.............But as for myself, I always wanted to join the Royal Navy. As a kid I'd be drawing ships, I could i/d most ships of the RN (we had more than a few in those days) and I could sketch a mean Fairey Swordfish (I'm not THAT old btw). I applied at the same time my best pal applied for the Air Force (same recruiting office) I was contacted for consideration of an officer cadetship, was interviewed, got the offer but it was conditional on me staying on at college to finish my engineering diploma (they'd have paid me!) and that's when it happened....somebody hit me on the head and 3 months later I woke up in the Metropolitan Police Cadet Corps. Hey ho, I might have gone down, badly, in the Falklands..... or anywhere. You just never know what our elected politicians might have plans for.
We're never at the briefing when our fate is being planned. I'm lucky I'm typing this.
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I always wanted to be a fast jet jockey. Unfortunately I didn't have 'O' level English, so I became a L tech NI. Later (days) it was changed to L tech FS.
Ah, the old String Bag, a wonderful aeroplane. (I wanted to join the FAA, but they didn't want me :-( ) The Swordfish was also known as a TSR1 (Torpedo, Strike and Reconnaissance) bit more successful than the TSR2!
My best mate was to ship out on the Coventry when she finished an excercise.
There was a wee National emergency and she left without him. He ended up as one of the ROs on the Geestport, which may have saved his life.
HD, I think some of your politicos are scarier than ours. Yikes!
So you were Shanghaied into the cops? Or was it a press gang? :-)
QM:
I think it was the `Pull Gang`, a lesser known but no less ruthless successor to the press gang. They'd find people in, or about to join, the Navy, knock `em out and dump them ashore. These days they're called `The Government`.
Given just what a Stringbag actually was, it is astonishing what the FAA accomplished with it. Superb torpedo bomber pilots making do with what they were given. If only they could have had TBMs to start with, there would have been no surface Kriegsmarine, and perhaps the U Boats may have been beaten earlier than May of '42. YAY Fleet Air Arm! HUZZAH!
One friend of mine was playing football when the Falklands was invaded. The other team had to put their uniforms back on and go and fight the Argentines - some still had their shinpads on - whilst my friend and his team mates had to rush back to HMS Endurance.
Scott: I have a special place in my heart for Lt Cdr Esmonde and his gallant men.
Spark: I had blokes turning up at my police stn wanting to be sworn in to fight the Argies.
It's funny how life goes. Another friend of mine, after 7 years in the Para's went onto other, slightly more special things. Three years later he was invalided out after a jump went wrong, just in time to miss the Falklands. Which, as you might imagine, rather upset him.
A ship-to-ship helicopter transfer killed nearly two dozen of his friends out there - toss a coin over whether he'd have been on that flight.
Spark`: Our special forces are indeed a small unit, esp compared to the size of the Americans Delta or SEALs. eg. a RM sgt I was chatting to recently had to sit through a yarn of mine where we were using the SBS to get us out to sea to nab the drug runners. The Op was in 1992 but this bloke knew all about it! Thats why you can never bullshit them, the Royal Marines are really a very small outfit.
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