Interview with Jeff Brown. Four

Interview with Jeff Brown. Four

At the end of the war Jeff found himself posted to Germany working as an equipper which didn’t interest him at all. He retrained as an armourer but he really wanted to continue to fly. He successfully re-mustered as a pilot and went to Canada for training. During the course back in the UK on Meteors he was diagnosed with a low tolerance to the G force and was grounded. He left the RAF and went to work at Avro.

2016

00:08:27 audio recording

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JB: So after the squadron disbanded we were all made redundant but we had to do something. Much against my wishes I was trained to be what would be called an equipper issuing equipment and as such I was posted to Germany to serve on some very small radar stations. And I was there for a couple of years and then I signed on for regular service in the post-war Air Force. Initially I was sent on a long course. Because I was an air gunner I had to have armament training so I was sent on a very long course at a place called Kirkham near Preston to train as an armourer. We trained on all the weapons that the RAF had at that time and all the bombs and equipment that was in use. We also did a short training course on aerial photography and then I was posted to join 149 Squadron in the summer of 1950. This was at RAF Marham in Norfolk and we were trained on big American bombers called the B29 Super Fortress, the type of aircraft that the Americans had used in the war in the Pacific and the aircraft, the same type that dropped the atomic bombs on Japan. After we did the training on them we were posted to RAF Coningsby where I served for two years until 1952. Then at that time jet aircraft were being introduced into the Air Force and of course there was no requirement for air gunners and there was a possibility of being redundant once again but the opportunity arose to what they call re-muster. Retrain as a pilot. I was accepted for this and I went to an Officer’s Training School at Jurby in the Isle of Man and completed that and then I was commissioned as pilot officer. After that I was chosen to go and do my flying training in Canada under a NATO scheme and I trained at a place called Claresholm which was in Alberta. About sixty miles south of Calgary. We were there for twelve months and qualified as pilots. And then when we came home we had to do a further training course at RAF Tern Hill down in Shropshire to do instrument flying to get a qualification that the RAF had. Qualifications in instrument flying. Different grades which allowed you to fly in different weather conditions. So I did the instrument flying course and qualified for that. Then we moved on to the Meteor which was a twin engine jet fighter and I flew on those for several months but then I became medically unfit for flying duties because I was having what was called G problems in violent manoeuvres like in aerobatic flying. I was blacking out and I was examined by the medical people and the, what we called flying doctors at the Institute of Aviation Medicine at Farnborough. They confirmed that I had what was called a low G tolerance which meant I would be grounded. I wouldn’t be able to fly and the alternative was to leave the RAF. So I didn’t want to serve if I couldn’t fly so I left the RAF. This was in 1954. I joined the Avro Company at Chadderton and worked in their design office for a number of years. I worked on the Shackleton aircraft, the Vulcan bomber and the Nimrod aircraft and then after a year or two doing that I transferred into what was called technical publications. We wrote all the books for maintaining and servicing the aircraft and I did this until I retired in 1989. During this period I had married and I had a daughter born in 1966 who is now just about fifty. She works at Heathrow Airport but previously she worked for several years on cruise ships and on those ships she’s been all over the world. In 1981 my wife died and then in 2001 my daughter married and went to live in Southern Ireland. In 2003 I moved to live in Mottram and in 2004 my daughter divorced and moved back to the UK and she now works at Heathrow Airport. And here we are. I’m still here. In about two weeks I shall be ninety one. That’s my life story.
Interviewer: Wow. That’s just amazing.
JB: Yeah.
Interviewer: But just to sit here a listen to you that’s covered the whole of my life. I was born in 1942 but to listen to all that. Oh my goodness.