it bemused me and it bemused a lot of people
but a report had been written at that time
called the Bette Report
and basically the Bette Report contained
an outcome that suggested
that a lot of aircrew were flying desks
when actually they should be flying airplanes.
A lot of these desks were operations desks
in various bunkers all round the country.
And it was decided at that point to try
and get the crews back to flying.
What they would do is they would take
some of the other branches, train them accordingly
and put them into the operations role.
And so, I was chosen very early on
to undertake this role
and I was posted to RAF Marham
as operations officer there
and part of my role there
which was very, very interesting
bearing in mind that I was still fairly young,
I was still very junior
and I was a logistics officer, not aircrew
was the role of strike controller.
Something that doesn't exist anymore
because the RAF no longer operate nuclear weapons.
The role of the strike controller
was part of the wartime posture of the base
and in terms of operations
we would have attack operations
which were using the aircraft
to carry conventional munitions to our enemies
and destroy them hopefully.
So, we'd have an attack controller
who would work with SACA to develop
the plan of what was going to happen,
which aircraft were going to carry which weapons to where.
The strike controller's role was very similar to that
but to deploy the nuclear weapons.
