Army Cooperation NOT

I suppose there has always been inter service rivalry, Brylcream Boys versus Brown Jobs. One needs to be careful with that expression in Glasgow :diablo: . The army also had a much more rank conscious attitude than the RAF and night fighter squadrons seemed even less bothered about rank. I even managed to swear at sqdn leaders without reprimand.

Any way, when we first got let loose in the Suez Canal Zone we discovered a tank regiment on the old Shandur airfield, a few miles from Kabrit. They would have little trips out in their Centurions and Joe soon found a new game in flying our Mossie down the trail of sand thrown up by a fast moving tank, and zooming over the hapless commander standing up in the turret.:eek: Later on we had a visit from the officers of this unit, which caused considerable amusement in the crewroom. Nearly half the Squadrons aircrew were NCOs, and most of us were sat around the crewroom playing cards or drinking tea, when our CO brought in the tank CO to imeet us. We shambled to our feet as only aircrew can, as this officer appeared. When he realised that there were NCOs present when he apparently expected all aircrew to be commissioned, he stopped with a horrified look on his face, turned to our CO and said, “I suppose you have to take an NCO along to do the work”, turned on his heel and hurried out.:D:D We were not so amused when some of the tank officers were given rides on air to ground sorties and most were airsick over our radar sets!, we then had to do an NFT and go night flying with them.:mad:

Another incident involving the army occurred some time later when we had the Meteor. The station was host to a large group of army officers and each squadron was required to perform various tasks to show them what we were doing, a sort of airshow.

One of the things we had to do was to demonstrate air to air firing, which meant towing off a target flag. The man tasked with this was George, one of our Polish Flight Sergeant pilots. George was his own man and had had a very tough life. A pilot in the Polish AF at the start of the war, he was imprisoned by the Russians in Siberia. These people were not released until 1942 when Churchill interceded with Stalin on their behalf. George then joined the RAF and became a Spitfire pilot. Shot down over France in 1944 he spent the rest of the war in a German PoW camp. So George could have his own little game with anyone, regardless, and did not give a damn.:cool::cool:

I should explain that 219 was our sister NF squadron, with whom of course there was considerable rivalry. The CO was a snob and would not have NCO aircrew on his squadron. Come the big day, the Pongoes were assembled in the control tower to watch proceedings. So, George’s turn came, the banner was laid out on the runway and George was marshalled up to it and the banner was attached to the aircraft. He then took off, and the banner righted itself to reveal “BUM TO 219” painted in large letters along it.:dev2: