Shackletons, a Brussel Sprout, and 14 Unforgettable Hours: A Glimpse into Sue’s RAF Career
I joined the Royal Air Force in 1978 (saying that now is utterly scary) as an Aero System Space Operator stationed at SOC Buchan. We oversaw the air defence of the United Kingdom and NATO airspace, controlling the northern QRA (quick reaction alert). At that time, it housed 43 and 111 Squadron flying the F4 Phantom, along with the airborne early warning aircraft, Shackleton of 8 Squadron. Intrusions into our airspace by Russian bombers was a weekly, if not daily, occurrence.
My morning job was to phone the squadrons and see what assets were available and what special missions they wanted to practice that day. At 8 squadron, my contact was Squadron Leader ‘Easy’. I am known to be a bit chatty, and he was absolutely charming, a good, fun, gentleman and we always had a laugh together. One day after I had spoken to him, he phoned back to talk to my colleague. He effectively asked what I was like and obviously she saw the opportunity to have a good deal of fun. Squadron Leader Easy was informed I was 5’8, an athlete, blonde hair, blue eyes and just a lovely person. With no surprise, he phoned back as soon as he knew I had returned to the desk and invited me to come flying with the squadron. As far as I know, this was and has remained a complete one off!
Fast forward two weeks, it was mid-October and I was being kitted out in a green immersion suit (similar to the ones deep sea divers wear) that could only have belonged to someone 6’10ft. To gain entrance to the beast, there is a zip running from the right hip to the left shoulder. The neck is effectively a rubberised collar, and once you’ve put your head through and done the zip up, you crunch down to let the air escape from the suit, making it watertight. As the crew were in their pre-flight briefing, they turned around and saw a 5’2 green thing approaching them. From then on, I obtained the nickname ‘Bruss’, due to my unfortunate similarity to that of a brussel sprout.
A Shackleton has absolutely no thermal protection. If you’ve seen any of the movies about Lancasters that is what it is like, except there is nothing posh about this at all. It has a kitchen to make tea and coffee and there are ‘facilities’, consisting of a blue bucket where the tail gunner should be, but no curtain. However, we were only on a two-hour mission, so I didn’t hold back on the tea and coffee and life was great! It was bitterly cold, deafeningly windy, but absolutely brilliant.
Then I heard the call. The call from Buchan that two bombers had come over the top of us and we were to fly around the Faroe Islands for the foreseeable. Rather than continue as a passenger, I asked to act as radio operator and pass information back to base. Remember there were no women flying then, so when I called Buchan using code words to pass information, there was a slight pause followed by…. ‘Sue is that you?’
The tea and coffee caught up with me, and suddenly I needed to use the facilities. The Captain, for reasons that will remain unknown to me and the rest of mankind, refused to let me take the suit off to use the facilities. There is no escape hatch for females in an immersion suit. There is a zip that runs from hip to hip and a piece of rubber comes out, but that’s not much use for women. Luckily, my host called me to the cockpit to speak to me one on one. Turning our mics off, with a huge grin he informed me that the suit I was wearing belonged to the navigator and he strongly suggested that I in his own words ‘warm my boots’ and I’ll let you work out what that meant. The mission lasted 14 hours and I was lucky enough to be allowed to crawl forward into the bomb aimers position in the nose of the aircraft for the landing at Lossiemouth. What an experience!
The seat used by the radio operator has the yellow cover on it, if you look in the middle that is the gap between the captain and FO where I crawled into the nose!
As fate would have it, when the North West BWPA group visited the Avro Heritage Museum in Woodford, I was unable to go. However, my good friends Jayne and Julie met with me at the museum another day. While waiting for them in the foyer, I looked up at a picture of a Shackleton and innocently said ‘I flew in one of them’. It went very quiet, and I don’t like the quiet, so I said, ‘it was Dougal.’ Unbeknownst to me, in very large pieces in the maintenance hangar, that exact aircraft now resides. The team generously allowed me access to the aircraft. I’ve now done a podcast with them as I’m one of two people they’ve met who flew in a Shackleton.
Chance is an odd thing. If I hadn’t had been chatty, if my friend hadn’t had such a good sense of humour and if Squadron Leader Easy hadn’t been the lovely guy he was, or even if the North West group hadn’t arranged a visit to the Avro Heritage Museum, this wouldn’t have happened. I just find it incredible. Those 14 hours represent such a small moment in my life, but one of the happiest, funniest and most joyful experiences I have ever had.
