Karen talks about her life in the RAF, especially her time working at RAF Neatishead.
I always knew that I was going to be in the military, my brother joined the Royal Navy when he was sixteen. I was only ten at the time and I watched his career and was totally mesmerised and completely pulled in by the military life. Of course there were women in the military but it was still quite unusual and I knew that I wanted to go and do something extraordinary, see the world and really be challenged.
I remember speaking to my brother about it and he wasn’t very keen, but he gave me a really great piece of advice. Initially I was thinking about joining the navy, but he said that I should join the RAF. Because, as he told me, unless I wanted to be a fighter pilot, which I didn’t, I could do any job that a man did in the RAF. It was an incredible piece of advice, and I changed my mind at that point.
I didn’t know much about the RAF;all I really knew was air traffic control so when I went into the Careers Information Office (CIO) that’s what I talked to them about. They told me about aerospace systems and the rest is history.
Joining the Women’s Royal Air Force
I joined the Women’s Royal Air Force (WRAF) in 1983 at 17 years old. They weren’t recruiting for air traffic controllers at that point but recognised that I had an interest in that area and said that they were recruiting for aerospace systems and ground radar.
Air traffic controllers worked with short range radars, bringing in aircraft, and aerospace systems operators would be working with the larger radars which look after our shores and have a longer range, 220 nautical miles. So when they told me about that role and what I’d be doing I said to them, ‘If you’ll have me count me in’. and there you go, that’s where it all began.
My knowledge of radar was what the average person knew, what I’d seen in films, thinking that it went blip when it went round which of course it didn’t – they said not to worry and that they would train me, and they did.
To join you had to have certain O Level grades and you had to take a number of tests too – which on reflection in my current profession I recognise as psychometric tests. And of course a medical.
Training and uniform
My initial training had nothing to do with radar or aerospace systems, but everything to do with being a service woman. We had to undertake six weeks on non-commission rank work, at RAF Swinderby in Lincolnshire. There were a lot of people joining the military at that point and there about 50 women.
So I did six weeks military square bashing: drill, uniform, discipline, camaraderie and leadership and all of those things. My technical training began after that at RAF West Drayton near Uxbridge.
I absolutely loved it from day one. I was the second of my parents’ children to leave home and join the military and they were left with an empty nest. I was ringing them on a nightly basis telling them how fantastic life was and how wonderful it was to be away. I think that they have forgiven me, but I knew from the day I got off that bus and was greeted by Corporal Karen Selway at RAF Swinderby, with her Welsh accent, that I had made the right decision and that I wasn’t going anywhere for a long time. Even now if I hear a Welsh accent it sends shivers down my spine.
The uniform … I can’t help looking at the uniforms in parades such as Remembrance Sunday, seeing how the women in the RAF are pitching up, making sure that they’re smart, no hairs out of place and everything in the right place. Old habits die hard.
But the uniform was very practical, it was comfortable and it did smell a bit of mothballs. As long as you didn’t get caught in the rain you were alright. It was largely a blue uniform, in everyday it was blue skirt, light blue shirt and a sweater, more formally we had a jacket. On a day to day basis we might wear a beret or what we called a ‘pork pie’ hat. Later in my career the hats changed to look more like the police officer hats.
It wasn’t the most of fashionable of things. The 80s were very different from a fashion perspective, so we didn’t like our shoes or our handbags much. But we weren’t there to be fashionable, we were there to do a job and we just got on with it!
Moving to RAF Neatishead
I was at Swinderby in 1983 and then West Drayton over Christmas time and then my first posting was to RAF Neatishead in early 1984. I spent three years there. I would then go to Portreath in Cornwall, Boulmer and Bahrain before coming out in 1991.
At Neatishead I suppose that our job was largely in three parts, looking at the radar scope itself, talking to an organisation that would give us flight movement information and we would be required to listen to information about flights, missions and we had to record this on what was called a tote.
The totes are still there at Neatishead and anyone who has visited Neatishead will have seen these Perspex boards standing on the top of the stairs. Those are the totes.
We were required to stand behind those and of course standing behind them meant that you had to write backwards. So our training was around being an effective tote operator, hearing and assimilating information and turning that into a neat and legible written form for those reading it. This could be passed to aircraft so we had to ensure that we were doing it properly. Our training also involved understanding the terminology that might be used in the ops room and getting us ready with some basic, foundation knowledge that meant that when we got into the ops room we could start to fit things together.
From the actual radar scope perspective we were looking at what was inbound, a potential threat. We needed to operate a system to ensure that the computer system enabled someone looking at it to know that everything was in the right place at the right time.
