It is a common myth that only officers fly for a living. It is also commonly felt that you must join the RAF either as a pilot officer or as an aircraftsman/woman (AC). To dispel these misunderstandings, and to further our understanding of the RAF, we invited a SNCO aircrew to talk about his work. We were delighted when Cpl Skelton managed to turn a chance meeting in Iraq into a firm offer to visit us.
FS Reynolds has recently returned from a tour of duty in Iraq and is about to join the Rotor-wing Operational Evaluation Training Unit or RWOETU. This rather complex acronym has led them to christen themselves as ‘alphabet squadron’. FS Reynolds joined the 1145 Sqn Air Cadets from 1991-1995, during which time he rose to be a cadet FS. When he left the cadets he tried to join the RAF as aircrew, but was turned down and told to grow-up a bit more. Ignoring this advice he joined-up as a electrical mechanic at RAF Bulmer. After two years service he made a second attempt to transfer to aircrew and was successful. He was streamed for rotor-wing work and was eventually assigned to puma aircraft. He has served Ireland, Kosovo and Iraq with 230 and 33 Sqns. He is qualified as a standards officer, a weapons trainer, a fast rope instructor, an electronic warfare officer and a radar operator.
In general, your application to be aircrew begins with a filter interview at the local careers centre. If successful here you will be invited to RAF College Cranwell where you will be subjected to a very busy few days of aptitude tests, group exercises (discussions, planning and problem solving) and command tasks. There will then be a second interview process during which your personal qualities, grasp of current affairs, medical and physical fitness will be assessed. If you make it through all of this it’s off to RAF Halton for the 10 week initial training process. Once in the RAF for real, you are transferred to RAF Cranwell for the 12 week sergeant aircrew course. At the end of this process you are awarded your three stripes topped with the RAF Eagle. Specialist training for 6 months teaches you to be aircrew at the end of which you will be streamed as rotor-wing, transport or nimrod. Each stream has a slightly different job. The rotor-wing crew have to be quite generalist, the transports are real load-masters while the nimrod guys are more electronic / linguist in nature (signalers, sub-hunters and SAR). Rotor-wing stream depart for Shawbury for a year before further streaming sends them off to pumas, merlins, chinooks or sea kings. Training for the puma takes 8 months after which you will be declared ‘limited combat ready’. Only after a final period of flying and exercises will you be tested and declared ‘combat ready’.
Last Updated on Saturday, 05 December 2009 00:26