Austin – 3
If you can be bothered to refer back to the pic of Austin I posted you will notice that the back-end of the ship is pretty ugly. Very elegant at the front end of the ship, but not so at the back. But such is life in the aviation world. A hangar is a hangar and so must look like a shed. Which in fact it was. A high-tech shed I’ll grant you, but a shed nevertheless. So. What we have here is a garage for 2 Sea Kings. 2 roller doors that went skew-whiff too often for comfort, lighting that was “fixed” (instead of being capable of being lowered down) that made replacing “tubes” a nightmare for the Leckies. An electronics workshop, a briefing room, assorted storage rooms, a rather large “ready-use” avcat tank, a sort of “rest-room” (where the RN guys could play
electronic golf or something) and, finally …”Flyco”. Oh, I forgot to mention that there was also a flight deck. 2 of them in fact. One of which is on top of the hangar. Somewhere or other there was stowage for masses of sono-buoys and other assorted pyrotechnics. Heavier stuff like torpedoes, missiles and so on were kept in special magazine areas within the hull, but separate from the ships “cargo” load of similar “stuff”. The “load” carried on this class of ship was roughly equivelent to that carried by “Resource” but more modern….and “Sea-Slug”, “Sea-Cat” etc. had long gone, but relaced by other nasty things.But all in all, pretty capable ships.
As you can well imagine, the flight-deck surface gets a fair old hammering. Not so much from the aircraft but from the wood pallets and so on used for Vertrep transfers. If they are not lifted or dropped cleanly then they have a tendency to skitter a bit (or a lot, sometimes). So the deck can get a bit chewed up. The paint surface is naturally of the “non-skid” variety, but not “as you know it” stuff. It’s also very, very expensive. To coat a flight deck the size of Austins would run into £x,000s, so it has to be done properly. One of the criteria for the surface finish is the friction it provides. This entails the use of some very sophisticated machinery. In fact it’s also so simple that anyone can use it. Very few components. A flat square of steel attached to a bit of string with a spring balance next to the handle held by the operator. Knowing the weight of the steel plate, the amount of pull required to move the thing is noted. If the pull reaches the desired figure then that’s OK, if it falls too far under spec, or needs more than spec, the surface is rejected.
Another little “aside”….when the flight-deck is not being used as such, it isn’t uncommon for it to be used for “leisure” purposes”. Some prefer running around it, others use a skateboard, using the ships natural movement to give the boarder a permanent downhill run…and then we get to “deck-hockey”. This is dangerous and elf’n’safety would never allow it. Not so much the game (although that’s violent enough)…but fall over on that surface and you’d discover what “sticky friction” can do to human flesh. A good slide can take the flesh off a knee to the bone. Yeuch.
During many visits to warships of other nations I invariably noticed how different were the deck surfaces. If ours were like pretty rough sandpaper, the Dutch ones looked as if they had been pebbledashed. They were the 2 extremes.
But back to the refit. Winter was now closing in, and the weather was both cold and wet (“wet” is very popular in Plymouth). So work on the flight-deck had to be done under a tent that totally covered the area, and some space-heaters installed to keep the place warm. As you all know only too well, the successful application of paint depends on the preparation….particularly so with a paint that can cost maybe £100 per metre covered. And so arose my first major “beef” with both DML and our “super”. “They” were happy with the tenting and heating….so was I, but the flight deck also “overhung” the deck below around the edges. This area wasn’t being “tented” or heated, so the cold and damp was chilling those areas. My concerns were very rudely dismissed (basically being told to wind my neck in). Please remember this when I get to the “Orient ‘92” deployment! Another “grouch” came when the re-building of “Flyco” started. This was one of those “A and A”s that I mentioned earlier. Drawn up and decided upon by my all-time favourite bit of the RN…the “Corps of Naval Constructors”. Without going into too much detail (only because it would take too long) the basic idea was to sort of push the windows out over the flight-deck by about 4ft to “improve visibility from flyco over the deck…particularly sideways towards the hangar doors. But instead of putting a window at each end of the new overhang, our experts had decided on a steel plate. Not easy to see through. My complaints this time did produce a sort of result….in that a nerd from the Constructors was despatched to “put me in my place”. Sorry, chummy; this approach wasn’t going to work. So I wrote a letter to a “higher authority” (minute chances of promotion now diminishing towards the quantum physics level). All sorts of people were despatched to see what I was moaning on about….most of them antagonistic as I was potentially upsetting their Xmas break. Eventually we got our windows, and I got a letter from our Commodore asking me (asking?) to be more circumspect in my statements, but as I already knew that the wording of my letter had caused some mirth in such exalted circles I sort of ignored it. Thousands and thousands of £ being spent on this thing and some little oik who hadn’t a clue about ships and the operating of them presumed to believe his department could do no wrong. Mind boggling.