That’s where the movement side of the job came in. We would be taking information from another authority that would tell us where the aircraft were going to be, what speed they going, what height they were, and what direction they were going to be moving in. And from that information we would be able to match the aircraft that we could see on our radar and scope and that’s how it all fitted together.
Three words – mature, professional, calm
It needed a huge amount of concentration and there were a lot of people around my age, but I think that the attributes needed most were maturity, professionalism and calmness. You cannot be messing about in an environment like that, you’re dealing with live jets, live tracks, you know, you had to make sure that you were doing your piece of the job.
You weren’t mature if you were messing about, you weren’t professional if you weren’t adhering to your training and if you weren’t calm, the cardinal sin was to panic. If you were panicking or flapping that was almost the worst thing you could do, but they would help you with that; there was a lot of training around that.
There was lot of mentorship, a lot of coaching from people, two, three, four, six, ten years ahead of you. They were incredible individuals and I think that’s why we still have those bonds today. It was an incredible experience as a young woman, 17 years old.
We were working alongside men, we were in the minority but the ratio was quite high. If you were a woman pilot the ratio was very low, but in aerospace systems, or scopies as we were called, it wasn’t that bad. It might have felt like there were a lot of women because we all had a lot to say. Naturally, we had those confidence issues that young women have but we must have had a bit about us to be able to navigate through such a situation.
There were four women and as there were two squadrons, two of us joined each squadron. We worked on a shift pattern but the person in charge of training worked the day shift. Our trainer was a woman and we would do on-the-job training on the scope or the tote. It was only when were effective in these roles that we were signed off and allowed to be there on our own.
We would be watched and we shadowed; they didn’t just throw you in there, there was too much at stake. If you weren’t handling it you’d be taken off, they’d get you to watch them and again only when they were happy that you were effective would they sign you off.
After training we were in it for real. Everybody was walking around really self assured and looking like they knew what they were doing. We were in the real ops room, listening to real planes and it was terrifying, thinking, ‘I have to get this right. I hope that I’m seeing everything.’
No messing about, people expected you to be mature and calm and professional, those three words again.
There was an emergency when I was at Neatishead and I am sure that there are some things that I can talk about but, you know, old habits die hard. All I will say is that I was with a fighter controller one day when an aircraft went down, in fact I think that two went down. This was widely reported so I don’t feel that I shouldn’t say that and it was awful. But you just go into auto pilot (if you’ll excuse the pun) and get on with it. You try not to think that these are real people with real families. And that’s where your training comes in.
But outside of Bahrain and war, as that is obviously very different, I don’t recall anything as bad as that was. Planes would often call an emergency because they had a problem, their hydraulics had gone for example. It might not be a military plane, but a civilian airliner that had to reroute. They were talking to air traffic about that if they were civilian, but we would know, by looking at the radar.
Working patterns
There were many shift patterns, one of which was called Squadron which meant working two days and two evenings. A day shift was 8am until 5pm and the evening shift was 5pm until 8pm, so very short, and you’d have weekends off.
You would also work what was called Watch where you’d work two days and two nights, so from five until eight the next day, so a 15 hour shift, which is a long time. You’d then have four days off but obviously your first day off you were sleeping off your nights. But it’s like any shift pattern, you get used to it. It was hard at first because your body wasn’t used it. Some people were better at it than others. I used to get really tired – the thing was to keep going, there were some quiet periods and sometimes we used to fall asleep in the crew room and they didn’t like that and they’d wake you up, quite rightly.
The ops room was manned 24 hours a day so you had to be there doing lots and lots of different things, getting the room ready for the next day, making sure that all the information was there so that when the day shift came in everything was in its right place.
But you got used to it and that’s where you got to know people, they were like family, they are like family. The veteran community is my family, we established enormous bonds on those shifts because we were doing extraordinary things in extraordinary times.
Life at Neatishead and Coltishall, which was never dull
There was nothing dull about Neatishead and Coltishall on the 1980s, trust me. All the women lived in a block on the edge of the perimeter at Coltishall and men were not allowed in there.
There was a guest room, just by the door, with a little sofa and a telly. There was also the mess where everyone ate and there was also a club, I suppose you’d call it, and a bar where everyone would congregate.
On a Thursday night there was the camp disco or the bop as it was known and that’s where it all happened. In the 80s, there were no jeans and t-shirts, it was dress up city, and we used to have a dance and a laugh.
Sometimes we’d go off site, pubs, restaurants, shopping, and we did get into Norwich too, and we loved Norwich. We used to go to eat in a place called Captain America’s which was a burger place, I don’t know if it’s still there, we used to love to go shopping too.
