Luqa. When at Luqa I took
advantage of buying some of the RAF furniture and other items which were
available, including a mahogany bureau - they of 'gold dust' fame! Even now I
have some bits and pieces around me, and of course, in those days, we were able
to find friends in R&D who would ship things back to the UK for us for the
price of a beer! I remember the maous round table which was in the Officers'
Mess. It suddenly disappeared but was conveniently transferred onto someone's
inventory and purchased for a song. I remember seeing it lurking at the back of
R&D, being made ready to ship back to wherever in the UK! Ah - life in the
good old days!
Life in te Officers' Mess was fun, with a lot of home-grown entertainment
in the form of cabaret evenings. I still have the silver, engraved "Bailey's
Holder" which was presented to me before I left, just before Christmas 1978.
Baileys was very popular in those days and I dread to think. now, of the calorie
intake from my favourite tipple! At weekends, the handful of livers-in, from
SATCO (the late Graham Hodge), to the Army lads and WREN officers plus, of
course, me and other RAF livers-in, would have water-bomb fights, with great
hilarity, around the pergolas outside the Mess. It was during my time there
that the SATCO and Fg Off Dave Raine came to my room and asked me to design a
zap for ATC. Zaps were all the rage in those days and I very quickly set about
doing a simple but effective design which I wish I had copyrighted, for it is
now known the world over - 'Get 'Em Down Safely with Air Traffic Control'! The
design was by no means vulgar although the first version, done largely as a
silhouette, seemed to show the woman, tastefully sown from the rear, to be bald
- she wasn't, but her pony-tail didn't come out in the printed pictures! The
second version showed her to have hair and was still decidedly not vulgar
although some months later, someone did write to The Guardian newspaper,
complaining that it was sexist! I was sorely tempted to reply that I, a woman,
had actually designed the zap and that they might like to 'chill out' , but I
couldn't be bothered! I and another controller, Nigel Williams, marketed those
zaps and sold them globally for quite a long time. I also sold the design on
tee-shirts and sweatershirts for quite some time afterwards. I was, however,
horrified when someone bought out a nasty, much cruder version of the zap - and
when I rang a Birmingham controllwer about it, he told me that I was wrong, his
friend had told him that HE had designed the original zap and that he believed
him, not me!!! I must tell you that, when you KNOW you designed something,
it's beyond outrage to be told someone else did it! I have the original
artwork to this day and I know that that was MY invention., absolutely my own -
I remember sitting at my desk in my room in the Mess at Luqa and there are, to
this day, people who will remember thus.
I will never forget the day of the fateful crash of the Canberra. I had
just walked down the very tall ATC tower and was standing with SATCO at the
bottom, listening to the take-off run of the Canberra. Somehow, I knew
something was wrong, the run simply didn't sound right. I knew the sound of a
Canberra take-off from my first tour at Wyton and this sounded plain wrong. It
was no surprise when we saw the pilot (Vince Mee, who I'd also known on 39Sqn at
Wyton) and nav eject, but the horror of the jet ploughing off the end of the
runway, through two stone walls and two fields before coming to rest, well, it
was ghastly because we knew the young lad who had been on the rumble seat, we'd
been nattering the night before. They'd come in a few days earlier en route
Cyprus and were bringing some stuff back for ian Cowie's wedding reception in
UK - that was in the days when formal training trips were allowed to coincide
with little extras and nobody got all uppity about it. They'd just come back
into Luqa for a nightstop and the accident was a horrible end. What was
particularly heartwrenching for me was the fact that I was told there was one
thing which emerged pretty much unscathed from around the wreckage - the 'Get
'em down safely' zap which I'd given the crew a few nights earlier. Sad.
In the final days of the Brits being in Malta, the country was divided.
There were those who were desperate for us not to leave, especially thos local
people who had worked in or with the British Forces for most of their lives.
They were at best morose and sad or, at worst, positively tearful. Then there
were the ones who couldn't wait for us to go, who hung sheets over balconies in
downtown Valetta and changed, daily, the painted slogan of how many days it was
before the 'filthy imperialists' went home! Post boxes had the royal crowns
crudely hacked off them, street names were steadily being changed to
Libyan-esque versions. I remember how irritated we were in ATC that the pilot
who flew Mintoff around was a Brit. So, whenever he returned from one of the
many trips to take Mintoff to see his pal Gadaffi, we used to invent reasons to
delay the aircraft on final approach. It was childish and probably very
unprofessional - but we enjoyed it!
We got them to do dog-leg's or even delaying orbits just because we
could!
I remember the
new runway which had a road tunnel going underneath it roughly half way along.
What was interesting about it was that the extended runway had been built by two
different work-forces working from opposite ends. One lot was referred to as
the Red Army, because it comprised a lot of Chinese labourers. Unfortunately.
when the runway met in the middle.... it didn't! It was askew by a few feet,
pretty much where the road tunnel crossed. I used to ensure no aircraft was
rolling over it whenever I drove through that tunnel!
I adored M'dina,
the Silent City. There was something about it which was peaceful and relaxing
and the view from the parapet walk was exquisite. I would love to
return.
My last ever
visit to HMS Ark Royal was when she came into Valetta Harbour. She commanded
attention and dominated the harbour. The savage reductions in our Armed forces
since then, to little more than a struggling Home Guard, make the memories such
as all of these all the more precious, yet sad. But Malta was a wonderful
interlude in my 18-year career and I wouldn't change the experience for
anything.