The Further Adventures of Alan Lowther (Armourer)

Hong Kong (July 1960 to January 1963) part 3

Having now got two stripes on my arm (and more money in my pocket!) I ran the armament side of the hangar and doubled up on the squadron as relief for John 'Taff' Davis in addition to the air firing work on Fridays and the Bay work on Mondays and Tuesdays. During this period, I think 'Taff' must have been on leave, one of the pilots, F/Lt Robinson, came into the crew room and said, "Who would like to learn to fly?" Strangely, I was the only person who said, "Yes". There were two other people however, the SEngO (S/Ldr Eaglesham) and a photographer. Anyway, it turned out that F/Lt Robinson had been posted to CFS Little Rissington as an instructor and the object of the exercise was to brush up on his instructional technique. So, over the next six months we went through the full flying instruction programme in the Vampire T.11, including some in-classroom instruction and by the end the only thing I couldn't do was fly solo. We even did some advanced training such as attack profiles, PAR approaches, instrument flying and the obligatory aerobatics. The SEngO also did very well but the photographer fell by the wayside somewhere along the way. At the end Flt/Lt Robinson asked me if I had ever considered aircrew and I told him what had happened on my first attempt. He advised me to re-apply on my return to the UK, which I did, but that's another story. One thing the (authorised) ground crew used to do at KT, that I never came across on any other unit, was to taxy the aircraft between the hangar and the line and vice versa (about ¾ mile). This was limited to approved airframe and engine personnel but after the flight training my name was added to the list.

The annual May Day celebrations were a time of heightened tension in HK due to events that had taken place many years before, the killing of British personnel (including women) etc. In the event that things got out of hand certain strategic points on the island and mainland were manned by Service personnel. The RAF manned the roundabout at the end of the Kai Tak runway (commonly known as 'Stinky's Corner'. We were all briefed (and shown the horrific pictures of what had gone before) on the procedures to be followed and had the necessary banners in Chinese and were armed with .303 rifles, SNCOs with Sten guns and Officers with pistols. I was selected as the marksman and, unbeknown to me at the time, I was the only one who had live ammunition! If instructed I was to shoot the ringleader of any unruly mob that did not comply with the instructions given via megaphone and on the banner. Luckily it all passed off without incident. I was on the party the following year (1962) when again it all passed off peacefully.

Early in 1961 we were told that the Venoms and Vampires were to be replaced by Hunter FGA9s and a Hunter T7 so preparations were put in place to move the armament servicing facilities to cope with Aden guns, gun packs and all the other equipment required for maintenance. The new bays were part of the station workshops buildings and comprised an electrical bay, gun bay, gun pack bay and Type 'C' hoist bay. Packs were harmonized outside on a concrete apron between the two buildings. The 25 yd range was modified to enable butt testing of the Aden 30mm guns. Seat servicing, small arms and admin offices remained in the old buildings by the main gate and next door to the guardroom. In the midst of all this preparation we still had to keep the Venoms and Vamps flying and we had some new faces arrive and some finished their tours and returned to the UK. Among the new arrivals were three ex-apprentices, J/Ts Dave Foggo, Dave Owen and Dave Ferrier, also SAC Alan Lowe (brother of George Lowe 81st). Dave Ferrier was in the same block as me at Halton and was well known for his 'bottle-bottom' glasses and his black Teddy boy suit with salmon pink collar, lapels and cuffs. Dave Foggo went to the squadron and the other two into the servicing bays.
New equipment for the Hunters was continually arriving and everything had to be prepared for the changeover that was scheduled for August 1961. We also had some of the aircrew tour-ex and replacements arrived to spend a couple of months on the Venoms before they finally went to the scrap yard. One of the Vampires developed a major crack in the main bulkhead and spent some time in Hong Kong Aircraft Engineering Co. (HAECo) having a new one fitted (old wooden bulkheads, so you could do that sort of thing). HAECo is now a major aircraft maintenance company in the Far East that carries out maintenance and repairs to all the large (and small) jet airliners. In 1960/63 they occupied a similar hangar to the RAF at the civil terminal end of Kai Tak.

We used to get quite a few USAF visitors and on one occasion we had a MATS C97 Globemaster arrive with a duff engine. They were carrying a spare but had no ground crew or equipment to do the change so the RAF volunteered to do the job for them. The job was started on the Friday afternoon and the engine was replaced and ground run on Saturday - all satisfactory. The Americans couldn't believe that we could do the job with no knowledge of the aircraft or engine and were very effusive with their thanks - so much so that Saturday night out downtown was on them.
I will say that the aircraft Crew Chief was very helpful and knowledgeable and answered all the questions we came up with.

