Air Cadet experience flight....

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Tom Bull
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Air Cadet experience flight....

Post by Tom Bull »

I was lucky enough to have had my first ever flight in an aeroplane in VC-10 from Brize Norton on 15th May 1990, with a bunch of fellow air cadets. It was a C1 with the back half configured for passenger transport, and the front half for freight. We were near the engine pods, and I recall the somewhat troublesome kid next to me prising a formica-like panel off the fuselage wall, revealing some interesting-looking cables. We were told that the pilot was newly qualified, and we went across the North Sea to Norway and back (with lunch served on board). As this was before the days when everybody recorded everything that happens, I have no pictures of the event, but am curious to know which C1 it was...Would anyone know if such a flight is the sort of thing that would have been recorded in the 10 Squadron ops record book? Wanted to check before I visited the National Archives....
Thank you😊
Jelle Hieminga
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Re: Air Cadet experience flight....

Post by Jelle Hieminga »

Welcome Tom!

I honestly don't know if a detail such as this would have been noted in an ops record book, but I have asked around for you. I will post here if I hear back from my 10 Squadron expert.
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Re: Air Cadet experience flight....

Post by Jelle Hieminga »

I just heard back, and the news is not good I'm afraid. First problem: the ORBs may not have been transferred to the National Archives yet, it may take another 15 years before the Air Historical Branch transfers them. Second problem: the names of any passengers would not appear in the ORBs as they were not part of the crew. Any details would be copied from authorisation sheets and those would normally only include the name of a passenger when it was a (V)VIP. You might get lucky if you could find an ORB that showed a flight to Norway on that exact day, but for that you would need to be certain that the AHB have transferred that ORB to the National Archive, and then get hold of that particular ORB on the off chance that it will show which VC10 C1 flew to Norway and back on that day. If the flight did not land in Norway, it might be difficult to distinguish between the flight you were on and any other training flights on that day.

Hope this helps with your question, even though it may not have been the answer you were hoping for.
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Tom Bull
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Re: Air Cadet experience flight....

Post by Tom Bull »

Jelle- thank you for taking the time to look into this, I do appreciate it. What a wonderful resource your site is, in celebration of a beautiful aeroplane.
Tom Bull
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Re: Air Cadet experience flight....

Post by Tom Bull »

Hi Jelle!
May I trouble you again for advice?
I have the 10 Sqn ORB for May 1990 (attached is a page), I read the "Details of Flight" column as airports/bases landed at during the sortie...so, XV102 landed at Gutersloh on 11th May before returning to Brize.
As I can't recall landing anywhere, I guess that my flight was in XV102 on 9th May.
Do you think that I have interpreted the doc correctly?

Cheers : )
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Jelle Hieminga
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Re: Air Cadet experience flight....

Post by Jelle Hieminga »

Hi Tom, no problem! I think you got it right, but just to be sure I will ask my 10 Squadron friend too.
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ICM
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Re: Air Cadet experience flight....

Post by ICM »

Tom, I'm a friend of the friend, a former Flight Commander on 10 Sqn and, significantly here, someone with a good deal of experience of the inner workings of Air Transport Force tasking policy. For me that was across much of the 1970s but I suspect that matters were not too much different in 1990. That said, I think it's most unlikely that you flew on a tasked flight that would be recorded in the monthly F541 pages. MOD-tasked flights were not laid-on for Air Cadet experience and my guess is that you were on a local training flight of some kind, and those were not recorded in the unit's 541. If Periodic Refresher Training (PRT) was still in vogue in 1990, a trip within the week spent on that is a possibility or, noting your remark about the captain, it could have been a co-pilot to captain conversion exercise. The bottom line, I fear, is that you won't find the aircraft serial number from that 541.

Beyond that, you can also dismiss the thought that you flew in 102 on 9 May. 2094 was in the block of numbers allocated to the Dulles/Belize schedules - you'll find the following week's at 2095 on 16 May, with others on following pages. What must have happened on 9 May is that 2094 had to return to Brize with a tech problem, probably a fairly serious one as the schedule had to launch again the next day with a different airframe, 806. Apart from that, you're right in interpreting the ICAO trigraphs as airfields at which the flights listed would have landed.

At this distance, I suspect your best hope of finding the serial number of the aircraft in which you flew may be to hope that someone who was in the crew that day finds this thread and consults his/her logbook. I'd like to help but I'm afraid the answer is unlikely to be found in the F541. My compliments, by the way, on the persistence you appear to have shown in trying to track this detail down. I can see from the AIR 27 file reference that you've been to the National Archives at Kew and taken a copy of that months' document or paid handsomely to have a copy made and sent to you. As you'll know, it's not available in digital form - and I know from experience that getting copies made by TNA is a pricey business.
Ian Macmillan
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Re: Air Cadet experience flight....

Post by Jelle Hieminga »

I'm having to retract my earlier statement Tom, I'm sorry. As Ian has indicated, the flights listed in the ORB sheet that you posted and the rest of the document are only those that were linked to specific tasks, such as the weekly Washington shuttle. Normal route flights would have a task number starting with '2' while VIP flights would start with '1', such as the one in your example on 16th May which routed from Brize to Lyneham, then to Moscow, Stockholm and back to Lyneham before returning home to Brize. This was most likely a multi day trip that set off on the 16th.

This information was compiled from the F540/541 sheets which in turn were based on the F1575 Authorisation Sheets. The F1575s were most likely destroyed a long time ago so you won't find more about this. Next to the flights in this list, local training flights such as Periodic Refresher Training (PRT) sorties or conversion exercises would have been laid on by the Operational Conversion Unit, but these did not end up in the F540.

The conclusion is that your group of Air Cadets must have flown on one of these PRT sorties, during which approaches and other procedures would have been practiced at other airfields. They would often use Prestwick or other UK airfields, but on your trip they obviously went a bit further afield for an unknown reason.

This is based on a couple of e-mails from two very experienced 10 Sqn guys so I'm very much inclined to believe them. Sorry that the trail went cold, you certainly did your best to dig up these details. Perhaps someone will turn up who will have the 15th May 1990 date in a logbook.
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Tom Bull
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Re: Air Cadet experience flight....

Post by Tom Bull »

Dear Ian and Jelle-

Thank you so much to you both for looking into this and the detail of your replies. I agree that it looks unlikely that I'll ever find out which airframe it was, but I still have the memory of the day when I took my first ever aeroplane flight, and I consider myself very lucky that it was a VC-10 : )

Best wishes.
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