But now Xmas was approaching. The Portacabin that was used (mainly by the junior engineers) as a sort of “haven” was by now looking like a land-fill site. Do all junior engineers exist on a diet of “Pot Noodles” and cans of “Coke”? Ours seemed to. And containers for “garbage”, because they didn’t rotate, reciprocate or produce anything and were therefore not an engineering responsibility were totally ignored. Some small effort was made to clean the place up….mainly by riveting some “decorations” to the ceiling and buying a plastic Xmas tree (came in 3 sections) which was decorated as only an engineer would know how. By this time we were aware that Gulf War (1) was on the cards, but there was no way we could be ready for it, although we naturally kept pretty well up to speed on what was either going on or expected. If you are old enough to cast your mind back that far you may recall that the big fear was being faced with chemical and/or biological weapons. I assume the RN ships do this also, but all “front-line” RFAs carry stocks of “detectants” and “antidotes” (effectiveness not proven….all on trust). As the guys out there really needed (wrong word) a lot of this stuff, it was time to raid our laid-apart stores and get out everything we could for onward despatch. Thank goodness we had a “crew” on board to do this.
By now the MoD Plods (A jocular and universally used term to describe our well loved MoD Policemen) were in full “Protection of the Realm” mode. Car searches, the “patting down” bit and all that….but most of the Dockyard-Maties” just waltzed on by. Britain is a strange place. Try all that in the USA and even if you’re a fully attired Admiral you’d soon find a gun up your nose.
Then somebody stole our Xmas tree.
Not the whole tree….just the middle bit, and then the top bit jammed onto the bottom bit, no doubt hoping no-one would notice that the tree was now nearly 3ft shorter than it was yesterday. Sod the refit. We wanted our tree back!. Unknown to me (at least) all sorts of little groups of people within the ship were discussing this turn of events (“we” had our own little group, unaware of others). Eventually, as will always happen, the entire thing coalesced. And ALL the groups pointed the finger in the same direction. Seamen may be mentally retarded but they aren’t daft. I kind of imagine that by now you have a vague idea as to where all these fingers were pointing. It then transpired that one of our very junior ratings had noticed “him” putting some ships stores into the back of his car on more than one occasion. A breakthrough!
It was quietly arranged through the DML guys (always pays to be friendly) for the Mod Plods to be tipped off as to “when” to do a “stop and search”. Embarrassment and bluster…..and we got our bit of tree back. Sad people, some of our “bosses”.
I’d elected to be the Duty deck officer over the Xmas period, choosing to be home for the New Year holidays. I quite enjoyed it, OK the ship was cold, but it was quiet and I could plough through all sorts of outstanding beaurocratic stuff that had been ignored for too long. It may sound odd, but I really did enjoy it, and then going back to my “flat”, going out to a restaurant and just relaxing for once.
Not all that much more, but I might remember some things so I’ll leave it there for today.
Just in case you’re wondering, no, I haven’t written all this lot up previously…you get it about 5 minutes after I write it. Hence the grammatical mistakes, mis-spellings and all that. But it all happened. BY