A Meteor TT20 arrived from Singapore for the last air-to-air firing with the Venoms for a trophy whose name escapes me but was contested every twelve months. They brought their own winch operator so we just carried on as usual apart from laying out the banners and tipping the ammunition with coloured bullet tipping paint. We only had six aircrew so the range of colours wasn't too onerous. It all went off very well, I can't remember who won the trophy but the Meteor aircrew departed for Singapore and left us to look after the Meteor until it was scrapped along with the Venoms. I do remember that the Meteor had an electrical fault that wound up one of the engines when the battery master was switched on.

We continued air to ground firing with the Venoms right up until the end and in the main all went well. We did have one accidental firing of a 20mm due to the gun bay doors being dropped when there was a link pile-up. The armed aircraft pan faced out to sea, parallel with the main runway, and the aircraft always faced out to sea so, luckily, no damage was done apart from maybe to the pride of the person who dropped the doors without checking the link chutes. Behind the air firing pan was the main apron for the civil terminal and, whenever the opportunity arose, we would go to the parked civil aircraft and ask if we could have a look round - it was really just an excuse (for some) to chat up the air hostesses. The jet airliner age had arrived in HK and there were 707s, DC8s, Comets and all the piston and propjet types.
Some of these excursions into airliners resulted in nights downtown with a bunch of good-looking air-hostesses. The Americans were a bit stand-offish but most of the others were quite accommodating, particularly the Thai International, Air India, Cathay Pacific and BOAC crews. The Squadron CO managed to get us onto a training trip on a Pan Am 707, it was OK if you liked doing mandatory circuits and landings for an hour or so, we did get on to the flight deck though and they did serve drinks etc. Afterwards we found out that they (Pan Am) had asked the CO for personnel so that they could fill the aircraft to make the training more realistic.

August 12th 1961 (a Sunday!) came and the Hunters arrived in the afternoon (bar one which was stuck in Labuan having run out of IPN). We refuelled them, did the A/Fs, put in the blanks and went home. The Venoms were still on the line and I thought we might have a farewell fly-by with the Venoms and Hunters together but on the Monday all the Venoms were towed to the hangar to be prepared for the scrap yard. Probably not enough aircrew anyway as the crews who had flown the Hunters in were Squadron crews who had flown to UK to fly the aircraft out. A Canberra was sent from Singapore to pick up a container of IPN and an Engine fitter and then flew to Labuan. The Canberra and Hunter arrived back at Kai Tak a couple of days later and we had our full complement of four FGA 9s and one T.7.

The Venoms were all disarmed, all recoverable items removed and were duly despatched to the scrap yard that was between the end of the hangar and the bomb dump. WR497 'F' was refurbished externally and put on display outside the airport fire station. We prepared the Vampires for their trip to Singapore and they were sent on their way. I tried to get on that trip but for some reason or other it was not allowed. We completed all the acceptance servicing on the Hunters, things returned to more or less normal and a couple of weeks later it was time for the first air to ground firing day. All went well from the ground crew point of view but the aircrew were unhappy, as they couldn't hit anything with the guns. As a result we checked all the aircraft gun harmonisation and found no problems. The squadron gunnery officer asked me to do a diagram of the harmonisation pattern at 800 yards and then all became clear. The pattern was a wide strafing pattern and the inner guns actually crossed over to fire from left to right and vice versa. I was asked if we could change to a point harmonisation pattern but that was not possible due to the blast deflectors fitted to the gun ports. In the end I (and the gunnery officer) calculated the amount of lay-off for required for each gun and this was relayed to the aircrew. We normally only fired a single gun but, if we fired a pair, it would be port outer and stbd inner or port inner and stbd outer which made it easy for the aircrew as far as lay-off was concerned and easy for the ground crew as it was just a matter of removing the fuses for the non-required guns. After all this the gunnery scores were vastly improved and the aircrew were happy; rockets were no problem. On a normal firing day the gun pack would last four sorties so the workload was reduced. I remember the publicity films extolling the virtues of the weapons system and the fact that it could be re-armed in about 2 minutes and 45 seconds. All very well but you couldn't refuel the aircraft in that time!

To be continued