Upon my arrival to the Royal Air Force College Cranwell, I thought that was working in the Chipmunk engineering section, and that as a mechanic newly titled, it would only do very basic things with these vintage aircraft. At the time of my arrival was just under 17 years and 2 months and was too young to be promoted to leader Air Craftman "LAC", while I had qualified for the range from LAC. So initially, was only allowed to help "to" other aviators or NCO and swept around the aircraft.
One of the important things I learned sobre in this stage was the control of the tool. All the tools were kept in a "shadow Board" when not in use. It is a plate with a silhouette of each tool, a hammer, key, or a pair of pliers. A system tool labels meant that it was possible to identify the mechanic or installer who had a specific tool Board and at the end of each period of work, all the tools must be returned, and obtained the tags. In this way it is possible to say if it was missing a tool, which had taken out of the Board, and, therefore, approximately where should be. This is very important, because it would have been too dangerous for the vintage aircraft have flown with a key between flight controls, or a pair of pliers short electrical connections.
At the beginning of December, 1963, I have reached the age of 17 and a half and was promoted to the and the Caribbean. Less than 7 weeks later came the second anniversary of my joining RAF and this was considered a good point that I promote range that had qualified last July. It therefore became SAC Howard, "Senior Air Craftman". This meant a domestic flight to squirrels line record.
Squirrels were operated from an aerodrome of grass on the opposite side of the main road from the rest of the season. I seem to remember that we had about a dozen planes, and as the first mechanical line, I had to learn various tasks that are not covered by my original lineup. We had to hand learn swing Gypsy Major engine, how to marshal the aircraft (indicate the pilot signals, we wanted to do) and how to ensure that pilot/s were tied securely and correctly. In the Chipmunk engine was started by a burst of cartridge, which generally blew a huge cloud of smoke over the operation. Once this had been cleaned and the pilot was happy with the way in which the aircraft was operating, he would be the signal for which the chocks removed and would the Chipmunk taxi through grass for take-off point.
I'm going to leave the discussion on this point and resume in a few days.
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