During the early part of my career in the Royal Air Force I worked on 27Sqn at RAF Marham.
We were due to be the first squadron out to Goose Bay that year and as normal the first squadron out took the jets out for the forthcoming detachments.
One jet that came from a Germany based squadron, 31 or 9 San, required a head box chance, even though I was only an SAC Armourer with 100% (ish) supervision I was allowed to work on and assist with seats. So we replaced the head box and as I was finishing up I gave the whole seat a final glance to make sure all was as it should be, a I looked down the back of the front seat I noticed that the top pancake cartridge in the main gun looked wrong, not seated like others I’d seen, lock-wire intact etc, I called over my corporal pointed it out to him, he told me to see if it would turn on the threads at all, to my horror it did and was left suspended by the lock wire, the other 5 jets were checked and all main gun pancake carts were only finger tight, unfortunately due toy rank and training I had no further part in working on those seat and nothing more was said to me.
However the following year, sadly 27sqn had changed to 12sqn and gone to Lossiemouth along with some good friends, I had remained at Marham and moved to the bomb dump, I got called in by my chief and told I had to be at station HQ the following day in my No1’s to receive an award from the AOC.
Please see attached my flight safety well done certificate awarded to me for “due diligence and awareness over and above my rank and training”. A very proud moment in my RAF career, I never got to work on seats again as my path lead me down the Explosive Ordnance Disposal route for the rest of my 15 years.