If you weren’t working you were enjoying yourself, unless you’d spent all your money in which case you’d be sitting in the block waiting for pay day!
I don’t think that we ever went into the village of Neatishead; we used to get bussed in and out the radar station. We didn’t go out of the base, there were people on the front gate and you were there to work, there was no wandering around, you didn’t even wander around the camp, you stayed put and when your shift finished they bussed you out.
Coltishall was slightly different because obviously that was our residential base and so we would be moseying around. I we were off we might go to the local shop, or the pub so we were bringing some money in.
Equality and promotion
I found that we were regarded as equal to the men. Of course that was my lived experience and I’m sure that you might talk to some women that weren’t. It was the 80s and there were some things that probably happened that were just of that time. Women have become more equal as we’ve moved through the generations.
One thing that obviously wasn’t equal and did contravene equality was if women wanted to have children. But we were told about this at the very beginning When I went to the Careers Information Office in Wolverhampton the corporal said to me that he had to tell me that if at any point I was to have a baby I would have to leave the force. I told him that I understood and accepted this.
It’s very different now; lots of my colleagues had children and went back and we’ve proved that it’s absolutely fine and like men we can have the responsibility of children and go back and serve. Men and women can have families and serve in the military and I am very pleased to say that they do.
I went for promotion; my final rank was corporal but I was a qualified sergeant. I passed my exams and every year you had an annual appraisal. I can’t remember the exact term used but you would get given a score, three numbers, which was very subjective but it determined if you were recommended for promotion. If you were getting eights and nines you were near to be getting recommended for promotion. Fives and sixes was middle of the road and twos and threes you were in trouble. You had to increase your numbers every year. It wasn’t good enough having good numbers you had to get a good write up and narrative about your performance. To get to corporal and sergeant you had to take exams too.
The written exam was very difficult for me because a lot of the information was classified so you had to remember it all, there was no writing it down and walking around with notes. I found this very challenging. My memory’s not good at all. I have to have a number of coping mechanisms even in my work now, I don’t know how I remembered it all!
Postings after Neatishead
I went to Portreath which was very different as it was very very small, but I was essentially doing the same job. It had all the same elements but just on a much much smaller scale with way less equipment. This meant the that the squadrons, or watches, were smaller so you knew everybody’s names, address, inside leg measurement because there were so few of you. The bonds were really really high there.
But of course there was a lot more responsibility on you, and because there weren’t masses of you everyone had to be trained on everything,
It was the more senior people who went to the smaller places like that. Neatishead, Buchan or Boulmer were probably people’s first posting as there was so much to learn.
It was interesting living by the coast at Portreath. As a Midlander I struggled with the time that it took to get there and back, and also in Cornwall half the time it was dead and the other half it was rammed. So Cornwall wasn’t for me; it’s a beautiful place to holiday, but not to live.
I then went to Boulmer and that was much like Neatishead, just a different set of people. Sometimes moving around the circuit, you bumped into people who you knew. I was always looking for the next shiny thing, still am, so I looked forward to moving to the next place.
Being posted to Bahrain
It was 1990 and I was called into my squadron leader’s office and he told me that I was going to Bahrain. I was just floored. I mean, people were being sent out to the Middle East to the conflict, but I was just so shocked to be picked.
I didn’t hesitate, I didn’t have a choice, but I was up for it, you know, and I think that I was shipped out just before Christmas. We flew from Brize Norton, and I’d never been on a Hercules or any military flight.
I have a story about this trip, I was walking towards the plane with all the men, I was the only woman on the plane and I could see the flight crew looking out of the window. Then this flight sergeant, known as the loadmaster, came towards me. He did exactly what it said on the tin, he was master in charge of loading! He told me that the flight crew would like me to join them in the cockpit; they said that they weren’t having me sitting in the back with all the lads.
I went into the cockpit and there was guy at the back and two at the front. The co-pilot turned to me and pointed at a bunk bed behind his head and told me that I could sit on there. I asked him if he was joking and he said no, but told me not to swing my legs or I’d kick him in the head.
I thought that he was having a laugh, but no, so I jumped on this bunk, which had a chain on it to take it up and down. The loadmaster gave me a box full of sandwiches and told me to sit there and don’t move. I thought, don’t move, this can’t be real, and hoped that no bells or whistles rang.
I don’t know if I should be saying this, but anyway I sat on this thing and held on and I travelled all the way there in the cockpit. It was the most incredible experience. I can smell that cockpit right now. You had the best view in the house, the guys in the back weren’t happy, they reckoned the girls got all the good gigs. As there were fewer of us there were some perks.
I’m sure that there should have been more straps but you know, but I’m sure that the gentleman is not flying anymore and he won’t get into trouble, but I’m sure that there was worse done in the air force.
