I was only a teenager living at Changi when the Confrontation started to build up.
First incident I recall was the surprise visit of a KLM Super Connie that brought Indonesian troops captured in West Irian. A Garuda Airways Electra ‘sneaked in’ and exchanged the Indonesian troops for some captured Dutch-sailors I think. This was probably the first time Indonesia had tried flexiing it’s muscles.

The crew enjoy a break in the sun at Changi -KLM Super Constellation PH-LGE ‘Pegasus’ -11th March 1963.

The next big incident I believe was when Brunei, a British Protectorate, was invaded by a couple of thousand ‘rebels’. 48Sqn Hastings started an airlift along with the Twin Pioneers of 209 Sqn from Seletar.

Squeezing an Army Land rover into a Hastings.

One of the regular ‘Changi slip’ Britannia’s from Lyneham was in so it was commandeered and flew two trips on the first day and carried on during the 11 day airlift.

Britannia 657 loads Gurkhas headed for Borneo.

By early 1963 the situation was ‘well contained’ but 48 Sqns Hastings were regularly flying near the border and the Javelin’s of 64 sqn started being used to provide ‘fighter protection’

60 Sqn Javelin XH724 armed with Firestreaks.

The arrival in August 1963 of 215 sqn’s Argosy’s began to relieve the load on 48 Sqn and others like the 34 Sqn Beverley’s. 215 Sqn started to have a detachment at Labuan undertaking the air drops and later began to use the short field capabilities to do ‘tactical landing’ flights.

215 sqn Argosy XP107 newly arrived August 1963.

Towards the end of 1963 a few ‘spy missions’ were being flown by the US Navy on our behalf…well the Yanks wanted to know what Sukarno was about as well I imagine.

Skywarrior from VAP21 ‘Heavy Recon’ unit at Paya Lebar civil airport at the end of 1963. The RAF Brit is there because Changi’s Western Dispersal was being re-surfaced.
The Skywarriors took photos as they over flew Indonesian airspace enroute to Townsville in Australia.

In May 1964, President Sukarno called for the destruction of the newly announced Malayan Federation and the Indonesians landed troops on the Malayan coast and dropped paratroops from a Hercules into Jahore. This concentrated the minds of the British who realised that the Indonesians had Russian Tu-16’s and Mig 19s and 21’s …and so Victors and Lightnings were put on regular detachment at Tengah and Butterworth. Seletar now had Bloodhound missiles.
Some local rioting caused a State of Emergency to be declared in Singapore during September 1964.

Hard at work during all this were the Commando Carriers, Albion and Bulwark which also ferried both helicopters and aircraft for the Army. Pioneers and Auster’s flying off the deck on occasions.

This is Albion at the Singapore Naval Base in 1963.

There was always a Main Fleet Carrier in the Far East and Victorious was there in 1964 with it’s newly installed Buccaneers.

I should also mention the helicopters from Seletar. Both 110 sqn Whirlwinds and the Belvederes of 66 Sqn. The later losing Belvedere XG473 in May 1963 killing 9 passengers and crew.

Finally Sukarno gave in, I believe to pressure from his military but I believe he lost two Hercules aircraft. anyone have any details of this?

David Taylor.

Albion at the Naval Base in 1963.

Yes, they have the same ethics that some Banker’s seem to have!
It’s a technique that places a ‘trojan’ in your PC that needs you to ‘buy’ their software to remove it.
I was caught but did eventually find some freeware that someone had written to clear it. Painful though.
DT

Graham,

In the 30’s my father was an observer/air gunner with 36 Sqdn flying Hawker Horsleys from Seletar. He had a great collection of pics of the McRobertson Air race aircraft, that I used to ‘pore over’ as a boy.
The Comets and the KLM DC2 were shown along with others.
Sometime in the 70’s he gave his collection to the RAF Museum at Hendon.
I’d love to see them again but I understand the the museum has thousands of pictures that are still uncatalogued!

A bit ‘off thread’…but I also remember one memorable sequence of three pics taken from the accompanying launch as his Horsley practiced torpedoing a large ‘rock’ in the Singapore Straits. First pic shows the torpedo just leaving the plane. It had a ‘datum line’ drawn on the picture to calculate the dropping angle. The second picture has the Horsley ‘water ski-ing’ (it had wheels). The plane had to go into a shallow dive to get the torpedo entry correct…but the plane was not meant to touch the water though!
Last pic shows a planes tail sticking up out of the water and two crew members swimming to the launch. The sequence always made me laugh.

It’s a pity that a campaign to scan historical images can’t be organised as I’m sure they are being ‘thrown away in old shoe boxes’ virtually daily.

David Taylor.

Oh great…still an ‘Army Air Corp’ plane and looking really good.
That’s fitting, since she has such a history, I had thought she was going to be a ‘civvie’!
Where’s she going to be flying from?

DT

Can we see what G-BURR looks like now? Where is she based?

DT