Carron talks about her life in the RAF, being posted to RAF Neatishead, deployment to the Falkland Islands and being part of the last personnel to be stationed at Neatishead.
Joining the RAF came about in a strange way for me. I used to be a dancer and had the living out of a suitcase lifestyle. When I moved back to Liverpool at 18 I decided that I wanted to keep that lifestyle but be paid a lot more than I was and so the RAF seemed like a wise choice.
In 2000 I went to the careers office and was offered the role of aerospace systems officer. Now, at the time I thought that this was because they desperately needed me as an aerospace systems officer but now that I have been in the RAF a while I realise that they were probably a bit low on recruitment numbers and that’s why I ended up going that way!
Joining the RAF and training
I did my phase one training at RAF Halton; this was our basic training where you technically become militarised and leave the civilian life behind. You get taught all the basic skills like shooting and lots of physical activity.
After completing that training I was moved to RAF Boulmer to do the phase two training. That was when you learnt your specific trade within the RAF. I want to say that training was about five months, but it felt a lot longer.
Arriving at Neatishead
I arrived at Neatishead in the late summer of 2000. I had hay fever and I was sneezing a little bit. I hoped that this wasn’t going to be my life every single day. But here I was in this strange little place in the middle of nowhere surrounded by beautiful meadows where I would spend the next three and a half years.
We didn’t actually live at RAF Neatishead, but at RAF Coltishall which was about a 20 minute bus journey away. We were bussed in every day.
I knew that I was going to be working in a bunker but when we arrived for the first time there were hardly any buildings on camp at Neatishead. I wondered if we were in the right place. You saw a nice little house and every day there are about 200 people who go into that little house – there’s only one place that they can go and that’s underground. So it was a bit strange.
We started work straightaway and you’d got your phase two under your belt. I had the basics of what I was going to do, but like many roles in the RAF you don’t really learn what you’re doing and the significance of it until you’re learning on the job.
The first rank after you get released from phase two is Leading Aircraft [LAC] woman, or man as it was then. I was trained in all the basic roles that an LAC could do.
I found that I slotted straight in and I found it really exciting.
Working life at Neatishead
There were lots of different jobs that you could do. Without going into too much detail, these jobs were split into two areas. You can read openly that at Neatishead there was a surveillance side of things, we were surveying UK airspace. There is also what we call the weapons side, where we assisted the weapons controllers in controlling the fighting aircraft. So you could be streamed to one or the other – I did a bit of both in the end and preferred surveillance.
I think that weapons is very punchy, and all done in one day whereas with surveillance I found a bit more job satisfaction. We really believed that we were protecting the UK and I really bought into it wholeheartedly. I think that at that time the number of incursions in UK airspace had dropped significantly, probably about three a month, and the RAF would be scrambled.
It was funny, especially as I know a lot more about the RAF now, but back then we really believed that we, as the operators, at 2 o’clock in the morning scrambled those pilots ourselves. They let us believe this because it was quite an important job.
Now I know there was a little bit of a process in between when we spotted something on the radar screen and those aircraft being scrambled. It’s not us individuals who launch, but I believed that for about three years.
When you survey the airspace, of course that is a 24 hour job and night shifts were fun. People who have visited Neatishead have said that it’s really kind of a spooky place. And it was.
When you were on the shift with your flight the camaraderie was brilliant, you stayed on shift with those people the whole time. You’d work together, spend days off together, go drinking together, all of that.
But there was always one shift that I hated and that was what we called the graveyard shift. We all congregated in the house ‘on position’. If you were on position on the graveyard shift you’d have to walk a couple of floors down to where you were working, on your own at 2 o’clock.
There was a little area in between the operations part and the slope going down to that that always reminded me a bit of Hannibal Lecter when he’s sat in the corner of his cell. That area looked a bit like that cell, there was just one chair and I always sort of imagined that I’d find someone sat there. I’d run past that place so fast every time. It wasn’t a desirable place to be on graveyard shift, but we always managed to share it between ourselves.
There was a Tannoy system which let you talk to people as they were walking up or down the corridor on the way to the bunker. Every now and then I’d hear little giggles and slight whispers where they were trying to scare me as I was pegging it down the corridor, it was quite funny.
Expecting to have more female colleagues at Neatishead
There was another female on my training and we went to the same places throughout our first few years in the air force. It was nice having another female through phases one and two and then at RAF Neatishead.
But when I got to Neatishead I was expecting to see more females and it was a bit disappointing because you ended up having more male friends than female. This was fine but it would have been nice to have had more females to go through all those challenges for a girl joining the military.
There are many stories, but this one is quite funny. When you had your annual report there used to be guidance to describe the person you’re reporting on. So whether that be ‘LAC Douglas is a tall man with brown hair,’ or whatever, you’d go on to what they did in the role and how they performed. I have just found my original report and it opened with, ‘bright bubbly and blonde’. Looking back, then I thought, yeah they have got me right down to a tee. In this day and age that would never happen, but back then I thought that it was fine.
