B.O.S.T. Portland – Part 2
(This story was originally written for a non RFA/RN audience)
FOST being FOST, he is not paid to trust the training given by any other establishment but his own. Alas, he doesn’t do any of it himself….or even come to see us. He “may” pop aboard for a drinky-poo and a sticky bun with the Captain, but he certainly does not address the masses. Perhaps when the TV cameras are there. He has Acolytes to do the dirty.
Portland trains naval ships from all over the world. Please, again, read this in the past tense. Even the USN do it now and again. For all my vitriol, I admire the system and its reason for being…but not some of the people.
I could be wrong here, but perhaps not. I think the whole idea started off during WW2 when the RN was huge and had recruited thousands of undertrained officers and ratings. Sure, they all went to shore based establishments to learn the basics, but doing it all in practice aboard a real ship is different. Portland then was very much a front-line base. Some clever and farsighted politician or naval officer decided that real on board training should be provided. Tobermory in Scotland was chosen…and what a superb job they did. It was only natural that the programme should continue post WW2, and the programme was moved to Portland. Portland is a very odd place. It is so odd that I think it should be re-classified as a foreign country.
During the period of one of our many spats with the Spanish I did once muse in public (only half tongue in cheek) that it may be a good idea to give Spain Portland if they left Gib alone. The two places have much in common…including their own language. Although the citizens of Weymouth would not care to be likened to those in La Linea.
Portland Harbour
Portland harbour is huge. I guess you really have to see it from the air to appreciate its true size. Look at some of the old wartime photos with uncountable numbers of major ships at anchor (and many more smaller vessels) and there is still room for another fleet. Mind, it doesn’t feel all that big when coming in to a precise anchorage on a dark and stormy winter’s night! Portland has 3 entrances. North, East and South. The South entrance was blocked (deliberately) with an old battleship. The ESC (East Ship Channel) is the one most commonly used for entering and leaving. The NSC is more often used by ships doing a “blind pilotage” or some other evolution that requires a bit of “privacy”. The NSC is also prone to interference by uncaring fishing boats and cross-channel ferries that don’t give a “xxxxx” even if you are the Royal Yacht. Many an emergency “full-astern” in this area.
In all the years I “passed through” Portland I always thought how “WW2” it looked. Not that it was ramshackle or anything, well, not all that much. It was just the style of everything. And having a small Moss Bros shop just outside the main gate seemed to give the place a “Dads Army” sort of feel. Having a socking great lump of rock so close to the water meant all the buildings and so on were compressed into a long ribbon. Nothing ergonomic about this place. Turn right and you will reach the main gate and then on to “Town” or Weymouth. Turn left and you are confronted by a paved route up the North face of the Eiger. God, that hill is steep (and long!). Unfortunately, half way up this hill was the Portland Fire School. Lordy, not again! Not too long ago this country had numerous car scrap yards. (Bear with me). These yards were often on oil saturated ground. So was the Portland Fire School. When the “sadistic ones” lit their fires all sorts of miniature oil wells used to sort of explode…usually very close to important anatomical bits and pieces, to the glee of the “ones” who knew where to stay out of trouble. Another dirty and wet day for all “pupils”.
By now I had graduated from being a helicopter controller to being a fully fledged Flight Deck Officer. (Another course done during a leave period), but my big mistake here was not to know or realise that the London to Weymouth train got cut in half at Poole. I don’t need to tell you which half I was in. There is something sort of world changing when you sit on a train, see the engine pull away but you don’t go with it. Such is life.
The FDO course was pretty good fun apart from that went on long after the pubs had closed. We “students” were offered the chance to be a front seat passenger in the rattly old Wessex that was our training aircraft. For some reason most of the RN guys declined. I loved it. As the “circuit” was very tight, the aircraft had to bank very steeply, so the pilot asked me to hold the old instrument panel in a position where he could see it. All lends to the romance of the occasion. During a lull in proceedings he took us out over Portland harbour and asked if I would like to try and “drive the thing”. What a hoot. So I got it to go up and down, I went sideways, I went backwards, In fact I could get it going anywhere but in a straight line forwards. Many years later I surprised a Sea King pilot by actually doing it, but the Sea King was easier to fly. During this course our digs were in La Linea, and so I became sort of acquainted with the wonderful sea front clock. I shall come back to the clock.
One of the oldest tricks in the book that the “sea-riders” (as the sadists like to be known..makes them feel superior or something) do is to either smuggle or post a pretend bomb on board. If the ship missed it then we would be marked as a “security failure” and in need of remedial training. What some of these morons never twigged was that many of us RFA types had more experience of Portland than they did. Our normal response was to quietly search until “it” was found. Re-package it and send it back whence it came. We sent one back that sat in an office for 3 weeks until it was discovered. Naturally this infuriated the sadists as “we” were not supposed to be free-thinkers. But we won that moral battle.
Every Friday evening the WPP came out. The Weekly Practise Programme. This can be quite a complicated document. It covers all ships running out of Portland (and there could be a dozen or so), what they should be doing at any one moment and where they should be…especially important if you were to be doing flying ops or a RAS etc with another ship. Sorting this out is a real headache for the Nav. This part is not training; it can stretch some poor guys to a sort of breakdown as every single point has to be perfect. From the ships speed, tidal considerations, the ships position in “the box” (more later on that), where to finish so the next “serial” could begin on time. Doing that and being “ready in all respects” was probably the most difficult and taxing jobs I ever had to do as a Nav. One of my pals (who later left the RFA) was a Nav on another ship, and through tiredness or whatever failed to spot a misprint in the WPP the said (for a particular time) “No calls on Fost”. So he didn’t. Only when it was too late did he remember that it should have read “NO calls on FOST” (i.e. Nav.Off calls on FOST”). He got a right bollocking for that one.
Another “tradition” with the RN is that some snooty young RN officer is designated to do a “walk around” (in our case a “sail-around) on a Sunday morning. Near us was moored the nuclear submarine HMS Sceptre. The little oik doing the inspection complained that the RFA in question (us) did not give a suitable salute to mark his passing. (I’d probably miss his funeral as well), and that our main radar aerial was not aligned absolutely athwart ships. (An impossible task with our radar set-up). I just knew I was going to have fun with this one! Sceptre was accused of “looking like a midden”. What, pray, can a submarine look like apart from a submarine?
HMS/m Sceptre
The CO of Sceptre invited me and a few of our officers over for lunch and a bit of mutual commiseration. And a very merry afternoon it was. Now we return to the Weymouth Clock. During my guided tour of this fantastic machine…the sub, not the clock..my host asked if I would like to play with his periscope (the metal one). We were perhaps nearly 3 miles from Weymouth beach. I had also never really thought how high these periscopes can go. But when you think how deep these subs are I should not have been surprised. After a good look around he showed me how to zoom the thing. “Try the Weymouth Clock Tower”….ZOOM. The poor girl probably still doesn’t know that her surreptitious copulation was being carefully observed and commented upon by a bunch of guys 3 miles away.
Made my day.
As far as the little oik was concerned I made sure he and his CO were invited to lunch on another day, during which the error of his ways were pointed out to him, and to put it mildly, saying he left with his tail between his legs and a further “chat” with his CO.
Round 1 to us.