Women in Bahrain
Being in Bahrain, was very very serious and I was assigned to a unit based on the edge of the airfield. We were using equipment that allowed us to see a picture from our ops room and then could give it to the people who needed it. This ops room was pretty much a Land Rover and a tent.
I had used the equipment before but obviously this was a very different situation, it looked slightly different, behaved slightly differently, but you made it happen. There were two other women who were both a rank below me but they were absolutely fantastic. I’m still in touch with both of them, and one went on to have a prolific career and reached warrant officer, she went right to the top. I’m so incredibly proud of her, proud of what she achieved and proud to have served with her.
After this posting I came out of the air force. Being in a situation like that makes you reassess things. I was in my mid 20s and I assessed a number of things, both professional and personally.
Highlights of RAF career
So looking back and thinking, a highlight for me would be my service to my country, I am very proud to have served my country in Bahrain. I am very proud of my service.
Other highlights were working at Neatishead, Boulmer and Portreath and meeting the most incredible people, who I have so much respect for and am so fond of. I’m just so grateful for their friendship, their counsel and their mentorship.
Life and career in civvy street
I knew that I wanted a career in civvy street and I knew with my skill set I was possibly going to have to retrain and I decided to go into learning and development. I used some of my skills, but that I had to change them because how we train people in the military was very different to how we train people in civvy street. So I transferred my skills but had to modify them.
I am sure that it is different now, but in military training there wasn’t much consideration to learning styles, there was no conversation. You had to learn by memorising the information and that doesn’t work for everyone.
On one personnel training job the fire check used to sit with my department and one day I had to evacuate the premises. I set the fire alarms off and everybody walked to the car park. In the military we would do fire alarm drills, we’d be on it, no messing about. Anyway, these civilians I was looking after, they evacuated, getting their coats on, dragging their heels, moseying along, no urgency, and I was looking at them thinking, ‘What are you like’. And then the cardinal sin, somebody tried to re-enter the building before I gave permission.
I think that I just turned into this Royal Air Force corporal and I remember screaming across this car park, ‘You don’t enter the building until I give you permission, who told you?’ I’m just screaming and shouting like that across the car park and then I realised that I wasn’t in the military; I’d forgotten.
Like most people it took me about three years to civilianise myself and drop those sorts of behaviours and approaches. It’s so ingrained into you because of life and death situations.
You’ll be thrilled to know that I don’t scream and shout at anybody now! I am very calm, I negotiate and have conversations with all the people that I work with now and I wouldn’t dream of doing that.
Another adaptation into civvy street was in the military I was used to people having my back, being tight knit, all of us doing anything for any of us, giving the shirt off your back. Going from that to then being around people who weren’t team players like that, trying to get business off you. Being in civvy street is completely different to the military and it takes a lot of getting used to, and a lot of vets struggle. not having that camaraderie.
I absolutely reject that people are institutionalised and can’t make decisions. All of the vets that I know are absolutely capable of doing very serious jobs and making their own decisions. They’ve had to do that as part of their job.
I mentioned that I went into learning and development. I spent 20 years in the corporate world of learning, development and training. I started at the bottom and 20 years later I finished as an ops director in a training company. In 2010 I set up my own business where I specialise in leadership and right now I am developing senior leaders, entrepreneurs, business owners, MDs, helping them to reach their potential. It’s an absolutely brilliant job, I am very privileged to do it, I get to work with and meet some amazing people.
I am just about to launch my third CEO peer group, where I facilitate peer learning for CEOs.
The common denominator in everything that I do is leadership, that’s my specialism, my passion, I think that I had a masterclass from a lot of people in my RAF career. That’s where it started, that’s where my fascination for leadership started, and certainly where my leadership experience began. And what a place to start.
My association with Neatishead today
So, I have been to the museum and I think that it’s great. There are mannequins and everything there, but most of the equipment that we used is there as we left it.
Of course the museum has put extra parts and extra rooms in to make it more interesting, more of a story, but it’s pretty much as it was. I was never in the bunker at Neatishead, I was in the building that is actually now the museum which used to be called R30.
I think that they are doing a great job and I am really grateful to them for keeping the story alive and commemorating all the work that was done. So many people over so many years, doing such an important job in protecting the South of Britain.
Thank you so much for inviting me to be part of this, it’s really fantastic. I am very excited that this project is being done, and that Neatishead is being recognised in the way that it is because it was such an important place back in the Cold War, so thank you.
Karen Tracey (b. 1966) talking to WISEArchive on 31st January 2024 by Zoom from Tamworth. © WISEArchive 2024. All rights reserved.