I think that attitudes have changed, but we’re still a couple of years behind the rest of the world when it comes to equality and diversity of women. You may have seen that there have been lots of women making it into the papers recently, with their experiences. However, I think it’s changed drastically and for the better. My niece is actually joining the air force in a few weeks, and I wouldn’t allow her to join if I didn’t feel like she would be treated well.
The social side of life at Neatishead
For me the best thing about Neatishead was the social side. Where Neatishead is you have to travel about two hours overland to actually start travelling anywhere. If I drove back to Liverpool I would have a two hour drive before I’d get on any major roads.
So this meant that a lot of people stayed over the weekend. These days, on a lot of camps when it hits midday on a Friday everyone has gone, but at Neatishead Friday was the best night. We went to a place called The Families – the family club – there’d always be a band on; we’d have little after-parties, or someone would have the idea to order a taxi and we’d go into Norwich afterwards.
At the time RAF Coltishall had a welfare fund; I think they owned a barge and I remember having a welfare day. We were allowed to go on the barge along to the pubs on the Broads, but what we didn’t realise was that we had to captain the barge ourselves! That was always fun.
You can imagine the things that happened trying to navigate through The Broads when there’s a lot of heavily intoxicated people on board…
Trying new sports, and a turning point in attitudes to the RAF
I was very fit back then and I had done a lot of sport . When you join the RAF you get opportunities to do sport that you’ve never done before. Since joining I have surfed and done springboard diving for the RAF; things I wouldn’t normally have done.
Part of the advantage of being in the military is that you get to do adventure training and I volunteered for these things quite early on in my career. I went to Yosemite National Park in the States to do this training and we were there for 9/11. The training was absolutely brilliant but being in the States when 9/11 happened, I think we had the realisation that what we actually did at Neatishead was quite important.
I remember being on one of the first flights back to the UK after the airports opened up again and there must have been only about 30 people on the Boeing 747 including us.
Coming back to the UK I started to take my career a little bit more seriously. Before then it was just good fun but that was definitely a turning point for how I thought about the RAF and my placed within it. I really think that it affected everyone’s attitudes. We were always professional anyway but there was a clear difference in how we delivered operations from that point on.
Within the first few weeks back there was a heightened sense of alertness and then once things calmed down it was just operations as normal. Over the years I’ve realised that being adaptable really is the key to being a member of the military.
Deployment
I was deployed quite early on in my career compared with some people. Whilst I was still based at Neatishead I was deployed to the Falkland Islands. I found that deployment really helped me to see the RAF that I had joined, all the aircraft, the different trades and the different people. Early deployment really opened my eyes to what the RAF was. Neatishead was quite insular because you mainly mixed with your same trade,
I wasn’t shocked by the Falklands at all, I was used to the remoteness, but some people would struggle with it. I really enjoyed it. I got to fly in all sorts of different types of aircraft and see the wider operation of the air force that we didn’t really pay a lot of attention to at Neatishead, which is all about UK operations. This was my chance to see the wide air force in its role as protector of other places in the world, so it was great and I loved it down there. When I was there you were able to do lots of battlefield tours so you could get to see the places that were attacked and get a feel of how the soldiers lived.
On return from deployment I realised that I didn’t want to be an aerospace systems operator anymore and decided that it was time for a change. After I left Neatishead I went to RAF Waddington which was a flying base like RAF Coltishall, unlike Neatishead. That was when I really felt that I was truly in the air force.
I am now in a different branch of the air force and I am at the rank of Sergeant, but I don’t mind that because I chose to leave another trade and learnt another profession so I kind of started again. But it was great to have the experience of Neatishead and I definitely took that experience into my next profession.
The closure of Neatishead
I guess we were the last personnel to be at Neatishead before it closed in 2004. I think that it was a choice between us and RAF Buchan. It may have been the cost of keeping us open, but anyway it ended up being Neatishead that closed. The news arrived whilst I was there and there was definitely a feeling of it being the end of an era, especially among those people who had been there a long time. When you first get there you learn about the history of the station and how it performed during the Cold War and things like that, so it really was the end of an era even after the short period that I was there. Quite sad.
My best memory of Neatishead would probably be the people. When you’re in your first years in the RAF you are all going through the same things and that bonds you for life. I’m still in touch with a lot of people from there and we always reminisce about the funny stories and the things that we used to get up to.
I haven’t been back to Neatishead. I know people who have and I think that it’ll be so strange going back. And I can’t believe that a place where I have been posted is now a museum. I would have to prepare myself mentally to go back there to see that where I began in the RAF is now a museum. But I’d definitely be a great tour guide I know that!
Carron Douglas (b. 1982) talking to WISEArchive by Zoom from Lincoln on 17th February 2024.
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